Rainbow Letters: Two LDS Parents’ Journey of Love and Faith

Today In the Den, we’re diving into a deeply personal and courageous journey—one that bridges faith, family, and the fight for LGBTQ+ equality. Gary and Millie Watts, parents to six children, were devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when their son Craig came out as gay. They chose to affirm and support their gay son in a time when there was no internet, no church support, and very little understanding.  They became forces for change on many fronts, including a years-long letter writing effort between Gary and top leaders of the LDS (Mormon) Church. Theirs is a beautiful story of love of faith and family. 

Special Guests: Gary and Millie Watts 

Gary Watts was born in 1940 in Logan, Utah, into a committed Mormon family. He attended Utah State University, where he was captain of the basketball team. After serving a two-year church mission in New Zealand, he married Mildred ‘Millie’ Cragun, his sweetheart since middle school. Gary then attended the University of Utah College of Medicine, graduating in 1968.

Millie Watts was born in 1941, also in Logan. Her dad was a well-known and popular family practice physician.

Gary worked for 35 years as a radiologist at the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, Utah. He was president of the UVRMC medical staff in 1981-82, and president of the Utah Medical Foundation in 1988-89. Millie was involved in many activities, serving as president of the Provo PTA, president of the Utah County Medical Auxiliary, and president of her church’s primary education program three times. They have six children, two of whom are gay. 

Links from the Show: 

• Find Gary’s book Rainbow Letters here: https://www.amazon.com/Rainbow-Letters-Gary-Watts-M-D/dp/B09YMGF8K2  
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org. 

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Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons. A podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here.

Today, we’re diving into a deeply personal and courageous journey. One that bridges faith, family, and the fight for LGBTQ+ equality. I am so excited to welcome our guests, the extraordinary Gary & Millie Watts whose beautiful book, Rainbow Letters: The Temerity to Believe, takes us on their journey of reconciling their gay children with their LDS faith. This incredible collection of letters, and speeches, and articles, and editorials spans nearly three decades and chronicles their relentless advocacy for LGBTQIA+ inclusion within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They never backed down in their belief that love and acceptance should be at the heart of their faith. Today, they’re going to share some of that journey of resilience with us, some of the heartache with us, and their unwavering hope for a more inclusive future. Gary & Millie, welcome to In the Den, I feel so honored to be having this conversation with you.

MILLIE: Thank you. It’s fun to be here.

GARY: We’re honored to be on your podcast, Sara

SARA: Thank you. I love this book so much. I have heard about it for quite a while now and the letters. Because, full disclosure to our listeners, I know well, one of your children. You two are like the OG Mama Dragons in a way.

MILLIE: Yeah.

SARA: I mean, you were early, early advocates for the LGBTQ+ kids and their parents and families in the LDS church, and started so many programs to help other parents on this journey. So I know that you have made an incredible impact in so many people’s lives over the years. So, you were both raised in the LDS church, is that right?

MILLIE: Yes. Mm-hmm.

SARA: Millie, do you have a long family lineage?

MILLIE: Oh, yes, I do. Like when Brigham Young sent the pioneers to Utah, all of my ancestors were in the wagon trains.

SARA: OK. That’s a long lineage.

MILLIE: I go way back.

SARA: You go way back.

MILLIE: Yeah.

SARA: Gary, what about you? What does your faith lineage look like?

GARY: Basically the same as Millie. In fact, incredibly we found, some time after we were married, that we had great grandfathers – is that right, Millie – that were in the same wagon train. But we didn’t know that until after we were married.

SARA: That’s extraordinary that that information was even available and you were able to learn that. That’s really neat. When you were young people coming up in the church and even as you started having children, did you then have an understanding about the church's position on homosexuality? Was it talked about much at the time? 

MILLIE: Well, I don’t think it was talked about at all when we were growing up. I don’t ever remember it being mentioned. And we didn’t know anybody that was that way. Everybody was male/female just like we were, as far as we knew.

SARA: As far as you knew.

MILLIE: Yeah.

GARY: I think it’s fair to say, however, Sara, that we were aware the church policy frowned on homosexual relationships and that they were not considered acceptable and were considered sinful. And, even as we were growing up, while we didn’t know a lot of gay people, we were aware that homosexuality was forbidden and was sinful. That was the way, that was sort of clear. And I didn’t know any gay people growing up and I doubt Millie did. But because they were all in the closet at that point in time, I suspect.

SARA: So you had some awareness of where it fit in church belief and theology. But not a lot of lived experience with people or any sense that anyone even had gay kids?

GARY: Right.

MILLIE: Right.

GARY: The church has always emphasized heterosexual marriage and have promoted the idea that we’re all going to live in the eternal life in our married state, and that when we die we’ll get back together. That was understood, I think, by us even before we had gay children.

SARA: And did either of you or both of you have leadership positions in your local churches?

MILLIE: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We were very, very active in our church. Gary was the – well you have to know the structure of the church – but he was in several bishoprics. I was in several Relief Society presidencies and a Primary president about three times. We loved the church. It was our life. And it took a lot of our time. So we were very active. Our whole family was.

GARY: I served an LDS – you know, when you’re 20, now it’s 19 or even 18 but when you’re 20 most Mormon kids go on missions for a two year mission – I did that and served two years in New Zealand and served in the mission presidency my last six or seven months. So we were pretty active through all those years.

SARA: And you had six children and raised them all in the church and so the whole family was active in their growing up years?

MILLIE: Yeah. They all were.

SARA: That’s amazing.

GARY: We’re a little upset, Sara, because all six of them now live in different states.

SARA: That makes it hard, I’m sure.

GARY: We still love them, but we’d rather they were close by.

SARA: I can imagine.

GARY: They’ve all got to pursue their lives.

MILLIE: It’s a little hard for them to live in Utah where the church is so dominant.

SARA: Sure.

MILLIE: So we’re the only holdouts here. Well, we have one son in Salt Lake.

SARA: Okay, in the big city.

MILLIE: Yeah.

GARY: In the big city.

SARA: So your story in this journey really begins when your eldest son, Craig, came out as gay to you back in 1989. Can you talk about that time, that moment, and what that was like for you? Millie, what was that experience like for you? How did you react to that?

MILLIE: Well, I didn’t really think he was gay. I thought he was mixed up. I thought all the gay people lived in San Francisco or New York City, and didn’t have a bedroom in my basement of my house. And then he also had four sisters. And so I thought, well maybe they’ve got him a little worried about being around females. And I just thought, a trip to a psychiatrist and he’d be straightened out. That’s what I thought. But when I found out he really was gay, it was very, very hard.

SARA: What was hard about it for you?

MILLIE: Well, first of all, thinking no grandchildren, which are very important to me. And it’s just a tougher life, I think, for a gay person than a heterosexual person. And we didn’t – where we were living – we didn’t know any gay people. So it was really frowned upon. And I didn’t want people to think poorly of Craig.

SARA: Gary, how about you? How did you receive all of that and process all of that information?

GARY: Well, Craig and I were really close. We ran together a lot and we did a lot of good things together. I was 49 years of age when he talked to us about his being gay. And I had no idea. I hadn’t even suspected that that might be the case. And I didn’t have any friends or know anyone that was gay. I was a 49-year-old doc and you’d think maybe a doctor might know a little more. But we didn’t get much information on homosexuality in medical school. I think we had one or two lectures that were sort of cursory. And so I didn’t know much about it. But I knew my son. We were really close. We’d run a marathon a few months before he told us, and we’d done a lot of training and we’d spent hours out together. And so it totally caught me by surprise. But I knew my son. And he wasn’t anything like what I had in my mind about what a homosexual was. And so I wasn’t that worried. In fact, I can remember the night he told me just like yesterday because the very first question – and again, partly ignorance – but the very first question I asked him was, “How gay are you?” I guess I knew enough to think that there was a spectrum, and his response was “Pretty Gay. Pretty Gay.” And so then the second thing I remember, I had read an article in a journal of Mormon thought called Dialog which I thought was about six months ago from a psychiatrist in Salt Lake about his experience of seeing gay Mormons, basically, in Salt Lake. I’d read this article in Dialog, and I said at that very time, I just read an article in Dialog just a few months ago, turned out it was two years, but it had impressed me. And I said, “Let’s call him.” So we called him and made an arrangement for [Craig] to see this psychiatrist who to this day is one of my heroes.

SARA: Well, tell me about that. One of your heroes? That’s pretty incredible that you moved that quickly.

GARY: I had read the article and it made sense to me. He was talking about his experience as a psychiatrist and how gay people were not what they were imagined and that they had loves just like heterosexual people. And I’d read the article and it made a lot of sense to me. And we called him. And Craig went there and saw him for four or five times. And then he invited us up to come. And he sort of laid out the groundwork for us. And that was the key to get me going in terms of trying to get some understanding. And I spent the next three years – or the next portion of my life – learning about homosexuality. And this wonderful man, two years after he had helped us through this period of crisis, developed a glioblastoma and died. So he… sorry, I’m emotional… He got us off to a good start. We figured things out fairly quick. And what he said made a lot of sense and what the church was teaching, didn’t really make a lot of sense to me. It just seemed improbable. And so that was where we got started. And it’s just gone from there.

SARA: He sounds amazing.

MILLIE: He just really laid it on the line. You know, when we went to see him, we had a lot of questions. And he was just very honest with us. And he said, “Craig is gay. He was 6 on the Kinsey scale.” He said, “He’ll move to a big city.” And then he told us how gay people fall in love with each other and send flowers to each other. And he was just very blunt. There was no question about Craig being gay. So I thought, “Oh, well, everybody’s been wrong about this. The church has been wrong. We’ve got to tell people. We’ve got to let people know.” One thing that I think helped us with Craig and by seeing that psychiatrist, was that Craig was just trying to figure it out himself, too. He didn’t have a partner. He hadn’t had any experience. And so it was kind of like the three of us studied and learned it together.

SARA: That’s really interesting because this is 1989 and there was no internet. And you’re in a pretty, pretty exclusive faith community that doesn’t talk about this a whole lot, perhaps even a little oppositional – although I think, what a wonderful blessing that that article just happened to be in your life and you read it and you had that one place that you could turn to. What else did you do to start learning what you could together, the three of you, without all the resources we have now, Facebook and the Internet?

GARY: Well, we found a lot of resources. And we trusted our son. I mean, we listened to him. We talked with him. We got his innermost feelings. And we trusted him and believed him. And I bugged our librarian at the hospital. I read everything I could get my hands on and I wanted to know everything I could about it. And so I sort of said, I didn’t really get a PhD, but I felt like over the next three or four years it was like getting a PhD in homosexuality because we wanted to provide an appropriate response to Craig and be able to support him. And when we find out he’s been struggling with this for ten years, that he went on a mission for the LDS church, primarily with hope that if he were faithful and whatnot, then these feelings would go away. And he comes back and he’s still got the feelings. And then he goes to a class at BYU where he hears, the first thing from back from his mission on homosexuality and thinks, “Maybe”. And then he finds out, listening to Dr. Ruth, that he’s really gay because Dr. Ruth had responded to a listener that had a friend who had sexual fantasies about men. And Dr. Ruth had suggested that this questioner that his friend was probably gay. And Craig said, “It went through me like an electric shock. And that’s when I knew I was really gay.”

SARA: Well, Dr. Ruth has been there for a lot of people discovering a lot on their own journey, particularly of mine and Craig's generation. I just want to point out and just hold for a moment with deep gratitude, especially in 1989, to hear you say that one of most significant things you did in your own learning was to listen to Craig and ask him questions and hear his feelings. And how profound that is to hear you say that. Thank you.

GARY: Well, and then we got involved with a support group of parents. And we headed it up for 13 years. And we started to meet gay people. And in my entire life with working with gay people, I’ve not had one person come to me who said they chose to be gay. Now I’m sure there are incidents with prison and deprivation and things where maybe people try the experience to see what it’s like. But I’ve never had a gay person tell me that they chose to be gay. And the church policy was that people choose this and that they can change. And we learned quickly that that was a big problem.

SARA: Well, I have a question for you about that a little bit. But I’m curious before we get there, Millie, did you – after Craig came out – did you and Gary keep going to church? Was it important to you to keep going to church? And what were those early days after Craig’s coming-out like for you in your church community?

MILLIE: We kept going to church. And I kept thinking we’re just going to educate everybody and everything’s going to be alright. And Craig was in Provo with us for about a year and then he went to University of Chicago for a while to school. So it wasn’t hard to hide the fact that he was gay. And I do think we did go in the closet. We kind of justified it by saying that he hadn’t told us to tell anybody. And in fact, those first three years, not everybody in our own family knew about it. We hadn’t told everybody. And it was at the time of his excommunication that things started moving.

GARY: Yeah. He had spent a year at the University of Chicago and then at Columbia. And then he had gone to Osaka, Japan, and was getting a PhD at the University of Osaka when the excommunication took place.

SARA: 1993, Craig was excommunicated. And in the book, you chose to include his journal entry from that moment. And it’s beautiful and heartbreaking to read. And he talks about being all alone, and particularly in the moment, living in Japan and you two were in Hawaii and he couldn’t get a hold of the sisters or a friend back in Salt Lake and just feeling that deep pain of not having anyone immediately to talk to. How did it feel for both of you when you first learned the news of his excommunication?

MILLIE: Well, I was so broken-hearted about it. I just could not believe that my church would do something like that. And being excommunicated in the Mormon church is really hard. And then his so-called trial that he had was not done correctly. A lot of it was in the Japanese language which he was just trying to learn. And he also didn’t know that he was going to a court to be excommunicated, which you’re supposed to be told that. And so it was just such a complete shock for him. But for me, personally, I couldn’t go to church after that. I thought, “Well, I’m going to be a big girl. I can handle this. I know Craig’s a good kid.” But I’d get in church and we’d start singing hymns and I’d start crying and just have to leave. It was just too hard for me to think that he wasn’t included anymore.

SARA: Yeah. Yeah. I bet. Gary, how was it for you?

GARY: Well, I had the same reaction as Millie. We were out of town and so he couldn’t get a hold of us. We didn’t have cell phones or anything back in those days. But it was about 48 hours after the excommunication that we were home. And then we had this long-distance phone call, 5600 miles to Craig in Japan. And we had the whole family together. And we listened to the story and then it was then, I remember, I said to Craig I said, “What can we do?” And his answer was “Just tell my story. Don’t let it happen to anybody else.” And after the phone call, we had a family meeting and decided from that point on we were going to be out and proud. And that’s basically when we made the decision to go full-bore and be out. He’d given us permission to share his personal life and so that was the beginning of our getting involved with support groups. And it all went from there, and starting to write letters to General Authorities which, in a way, I was a little blessed. Because there were four General Authorities in the church that were really good personal friends of mine. And I felt confident that I could write to them and share. And so that was the start of the Rainbow Letters, basically. And you can read about all those letters that I wrote over a, I guess, a 25, a 30, I guess 36 years or something like that. All of them heartfelt. All of them responding to something that was an anti-gay policy or talk that was given over the pulpit at conference. It was about the time that same-sex marriage was starting to come more and the church was leading, Prop 8 was taking place in California in 2008, or whenever it was. And so almost all the letters were a result of what I saw as anti-gay attitudes from a church that I thought should be more inclusive of their gay brothers and sisters.

SARA: One of the things that I remember reading in Craig’s journal entry about the excommunication was that the leaders – so he’s at a ward in Japan – and “The leaders told him that Heavenly Father had confirmed to them that I should be cast out.”

GARY: Yes.

SARA: That sounds pretty horrible, like a hard, really painful thing to hear from church leaders. What did you think when you heard it like that? Did it make sense to you?

GARY: Well, I don’t hold any grudges. I try not to. I think the people in Japan, the church leaders, Craig told his Bishop that he was gay. And he thought that he was a confidant and that he could be trusted. And then a week later he called and told him that an authority was going to come and they wanted to meet with them. And it turned out to be a court. But they’ve got their handbooks and they’re trying to do what the handbook tells them. And they’re trying to do their job as leaders. And so what do you do? Here’s a guy who is openly gay and is okay with it and felt like that’s okay. And, as leaders, they decided he didn’t fit what he should be doing as a Mormon. And so they decided to kick him out with the idea that maybe he’d get rebaptized and come back in and repent and be able to be straight. I guess, I don’t know.

MILLIE: They’re called “Courts of Love”. Very seriously because if you’re excommunicated maybe you’ll rethink what you’d done to cause that and then come back to the church. But it was not a court of love. It just was not. And they didn’t know him very well, either.

GARY: The church policy, and it’s still the church policy, is that gay people can either change or they can be celibate. Those are the options that are there for gay people in the Mormon church. And that’s still the case today, you see. And so that’s why so many gay people leave the church and so many of their families leave or become less active. Because the options that gay people have, to either be celibate or to change, neither one of them are very good options. Change has pretty well been decimated as a possibility. And being celibate, nobody wants to be celibate. I’ve said to my friends and to the general authorities that I write to, “How would you like to live your life without so-and-so?” And that’s what you’re asking these people. And then the other thing, when one of the general authorities that I wrote to, he says, “If we can agree on celibacy then I think we can do something.” And I talked to Craig about that possibility of celibacy. And the church, the Mormon position was that in the next life he’s going to be straight. And of course that really bothered Craig. He says, “I’m not going to be the same guy?” It didn’t make any sense to him. It didn't make any sense to me. And so there’s a problem. And what you do if you’re a father and a mother and you’ve got a child and you want to defend them, you want to figure out a way to have them part of the equation, not a problem.

MILLIE: And you don’t want him to be alone. You don’t want him to have dinner alone and no family around as they get older. And, of course, families are very important and especially – well maybe not especially – but very important in the Mormon church. We did not want him to be alone. And he had left the country and gone to Japan and then to China. And so he was a long ways from home anyway. And didn’t have people. I don’t know, sometimes I think maybe he went to those countries so as not to embarrass our family that we had a gay child or something.

SARA: Wow.

MILLIE: But he loved Japan and China. He loved both those countries.

SARA: He stayed there a long time. So I guess he really liked it.

MILLIE: He was there a really long time.

SARA: I think you can really hear that in your letters and in Craig’s journal entries, in the letters from the family, this sense of how important and central family is in your faith tradition. And we know that about Mormonism. It’s a real central tenet. And this idea that one’s sexual orientation may or may not change those attitudes about the value of family and wanting to have a family and wanting to be in a partnership and wanting all of those wonderful things that you all taught your kids in the church when they were little.

MILLIE: Yeah. We sort of had a map for our kids.

SARA: Sure.

MILLIE: You grow up in the church. You go on a mission. You come home. You get married. You have children. I mean, it’s all spelled out for you.

SARA: Yeah.

MILLIE: But suddenly, for Craig, he didn’t have a map. And we didn’t have a map for him, you know. So he had to kind of strike out on his own and find things out, and so did we. But the thing that really – well maybe I’m changing the subject – but the thing that really helped me the most was this support group that we had. And there’s no internet, no way to contact people. But it was just kind of like word-of-mouth. We held a meeting, our first meeting, at our home, and Gary just got on the phone and called a lot of our good friends that didn’t really even have gay children. And then, by then, we knew some who did. And we had a big group that came to our home. And that was just the beginning. And when a Mormon mother with gay children meets another Mormon with gay children and you don’t even know each other, there is such a strong bond or something because we know what we’ve both been through.

SARA: You speak a common language.

MILLIE: Yeah. A common language, that’s exactly it.

SARA: So this support group you’re talking about, this is the early Family Fellowship that you two co-founded together?

MILLIE: Yeah.

GARY: Yes.

SARA: Also in 1993 all around the excommunication and the letters are starting? But then this really grew to be a significant part of your lives and of the lives of so many friends and LDS families. You hosted conferences and had experts and quarterly forums.

MILLIE: There were about six people that were in the beginning with Family Fellowship. And then we had a retreat with several other couples and we just decided the church wasn’t doing anything for our gay kids and so we needed to. And so that group grew from about – and then, of course, no internet, so we did mailings. We mailed out newsletters and notices of meetings and forums. And so we ended up with about 1700 families on our mailing list. So we’d get several couples here at the house and stuff envelopes. And we got a permit from the post office to mail things out cheaper. And really, some of our very best friends are from that group. We’ve just really bonded. And we’d have parties.

SARA: That’s amazing. And those numbers, back then in particular, are astonishing. It must’ve felt really good to meet so many families and parents like you.

MILLIE: Oh, yeah. It did. It did. And then gay people started finding us and I found out that Craig was not an exceptional gay person. They were all exceptional.

SARA: It’s okay for a mother to think hers is exceptional.

MILLIE: Yeah. I thought that he was gay, but not like the other gays, you know. But we met so many wonderful people. And we had really sad, sad experiences when certain policies were being put forth. And happy ones too. And we just kind of kept each other going. It was great. I’m all for support groups now.

SARA: Oh, they are so important, truly. I mean, the Mama Dragons community has grown out of that very same desire and a very similar world of wanting to support our kids. Gary, I’m curious in those early days of Family Fellowship and as it was growing, did you get any push back from church leaders?

GARY: No. I would say we got none. The sad part, I felt badly because I felt like they should be listening and should be looking for us for some ideas. And the letters that I wrote, I wouldn’t say they fell on deaf ears because I think there was a lot of empathy. But the way the church hierarchy is, policy doesn’t change without unanimity. And as you may be familiar with the history of Blacks and the priesthood in the Mormon church. It was in 1978, there was a revelation by the church president at the time that Blacks should be granted rights to the priesthood and membership and so forth. And it was long overdue. In a lot of ways, I felt like the gay people were a little bit like the Blacks in the sense that they were unfairly treated to begin with. And that still is the case. And it’s only going to be a matter of time before it becomes such a liability that the church will need to make some change. But I don’t know when that’s going to happen.

SARA: Right. So it’s 1993 and Craig has been excommunicated, you’ve started the support group, and this is also when you really started to write your letters in earnest to the church leadership.

GARY: Yes.

SARA: And you mentioned a moment ago that you started – or many of those letters in the early days were people you knew personally, were friends.

GARY: Yes.

SARA: And knew Craig. And so did you hope or think that that personal connection would make them a little more open to hearing your story and your ideas?

GARY: Well, of course I had hope that as we wrote letters and described what was really going on that it might resonate with them and that they might consider a change in policy. And I still have that hope. I still think that it’s going to happen. But I don’t know when. And it’s hard to say. The first letter I wrote was to one of the apostles, a fellow by the name of Russell Ballard. He was one of the 12 apostles. And he had met with Millie and I as we had a common friend and we had met with him. And he gave me a booklet, a little pamphlet, that was entitled, Understanding and Helping Those with Homosexual Problems, which I read in great detail. And then I wrote him this long letter which was the very first letter I wrote about how the brochure should’ve been entitled, Misunderstanding and Hurting Those with Homosexual Problems, because it seemed to me that everything in there was just backwards. They gave no credibility to the fact that it was not a choice and that they could change. And, of course, they had all these change groups that were trying to help people change, which have all fallen out. They’re no longer, I mean they’re deplored by all major societies and support organizations. Sure, I thought maybe pointing out all this stuff might have some impact. And I think it has softened some. I think there have been some changes that have softened their approach on homosexuality. But they're still into the celibate – maybe not the change thing anymore – but celibacy is the option and this is something, their secretaries might have to be celibate because they can’t find….. I mean, I don’t know.

SARA: It’s so interesting that you reference that because I pulled that quote from your first letter to ask you about this brochure. And you go on in that letter to say, when you’re talking about the brochures and how you thought it should be titled Misunderstanding and Hurting Those with Homosexual Problems. You also go on to write in that letter, “The whole thrust of the brochure is that homosexuality is sinful, is chosen, and can be changed. If the homosexual fails to change, it’s because he has an inadequate faith, is a rationalizer and is an affront to God and Christ and is therefore a bad person.” You’re talking about what’s in that brochure. And you really took issue, almost right away, with this idea. You mentioned it just a few minutes ago that it said “homosexuality is chosen and can be changed with prayer or therapy or deeper faith.” How did you come to that understanding yourself and why was it such an important argument to make to church leaders?

GARY: Well, the first thing you have to say is that you have to experience it first-hand. I mean, I was 49 years of age when Craig came out and I hardly knew anything about homosexuality. But I learned. And I recognized. And so when you go to the general authorities you think, “What can we do?” And then, I think if you remember, I said, “When I think about that brochure going out to all the ecclesiastical leaders of the church, I shudder.” Why? Because they’re not in a position to really sort through this and know, no scientific background. And I’ve tried to point out to all the leaders how the policy was formulated in the 40’s and 50’s when there wasn’t any information. And when you get more information, do you have to stick with the policy because it’s a policy or do you change it? And I remember I used to ask them just a question, I’d say, ‘How are you feeling about the policy of homosexuality and the church? Is it working? How are relationships with the gay community?” And to point out that change was necessary.

SARA: Yeah. It’s interesting and I think this has something to do with a little bit of the Mormon structure and theology because I’m hearing you talk about these policies, but then I’m also hearing you talk about the “revelation” that came to allow Blacks and African Americans to become priests. And so it seems like there’s just a little bit at odds with each other that there are these policies that leaders can choose to change but then there’s also this sense that it also has to be a revelation from God.

GARY: The only way you’re going to get change, a unanimity, is from the prophet saying, “I’ve talked to God and this is what he’s saying we should do at this point.” Otherwise, you’ve always got some general authorities that support the policy. And to get a unanimous consent to change policy is pretty tough. It’s not going to happen without a revelation.

SARA: I see. And it was interesting to me to read in Craig’s journal, again, that he really wrestled with this belief. That this belief was really strong, really permeated Mormonism at the time that gay was a punishment or a test from God. And Craig writing that if he’d just served God zealously enough, he would be healed. Mille, how does it feel to hear those words now, all these years later?

MILLIE: Well, at the time Craig came out, there were several groups. And I think one especially was backed by the church about being able to change. And they had meetings and silly little reasons why maybe Craig was gay because he didn’t play basketball with his dad or didn’t play baseball with his dad or didn’t have a good relationship with his dad. And all those reasons, they just didn’t make sense to us. We could see no way, no way that he could change.

SARA: So you had six children in all. And some years after Craig, your daughter Lori comes out as gay.

MILLIE: Right.

SARA: So now you have two kids who are gay. Tell me about that moment, again, when your second comes out to you and a little bit about, did that shift anything or continue to fuel your fire in any way? Did you feel more prepared for that news?

MILLIE: I guess we had been around gay people enough before Lori came out that we were kind of suspecting that she might be gay but that she hadn’t realized it yet. So when she told us she thought she was gay, it was hard to have another child going through that because Craig had gone through so much with his excommunication and things. But Lori came out enough later that she withdrew her membership from the church. And, at that point, we weren’t going to church. We weren’t active in church anymore. So we often say we were twice blessed to have two gay kids.

SARA: Well, Millie, I’ve heard you say that on some interviews. And I have to tell you, when I heard you say “Having gay children has been the biggest blessing of our lives,” it really brought tears to my eyes to hear another mother who’s had many children, who’s been at this for years, say those words.

MILLIE: Well, it’s true. I think Gary and I lived privileged lives. We grew up in well-known families and had never really had any challenges. And I think when you have challenges, you become more empathetic, or, I don’t know. I can’t find the word. But I think I became a better person because of that. And I could listen to other people and understand what they were going through. It was a blessing for our entire family. I mean, all our kids are wonderful, just like Lori and Craig. And they all were supportive immediately. We didn’t all understand what was going on but everybody in our family was very supportive. And I think it really, out of maybe a tragedy, brought our family closer together. We used to go camping at Lake Powell a lot. You’ve heard the saying, “The family that prays together, stays together.”

SARA: Uh-huh.

MILLIE: I think the family that camps together, stays together. And that’s how it was with us. It just brought us all closer.

SARA: That is really beautiful to hear. And I hope other parents really soak that in too. Go ahead, Gary.

GARY: I was just going to say, we now divide our lives into our pre-gay-child lives and our post-gay-child lives because they are so dramatically different now then they used to be. And it all ties in with the church and the policy and what we feel like is a policy that produces more pathology than it does. In fact, I just looked up in my book, I was going to just maybe share with the readers a letter that I wrote on October the 9th, 2008, to the Member’s Record Division of the LDS Church:

I’m writing to formally resign my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. This resignation is effective immediately. I request that you permanently remove my name from the membership rolls and I withdraw my consent to be treated as a member of the church – This was during Prop 8 in California – The church’s action in respect to Prop 8 in California has forced me to face the stark reality that the church no longer reflects many of my core values. I support the right of gays and lesbians to marry and share their lives in committed monogamous relationships. The intransigence of the current church policy regarding homosexuality in the face of the bitter fruit it so obviously produces is simply inexplicable. I am confident that the church and its members will look back on the actions the church is now taking in California with shame and embarrassment. I do not want my name to appear among those complicit in this divisive action. Gary Watts.

MILLIE: Prop 8 was really a hard time even though it was going on in California. It was really hard in Utah. The church asked people to donate money for the cause. And we had families that brothers and sisters, some would donate, some wouldn’t. It was really hard. I was having lunch one day with a bunch of Family Fellowship women at the time. And I just said, “After this is all over…” – or something, I said to them – “would you guys go with me to church headquarters and hold signs in protest?” And they all said they would. Some of them said we should have a little meeting before. And we had several that volunteered to give talks about it.

SARA: So you did your protest.

MILLIE: Yeah. But we did it before the vote because one of the mothers, her son said, “I think you should do it before the vote.” And so the day we had it planned, and I think it was called the Mother’s March or something like that. And the day it was to be held, it just poured rain all morning. It was just awful. And we were going to have it outside at the library in Salt Lake. And then, about an hour before it was supposed to start, it cleared up. And so we thought, “Well, we’ll just go ahead and do it.” And I thought, there probably won’t be very many people there, but let’s do it. So we get to the library and there were so many people there. And so we had a little program and then marched around library square. And every part of that sidewalk was taken up by a person that felt like we did. And it was just really, really inspiring for us.

SARA: Well, I want to tell you, it was inspiring for me. I was working for my church, for the Unitarian Universalist Church in California in 2008 in the midst of Prop 8. And so this was also the time, really, that it was uncovered, it exposed some of the LDS Church’s deep financial involvement with Prop 8, like millions and millions of dollars funneled into California to pass this initiative. And it was really quite a scandal, I think.

MILLIE: It was.

GARY: Yes.

SARA: For both Mormons and non-Mormons to learn of this involvement. So all of the Mormon members and parents who were pushing back on that at the time felt really important and really inspiring. So thank you for that. And I want to keep talking about Prop 8 and kind of this revelation of the church’s involvement because we all knew that the Mormon church was not particularly supportive of LGBT folks at the time. But it felt really confrontational. It felt like quite an affront to have a church take such deep financial investment in this. And, Millie, I know that you were, I think you were interviewed for that documentary that exposed some of this called “8: The Mormon Proposition” And in that documentary, I heard what I think was a church leader say the words, “Gays, they are probably the greatest threat to America I know of.” How did it feel to hear that, especially in 2008 after years of writing letters and years of the Family Fellowship and all of this work that you’d been doing?

MILLIE: Yeah. It was discouraging for me because right at first when Craig came out, I just thought, “Well the world doesn’t know what’s going on here. We’re going to tell the world and everything . . .”

SARA: Everything will be fine.

MILLIE: Yeah. Everything will be fine. And so it’s taken years and years and years. But to ever think that gay marriage was going to be legal – and at the time in Salt Lake when our friends were getting married, our gay friends – we happened to be in Thailand because Craig had had his first baby and we were over there helping him with the baby. And I was wanting so badly to be there at City Hall and see all our friends get married. It was just such a happy time for everybody. But we kind of missed out on that. We watched it. And we saw a lot of our good friends get married. And, you know, marriage means a little more or something. I don’t know why would a piece of paper make so much difference? But it’s a real commitment and I remember when Lori and Sherene got married, it just solidified their relationship so much more. And I don’t know. It’s just a word “Marriage.” But it is more than that. It really is.

SARA: Millie, was that Prop 8 moment similar to Gary that finally pushed you out and made you decide to leave the church?

MILLIE: No. I still have my membership in the church. I don’t go. I’m not a believer like I was before. But there’s something in my head about my ancestors that sacrificed so much to come across the plains and be in Utah that I just can’t quite pull the plug. Some of our kids have. Some of our kids haven’t. My name’s still there on the membership list and when they’re going over who’s not active in the church, why they’re not coming, what do they say when they get to my name? How are they going to get me to come back? So I think it gives them a little time to think about things.

SARA: Sounds a little subversive. Gary, you kept up your letter writing, well both of you, after Prop 8. I think your book goes through letters through 2021.

GARY: 2021. The last letter in the book, I wrote to Elder Holland. And, by the way, Elder Holland has been a really good friend of our family. He and Pat – Pat has now passed and Jeff is not in good health – but they’ve had kids that are the same ages of our kids. And they’ve lived in the same stake and we’ve known them for years and years. And they’re really good friends. But Elder Holland came and gave a talk at BYU on, I think, It was August 23rd, 2021, if I’m remembering in correctly in which he had either made the decision – I think he was sent down here to BYU to tell the faculty and staff to get aboard of the church policies and support marriage between a man and a woman. And he spoke to that and that was the last letter I wrote to Elder Holland. And there’s one additional one. But those two were the last two that were included in the book. And partly it was because I felt like Holland was a good friend. I still consider him to be a good friend. He’s a really fine, fine guy and has a great family. And I just thought, “Whoa, really?” After all we’ve talked about and all we’ve done, it seemed like an unlikely spokesman for the general authorities to come and give a talk like that. So that’s where the book ends is with that. And I have not written a letter to Elder Holland since. I did write one to Elder Cook in the last two or three weeks ago. But the letter writing has sort of fallen off now.

SARA: I know in your book you mentioned that you chose to keep their responses, any responses that came to you out of the book to protect their privacy. That is totally understandable. But I’m curious to know if, in receiving those responses, you did receive some curiosity and openness to some of your ideas and arguments that you were making?

GARY: I don’t really know how to answer. What I would say is that I’ve never received a letter from any of the general authorities that I’ve written that indicates that they don’t agree with the current policy. There’s a lot of empathy that comes in their responses. In fact, on one occasion I got a letter that was written jointly from the four general authorities that I knew, they had gotten their heads together and written a letter and sort of reprimanded me a little bit for my idea that the church could change without a revelation or something like that. And so Jeff Holland said right at the first, he says, “Gary. There’s some things I can do and some things I can’t do. And at no time will I be in a position to change policy.” Himself, you know. Do I feel empathy? Yeah. I think that there’s empathy. I think there are some general authorities that if given an opportunity might be able to do something to improve the policy. They’ll say, “If you knew all the hours that we spent in prayer and discussion about this issue.” I even wrote them back one letter and I said, “How much time have you spent talking about the Golden Rule and why is this one taking so much time and effort?” Because it’s a problem and that’s why. You don’t have to spend a lot of time discussing policies that are straightforward and Christlike. But if you’ve got something that’s excluding people and is not the antithesis of what we try to teach, then you ought to spend some time on it.

SARA: What made you both keep writing and keep fighting in the face of an institution that refused to change?

GARY: Hope, and a strong belief. There are certain things about homosexuality that I’ve learned and I think that maybe, I mean, I’ve studied a lot. Do I think homosexuality is chosen? No. I think it’s biologic. Do I think it’s changeable? No. I don’t think it is. And those are the two core things that the church’s policies rested on. And they’re on false assumptions in my mind and they need to change. And to think that these five or six percent are going to destroy marriage and destroy the constitution, I mean, it’s just nonsensical. And so my philosophy is that the church policy produces pathology rather than wholesomeness. And I think we’ve got to get to a point where we can change that. And so the main reason that we do this is for family. We have grandchildren. One who has identified as trans who is 11 years of age and is growing up in San Francisco right now. And a second grandchild who actually is 20 and lives in New York and identifies as nonbinary. And we’re interested in being sure they know that we are their allies. The one who is in New York City is 20 and has made it through those tumultuous teen years – which have worried me so much for the time coming up for Mango – and has come out pretty well on the other end. I think, in large part, due to some good parenting. They are intellectually and artistically gifts, and in fact, did the cover for my book The Rainbow Letters where you see the rainbow letters sort of flying around. They already know that Millie and I are their allies. And we want that to be the case for all of our grandchildren.

SARA: That’s a great goal. This transgender grandchild, I just want to point out, this is one of Craig’s kids. So you got some grandchildren.

MILLIE: Yes.

GARY: We have thirteen grandchildren and five of them have come from our two gay kids. So I’ve kidded them about out breeding the breeders.

MILLIE: But I think another reason why we have stayed active on this issue is for the kids that are coming up. We don’t want them to have to go through what our children did and their parents go through what we did. And so we still go to a different support group since ours has been dissolved. And we just want to tell people that they are good people and that we love them and that we want to help them. And there’s always kids coming up that are going to be going through this and we just want to help them.

SARA: Thank you. It’s very inspiring as a parent to hear you all say that. And I can’t help but think how truly blessed all thirteen of your grandchildren are to have you as grandparents and in their corner. And for all manner of reasons you have been incredible champions. And I’m curious how it feels. It must be pretty hard to have watched, culturally, things change quite a bit, a little more acceptance happen if not in the church then in the larger society. And now, it kind of feels like we’re heading backwards and all of that is really shutting down and going away. And I know it feels heartbreaking to me. It must feel equally so to you.

GARY: I don’t know how to say… We’ve taken a turn to the right that is really upsetting to me personally. And I think it’s the wrong way to go. You get me going, this current administration seems to have a vendetta against DEI. When did diversity, inclusion, and equity become old-fashioned or not acceptable or something that we should pursue as a society? I don’t know how we’re going to get through it and get by it. But I’ve told my friends, I spend a lot of time listening and looking at the serenity prayer to grant me the wisdom to know the things that I can do and the things that I can’t do, and the wisdom to leave alone what I can’t do. And I guess I’ve kind of reached a point where I hope that I can have a little serenity.

SARA: Both of you, do you still have some hope or hold out some hope that that revelation will come in the LDS church?

MILLIE: I don’t think it will happen for a long, long time. The church is just too much of a heterosexual church. And the ceremonies that are done in the temples and all the music and everything, it’s about a heterosexual family. They’d have to do so much changing to do it. If it were a revelation from God, they would do it. But I think it’s going to be a long time.

GARY: I don’t know how long it’s going to be. But I can tell you in my mind, it’s a liability for the church and it’s only going to grow. And when the liability got so great that the church was threatened by the Black issue, suddenly a revelation came. And as the liability moves, and it’s going to continue to move and affect the church, there’ll come a time where the liability will make it so great that a change has be implemented in order for the survival of the church. Bad policy needs to be replaced by good policy. The church’s policy on homosexuality is bad policy. It’s producing pathology not wholesomeness and it will continue to do that. And ultimately, they’ll have to make a change. That’s how I feel.

SARA: Well, Thank you both. This has been a really extraordinary conversation. And from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for your decades of fighting and allyship and learning and growth and celebration of the gay community, the LGBT community, the Trans community. It’s such a privilege to speak to you to learn that history and such a joy to know that there are folks like you out there in the world who have been doing this for decades out of the passion of your own heart and your own sense of deep, deep love, unconditional love for your children.

GARY: Sara, you’re great. And I’m just going to put a little plug in for the book.

SARA: Please do.

GARY: Anybody that’s dealing with homosexuality in a family, I think there’s a lot there to learn. And I think it’s a book that I’m really proud of. And I hope that when it starts to become aware in a family that you can access the book and learn as much as you can. I’m glad I did it.

SARA: And you should be. You should be so proud of it. I’ll remind our listeners the book is Rainbow Letters: The Temerity to Believe by Gary and Millie Watts. It is also available in our Mama Dragons bookstore and we’ll make sure to put a link to that in the show notes. And we didn’t really get a chance to talk about this much, but the book is both the letters of decades of letter writing but also an appendix of letters that you receive from people and articles people published and op-eds. And so it also fills out this whole community support around the work that you all were doing. And I just loved every minute of it. Particularly, I want to plug for our LDS folks in our Mama Dragons community, of which there are many. But any who’s just also really struggling with these times, these letters will give you hope.

GARY: Thank you.

SARA: You’re welcome. Thank you both for being with me today. 

Thanks so much for joining us here In the Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons offers an eLearning program called Parachute? This is an interactive learning platform where you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at mamadragons.org/parachute. Or find the link in the episode show notes under links.

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