In Memoriam: Carol Lynn Pearson (1939-2026)

I had long been a fan of Carol Lynn’s poetry, I saw her musical “My Turn on Earth” as a teen, and I have always considered her the unofficial Poet Laureate of the Latter-day Saint Church. I came out on July 4th, 1985, divorcing my wife soon after, but I struggled immensely, wallowing in my own toxicity and self-loathing – constantly suicidal. A year later, Carol Lynn published Goodbye, I Love You: The True Story of a Wife, Her Homosexual Husband and Love Honored for Time and All Eternity.” I didn’t read it until around February 1987. And then read it three or four times in a row, weeping uncontrollably each time. One evening in Salt Lake, I looked up her phone number and cold called her at her home in Walnut Creek, California. I told her my story and we wept together. Her love came so easily to a complete stranger. The one message that came through strongly was that if she could feel compassion and love for me, why couldn’t I feel it for myself? Having felt worthless and unworthy my whole life, I realized it was time to change that.

A few months later, she came to Salt Lake, and I got to meet her and her daughter Emily, who was just starting at BYU. I had journaled as a teen but had stopped in the early 1980s. The very first thing Carol Lynn encouraged me to do was to start journaling again – to keep a record of my story. So, in May of 1987, I started writing again, just as I was beginning to become an activist. I’m so glad now that I have a record of those amazing years.

In January 1990, Carol Lynn came to Salt Lake to put on her one-woman show, Mother Wove the Morning, at the Salt Lake Art Center. I loved watching her on stage as she transformed into 16 different women from the paleolithic era to modern times. A love letter to “the goddess,” her play was instrumental in me embracing the Divine Feminine within myself.

The LDS oriented Sunstone West Symposium was held in the Bay Area in 2005, and I was living just south in Santa Cruz. Carol Lynn and I were both on a panel together called “In Quiet Desperation,” which dealt with the horrible plight that LGBT LDS folks found themselves in. The panel name refers to a a mildly homophobic book published in 2004 called In Quiet Desperation: Understanding the Challenge of Same-Gender Attraction, written in the aftermath of the suicide in 2000 of a Bay Area Gay Mormon named Stuart Matis. Stuart’s parents were two of the authors. For my part of the panel, I listed the names and some personal info about the Gay Mormons that I had documented (including Stuart Matis) who had committed suicide and I then challenged the LDS people in the audience to treat us with at least justice and perhaps a “modicum of mercy.” Carol Lynn responded to this book by criticizing its premise that Matis’s parents would rather have their son be dead than “living in sin” with a partner.

If you’re interested in hearing the panel, it’s at:

https://sunstone.org/panel-in-quiet-desperation-2/ 

My comments start at 16:40 and Carol Lynn’s at 31:30. I think that this panel likely was the impetus behind her writing her play, Facing East, a year later. It deals with the suicide of a young Gay Mormon, and how his parents deal (or don’t) with the aftermath. It was first put on here in Salt Lake at Plan-B Theatre, under the direction of Jerry Rapier, and funded by Bruce Bastian. For the 20th anniversary of the play, Plan-B will be putting it on again this fall. The Saturday, October 24th performance at 4:00 pm will include a post-show discussion about the history and impact of the play, etc. https://planbtheatre.org/facingeast/

Also in 2006, Carol Lynn wrote a “sequel” of sorts to Goodbye, I Love You, called No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons around Our Gay Loved Ones. I was honored to help her edit it and she also included my own story in brief and anonymously.

While living in Santa Cruz, I had the delightful opportunity of visiting her in her home in Walnut Creek a few times, breaking bread with her and her family, and receiving her lovely foot massages.

Then, in the aftermath of Prop 8 in California (the anti-marriage equality state constitutional amendment heavily supported by the LDS Church), the church in the state faced immense public criticism and falling membership numbers. So, in September 2010, a general authority named Marlin Jensen (an acquaintance of mine from when he had been the Church Historian) came to speak at the chapel next to the Oakland Temple to perhaps do some damage control. Carol Lynn asked me to attend with her. Doing something I’d never heard of before, Jensen wanted to have an open mic! The first couple of people were rather homophobic and left her and me rather uncomfortable. She kept poking me to get up but feeling too much like a fish out of water, I wasn’t ready. She finally got up and made some rather pointed remarks. She talked about her vision of an LDS church where Gay couples are completely welcome in the church and where our marital relationships are supported and sustained. She got a nice ovation from the crowd and thankfully turned the spirit of it around. I then mustered up the courage to speak. I dramatically told everyone how for the 12 years I participated in that church as a young adult that Mormonism had violated by soul. I then turned to Marlin Jensen directly and told him that the only way his church was going to get out of this mess they created was for his church to repent. Marlin then got up and said to me, “With all my heart I am so sorry at the pain my church has caused you. I deeply apologize, for whatever that is worth to you.” That sincere apology meant a lot to me!

My last interaction with Carol Lynn was about 10 days before her passing. She called me but not sounding well and being very befuddled, she asked me a couple of times why I had called her. I corrected her the first time but that seemed to confuse her even more so the second time, I just told her that I had been reading volume 3 of her journals, which are now being published by our friends at Signature Books. (https://www.signaturebooks.com/books?tag=Carol%20Lynn%20Pearson)

I said that volume 3 covers the time when we spoke to Marlin Jensen at the Oakland chapel. I too had written about that experience, and I was so relieved to find that her account in her diary meshed so well with what I had written. She laughed in delight.

We chatted a bit more and then I told her how much I loved her before we said goodbye.

And the second I hung up I knew deep in my heart that this would be our last conversation.

Goodbye. I love you.