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Are You Aware? Queer and Mormon
This is part III in our LGBTQ+ Education Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. Hello, friends. I’m Blaire Ostler. I’m a born and raised Mormon. I come from nine generations of Mormon pioneers. I often joke that if there is a Mormon gene, I have it. I’m also a genderqueer and bisexual, but most of the time I refer to myself as “queer.” If there is a queer gene, I’m pretty sure I have that too. The constant struggle for a bisexual person, at least in my case, was never feeling like you belong somewhere. I was never gay enough and I was never straight enough.…
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Are You Aware? My Complicated Life as a Transgender Latter-Day Saint
This is part II in our LGBTQ+ Education Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. Ever since I can remember, I have felt that I was somehow different. As I got older, I learned that the way I was different was not OK — even shameful. I hated this part of myself that made me different. I prayed and wished and hoped that someday I could be the same as everyone else. My name is Ann Pack and I am a transgender woman. It has taken decades for me to not only be OK with this part of myself but actually love and embrace this part of…
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Are You Aware? LGBTQ+ Education Introduction
This is part I in our LGBTQ+ Education Awareness Wednesday series. Read the other posts in the series here. My husband and my oldest son have brown eyes, I have gray eyes, and my younger son has grayish-green and gold hazel eyes — I don’t have any other way to describe them. My husband has dark brown (almost black), salt-and-pepper hair. My hair is naturally brown, though I choose to highlight it to cover some of the gray that started showing up when I was 16 years old. My youngest has red hair, and I don’t even know what color to call my oldest son’s hair. Sometimes I say red or…
