The Possible Dream

Parents often worry about the future of their children.  And sometimes that intensifies for a bit when their child comes out.  They wonder if their child will be able to find love and relationship.  They wonder if their child will be held back in their careers. Today In the Den, Jen talks with special guests Seth Anderson and Michael Ferguson about their personal experiences of coming out, falling in love, and finding happiness. Listening to their personal narratives is a glimpse into another wonderful example of the health and success that is possible for LGBTQ individuals.

Special Guest: Seth Anderson

J. Seth Anderson, PhD, was born in Provo, Utah, and raised in Utah and Arizona. He served a mission in the Russia, Samara mission. He earned a BA in Russian and a BS in Economics from Arizona State University, an MA in History from the University of Utah, and a PhD in History from Boston University. His dissertation explores the origin of gay conversion therapy. (He claims to be working on the book proposal, but that's debatable.) He likes to play piano and go to the gym. He and his husband Dr. Michael Ferguson, were the first same-sex couple married in Utah in 2013.

Special Guest: Michael Ferguson

Dr. Michael Ferguson is an Instructor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School, where he directs the Neurospirituality Lab at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics. He also directs Wellness and Self-Discovery programs for first-year students at Harvard College, where he has launched the Crimson Compassion and Earth Compassion initiatives. He is a certified Mindful Self-Compassion teacher and a world leader in the science of spirituality. Dr. Ferguson earned his bachelor’s degree at Brigham Young University and his PhD at the University of Utah. He currently serves as the choir director of the Cambridge 1st Ward in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Links from the Show: 

• The Compassion.Science website: https://neuromichael.com/
• Join Mama Dragons today at www.mamadragons.org 
• Mama Dragons on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mamadragons 
• Mama Dragons on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themamadragons/ 

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Transcript

JEN: Hello and welcome to In The Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created to walk and talk with you through this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. Thanks for listening. We’re glad you’re here.

Today, we have with us Seth Anderson and Michael Ferguson. Our podcast team had been hoping to do an episode with each of them separately based on their areas of expertise. But we felt like a regular, professional conversation would leave all of us wanting more. Because they are experts in their fields, but they are also a regular couple who found love and marriage and we love those examples! Parents often worry about the future of their children. And sometimes that intensifies for a little while when their child first comes out. They wonder if their child will be able to find love and form relationships. They wonder and fear if their child will be held back in their careers.

So today we are going to dissect Seth and Michael’s personal experiences and listen to their personal narratives, because it seems like they are another wonderful example of health and success. And then, in a few weeks, we’ll do an entire episode with each of them separately, diving into the topics that they know best. So welcome to Seth and Michael.

MICHAEL: Thank you. Good to be here.

SETH: Hi. Thank you. Good to be here.

JEN: All right. So, let’s talk, start with before you guys met. I’m interested in when each of you knew that you weren’t straight.

SETH: Do you want me to start? So I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve answered this question before. Very clearly for me, honestly, no joke, I remember very clearly I was seven years old. I was the age of seven and I just knew I’m different from other boys and I didn’t know why. But I had this conscious awareness and I didn’t know the word. I wasn’t sexually active or anything. But I was aware that I was different. And as an adult looking back on it now, I can see these examples of why I would’ve been thinking that. So, for instance, there was a guy in our ward – I grew up LDS. We’ll talk way more about that later. But I grew up LDS in Utah and Arizona. There was a guy from the ward, the local congregation, who was a tennis player and my mom was like, ‘Seth will take lessons with you and learn how to play tennis.” And I had the biggest crush on him. And I didn’t know that was the word. I didn’t know what it was. But I have my old journals from when I was seven, eight years old and they’re so this little boy just doting over this 22-year-old adult man, just so enamored with him. So very clearly, for me, it was that age. I knew then. Later, by the time I was eleven, I knew what the word was and this was the early 90’s and that was a bad word. It was a bad thing to be and it made me very nervous. And then starting about age eleven, twelve, kind of went into this separate life thing where I pushed that to the back of my head and just focused on school – and later when I was a little older, on having a job. I was very conscious of being busy all the time so that “I couldn’t have a girlfriend” because I was so busy with everything else. So then nobody would bother me. “I’m just so busy. I have all these jobs and all this school work to do. I can’t have a girlfriend.” That was sort of how I dealt with it until after I came back from my mission. I was a Mormon missionary for two years and then that kind of early 20’s trajectory had to shift. So that’s how it began for me.

JEN: Were you internalizing any messages? Like you said you knew it was a bad thing to be and you were kind of running for it. Did you internalize the idea that it was bad so you were bad?

SETH: I don’t remember that I thought I was bad. I remember knowing – because it was the early 90’s so this was still the 90’s wasn’t a great time for anybody to be gay. It was still a difficult time. But my ears were very attuned to any type of conversation or any discussion on TV or radio shows that I was hearing, picking up things that kids at school said, kind of just homo-negative slang slurs towards gay people. Like the really typical – and what was portrayed was a stereotypical type of an effeminate, girly, gay man. And I wasn’t that. And so I felt I wasn’t unsafe or anything, but it was easier for me to be distanced from that. So I never felt myself as bad. In high school and after the mission, I think what I felt bad about was that what I thought my life was going to be, wasn’t going to be that. And I think there was a mini sense of mourning that life which made me feel bad. But I didn’t feel bad that something was wrong with me.

JEN: Good. Okay. That makes perfect sense. How about you, Michael? When did you first know that you weren’t straight?

MICHAEL: Oh, gosh. I’ve got to break that one down. And I will try to not go into a philosophical tangent about “What is knowledge?”

JEN: All right.

MICHAEL: But I would say that there’s four stages. That there’s Having Experience, Recognizing Experience, Naming Experience, and then Narrating Experience. And so in terms of having the experience of same-gender attraction, I can remember back to first grade that there was a show-and-tell day where one of the other boys in my class was showing wrestling. And he came in with his wrestling spandex suit and was showing wrestling moves. And I just remember having an experience of, “I feel energy in my body when I’m watching another boy in a wrestling suit right now!” But I certainly didn’t recognize that as a different experience. I had the experience. I would say recognizing it as a different experience came for me somewhere between 5th and 7th grade that I started to recognize, “Oh, this experience is different.” But I still wouldn’t name it. So naming the experience, I started to name the experience around sophomore year of high school but with tremendous fear and trembling.

JEN: So that’s sixteen-ish?

MICHAEL: There about.

JEN: Okay.

MICHAEL: But even naming it in a way that I was so guarded. Not naming it as Gay or not naming it as homosexual. Naming it as “I’m having feelings.” I remember in high school telling a friend, “I’m having feelings for other guys.” So naming it for the first time as Same-Sex Attraction for me was when I was on my mission. Naming it as Gay, actually, there’s Homosexual before that, before I got around to using the word gay. Homosexual was after my mission when I was finishing up at Brigham Young University. Naming it as Gay was, oh gosh, my mid to late twenties. I mean, it was a slow crawl from Feelings to Gay in terms of naming. And the Narrating is how does this incorporate into my greater identity and how does my greater identity incorporate into society and how does that incorporate into the trajectory of history. So you can really go big, big, big, big with narrating. And I’d say that’s an ongoing process of narration and renarration. But that, though, just to, like, boil it back down, having the first experiences, I can trace back to first grade.

JEN: Do you think it was slow, this slow crawl, do you think you were trying to avoid it, you were trying to keep yourself separate?

MICHAEL: Oh, 100%, 100%.

JEN: Okay.

MICHAEL: Yeah. But I would also say that it’s not just an avoidance of same-sex sexuality. It was just an avoidance of sexuality. I mean, growing up in a culture where – and this becomes a whole huge, huge, important but tangential topic about chastity and about chastity culture. But I think that independent of the same-sex orientation, that just growing up in a culture that is soaked in sex shame and sex anxiety was a huge part of the reason why that crawl toward a name was a very slow crawl.

JEN: That makes a ton of sense. Okay. So we’ve got both of you, with kind of this long trajectory of recognizing your identity, which I love. But if we separate your orientation before, your life, before you came out to anyone else, as you’re discovering it yourself, before you’ve come out publicly, what sort of vision did you have for your life, for your future? Did you think it was going to go away and you were going to marry a woman? How did you picture life?

MICHAEL: I’ll answer this one first. Oh, for sure, 100% that I completely, and no one told me this. This is a thing too, is that no one told me this but I just believed, fundamentally, that when I went on a mission, served a faithful mission, that I would come back straight. And I’ve talked to so many other gay Latter Day Saint men who had that same belief. So to me, that’s fascinating how perennial and persistent that specific belief is for gay Mormon men.

JEN: The culture, there’s not a lot of other examples. “This is what the future looks like, so this is what I’ll probably do also.” Seems to make a ton of sense. What about career, did you have ideas of what you wanted to do when you were younger?

SETH: I was convinced I was going to be a big rock star. I did want that. I never, never pursued it at all.

JEN: I love that.

SETH: My teenage fantasy, which was really more about being respected and being good at your job. I wasn’t about the thing necessarily. It was just about being qualified  at what you’re doing, is I think the root of that idea. I was really naïve. I come from a very working-class family background. My dad did a lot of day-labor stuff, construction stuff. My mom, for as much as she could be, was a stay-at-home mom. When I was a little older she had jobs. And I didn’t know what I was… the idea was, you go to college and then you work in business. That was the extent of it.

JEN: Somebody with a suit.

SETH: Yes. Something where you make money. And that, the career thing for me didn't resolve until like actually fairly recently. So I didn’t really have a vision of what my career was going to look like.

JEN: Did you think you would marry a woman?

SETH: I didn’t. I didn’t plan on it. I knew as early, like a very early memory I remember thinking, “I can’t bring somebody else into this.” It’s been so long I don’t remember if I would describe those early years as turmoil. There was struggle for sure. And I probably was embarrassed by it. But I never thought that if I got married to a woman that it would be better. That just was not, that just seemed so stupid to me. Why would anybody even think that? How could that possibly be true? And because of that, then that meant that I couldn’t bring anybody in and try to fake it. I wasn’t that good of an actor. And I wasn’t that sexually attracted to women. I couldn’t. It would’ve been impossible. So I sort of just envisioned a single, playboy, not celibate . . .

JEN: I was going to say, can’t be a playboy and celibate.

SETH: I imagined being single, successful, maybe dating people but not maybe in some kind of committed relationship but not married. Not married to a woman, not having children, that was never in my plans either.

JEN: So talk to us about when you came out, like when you decided to some out how you did it and how did that go?

SETH: Michael, do you want me to go first?

MICHAEL: Sure. 

SETH: So I’d gotten back from my mission. I had gone to Russia. And my mom, at the time, was working for the airline. So I was able to fly back and forth between Phoenix and Salt Lake pretty frequently and at no cost which was really fun because I could go up to Utah, see my family and my friends up there, then I could go home to Arizona. But I remember very clearly, there was one time the plane landed at Salt Lake. And I looked out the window and I could see the city, you know, out there in the distance. And I swear it was like a shot clock in a basketball game, popped up in my vision. And it was like counting backwards from 30. And I swear it was my subconscious being like, "You have this much time before you have to deal with this.” And that freaked me out. So that was probably about 2003 or 4. I was in college at ASU. And then it was summer 2005 and I met somebody who I could tell was gay and was very comfortable with that. And he was a little bit older than I was. And we worked at the same place and we started hanging out. And one thing led to another and then before long we were sort of dating. And I was like, “Whoa, this is new for me.” And then it was around the time that I was finishing ASU. My sister was about to get married. My parents were asking, “Who is this person you’re spending all this time with? What is going on?” And so then I knew, “I have to deal with this.” My parents are divorced and so I wanted to tell them separately. I took my mom to lunch, to a public place just in case. So I was probably 23. So I wasn’t a kid. I was back from my mission. I had graduated from college. I was a young 20-something. And we went out for lunch and I told her. And she was a little – I don’t know the right word – she was not happy. I’d say that. She didn't have a meltdown or anything. But l think she struggled with it for a while. And she told me later, and I believe her, I don’t think this was her re-writing anything. I think she was sincere. I think she thought, she told me, “I was afraid for you because I didn’t want the world to be mean to you. And I knew that gay people were not treated well. And I couldn’t imagine you being treated the way that I had seen other gay people be treated. That freaked me out.” That’s what she said. I think she was right. And then I also give her credit because I had 23 years up to that point to reassess what my life was going to look like. So it’s unfair then, to be like, “Here’s the breaking news, Mom. You have 23 seconds to get onboard with this, this thing that took me 23 years.” You know what I mean? So we didn’t talk for a few months after that. Not in an antagonistic or punishing way. We just had some distance. And then she came around and has been fine ever since. Not an issue at all, at all. So that was my mom. And my dad, I took him out to eat as well. And he said something really kind that I think back on all the time. So I told him, “You know, I’ve been hanging out with this person and we’re really happy together.” Meaning “We are together.” He sighed. He took like a big deep breath. And he kind of looked down. and then he looked back up at me again and he said, “I always hoped that this day wouldn’t come. But now that it’s here, it’s not so bad.” And then that was a really healing moment for me and my dad because I couldn’t ever really talk to him openly. There was also some sort of a barrier because I didn’t want to reveal too much or have him ask too much and have to be evasive and then tell a lie and then another lie to cover the lie. I didn’t ever want to do that. So we always had these kind of superficial conversations. After that, though, the cat’s out of the bag. So now we can talk about whatever because there’s no hiding anymore. So that was with my parents. Then I told my sisters separately and it was fine. My grandma, my grandparents in Provo were actually the best. Both to the person I was with, he and I ended up being together about five years. And then we parted ways. We’re still friends but we were better friends than anything else. And, when my grandmother died, my grandparents in Provo were both temple workers in the Provo Temple for a long time, which means they volunteered at the Provo Temple and spent a lot of time there. It’s a very spiritual and serious thing that faithful members of the Mormon church do. And from a small town, Fountain Green, Utah. They were farmers. And I never told them. My dad told them for me. And he said they were cool with it. But then they met Michael after we were married. And there’s a story with that how Michael and I were the first to get married in Utah and it was big news.

JEN: We’re going to cover that for sure.

SETH: I’ll tell you this, then. My grandma was really great about that. I’ll tell you that story when we get there. And, when she died though, she was really on her deathbed, really at her home in Provo. And we went to say goodbye. And I gave her a hug knowing “This is the last time I’m going to see you.” And she gave Michael a big hug too and told him, “I’m so glad you’re mine.”

JEN: That’s cute.

SETH: So my experience was really, really positive compared to other stories that I know. But mine was, I think, fairly unique and that’s a bummer. I think most people should be more similar to that than traumatic. So I feel very lucky. But my family was really great when that all came out.

JEN: How about you, Michael?

MICHAEL: I’ll preface mine by saying that both God and love played a long game.

JEN: Okay.

MICHAEL: I would say that the long game has been a positive one. But episodes within that longer arch have been really excruciating. I could describe maybe two different coming out stages. So coming out version 1.0 and then coming out version 2.0. So coming out version 1.0, I was basically forced to come out to my family because of conversion therapy. So let me explain what I mean by that. During my mid to late 20s when I was going to conversion therapy, coaching and counseling and groups and retreats. I was a student at the time. And I was in the closet, deeply. I was paying for all of this out-of-pocket. I mean, insurance doesn’t cover this. And so I’m hemorrhaging so much money. My parents, my family can’t get a hold of me on the weekends because I’m away on retreats trying to not be a homosexual. And so, finally, at one point, my family was like, “What’s going on? Why do you not have money? Why are we not able to contact you? Are you on drugs? What’s happening?” They could tell that something was off. So coming out version 1.0 was because all of my time and resources were being hemorrhaged on conversion therapy. And so I had to say, ‘Here's the situation. I experience unwanted same-sex attraction. But it’s okay because I’m going to therapy and I’m still going to get married in the temple and everything’s going to be good.” That was coming out version 1.0. And even version 1.0 is super hard, super, super hard. Fast forward a few years and coming out version 2.0 was where it was like, “Oh. Hey, remember about that unwanted same-sex attraction but I’m going to conversion therapy and still going to marry a woman in the temple? New version of the story, I’m actually gay and I’m not just theoretically homosexual. But I am dating someone.” So whereas conversion therapy forced me to come out in version 1.0. It was Seth Anderson that forced me to come out in version 2.0. I say playfully tongue-and-cheek, just in the sense that when there’s something that important and big and central in your life, then it just doesn’t feel good, it’s not good for you, to keep those things shrouded in such secrecy.

JEN: So how did your family respond to the two different coming outs?

MICHAEL: So, like I said, the long game has been a good long game. But the episodes in the game have been rough.

JEN: Was it easier for them when they thought you weren’t – I’m mostly interested in comparison, like were they more concerned about how you were going to act or more concerned about how you were feeling?

MICHAEL: That’s a great question. Thanks for clarifying the differentiation that you’re curious about there. Both were rough and part of the reason why both were rough, especially for my folks, especially for my mom is because so much of conservative – with a small c – of the conservative conversion therapy explanation is that your parents screwed up. Your mother was too close. Your father was too distant. And so even with coming out 1.0 that my mom deeply internalized that “This is my fault. I screwed up. I’m a bad mother. What have I done?” And that’s one of the reasons that I feel so strongly about the need to route out these horrific conversion therapy narratives. That’s again, another topic that we’ll get to. So version 1.0 where “I was experiencing unwanted same-sex attraction but I’m still getting married in the temple and everything's going to be okay!” It was still difficult for those reasons. Again, largely because of those blame, shame, narratives that circulated in a lot of communities where these are difficult topics. Version 2.0, I would say that version 2.0 and feedback that I’ve gotten from family, there's been a ton of healing and reconciliation that’s transpired in the past decade. But part of what made version 2.0 so tumultuous was that for me it also was a step away from the faith of my upbringing and a step away from the faith of my family. And that rupture in a shared faith system, I think, is what really made version 2.0 so intensely agonizing.

JEN: That’s super, super, relatable to me. I think back to the early parts of our own journey and if it had been similar to your situation, I can almost see myself as your mom in that position being like, ‘Okay. I need to focus on this part because the gay part is going away. He’s fixing that. That part’s going away. I don’t really need to learn too much about that because it’s going to be gone anyway.” And then getting hit the second time around with, “Oh, it’s not going away. I could’ve had all these years that I should've been learning to kind of stretch things out a little bit.” 

Throughout your entire journey, I don’t know if this is even possible to imagine. But for both of you when you’re seven or twelve or a sophomore, all of these times when you’re running fast, running away from it or slow crawling towards it or however you describe it, is there anything that your parents – and I’m mostly thinking of other people’s parents, right – is there anything other people's parents, our listeners, could be doing to make those things a little bit easier for you as a child. Are there any conversations that could’ve happened in your household or things that might’ve – Seth, your dad sounds like he sort of maybe had a hint. Would it have been helpful if he brought it up or absolutely not ‘cause you weren’t ready? Does that make sense, the questions, a little bit?

SETH: That is a good question because my parents did tell me later. They’re like, “Oh yeah, when you were younger we had these thoughts. We wondered because you liked Madonna” or whatever it was. And I would’ve been so humiliated, first of all, had you asked. I would’ve lied to you. No, I wouldn't have been okay with that because I wasn’t okay with it yet. So for somebody to, not force it, but even just to bring it up, for me in those years i would've been difficult. Again, though, the cultural context is completely different. We don’t live in, it’s not the 90’s anymore. Culturally, things are so much more different that I feel I would have felt so much, I would have been more attuned to and accustomed to and okay with a bunch of stuff that I wasn’t in the 90’s because there wasn’t anywhere to know about it. The idea of gay people getting married was the butt of a joke. That wasn’t ever going to happen. And for almost a decade now, that’s been true. So kids, and there’s more people who are gay on TV, or in the office, or that you know. It’s just so much more commonplace that I feel it’s easier to bring up and talk about now, I think. And in that time for me that would’ve been weird. And Micahel, what are you thinking?

MICHAEL: My thoughts at this point are a little bit abstract. I’m trying to think of how these abstractions would distill into practical interactions as a child.The two big abstractions, I’ll just put on the table. One, if I had had messaging about the universal dignity of every human being, then I think that would’ve helped. And then, secondly, if I had had more messaging about the boundlessness of God’s love. But now thinking about, what does that look like in practical neighborhood details? You’re at your neighbor’s house and your neighbor’s parents were messaging about the universal dignity of every human being. Right now, on the fly of a quick translation of what would that actually look like, to interact with a kid and give those messages. But at an abstract level, I think those were the two big messages that would’ve been really beautiful and really empowering to internalize more.

SETH: I think I could add a little more now that I’m thinking about it. I do remember I had a friend in high school. He did come out as gay later. But when we would hang out at one of our other friend’s house, our other friend's parents probably were aware. And it was not a big deal. It was just so easy and they didn’t focus on things or have to make every conversation about it or ask if he was safe. It was just such a normal part of life that, that for me was really helpful. So I think not hyper focusing on this thing that makes you different is actually a good strategy for just fitting in slowly. I would’ve been singled out and talked about.

MICHAEL: Just riffing now because I’m starting to get some ideas too. So hypothetically, if when I was a kid, let’s just say there was a gay couple or a gay person in the neighborhood. If another adult had said, “John is such a good person. God loves John so much.” Something like that, if there had been concrete expressions of the goodness of this person who is gay, how much God loves this person who is gay, that would’ve really warmed and changed my heart at a young age.

JEN: That makes a ton of sense. And I love that the more people who are out the more opportunities that we have to do that. We know who our neighbors are so we can do that for our kids. I worried most, I was having kids in the 90’s so we were part of “the nobody talks about it” generation. And so I never said bad things because it was just a vacuum. We had no conversations about it. It almost didn’t exist. And now I think we have so many opportunities to speak about it positively but there's also a lot of really negative conversations. So I worry about the messages that kids are hearing. Because obviously, it’s better to have it not be invisible and mute like we all were in the 90’s but is sure comes with some collateral damage in the process.

SETH: Which I think is good for gay – this is what I loved about or what I do like about gay strength of the past was that the 90’s weren’t great, but the 80’s were worse and the 50’s were worse. And one of the things that gay people were so good at was wit and then being funny and knowing how to talk about things they wanted to talk about and being strong and standing up for themselves and knowing the arguments and knowing the debates. And inviting people in to actually talk and say, “Let's think this through.” I think we’ve lost that in some ways for me a big con to the younger gay generations who are more coddled and not allowed or they fear being exposed to any kind of resistance, which is what you need to strengthen your muscles.

JEN: We talk a lot about resilience because it does seem to be an issue with our generation of kids. So I like that you mentioned that. As you guys think back across your lives, I think I used the word “Successful” to begin with. But I’m curious if you feel like there are ways that being LGBTQ – you guys are just gay – if there are ways that being gay has held you back in life, in happiness, in relationships, or in career?

MICHAEL: I think I can say for sure. Just in the sense of – I mean, it’s so situational for me though. But just in the sense of time lost. I mean, I really spent a decade chasing heterosexuality. And it’s like, “What would that decade have looked like if I was just like, I guess this is how it is. Moving on with my career now.”

JEN: That makes sense. How about you, Seth?

SETH: Honestly, nothing that I can think of. It’s mostly been a boom. Really. My personality has always been more inclined to punk rock sort of…

JEN: I have such a hard time picturing that.

SETH: Not like musically, but the aesthetic and just the, “I’m going to do what I want and I’m going to look different and I’m going to stand out from the crowd.” That has always resonated with me.

JEN: That’s awesome.

SETH: And being gay used to be pretty punk rock. I don’t think it is anymore which is a bummer. I liked that. But I think from my own personal fears that got in the way of a lot of things. And I agree with Michael with the loss of time. I think there was a lot of, “What if that 30% of my brain that had always been second-guessing everything and trying to out-think everybody. That 30% of that CPU could’ve been doing other things.” That I agree was the biggest con. But, generally, no. I think especially today identifying as a sexual minority gets you pretty far. Otherwise people wouldn’t opt into it, voluntarily.

MICHAEL: Another thing that comes to mind, Jen, so like from my story of chasing being heterosexual, I think that is something that is like a natural thing to happen is going the opposite direction as well. Especially if you have lived repressed. Now I come out and I’m just going to throw myself into alcohol, hook-up sex, and drugs. And so it’s like that is a phase. That’s a maturing, developmental phase, to go figure out, “What are my values? How am I going to navigate these different life choices?” But I think in terms of, just the general question: Are there things that could hold you back in being gay? I think either extreme of: “Now it’s like the extreme of I’m partying all the time.” “Now it’s like the extreme of, I’m fighting who I am all the time.” But it’s like those seem to be opposite sides of the same coin.

JEN: So kind of almost the reverse of that question, I guess, is now I’m thinking about just in my own personal experience, how many, particularly gay men spent those years running fast, right, like achieving, doing amazing things to avoid thinking about their sexuality and it almost seems like in some of those cases career-wise they’re a little bit ahead because they didn’t date or they didn’t – other than that, are there ways that you guys can think of that being gay has been a plus in your life success.

MICHAEL: Oh for sure. Not having children is, Whoa, that’s a huge difference in terms of just the time and the energy that you do have to put into self development or career development.

SETH: Which is also an opportunity cost for that too. When I was younger, as I said before, I didn’t see kids in the future and that wasn't a plan of mine. As I've gotten older, I feel that internal biological clock being like: “Something's off. Something’s off. Everybody your age is doing different things than you and you’re not.” And that and as I’ve gotten older in the past couple of years has really surprised me that I missed that, for something that I didn’t even know I wanted, I can’t have. And that’s something the gay community has to deal with and think about and be better at explaining those things that we do give up for these other successes. So I agree with MIchael, we have a really interesting, fun life. Way more fun than my friends my age who have three kids who range from 14 to 5. We live very different lives. I think too, gay men, when gay men are good to each other, are really good. I think gay male art and gale male wit and humor and literature and friendship is really something special that is a positive.

JEN: Yeah. So I’m interested in the dating part. It’s going to be kind of different because of the early trajectory. But when you started dating, whether this was trying to date girls or women, depending on your age, or dating men, you kind of touched on your first same-sex relationships. But what did early dating look like for you? Did you go to prom when you were 17 or whatever?

MICHAEL: I can jump in an answer this. I grew up in the era of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where we had this pamphlet called “For the Strength of Youth,” and they were really strict guidelines. So, for example, you didn’t go to dances until you were 14 years old. You didn’t go on a date until you were 16 years old. And like, by gosh darn it, I followed every single one of those rules. So when I went to my Junior year homecoming, I was 15, but I was on the Homecoming Court so it was this dilemma where it was like, “I want to go and I want to go with friends. I want to be normal.” So I had this very elaborate friend group where it’s like we’re all going and there happened to be even numbers of guys and girls, but it’s not a date. But then when I did start going on dates, before my mission it was very fun, simple, not at all to have a deep relationship. But then after my mission, when I started dating, I thought that I was in a few relationships that were really serious. And fastforwarding through a lot of details and a lot of young women’s hearts that I broke along the way, that, you know, the last woman that I dated, she dumped me and the night that she dumped me, I remember being so flabbergasted like, ‘Wait, what do you mean? Things were so good.” And she looked me directly in the eyes and she was like, “Michael, we have no chemistry.”

JEN: And you’re like, “I’m confused. I don’t even know what that means.”

MICHAEL: “Chemistry? What’s Chemistry?” I was like, “But our resumes. We both like music.”

JEN: You were looking for a best friend.

SETH: I could add on that because there’s similarities. Michael and I are the same age, the exact same time. So I had the “For the Strength of Youth” thing that listed all those dating guidelines. My parents didn’t care because they were like, “You’re 12. You’re not dating.” So I did go to my 7th grade Valentine’s dance. And I went to 8th grade school dances. I went to prom my freshman year and sophomore year and I went to two my junior year and two my senior year. I moved in the middle of high school, so I had two schools. They weren’t “dates,” though. I was not romantically interested in anybody. I did have for a hot minute a “girlfriend” my freshman year in high school, which, you know, we held hands in the hallway. That was the extent of it. And then before the mission, no, I didn’t go on any dates with anybody. I went on literally two or maybe three dates with young women after I got back from my mission. And to Michael’s point, the chemistry thing, no chemistry. And I was fully aware of that. And it bothered me. So when I met that other guy who I mentioned earlier, it was like fireworks. And I was like, “Oh, this is what people feel. This is what it’s like,” And that was the first time I had ever, ever felt that with anybody. But I never had a serious girlfriend.

JEN: It’s so interesting to think about how we get trapped in our own heads and if we don’t have language and we don’t know how to explain things. But I was the girls in college. And just thinking you’re dating multiple people and they know what it’s supposed to feel like and trying to get you like, “Are you sure you don’t want to kiss me?” kind of energy. And you’re like, “Nope. We’re good.”

MICHAEL: And “I am so good at the law of Chastity. I don’t even want to try anything on her.”

JEN: I find that a lot in these conservative religious cultures, the girls are largely attracted to guys who aren’t looking at their chest all the time, who can hold a conversation, who aren’t only interested in the physical. And they themselves have to mature into the idea a little bit that it’s deeper than that. I need to find a guy who’s attracted to me AND doesn’t obsess with my body all the time. So how did you guys meet? Tell us your love story.

MICHAEL: We were, like true millennials, an algorithm match on Facebook. There was one day that I was on Facebook . . .

JEN: Does Facebook do dating?

MICHAEL: It doesn’t. It doesn’t. But it does suggest friends.

JEN: Oh, OK. I’m with you now.

MICHAEL: And so there was one day where, here I am on social media. And in the right hand panel of “suggested friends,” this attractive face pops up. and I’m like, “Interesting.” And so I click on it. And the other photo is really cute. So I click on that one and then the next photo. And then I’m like, “This guy’s really cool.” So I just sent this guy a message as a total stranger.

JEN: Could you tell he was gay in his Facebook profile?

MICHAEL: Oh, you could tell from space. But, no, I definitely could tell he was gay. So I shot him a message. And I just said, “Hey, I think we met at a party.” And that was it.

JEN: Was that a lie?

MICHAEL: It was a total lie!

JEN: I love that.

MICHAEL: I just wanted to initiate a conversation.

SETH: It was a great ruse because we had a million Facebook friends in common and ran in kind of the same circles. And so I thought like maybe we did meet at a party and I’m a jerk and I don’t remember. So I wrote back and I remember being like, “What party was it?” And Michael was like . . .

MICHAEL: Moving on. Moving on. That’s not important.

JEN: Let’s talk about something else.

MICHAEL: And so then the conversations, I mean, quickly became really rich. They moved from Facebook messages to phone calls. Then they moved from phone calls to Skype, if you remember when Skype was a thing.

JEN: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And then from Skype, we were Skyping, like, really regularly and I was starting to get emotionally involved. And I was like, “Oh gosh. I can not let myself get emotionally involved with a guy on the internet who I’ve never met in person.” And so I asked Seth one time if I could come down to visit him in Arizona. At the time – context is important – at the time I was living in Salt Lake City and Seth was living in Phoenix.

JEN: Okay.

MICHAEL: So we were in different states. And yeah, just put it out there. and he said, “Sure. Let’s give that a try.” So I got a plane ticket, got a rose, and flew down to Phoenix.

JEN: Wait, did you get the rose before you flew?

MICHAEL: I got the rose before I flew.

JEN: So you’re carrying on your flight.

MICHAEL: I’m carrying a rose through security and on the flight and out of the airport in Phoenix.

JEN: I love that. Okay.

MICHAEL: Very Bachelor, right?

SETH: So I pick him up, you know, at the curb at “Arriving Passengers” or whatever. And he hands me a rose and we’ve never met in person. We’ve been talking for a month or so, two months, I guess, at that point. And I recall it being just very easy. It just felt so natural, like that we had been friends for a long time. That we were just reconnecting after being apart for a little while. And it felt seamless to me. And our very first date, actually, so that night – in high school my seminary president, so high school kids, Mormon kids take seminary which is a Sunday school doing the week. And I grew up in Arizona so there was a lot of Mormon kids there, so we had released time seminary. It was part of our class during the school day. And each class has a class president. And my class president was Michelle. And she had come out later. She had gone off to BYU and I had heard through the grapevine that Michelle was now a lesbian. And I was like, “Oh, I didn’t know.” Anyway, she had contacted me a few months before and she was in a band and she was going to be on tour with her band and was coming through Phoenix.

JEN: You’re like, that’s my dream.

SETH: And she said, “Would you come to the show? My parents are going to be there. My sisters are going to be there. And I knew them. We were high school Mormon friends so I knew who they were. So I picked Michael up at the airport and our first stop was to this Lesbian bar in Phoenix which I had obviously never been to and saw her band play. And that was our first date, at a lesbian bar.

JEN: Okay. So I love that Facebook is like, “Wait! You’re gay. You’re gay. You’re both adorable. You have similar roots. Let’s line you up.” And it worked. That’s so adorable. But, at the time, Michael, you weren’t out really?

MICHAEL: Right. Not Big out. I was Little out.

SETH: He was taking steps out at that point.

JEN: So you had already been through significant relationships, Seth, and you were all the way out?

SETH: Oh, yeah.

JEN: Did it make you nervous at all that Michael wasn’t out?

SETH: Um, honestly, I don’t remember that; I don’t remember how early on I knew that he had been or hadn’t been or how out he was. I just assumed that we were kind of in the same place is kind of what I thought because it was later – not that much later – but I think it was around that time that we were very first meeting in person that Michael got asked to be in the conversion therapy lawsuit. And so he brought that up because he just got the call and whatever and was like, “Here’s this big crazy thing.” And that was the first time that I’d heard that he’d gone to conversion therapy. And I was like, “Wait? What? People do that?” I was astonished. I thought that had ended in the 70’s and that kookie far, far backwoods rednecks do this conversion therapy pray to Jesus thing. That was how I thought of it. Turns out, I was very wrong. It’s actually a very big industry and I ended up writing my PhD dissertation on the history of conversion therapy. But I think that when I met Michael, I wasn’t for me a concern because I don’t think I really, fully grasped what all of that meant. So my naivety was a plus.

JEN: Okay. And Michael, were you like, “This is the guy?” Or were you like, “Here I am, entering this new world. I’ll try it out and it probably won’t go anywhere?” Like you already knew you weren’t marrying a woman?

MICHAEL: Oh, yeah. At that point, that ship had sailed. I mean, at that point, I had come to the conclusion that it would be unethical for me to pursue a relationship with a woman.

JEN: Okay. So you weren’t experimenting still? You were done. You weren’t just testing the water?

MICHAEL: That’s right. But I was very husband-hungry. On a hook up app, my profile said like – oh, what did it say – “Claire Huxtable looking for her Heathcliff.” It referenced the Cosby Show. Which from the get-go I was like, “I’m looking for an LTR and I’m looking for it now.”

JEN: Okay. That means Long Term Relationship for our listeners.

SETH: I’m not sure that I was looking for that at that particular moment, but that changed. So Michael and I spent that first weekend together when he came down to visit. And I dropped him off at the airport when he had to go back. And I felt sad about it. It felt like my friend that has to leave. And while at the airport, Michael made a Prezi Presentation, if you remember what Prezi is. It was sort of like a slideshow.

JEN: Kind of like PowerPoint except.

SETH: Kind of like PowerPoint, yeah but, like, a little classier. And he put together all the photos that he’d taken over the weekend that we had spent together and added comments.

JEN: That’s so cute.

SETH: It was so cute. And put it on the Selena song, “I could fall in love.”

JEN: Oh, now I’m going to fall in love with you, Michael.

SETH: And he sent it to me and he said, “Check your email.” So I went up to my computer and I opened it. And I didn’t sit down. I remember I was standing. And I watched it. And it was like this beam of light shot out of the computer and flew me across the room. And I remember thinking then, “Oh, everything has changed. I don’t know how or what that means. But I know everything is different now.” And six months later, I moved back to Utah.

JEN: Oh, I was just going to ask that. So how did you guys actually do the relationship part? So you did six months of long-distance.

MICHAEL: We did the relationship by spending an inordinate amount of money on airfare.

SETH: It was bad.

MICHAEL: Yeah. It was not good. But, Seth, our first date was in January and in February, the very next month, Seth was speaking at the Mormon Stories conference. If you like, you know.

JEN: That’s a podcast.

MICHAEL: And they had just started having in-person events. And so it was like, “Oh cool.” So I definitely wanted to go back down to see that. Um, and then we kind of alternated where it was like every other weekend either I would fly down to Arizona or . . 

JEN: Every weekend you guys were going back and forth?

MICHAEL: No. Every other.

JEN: So twice a month?

MICHAEL: So twice a month, one of us, alternating who was going where. Yeah. And that was just not financially sustainable.

JEN: No.

SETH: And at the time, I was very much a Phoenix socialite. I had really come to history. Several years before that I was very involved in local Phoenix politics and historic preservation and doing Western history. And I was cutting my teeth as a historian, but I didn’t have any historical training. And I knew that I was about to hit a big wall that nobody would take me seriously as a historian if I didn’t have any professional training. So I was looking, I was thinking, “What would it mean to go to graduate school?” And I had zero idea what that was. But Michael was in graduate school working on his PhD. So now all the sudden, I had somebody who could tell me.

MICHAEL: Parenthetically, teaching GRE-prep courses which was another little thing that was a feather in the cap.

SETH: Yeah. ‘Cause I was like, “What ‘s the GRE? How do you do that? How do I apply? What’s the program? How do you pay?” Again, very working class, very, my parents didn’t go to college. None of that made any sense to me. So I was looking at potentially going to graduate school. And ASU would’ve been an easy choice. It was right down the road. But then Michael was in Salt Lake. And he helped me look at the history department at the U. And who’s a professor there? What do they work on? Does any of that sound like something you’d be interested in because you could work with them? And so I met with a professor there who later became my Master’s Thesis advisor. Applied to the U. So that was the plan to go back to Salt Lake, was, “I have a reason besides the relationship thing. I have a thing to do when I get there as well,” which helped me focus, I guess. And then the other thing around that time before I moved back, Michael had a conference that was in Beijing. And part of his graduate school training. And I was like, “Well, I want to go. I would love to go.” So I told my boss that I needed the month of June off because I had to go to China with this guy that I met on the internet. And she said, “Look. I need you to pause and say that again and listen to what you just said because it sounds crazy.” And I was like, “Oh. It’ll be fine. It’ll be great.” And so we traveled to Beijing and we traveled really well together. And it was one of those situations where it was . . .

JEN: That’s a good test.

SETH: Yeah. It was. And it was not a road trip to Vegas and if you hate each other you can get out of there tomorrow. It was like, “Oh, we’re going across the ocean.” And we traveled so well together. And it was so easy and it was so fun. And a month after that we got back, I was back in Salt lake and started graduate school that fall.

JEN: So you guys have traveled together. If you can travel well together on a stressful trip, you can travel life together pretty, pretty well.

SETH: That’s what I thought.

JEN: That’s a great test. But you weren’t thinking about getting married, right? Because that was not a legal option.

MICHAEL: No. The time that we, at least for me, the time that I first took marriage seriously was when we were driving to Wyoming one day . . .

SETH: I know what you’re going to say.

JEN: Wait. Wait. Give me a timeline. You went, you’re back from China and. . .

MICHAEL: So Seth had moved to Utah. We’d been now cohabitating for maybe a year.

SETH: Not quite a year. Wasn’t it the fall of 2012?

MICHAEL: I don’t recall exactly. But it was within the first year that we were living together.

SETH: Living in sin.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Living in sin.

JEN: Okay.

MICHAEL: So we’re driving up to Wyoming. As we’re passing through Summit County, so like going up by Park City, Utah, we get pulled over. I’m the one driving. And I’m like, “What?” My heart starts racing as the police lights behind us turn on. And so I pull over and the officer says, “You were speeding.” I was not speeding. I am not speeder. Ask Seth. This is actually like one of the points of tension in our relationship is the fact that I do not speed. So I was like, “That can’t be true.” Longer story, in retrospect, I think that it’s because we had a rainbow flag bumper sticker and that it was a homophobic cop. Obviously, I can’t prove that. Obviously, I’ll never know that for sure. But got pulled over. The officer ran the plates. I had some unpaid parking tickets. So he had me get out of the car, cuffed me, arrested me, and jailed me in Summit County for these unpaid parking tickets.

JEN: Scary.

MICHAEL: Meanwhile, Seth is freaking out like, “What the heck is happening?” Obviously not giving him any information. I’m sitting in jail. Seth gets to the Summit County Jail, is asking “What’s going on?” They won’t tell him. He asked if he can contact me. They ask if he’s family. He’s not. So he has no legal claim whatsoever. And the whole incident was so silly. But I was in jail for a total of like four hours.

JEN: But that’s scary.

MICHAEL: It was super scary and it was just like so disorienting. And coming out of it I was like, “Holy crap. Okay. Legal protections matter. Legal rights are a thing. That is a material difference in a relationship that has claims protected and provided by the law.” And so I would say that that incident, as silly as it was to be arrested and jailed in Summit County for four hours for unpaid parking tickets, it was a wake up call that really put the legal protections of marriage on my radar.

JEN: So did you propose as you were walking out of jail?

MICHAEL: Walking out of jail and dropping on one knee. No, it took a little while longer than that. And we were trying to figure out, do we go to California? How does this actually play out?

JEN: Because it wasn’t really an option. I’d like to get married and, yeah . . .

MICHAEL: Yeah. This was in 2012. Timeline here being it was December 2013 when marriage equality became the law in Utah. So briefly, and we can elaborate on any points that you’re curious about, Jen. But it was summer of 2012, that I proposed to Seth.

SETH: 2013.

MICHAEL: It was summer 2013? Okay. He’s a historian. Trust the historian.

JEN: Okay. So you proposed but is it just going to be symbolic?

MICHAEL: The thought at the time was “We’ll go to California. We’ll get married there and then, you know, hope that there’s some kind of recognition.”

SETH: That was really the extent of the planning, that we weren’t looking at venues, we weren’t inviting anybody. It was just so like, okay, we’re engaged now and I guess at some point we’ll go to California. That was like the . . .

MICHAEL: You’re going to see a key difference here that Michael’s a romantic. We were definitely planning. We were definitely looking at venues. We were looking at the Peace Gardens in Salt Lake County. At least I thought we were looking at venues. It might be one of those things where it’s like two people are doing the same thing, one thinks they’re on a date. The other one’s like, “Uh, this was definitely not a date.” So maybe Seth didn’t realize we were looking at venues, but we were looking at venues.

JEN: That makes sense. And then what happened? You’re going to California to get married at some point, but something else happened?

SETH: Something else did happen. So, at the time, we owned a tea company. It’s called the Queen’s Tea. It still exists in Salt Lake. We sold it. But we had a little tea business, you know, in graduate school, start a business. And it was really fun. I was a cute little thing we sold at farmer’s markets or whatever. So it was Friday December 20th. That was the date, Friday December 20th, 2013. The next day, the 21st was the big holiday market that we were prepping for. So it was this really weird moment where the semester was over, I wasn’t in class, Michael was not at his lab because we were at the tea shop together at the same time to prep for the market the next day. That’s why we were in the same place at the same time in the middle of the day, which didn’t usually ever happen. And we had an attorney friend in town who we’re good friends with and keeps us up-to-date on stuff going on in the legal world in Salt Lake. And he calls me. And I ignored it. And he called me again and I ignored it. He called again and I ignored it. And I was like, “Oh, he clearly has something to talk to us about because Michael’s phone kept ringing.” So, finally, we get on the phone with him. And he said, “Hey. Judge Shelby just ruled in the case, like right now, and struck down Amendment 3 in Utah!” Which was the law that prevented same-sex marriage. And our attorney friend said, “You could go get married right now and nobody can tell you no. There’s no legal anything from stopping you from doing it.” And so Michael and I kind of looked at each other and we’re like, “We’re already engaged. We’re already talking about this. Are we getting married today? Is that what’s happening?” And so we rushed down to the county clerk building, so on 21st South and State Street thinking that everybody knew, thinking there was going to be a crowd, and there was going to be a line, and the media was going to be there. And we get there and the office is whisper quiet. Nobody knew a thing. And it was just a sleepy Friday before the Christmas holiday, day at the County Clerk building. And we get in line, we go to the front, and we say “We’re here to get married.” And the woman there was very nice. and she said, “Look, there’s nothing more that I would like then to give you a marriage license. But the state does not allow that.” And I pulled out my phone because I had the judge’s ruling. And I was like, “No. Look. The judge ruled today. It’s legal.” And she went, “I need to talk to somebody.” And then I started tweeting it. And then my twitter started going crazy. And then a guy from Q-Salt Lake, which is the local gay/lesbian publication in Salt Lake, saw my tweets and thought that Seth and Michael are pulling a joke on everybody or whatever. So he shows up to see what’s happening. I hear him get on the phone with the publisher of Q- Salt Lake. And he’s like, “Oh, no. This is happening. This is real.” Then it got kind of crazy from there. I know Michael has another backstory part, too, though.

JEN: Alright. Let’s hear that, Michael. Let’s hear this back story.

MICHAEL: Meanwhile, I had been planning a protest of sorts. The concept is that it was going to be called “Love Denied.” And the vision was that on Valentine’s Day, on February 14th, that we were going to have as many same-sex couples as we could get to sign up, go and apply for marriage licenses. And the idea is that then we would have a photographer there and these same-sex couples would be photographed with their denied marriage applications. So on December 19th, 2013, I go down to the County Clerk's office, it’s a labyrinth there. I have to figure out, “Okay which building is the marriage licensing office? Okay, which office in the building is the right office to be at? Which desk?” It was not trivial to figure out where I needed to go in order to talk to someone in the county government who issues marriage licenses. So I figured all that out. Talk with her. Say “Here’s what we’re planning on doing on February 14th. We’re not going to be hostile. We’re not going to be disruptive. But we just want to raise awareness and bring visibility to the inequality under the law right now.” And she was totally sympathetic, totally supportive. So then, little did I know the next day that there was going to be this federal judge ruling that’s going to pave the way for us to go get married. So, because I had just the day before been down at the County Clerk's office to talk to them about marriage, as soon as we got the ruling, I told Seth, “Oh my gosh. I know exactly where we need to go.” So, Boom. We made a bee-line down there. Like Seth said, we thought that there was going to be a huge line out the door. Also keep in mind, we had no idea whether the time window on this was five minutes, five hours, five days. This was a new norm. So we felt a sense of real urgency to get in and apply fast. So even when we’re on 21st South and State and the light is red and it’s not turning green, it’s not turning green, it’s not turning, it’s not turning. I’m just like, “I’m going to get out and run.” I get out of the car, like, run across lanes of traffic to get into the county clerk's office, truly thinking we might just have seconds before the window closes for us to get this marriage license application in.

JEN: You could feel the tension.

MICHAEL: Totally. So I get in there. I’m filling out the marriage license application. I present it to the woman at the desk working that day who happens to be the same woman who I worked with the day before. So she thinks that I’m doing a practice run.

JEN: Oh, yeah.

MICHAEL: So she’s kind of winking at me and she’s like, “There’s nothing more that I would love to do than to give you this marriage license. But at this time, the state of Utah . . .” She’s doing the script. She’s doing the script that we had rehearsed the day before. And I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not a drill. This is going down.” And so, like Seth said, she gasps and says, “I need to talk to someone.”

JEN: That’s so awesome. She’s like, “Yeah. That guy looks familiar.”

SETH: Meanwhile, our attorney friend, Paul, was texting me being like, “What’s the update? Did you get it in? What’s happening? Tell me what’s going on?” and then Sim Gill who is the District Attorney of Salt Lake walked in and he was kind of flanked by a team. And I was, I remember thinking, “This is game over. He’s here to say there’s been a stay on the ruling. Thanks for coming.” But he doesn’t. He says, “Oh. So I hear that you’re here to get married.” And I said, “Yes, sir. We are.” And he said, “Okay. Well, don’t lose your place in line. A lot has changed. I’ve got to get some people up to speed. So hang on. Hopefully twenty minutes.” So that’s why we’re just pacing the room. I’m tweeting what’s happening step by step. And Michael calls his PhD advisor who came down. He called his cousin who came over. And some of the people who we’d never met. They were just there for like a passport or whatever. They were like, “Can we hang out and watch what happens?” And we’re like, “Yeah. Sure.” And so the woman, her name was Wanny [sp?]. She comes back and she’s like, “Okay. I’ve been told that we can proceed. But I’ve also been told that I can’t perform marriages today. I can just issue the licenses. And as how naïve I was, I just thought you had a license and you were married. You get a driver’s license, you drive a car. That’s what it thought.

JEN: That makes sense.

SETH: The license is so that somebody can marry you so that you can actually be married. And then the guy from Q Salt Lake, he’s like, “Well, I’m actually an ordained minister. I can do it.” And so all these pieces just fell right in a row of how . . .

JEN: That’s awesome.

MICHAEL: And there was another piece, the last one, because we could keep going down this fun, fun rabbit hole. But the last piece that I’ll say to that was just magical that it clicked into place is that they didn’t have a room. They have rooms attached to the County Clerk's office where people perform the civil marriage ceremonies.

JEN: Okay.

MICHAEL: And all the rooms were booked though. And so we asked them, “Is there an open room?” And they’re like, “They’re all booked.” And then someone said, “Actually, this person didn’t show. So this room is open right now.” And we’re like, “We’re going in.” So we have a minister. We have a room. We have a license. Bada Bing, Bada Boom, say a few words, I pronounce you husband and husband.

JEN: And by that point, there were crowds there, right?

MICHAEL: No.

SETH: At that point they were starting to show up. The media had just gotten there. So right after we signed the paperwork and we get it in. Paul, the lawyer, was saying get it in. It is so much harder for the state to take that away from you than it is to block it. So make sure that it gets legalized. So that was the urgency that we were feeling. And then we hear a knock at the door in the little room we were in. and Michael goes, “Don’t answer it.” Because honestly, we thought it was the governor of Utah at the time.

MICHAEL: In my mind it’s like, “Oh no. It’s the governor here to tear our license up.”

SETH: And it wasn’t. It was a woman named Annie from the local news. And so then we came out and there was sort of this wall of media because my twitter had started going crazy with this news. And we come out and we kind go down the line of media interviews. And then I remember thinking, I need to call my mom and tell her we got married. And so I did. and she’s like, “Oh, that’s great. What did you wear?” And I was like, “Honestly, nothing cute. We were at the tea shop.” I’m in my frumpy grandma sweater. I was not planning to be in photographs or anything today. And we stayed there for a while. By then, the crowd was crazy. By then the line was out the door.

JEN: Those were the pictures I saw.

SETH: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Once word got out, then people swarmed.

SETH: And then we stayed there for a while and hung out. The county clerk extended its hours I think that night to make sure that everybody who was in line could get a license. And I remember that night, we went over and had dinner at one of our restaurants in Downtown Phoenix that carries our tea, it’s called Zest, it’s still there. And we went over there, had a post-wedding dinner.

JEN: In Salt Lake, not Phoenix, right?

SETH: Yeah. This was all in Salt Lake. And it was December, so it was winter and kind of snowing and cold. And Michael and I lived downtown at the time. And I remember walking home up State Street to South Temple where we lived kind of over in the Avenues. And honestly, the ground felt different. And the air felt different. It physically felt different. And I don't know how else to explain it but that.

MICHAEL I just want to say to agree with what Seth is saying. It felt like we walked into a new dimension.

SETH: 100%. 100%.

JEN: Okay. So you guys have been married for ten years. You’re working. And we’re going to talk a lot about your careers and your professional pursuits in our next episodes with each of you. But I talk to me outside of that about your lives and what you’re doing, your values? What does life look like for you guys now?

MICHAEL: That’s a great question. So I do neuroscience research at Harvard. And the thing that I study most closely is spirituality, the neuroscience of spirituality. That even stepping away from the LDS church, spirituality persisted as a really central and important part of my life. And about five years ago now, I actually entered the Roman Catholic church. That’s a plot twist. I was not expecting that. If you asked me as a closeted gay Mormon teenager, “Will you one day be a married, gay, Catholic?” I’d be like, “I don't know what universe you’re looking into. But that’s not in the cards.” Turns out it was in the cards. I can go more deeply into that in our one-on-one conversation. And then Seth about two years ago was like, “Hey. What if we checked out the LDS church again?” And do you want to talk about that, Seth?

SETH: So other things, like before I jump into that, other things that I’ve done. I’m still on my history stuff. So I went to graduate school. Wrote a dissertation and all that stuff. Being in Boston as well, I started sailing on the Charles River in a little boat club thing that ‘s really fun. And being from the desert, for me it was very interesting to learn how to sail. Done that. We live on Harvard Yard, work with first-year students at Harvard which is a thing that we do, and still read a lot. A couple years ago I started taking music seriously again and like actually studying piano more in depth than I did as a kid. And then it was – this was weird to me too – so I did officially resign [from the LDS church] in March of 2008 after Prop 8 in California. That was the stepping point for me in this journey. And it’s come full circle though. So from 2008, I left and I remember being very sad about that. It was a mourning, I felt a sense of mourning and loss that… We can talk about that more with other stuff. That was a thing. And then Michael and I were apart from Utah for a while and very involved in, I guess, Gay and Lesbian activism there. And a lot of that has overlapped with being angry at the church. And there’s reasons for that. And we kind of moved beyond it. And then it was 2022. So I had been out for, what, 15 years at that point. And this was post-COVID. This was post-me, I was about to turn 40, maybe. I don’t remember when it was. But I felt this really strong desire to check out what the ward was like in Cambridge where we lived. And I got in touch with the Stake President, who’s kind of like the head guy over the area. And we had a meeting. And I told him what I was thinking. And he was really kind and really nice. And then we started going, we just walked in one day to the Cambridge First Ward in September 2022, early September 2022. And loved it. And it’s so punk rock. What I said earlier about being punk rock. And it’s very punk rock to be an openly gay married couple attending Mormon. And there wasn’t a secret about it when we went. It wasn’t like we were hiding it. And everybody was so great to us and welcomed us with open arms. And I really felt, for the first time ever, even when I was younger like in high school, feeling excited to go to church on Sunday because I liked what I was hearing. I liked the people I was meeting. And they were really good to us. And I then had a meeting with the Bishop and I laid out all the cards on the table. I said, “Here’s what I think about this. Here’s what I think about this. I won’t do this. I won’t do that. I will do this.” And he said, “Great. We’re happy to have you.” And I also know that that experience might be unique given where we live. We live in the Cambridge First Ward. When I was growing up in Utah and Arizona, this was the ward of those crazy, east coast, liberal Mormons. That’s where we are now. And it was the ward of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich before she left. And it’s the, I think, oldest continually operated ward in New England. It has this really rich history. And the ward is made up and comprised of graduate students or undergraduate students, professors, so people who really know how to wrestle with ideas and with nuance in a really sophisticated way. So, in a lot, in a very real sense, I think I intellectualized myself back into the church. And started asking a bunch of different questions and I felt so much more equipped to handle and deal with conflict or disagreement than I ever had in the past. So I’ve really enjoyed it. We have some good friends there. Cambridge is also one of those places where people come and go very quickly because school schedules. So it’s a very transient ward. I very much look forward to going on Sunday which is so weird because like Michael said, if you’d told me that ten years ago, I would’ve been like, “What? What planet is that on because that’s not happening?” But it’s been really great. It’s not a literal belief. I have to nuance this to death now. I have my intellectual concerns and questions but I really value the community. I really value that people encourage each other to aim a bit higher. And I think this is a function too of becoming a middle-aged homosexual which is, there’s that phase of life where you’re partying and drinking and doing all kinds of stuff. And that’s fine. That’s a phase of life. But I remember thinking I can’t be 65 and doing that. That’s not the community that I want to be with. And so being around a community that speaks a very unique language, one that I also speak, was really fulfilling in a way that surprised me.

JEN: That has elements of – makes me think of Joseph Campbell. The Hero's Journey. Anyone who’s listening who’s not familiar with Joseph Campbell's, The Hero's Journey, you should look into that because it has a lot of that. So, Michael, Seth wants to go back to church and you’re thinking?

MICHAEL: I’m thinking, “Great! We’re going to be closer to Jesus again.” I love Jesus. I always have, always will. And so when Seth was like, “Let’s go back to church?” I’m like, “Jesus is Jesus. Let’s do it.”

JEN: So technically, officially, are you, Michael, still Catholic?

MICHAEL: So technically for sure, yeah. I’m both Catholic and Mormon. That’s a whole thing in an of itself. I never resigned. I’ve never been excommunicated. So I technically have dual-citizenship which I think is super cool. I wish that that were more the norm. I wish that it was more like, “I like what’s here. I like what’s here. I want to draw from the good that I find. I want to draw from the true and the beautiful that I find wherever it is.” 

JEN: And things are going well. I have to ask one more question because you kind of hinted. You can refuse to answer if you want. Do you guys talk about, think about, plan on, having kids?”

MICHAEL: We see-saw back and forth. When Michael is yes, Seth is no. When Seth is yes, Michael is no. So we’ll see if the see-saw is up on both ends somehow, someday.

SETH: Last summer we were both on the yes, maybe two summers ago, we were both like yes. and then there’s complications to it. The two main routes would be adoption or surrogacy and pros and cons for both. Costs are different. There was a minute, a few months ago there was a more serious conversation about surrogacy. But it’s a lot of money that we don’t really have. So that probably isn’t on the table which leaves adoption. But we’re not having any serious conversation about it at this moment. And, honestly, I think that if it doesn’t happen within the next two years, it’s not going to happen.

JEN: I understand the window of opportunity conversations. I want to thank both of you for agreeing to come and participate with us, not just today but agreeing to come back, each of you to share with us your expertise. But I do think it’s so important for people to get a chance to meet a wide variety of LGBTQ people. I think it offers hope to people who are maybe intimidated or afraid. And it diminishes fear in the larger community to provide your story. Your story mostly feels just pretty normal. You met and you fell in love and been together for ten years. I appreciate you coming and working with us today.

MICHAEL: I’d like to put a plug, Jen, in case any of your listeners would be interested to interact with me more. They’re welcome to check out compassion.science. So in addition to running a laboratory at Harvard Medical School, I’m a certified Mindful Self Compassion teacher. And especially for resilience for gender and sexual minorities and their families. Oh my gosh. I can’t say enough about the importance of self-compassion. So if any of your listeners are interested in engaging with me on that topic, check out compassion.science and what I’ve got going on there.

JEN: And we’re going to take a much deeper dive into that when we talk to you next time. But we’ll include a link to that.

SETH: And I blissfully have no social media presence, so nobody can get in touch with me at all.

JEN: And Seth is invisible. That’s fantastic. Thank you guys both so much.

SETH: Pleasure.

JEN: Thanks for joining us here In the Den. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends, and take a minute to leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, please donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can follow us on Instagram or Facebook or visit our website at mamadragons.org.