Wisdom from matriarch Carol Lynn Pearson’s diaries, vol. 1
Available on Amazon and Signature Books
Carol Lynn Pearson has been a gentle, outspoken ally of LGBTQ people since the 1970s. As chronicled in her bestseller, Goodbye, I Love You, she and her gay husband Gerald divorced around 1978, after four children and twelve years of marriage. When he contracted AIDS, he came home to die while she cared for him in his final year of life. She has also written No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones, a play Facing East, astonishingly beautiful poetry about various spiritual subjects, and more. See carollynnpearson.com.
Ever since I joined the Church at age 16, I have held Carol Lynn’s work close to my heart. I’m delighted now to have the chance to literally read her personal diary in four volumes. Her observations are blunt but charitable, and it’s rather eye-popping from time to time to read this behind-the-scenes look at Church culture.
Here are a gem that I have thought about a great deal. It’s particularly relevant to LGBTQ folks and those who love them:
In Los Angeles, I addressed the Miller-Eccles study group in Pasadena. It was in a large backyard and there must have been 150 people there. . . . A man asked, sincerely and not challengingly, if the final answer to the problem of homosexuality wasn’t just a healing blessing of the priesthood to relieve one of the problem. I asked, also sincerely, if he knew of any instances in which this had occurred. No, he said. I said that I did not either. A woman then rose and commented that maybe what we should be doing, rather than looking for the priesthood to heal them, is to call on the healing powers of the Lord to heal us of our attitudes and our prejudices. I thought that was quite a remarkable thing to hear (emphasis added).
“We are pioneers, my dear, and right now we’re up to our ears in Winter Quarters.”
Carol Lynn, I’m ready for Volumes 2, 3, and 4. Thank you for your brave, tireless, loving, pioneering work for decades and decades at these LDS LGBTQ crossroads.
-Marci