Another Mormon Bishop Told NOT to Report Abuse- Christopher Jenkins | Ep. 2119

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dillon. It's February 23rd, 2026, and we have today on Mormon Stories a man who was a Mormon bishop just two years ago and an active temple worker just four months ago. and he reached out to us in response to Bishop Bo Euler's soft white underbelly interview where Bo Euler told the story of his interactions reporting a child abuser to the LDS Church's hotline for dealing with child abuse. And in response to Bo telling his story as a bishop about reporting a child abuser to the Mormon Church's hotline, The eldest church responded with a press release basically calling Bo a liar and also an army of Mormon apologists on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube all came out basically smearing Bishop Bo Euler to call him a liar about what he said were his experiences as a Mormon bishop reporting a child abuser to the Mormon church's hotline. And in response to that smearing of Bishop Bo Euler, Christopher Jenkins reached out because he has also relatively recently and even as recently as a week or two ago had interactions with the Mormon Church's hotline. And he felt inspired to want to come on Mormon Stories to share his views. Now, just a couple of disclaimers, he's still currently attending church with his family. And also, I think it's important to note that a major theme for today will also be his faith journey and messages that the church taught him around the LGBT experience, particularly parenting as his kids grow into maturity, will be important themes as well. But, you know, that's the introduction. I think today is going to be a really important issue to help shed more light on all sorts of things, including how the Mormon Church handles child sexual abuse and LGBT issues and faith issues. So without any further ado, Christopher Jenkins, thank you for coming on Mormon Stories Podcast. Thank you, John. I'm happy to be here. I think. Well, we didn't. You reached out to us. I did. I did. Hopefully we didn't twist your arm. No, no, I felt it was important to tell my experience. And, of course, Margie is with me as well. Hey, Margie, thanks for joining. Yes, I'm really happy to be here. Christopher, do you want to give any, I mean, I just stated my understanding of your intentions and the backstory at a high level. Is there anything you want to say about why you wanted to come on to do this interview today, especially given that you're still attending church? Sure. You were still recently a temple worker and a bishop just two years ago. I recently went through a change in my faith, but wanting to support my two children that are still attending and my wife, I had been very quiet about it. I told her and my bishop, and that's about it as far as members of my ward. I told a couple of my children, and I didn't really want to speak out, But when I saw the press release on Bo Euler and then watched his interview, I felt it was something I needed to do and let the chips fall where they may, pretty much. That being said, my goal was never to dissuade anyone else from their faith in the church. in fact if my kids get a hold of this video and you don't necessarily need to watch it because it may not help your faith in the church if you're happy and you want to stay I'm happy to support you there love it that's my disclaimer beautiful it's worth noting that your patriarchal blessing you mentioned as a key theme that played a pivotal role in your life that will weave into the narrative if you'd like. Yeah, the direct significant abortion, actually, yeah. So we'll get to that too. All right, so let's do just some of the basics of your Mormon childhood, just to know to what extent it's pretty similar to what others have experienced. Were your parents LDS? My parents were both active LDS. Most of my life, in my teenage years, they were a little inactive. I fell in with a great group of young men that there were the five of us. We still get together every few years for a weekend and things. What city, state? I grew up in Walla Walla, Washington, which is my current hometown. I moved back several years ago. My parents were both Idaho farm kids, met, married. My dad was probably a closeted narcissist, honestly. So that played into my youth and their interactions and some mental health issues for myself through my life. but yeah Were the mental health issues present as a child? I dealt with some depression in high school and had some counseling and some medications through just realizing that I would never receive the love that I sought from him, he wasn't capable of that. And coming to that realization, I could move past it and kind of heal. Wow. I feel like that's a story all unto itself. Probably. I imagine, yeah. You mentioned work being an important theme, and it almost sounds like working for your worthiness. Yeah. Yeah. It was, you know, being a child of two Idaho farm kids, you worked. That's how you provided value to the family and to life. You got out and worked. At 14, I painted the house on my own. Wow. and you know 16 I finished taught myself how to weld and I finished welding a pickup bed on my dad's truck so I could then drive it to school dang um so yeah I learned how to work and I was very self-motivated um trying to to um seek the love that I was you know I was trying to seek love and appreciation from my parents and things, which, so, yeah. If we were going to go back for a minute to childhood, meaning let's just say up to like 12 years old-ish, how would you describe what, you're mentioning it, but I kind of want to go a little bit deeper, the love that you experienced, what messages you absorbed about love through that time, and what you yearned for. I experienced love when I was contributing, when I was doing well in school, when I was doing my chores, things like that, you know, helping. And, you know, I also learned that from example. My mother will readily admit that she was always striving to earn her father's love. Some generational. So, I mean, just now I can look back and say, yeah, I was wishing for love unconditional, just to be loved for being me. And you were pretty aware of that? No. At the time. So not at the time. No, this is retrospect. Okay, so let me ask you this. As a boy through those ages, how did you experience your home and love in the moment? I mean, I think I had a good home life growing up. I had a third of four kids, two older brothers. you know they called me the labor negotiator because I was always trying to negotiate my fair share as being the third child yeah I guess I always had this innate sense of fairness and what should be right trying to protect myself I guess Yeah. But no, I felt love from my siblings, my mom. I realize now my dad wasn't really capable of that. I mean, he was supportive as much as it could revolve around him. Mm-hmm. And then just one more question from zero to 12. is just, and kind of answering for who the boy, right? As opposed to like you being an adult looking back. But like, do you remember in the years kind of in primary, it feeling like a good fit to be in the church? As opposed to like, nope, you already had, you know, some friction. It was difficult or shame already appearing. And how was the fit for you, you know, up until kind of teen? Yeah, that's a good question. I didn't actually enjoy the church in the primary when I was under age 12. I, you know, would rather just stay home. it wasn't until I was 12 and I fell in with these other young men that I was all my same age that I really started enjoying having the social experience at the church. Yeah. Yeah. Can you mention all of your friends were sons of bishops, former bishops at one point or another? Were there many of them? Three of the five. Okay, that's a lot. Three of the five. I and another friend were the odd guys out. We cost all the trouble, but they included us anyways. We were the instigators. We were the... Actually, one of the bishop's sons was... He came up with all the ideas, but never would do them. He's like Todd Sawyer. The other two of us would say, okay, let's go. Trailer papering? How many rolls are we going to go buy? That's no Mormon. We have not discussed toilet papering houses enough on Mormon straw. That was a core part of it. Thank you for bringing it. There was epic toilet paper battles. I bet there's people that don't know what toilet papering is. Is that a national thing? Or is that a Mormon thing? I don't know. I think it's definitely extended back east as a Mormon thing. I haven't heard of my kids ever doing it now. We have toilet paper cute girls that we liked. And I think looking back, like, I'm not sure that was smart, but we would, their parents probably didn't love it. Like, they had to clean it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we recruited our seminary teacher to drive us. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So did you do seminary, you know, in the high school years? Early morning seminary for four years. Well, three and a half. I spent one semester in Arizona with my aunt and uncle in high school, and so I got to experience release time for one semester. Okay. I learned more in that semester than I did probably the other three and a half years. That's where you attended on the school premises while you were going to high school. You walked across the street to the building. At or near the school premises. Yeah. That was better than the home, like the early morning cell area. I actually enjoyed early morning seminary. But, yeah, we didn't learn as much. I had a couple of my friends would pride themselves on seeing how long they could distract the teacher from the lesson. Sometimes our lesson was five minutes. You mentioned the patriarchal blessing having a pivotal role in your life and maybe in a not so good way. Do you want to talk about that? So, yeah, I can't say it was a bad thing because of how my life has turned out. but um so i received my patriarchal blessing when i was 16 and the patriarch uh so before that i had had strong interest in you know engineering or architecture you know i really enjoyed drawing i was you know setting the curve in my drafting class at school and just doing you know i really enjoyed that sort of thing got my patriarchal blessing and it's stated specifically that I should consider the profession of medicine. Wow. That's so prescriptive. And detailed. Detailed, yes. And so immediately I shifted my focus. I quit drafting and started taking chemistry and biology and that sort of thing as a junior in high school. Wow. Had a big impact. Had a big impact. There was a promise in there, which I, right after he said that, the promise was that the Lord would bless my mind to be able to, the first thing that crossed my mind was I'm not smart enough to be a doctor. But then there was this promise that the Lord would bless my mind that I would be able to understand. And, you know, I think psychologically that really affected me, and, you know, I never really doubted I could do it. So I just forged ahead. Yeah. And for anyone new to Mormon stories, do you like to share what a patriarchal was? I'll just summarize. That's basically some 50-plus-year-old Mormon man laying his hands on your head, basically saying a prayer, pronouncing a blessing on you that tells you what the rest of your life is going to be like. And in that, he's telling you you should pursue medicine. Correct. Right? Yes. Which is kind of like fortune telling or tarot card reading, but from a religious perspective. And very unusual that it was that specific. from what I've heard. That is unusual. Yeah. Okay, we'll see later in the story how that turns out. So, by the time you're graduating, are you feeling like you're on the normal Mormon track that we've talked about a lot of Mormon schools? I worked for six months, didn't really want to go to college right after because I wanted to leave on my mission as soon as I turned 19. So I just worked for six months and then left on my mission. I served in Rosario, Argentina. Around what year, time frame? 95 to 97. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Had a great time there. I really enjoyed it. I probably wouldn't have been able to learn Spanish any other way. I'm not real quick with languages. But, yeah, I had a great experience. I enjoyed it. I had some spiritual experiences. You mentioned that some strupulosity or some religious OCD started emerging on your mission, is that right? Yeah, I was very letter of the law when I got there. You know, and I, again, was kind of working for my value. I was trying to... Hustle. Hustle, yeah. I memorized the discussions in four months. The goal was set by the mission president was to memorize them in six months, and I just had to be an overachiever. Um, you know, I was letter of the law getting out and studying and getting out in the morning and getting back to the apartment on time. Um, once in my mission, our zone leaders came up with this grand idea to tell us all to get up an hour earlier. So instead of getting up at 630, we got up at 530. I don't know if anybody else in the zone actually did this, but my companion and I, we may have been the only ones. But yeah, for a month or so, maybe six weeks, we were getting up at 5.30 in the morning. And during that, I think I had a nervous breakdown. I don't know what exactly I had. I woke up one morning and couldn't get out of bed. Just had this mental block. I laid there for a couple hours my companion didn't know what to do with me finally we called the mission president and we traveled across the city and I visited with him I can't remember the interaction there were you in distress? not being able to I was just numb I think my body and brain were just shut down because I was overworking so I think the mission president when he heard about that shut that idea down and told everyone no you you need sleep sleep till 6 30 and those zone leaders got reprimanded but yeah but I think through my mission I actually learned to relax a little bit and I wasn't as letter of the law by the end. It sounds like a healthy change. I think it was. And would you say, do you think it was brought on by that extreme response to trying to overachieve in an already, let's just say, demanding situation? Or no? I don't know. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe. Okay, so you get home and college. You finish college pretty quickly. Yes, so I got home in mid-December, started at BYU in January of 98, and graduated in August of 2000. So I went, I was actually eight semesters, because I went spring-summer. halfway through my experience at BYU I realized if I changed majors from microbiology to marriage and family science that I could graduate a year earlier because it was a lot less demanding of a major but you're still taking pre-med classes at that point I had finished most of my pre-med classes I was taking the MCAT, and so, yeah, I did the fast track. Yeah, kind of the fast track. But also you mentioned you were working 30 hours a week. So doing school in two and a half years, eight straight semesters, working 30 hours a week, taking a pre-med course load, I guess that kind of shows the Idaho farm parents' work ethic shining through. I think it also goes to I never felt like I was as smart as everyone else. I always viewed myself as I may not be as smart as everyone else, but I can work. That's right. I can make up the difference by working hard. Right. Right. And so that's what I did. That's so interesting. And you probably, I mean, did you receive, I feel like culturally, American culture, but also Mormon culture, did you receive a lot of positive reinforcement for that? Yeah. So you feel this deficit inside yourself. And then you try to compensate by saying, well, what I can control is just to work really hard. Yeah. Yeah. so we agreed that we you know kind of your wife and certain parts of your family journey we won't focus on today but tell us just at a high level I assume you got married in the temple tell us how many kids you had you went to med school actually I went to Missouri for med school Kirksville, Missouri I come from a small town and it was the smallest town in the United States that has a medical school. So I like that idea. And my wife happened to be attending the state school there. I kind of robbed the cradle, I guess. She was an 18-year-old freshman and I was a first-year med school, med student when we met. Okay. we started dating and two weeks later we were engaged and then we were married five months later six months later and that's not super unusual I don't know I don't regret any of that it's been a wonderful ride she's a wonderful person and how many kids did Jo end up having we have six children Oh, wow. Okay. Oldest is 22 and the youngest is 12. Okay. Right now. And anything abnormal about the time between getting married, having kids, and becoming a Mormon bishop? Anything important to your eventual faith journey or? I graduated from medical school. I always had, you know, my mom had had to work when I was a child. and so I always had, and she had gotten her college degree. So when we got married, I told her, I don't care what you do, but you have to finish your schooling. You have to finish your degree. So my wife graduated. At the same time, I graduated from med school. We moved back to Washington State for residency. What was your area? Family medicine. Okay. That's what I specialized in. I went to that specific residency because they had a strong OB component. So I finished residency doing C-sections and deliveries. And then we went to Idaho, a rural town in Idaho, for four years. and I did everything from cradle to grave medicine, did colonoscopies, EGDs. I loved it. It was great. The only problem was that the school system wasn't up to par, and it was kind of going downhill at the time. Are you comfortable sharing the name of the town? Orfino, Idaho. Okay. And what's the closest city that we would have heard of? Lewiston, Idaho, maybe. Okay. Do you know Lewiston, Sean? I mean, I've heard of it. It's in the middle of nowhere on the Clearwater River. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. And I loved working at the hospital there. They treated me so well. And, yeah, we moved to Walla Walla for the schools and to be closer to my parents because they were getting older. Two weeks after we moved to Walla Walla, I told my wife I want to move back because I hated my new job. And she said, nope, we're here. we've been there ever since in Walla Walla where you grew up has it grown on you? oh no I love Walla Walla kind of in jest the medical community is difficult there's a lot of politics I see okay I mean should we take a minute to touch on parenting sure are we there yet? or you want to talk about your approach, how you found yourself parenting during these years as your kids are growing up. So I, you know, my major in college was marriage and family science, child development. From BYU. From BYU. So, you know, I'm supposed to be the expert, right? So I was probably a little more, if I had to go back and do it again, I'd probably be a little less authoritative, a little more permissive. Well, BYU, I think, taught high control, high support, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, and that's kind of what I grew up with and what I felt was right. Some of my kids worked well for and some were more resistant to it. I think they've all turned out pretty well so far. They still talk to me. You didn't do, as far as you know, irreparable damage. I don't think so. Okay. All right. So I assume you and your wife both had many of the significant callings in your Mormon congregations leading up to your becoming bishop. But what were the major callings you both had? In residency, I was called as a counselor in a student ward, a single student ward, before my kids didn't need a primary. I was there. And then when we moved to Idaho, I served as a counselor again in a bishopric. Always kind of focused on the youth when I was there. And then when we moved to Walla Walla, I was called a scoutmaster, which I really enjoyed and would have stayed there forever if they would have let me. So, yeah, always had callings with the youth and always really enjoyed being out camping and being with the boys. And that was actually, as a bishop, that was one of my favorite things, It was, you know, crease corm. Oh, yeah. And, you know, I was happy if we had a five-minute lesson or not. I mean, we'd go around and do cherries and pits and just ask everybody about their week and just talk. And just my main goal was to have a connection with them. Yeah. And that was actually one of my favorite things of being a bishop, was hanging out with priests. Really? Just that connection time. It seems like you, and cherries and pits, I mean, I'm going to make an assumption, but is it kind of like highlights? Highlights. Things that are good, things that are hard. What good happened this week, what bad happened this week. Tell us about your week type thing. And, you know, if they weren't taking enough time with that, I'm like, come on, tell me more. We don't want to rush to get to this lesson. Yeah, that's really connection based. What year were you called as bishop? 2019. 2019. So that's seven-ish years ago. Yeah, it was the end of 2019, six and a half years. Okay. One of the first things I did was I bought a pair of wingback chairs like these and put them in my office because I didn't want to sit behind a desk. I didn't want to have an authoritarian relationship. I just wanted to, I mean, if people are in for an interview, I want to sit and talk to them, find out what's going on with them. I wanted to have that connection with them. And as an added bonus, the priests would rush to my office to see who could get the wingback chairs. Apparently they liked talking with you. Well, they were all competing over who'd get the soft chairs for a quorum meeting. And what type of training did you get as a Mormon bishop? and let's just say specifically around matters of abuse? We may have touched on it in a bishopric training. I don't remember specifically. I spent five years as a counselor in two different bishoprics, but I never got exposed to any abuse issues through that. A couple of disciplinary councils, but never really any abuse. I did have training with abuse professionally and had to report some child abuse as a physician a couple times. But, no, I didn't have any much training that I remember. I knew about the hotline, and I knew I was supposed to call it if I ran into abuse. Okay, and that's pretty much all you knew about that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And so there's a lot that you mentioned loving about being a bishop, including working with the priest quorum and that sort of thing. Did you have opinions about how to handle people who had sins or transgressions, worthiness stuff? Also, did you have opinions about being LGBT? You know, what types of worldviews did you have about sin and appropriate behavior that influenced how you bishoped? I probably pretty much towed the church policy line. Yeah, I was probably pretty letter of the law about a lot of things when people came in to confess. I tried to be an open ear and help them try to understand the atonement and feel forgiven. I did have an interesting experience with a young man who came in, And actually, it was at Trek he confessed to having issues with masturbation. And I kind of gave him a puzzled look and said, you know, I'm going to have to look, but I don't even think that's in the manual anymore. I don't know if we even call that a sin. Growing up, what had you been taught about that? Definitely. You know, Miracle Forgiveness, chapter 4, first page. I can show you exactly where it was. For those who don't know, what did it say? It said that masturbation was a sin and would lead to, I can't remember exactly, but homosexuality and other things. Yeah. Okay. I knew the exact page that was on. But you got to set it somewhere along the way the church softened that stance. Yeah, and I don't know when it happened. Somebody told me about in 2010 they took it out of the handbook of instructions. Yeah, and I don't remember not hearing about it. And I couldn't remember at the time that young man came to me. And I actually went to my state president and asked him about it, and he said, well, I think we should still consider it a sin. I'm like, what? There's nothing, there's no guidelines on it. Unless somebody tells me, and I'm not going to go by miracle forgiveness anymore, unless somebody tells me or shows me where it is, I'm not going to tell my congregation that it is a sin. And you can release me for that if you want, but that's where I'm at. Your stake president you felt was wanting? Yes, he was encouraging me to still consider this and have members repent. You know, what that's introducing is two things, the influence of your stake president, the influence of stake presidents over bishops, which is off book. It's off script. It's off manual. And that's normal that a state president is going to think about how they were raised in the church, how they were a bishop, how they were counseled by their state presidents. And so there's this whole, I think Boyd K. Packer used to call it the unwritten order of things. There's this whole culture of obedience and practice that isn't even institutionalized formally, that is influential. And I understand completely where he's coming from because we're the exact same age. Yeah. My state president and myself, we were raised in the same era of the church in the mid-90s. The Strength of the Youth came out when I was 14. It was first published. Yeah. And it did talk about masturbation as a sin. Yeah. I feel like this is also introducing that concept of ecclesiastical, the roulette side. Yeah. Because there's space here for how it's being interpreted and implemented. Yeah. And so depending, like, if you saw you, it would be a very different thing than if they saw the stake president. And this is what we hear all the time. Yeah. you mentioned one of your first interviews being with your son or one of your kids do you want to talk about that yeah so my my daughter she's trans female and I know it sounds kind of odd when she came in for her interview to become a priest advancing in the priesthood this is two months after I'd been called as bishop. She told me that she'd read the CES letter and didn't believe in Book Mormon, didn't believe any of it. And I was like, what's the CES letter? So this is 2019, 2020, something like that. And your child is the one that, wow. So as a bishop, you had not training in either that a CES letter existed, and certainly not about the historical or truth claims problems addressed in the CES letter. No. And that's after the Gospel Topics essays had been released. Had you been made aware of the Gospel Topics essays? I didn't know about the Gospel Topics essays until four months ago. Oh. Okay, so, wow. I served four years as a bishop and never knew about the Gospel Topics essays. So years after the Gospel Topics Essays addressing truth claims issues were released, neither had you been told that they existed or taught about them, nor did you ever instruct members to consult them because you didn't know they existed as a Mormon bishop. Yes, correct. That's wild. Didn't know about them. Wow. Until just a couple months ago. Okay. So certainly the issues in the CES letter you hadn't considered. No, I skimmed through it at the time. I was very resistant to a very defensive in my mind. I read I Can't Remember Whose Rebuttal to that. Probably Jim Bennett. Yeah, probably. I don't remember. and I felt like oh well this doesn't make me feel good so it must not be of the spirit so yeah so how'd you respond to your kid when they're I didn really we left it I didn know how to respond to him and to be clear she brought it to you in a bishop capacity not in a hmm My wife and I kind of decided that okay well you can still come to church with us because we go to church as a family. So she continued to come to church with us for a while. And then about two months later, my third child came to us. This is not as a bishop. They came to us and said that they were non-binary bisexual. And I had no idea even what that meant at the time. So they also said that, you know, as a 12-year-old in young women's class, she had been made to feel very uncomfortable when they had a lesson about LGBTQ issues. She was having some thoughts that direction already and didn't know who to talk to or anything. She kept it to herself for a couple years and then finally came to us when she was 14, I think, 13 or 14. Did the church give you any training on how to deal with a member and or youth that comes to you with LGBTQ perspective? None? None. And did they give you any training on how to deal with a member that came to you with truth claims or history or faith crisis issues? No. I mean, I'm already thinking the major theme is how unprepared the Mormon church leaves its bishops from today's... I didn't really, you know, think about it at all like that at the time. I was thinking more you know why me how did I what did I do wrong as a parent to have two children leave the path you know was I too strict with them when they were little blaming yourself Blaming myself, blaming society, you know, let them have too much Internet access, you know, that they can go online and read the CES letter type thing. And I guess with the LGBT stuff, you might wonder if they're socially were influenced. Yes, definitely. Yeah. You know, I kind of saw it as a, at the time, I kind of saw it as a social contagion. I see. You know, especially in the, it seems like in the middle school, it just seemed like everybody was talking about it and whatnot. So what I'm kind of hearing you say is that at this point in time, your beliefs kind of created a barrier to you being able to connect with your children in this moment. Would you say that's true or am I that's what I'm hearing? I grew up when did the proclamation on the family come out? I mean oh man 95 that was a big deal. That was the year I left on my mission. I was fully ingrained in my mind. Yeah those, you know, preset truths that, you know, of gender and sexuality and, you know, marriage that can only be found in these very structured settings. And then anything else isn't of God. Yeah. So you're a bishop. You're supposed to, you're feeling the pressure to have the model family, to be the model father in your ward. You're counseling other ward members on how to be parents and spouses and good church members. And now you have two of your kids, two of six, have either lost their faith or come out to you as LGBT in some way. What was that like? That was hard. I, and it was hard because of the, you know, I was thinking that, you know, if I, you know, have family home evening and take them to church every week and we have family prayer every day and we read our scriptures, they'll stay in the path. And, you know, this is, you know, God will bless my family and then my kids will follow the path. right and um that wasn't happening i was doing everything right and it wasn't wasn't uh happening they were they were choosing their own path which is you know in hindsight is great but so i'm curious so when your child came to you and talked about um being non-binary and bisexual was that the first time because it feels like in your story it's earlier when you were bishop but was that the first time as a bishop that you had been introduced to LGBTQ? Yes. Kind of, okay, by your and it was to be clear, not in a bishop's office, it was in a parenting role right? Yes. That they came to you and were saying and told us this yeah. Okay. And yes, I had been a bishop maybe four or five months. Yeah, so kind of early on. I think it's interesting within Mormonism, and this is one of those key times of life, that within the box or within the path, what is allowed and what, let's just say, success looks like as a parent, what righteousness looks like. It's so specific. It's so narrow. that anything that falls outside that, you view it as a deficit. You view it as something as opposed to even things that are good in general life or things that without this conditioning, without this sort of prescriptive, very narrow path, you would be great things, right? Like you have a child that's curious, that is a critical thinker that came upon this, right, as a young person. That could be viewed as a very positive thing. You have another child that has deconstructed things and really looked internally and is doing work around their identity. And that could have been viewed as a positive thing. But how many times in Mormonism, you know, do we show up and we realize, like, that the life that is allowed is so not only specific but so narrow. And anything outside that is your fault. yes and what's my job as a father is to see what i can do to fix this to fix it there's something wrong to fix them yeah there's there's something wrong it's either i raised them wrong what can i do to to fix that now how can i talk them out of this yeah um yeah all these you know now i see them as destructive ideas, but at the time, yeah. I'm just feeling so sad about how unprepared you were, both as an LDS father, but also just especially as a bishop, because it's one thing if you weren't prepared on how to be a healthy dad when your kids come to you with faith or LGBT issues, but to have a bishop that's in charge of an entire congregation, multiple families, multiple parents, multiple kids, and I don't mean to come out too harshly, but knowing the church has $300 billion in assets, it could afford to train its bishops with a basics in Mormon church history, a basics in Mormon church truth claims, basics in the biology of LGBT issues, even basics in how to handle basic mental health issues, but specifically LGBT issues, even if it's just refer them to a competent, licensed ethical therapist. But it just sounds like you were just kind of pushed out to swim. And honestly, it was mostly nobody else was coming to me about these issues. It was really just my kids in my congregation. So I thought it was just an us problem. But even if, you know, I'll counter your thought there, though, and say that even if they had a training program, would I have had time to do that training program? I mean, there's so many things they want bishops to do and be trained in. and I'm running my practice. Yeah, I don't know that I would have gotten to it either. Well, I mean, I would have gotten to it after they came to me. I would have gone back and been able to say, okay, what sort of resources? And they have come out with some resources. I haven't looked at them in a while. I don't know. There's some things online that focus more on that. But like I said, I haven't looked at them in a while. Yeah, and so you mentioned in your outline that you were kind of upset with your children. Yeah, there was some resentment. I mean, why are you doing this? or, like, you know, just, you know, blaming myself, blaming others. And, you know, we're not doing what we're supposed to. We're not the eternal family because we're kids straying. And being a bishop has to add pressure because, again, like I said previously, you're supposed to be the role model. You might feel pressure to be the role model father and the role model family for the ward. There's some of that, I think, maybe. I don't know that I was ever too worried about being the perfect bishop. I kind of said that, you know, you called me so you get what you get type thing. I think I probably would have had a lot of a lot of the same feelings even if I hadn't been bishop at the time Can I say something that I feel like it could sound well let me put it this way so like all the love for you because we all are human we all in these instances and I'll just say parenting because that's where we are in parenting, you know, we show up as we are. We don't know what we don't know, you know. And so offering self-compassion to you in that moment, I've been there as well. I think it's innate to parenting. But also recognizing where the conditioning leaves us in those moments, how it fails us. One thing I notice that the church teachings kind of support is inadvertently creating adults that become immature, emotionally immature. And how I would say that is like our children come to us in a confiding capacity. And for whatever reason, we have all the conditioning to make it about us. Right. Instead of truly being able to do the work of and focus on the child of the moment and really hear the child and show up for the child and, you know, kind of do that work that that we are supported through the way the church actually works through the type of parenting. It kind of supports us to be to really focus the attention on this is so stressful. What have I done wrong? Like, you know, now we have to do these things. Now we have to fix it. I'm going to give you like I'm going to exude a lot of anxiety now, a lot of sense of failure in my feelings. And it inadvertently like creates that focus on the parent along with, you know, what we just discussed. And I think it's worth mentioning this dynamic. I share in that. I've had my own moments with that, and it's definitely been part of my reckoning. So I just wanted to, like, take a moment for that. Yeah, I completely agree. I love that term, the emotional immaturity. And I recognize that I was immature. I was making it about me and what I was doing as a parent or not doing as a parent or what the, you know, it wasn't, yeah, I wasn't there for them and support them when they were, they were trying to come to me with something hard. Right. Yeah, and before we now talk about the hotline, I just want to reiterate that even though your sense was that masturbation was no longer prohibited by the church manuals, that your state president was telling you that it was still wrong, even if the manuals didn't say so. Yes. Yeah. Well, I had some other influence along the lines there. When I was trying to understand my child, my wife had sent me a podcast concerning talking to your children about sexuality by Jennifer Finlay-Cyfe. And I immediately took to her work and listened to a lot of her podcasts. podcast. We did several of her courses and grew as a couple, my wife and I. I was working on not seeing how it was about me and seeing how I could more support my child. Still in the context of the Proclamation on the Family, though, and it That made it very difficult to see past that. Yeah. That they were not in compliance with what the church wanted. Mm-hmm. Um, I, the, my, my feelings on, on, uh, on masturbation and, and things like that were more from, you know, the learning with my wife and, and, uh, understanding better our sexuality and, and things. so yeah when that young man came to me about masturbation I was like I don't see a problem with it. I see so it was actually from some education and growth on your own. Yes. At that point. Nothing from the church. Yeah that's important. I actually went to one of her in person workshops workshops a little over three years ago. It was a great experience. It was what I said to several people, it was what elders quorum should be because it was a men's retreat. You went as a bishop. I was bishop at the time. And I had already done. So you're getting training from Jennifer Vinley. That's right. Maybe they should have been giving you. There were bishops there. There was a stake president there. good for her and it was just a wonderful experience because everybody was really open and we were talking and connecting on levels that we should connect in the elders quorum but we don't we're too superficial we're not honest there's just an inherent dishonesty in the superficiality of membership in the church. Yeah. And so, yeah, so my feelings on that were changed and influenced by some of Jennifer's work. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, shout out to Jennifer. She's a friend and I think she does great work. Okay, well, let's go ahead and dive into the experience you had with somebody who had engaged in child abuse. And how did they come to you and what was the situation? So it was a less active sister. maybe late 20s, early 30s, came in and confessed to me that she had had a relationship with a 14-year-old teenage boy. The teenage boy had no idea who he was. He wasn't a member of our congregation. And I kind of sat back and said, okay, I'm not sure what to do with that. I'm going to find out. As a physician in the state of Washington, I am a mandatory reporter. And so my first thought, well, I need to call the police and we need to have you turn yourself in. But, of course, I had been told about the hotline. So I called the hotline. So immediately you felt like your allegiance was to the hotline in the church first. Well, I wanted to find out. I wanted to know. I figured they were going to tell me to report before I called. I mean, I figured they would help me work through how to counsel this sister on turning herself in and, you know, dealing with the legal part of it. and then I could help her work on the repentance part. The legal part is part of the repentance process. And this was, just to be clear, the year, this was around two, three years ago? Probably three or four years ago, 2022 maybe. Okay, 2022, okay. Yeah, I don't remember exactly. No, that's around then. Okay. So it was a Sunday afternoon. There was nobody in there. Well, they have a secretary answer the phone, and then they take your name and number, and they called me back. Same day? Same day, about an hour later, I was at home and asked me where I was from and asked me the situation. I told them, and they said, okay, you're not a mandatory reporter. I'm like, I'm not. What do you mean? I thought I had to report this. No. State of Washington, you do not have to report. And I was like, okay, so what am I supposed to do? Before we jump in there, can I ask you a couple questions? Sure. So we've done some episodes based on the reporting of Michael Resendez of the Associated Press and then also based on some of the experiences with an attorney, Timothy Kozunoff and others, that they were able to, through a lawsuit, obtain the questions that the hotline people used to ask bishops who called in. And, you know, we reviewed those questions at least as they were several years ago. And there were questions like, was the person, was the abuse on church property? And was the abuse done by someone who had a calling in the church? And all of the questions, literally all of them, seemed to be around assessing the Mormon church's legal liability. none of the questions were around the health and safety of the victim or of making sure that the perpetrator seeks justice. So do you remember any of the questions asked to you by the hotline person to then lead them to tell you you're not a mandatory reporter? Did they ask legal assessment questions or victim care questions or any of that that you recall? I don't remember specifically. They may have just asked me the situation I told them, and that answered some of those questions. I was just volunteering. Okay. Less active sister. They would have known that there was no calling. didn't happen on church property. I don't remember if they asked that or if I told them that specifically. Got it. The, like I said, I didn't know the victim. I was able to tell them that the abuse was no longer happening. Yeah. And was the abuse to a church member? Not that I know of. Okay. So it was, in this case, priest-penitent kind of exchange where somebody is coming to you to confess. Mm-hmm. Okay. Correct. And do you know the priest-penitent laws in Washington? I do now since this last—I looked them up this last week. because I was in response to the press release. I looked them up. The Bo Euler press release. Okay. Do you know what the laws were at the time or now? There was no requirement of mandatory reporting. Okay. It might be a little gray area because I was a physician. or I am a physician in the state of Washington. So which ethics do you have to? I wasn't functioning as a physician. I told them that, that I thought I was a mandatory reporter. And to be clear, when I called them, I only spoke to the secretary and then a lawyer called me back. I never spoke to anybody else. No social worker? No social worker. No priesthood leader that could give me any guidance on how to counsel the sister. Um, it was just, you know, encourages them to turn themselves in and, you know, work through the repentance process with them. So they did tell you to encourage them to turn themselves in. I don't remember exactly what they told me at the time. Um, but I, I think that was part of it. or just that they have the option to turn themselves in but in terms of telling you what to do or what you should do they just told me I was not a mandatory reporter it felt like they were directing me not to report that's how I experienced it They may not have said that outright. You know, I realize I am talking to lawyers, and so they will hedge their bets. I understand that. And I'm probably reading a lot into that. But that's the way I felt, that it was better that I didn't report. And this was a Kurt McHawkey lawyer, do you know? I believe so. Okay. I mean, they didn't say. They probably told me their name. I don't remember. They did give me, I think, a case number and a phone number to call back if I had further questions, but I lost that a long time ago. And to clarify, how long ago was this? Probably three to four years ago. Yeah. Just wanted to. Maybe around four years ago. Okay. Okay. Okay, so even though your medical training and ethics would have immediately led you to report, you left that phone call with the church's hotline slash lawyer with the impression that you, the church did not want you to report the abuser. Is that right? Yes. And so you didn't report the abuser. I did not. Is that right? I did not. Okay. And I always felt uneasy about that decision. I never felt that that was quite the right thing to do. I, unfortunately, she stopped responding to my phone calls and texts, and so I couldn't work with her further on the repentance process. Do you know why she stopped? I don't. Okay. It could have been that situation, but I don't know. And had you received counsel from the state president? I didn't before or after that. Not on this specific case. They may have given us some general guidelines on reporting abuse at some point. I don't remember. and just to be clear I know I've already asked this but at no point did the church from what I'm hearing at no point did the church put you in touch with a therapist or a social worker to help you get care for the victim no I didn't have any contact with the victim I didn't know who he was at all either so okay and part of the complication is as far as you know they weren't a member yes so it would have been weird for some Mormon bishop to randomly try and reach out yeah to a teen or their parents but I mean on the other hand dang if I'm a parent and somebody knows that someone had abused my kid I'd want to know that's so true yeah right that's why I never felt settled about that. But the church didn't try to make any effort to help you get in touch with the parents of that kid? No, no, they didn't encourage me to do anything like that. They just um Kurt Malkin only told me to you know, work with the sister through the repentance process. Do you know why she cut off contact with you? I don't. Okay. Can I do a quick little exercise? So can we compare, contrast this with your medical situation? I just think it's kind of an enlightening thing to do. So if you had been in a doctor role, this idea of mandatory reporting, what would it have looked like? What would you have done? I would have like I saw her in a clinic setting I would have said okay hold on I need to go check something outside in your chart or something I would have excused myself from the room and gone and called the police while she was still there yeah I mean, it really depends also if I see there's an immediate threat to somebody's, if the abuse is ongoing, if, you know, she's going to leave there and harm someone, I would have called the police immediately. If I don't see that happening, then I might have, you know, let her go and contacted them later or contacted DSHS, the Department of Social Health Services, directly. It kind of depends. There is an abuse hotline, but where there's an immediate threat, I would have contacted the local police. I see. Okay, so the advice the Mormon Church's attorneys gave you, you felt like was to not report this to the police. Correct. And the Mormon Church made no attempt to notify the parents of the victim or to see if the victim was okay or to provide any relief to the victim. No. Okay. Nobody knew who the victim was in that case. Yeah. But there was no attempt to try and find out. Mm-hmm. Okay. And then did you end up, did Kurt McConkie, the Mormon Church's attorneys, give you any instruction on how to officiate in church discipline of this member who was a child abuser? Did they say you've got to hold a court, excommunicate them? No, they didn't give me any guidelines on that. They said, you know, follow the manual. And they just told me to work through the repentance process with them, as far as I remember. I mean, it was four years ago. I don't remember the specifics. And then, but you say, did you try to, like, hold a disciplinary? Did you, with your training, did it even occur to you that you needed to hold a disciplinary council and potentially, you know, dispellship or excommunicate this member? Okay. Unfortunately, she stopped responding to my phone calls and texts and wouldn't answer the door when I went to visit her. Okay. So you actually went to visit her, but she wouldn't answer the door. You don't know why? Couldn't find her at home. Maybe she wasn't at home. Maybe she was just not answering the door. I don't know. So do you know if there was any annotation made to her record such that if she transferred to another ward or stake, the knowledge that she had confessed child sexual abuse would have gone with her to other wards or congregations? I never knew. I guess I knew that was a thing, but nobody had told me that that's what I needed to do, and I didn't even think about it. Like I said, I was trying to get a hold of her again. So, no, I don't think her record was ever annotated. I was actually thinking about this last week, that I should probably go to her current bishop and have him do that. Were any ward or stake members notified that there, you know, was a member who is a child abuser kind of in their midst that they need to kind of watch out for? Anything done to help notify the members, help keep the other children safe? Like I said, she kind of broke off contact, so she stopped attending. And, you know, had she continued to attend, I probably would have made some effort there. Did Kurt McConkie want you to tell your state president that this had happened? No, nobody ever mentioned that. And thinking back on it, that probably would have been a good idea. I'd talk to him about it, but. Yeah. Yeah. And did Curt and McHawkey follow up to make sure that the right actions had been taking place? No, there was no follow up. To make sure members were safe or that the discipline happened? No, they did give me a phone number and I think a case number, but I can't remember that I could call back if I had further questions. so yeah it sounds like do you feel like now you have some regrets about how you handled it do you wish you would handle it differently yeah yes I I can't say for sure what I would have done with my current knowledge in the situation. I'd like to say that I would have pushed her more forcefully to go confess, turn herself in, and if she hadn't, I would have called the police department to start an investigation on her. Yeah. So how do you feel about either the training or the policy or the Curt McConkey's, the lawyer's handling of the situation in terms of it influencing or not influencing appropriately the ultimate way you handled it? The problem is we're treating an ethical issue strictly by the law. We're leaving something to the lawyers that we need to deal with as humans. And I'm sorry, I'm not saying lawyers aren't humans, but they just have a different perspective on how to handle things. And their main goal is to protect their client. That's what they're trained to do. From legal risk. Yes. And their client is the church. And PR damage, basically. Their client is the church and myself as a bishop. Yeah. To protect us. Now, the state of Washington did change their laws this last year. And they made clergy mandatory reporters. But then, interestingly, the Catholic Church, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the LDS Church, I believe those three, from what I've read, joined together and fought that in court and got a confessional exemption. So if somebody, if a clergy finds out in confession that they're not a mandatory reporter in that case. So the Mormon Church teamed with Jehovah's Witnesses and Catholics, as far as you know. I believe so, yes. To fight an attempt to get rid of the priest penitent privilege. they were trying to defend the priest's penitent privilege and then got an exemption through court in December. And just two months ago. They were fighting any attempt to make bishops, Mormon bishops, mandatory reporters of child sexual abuse. So the clergy are still mandatory reporters if they find out not in confession. So if the perpetrator comes, if the victim comes, yes, they have to report. But if the perpetrator comes and confesses, then they are not. And I mean, how often is a child going to come to a bishop to say an adult in power abused me or my parent abused me? I mean, that's I don't know how many kids feel comfortable going to some random bishop to tell on their parents or their sibling or, you know. Some adult in power. That seems like expecting too much for a kid. But it is something. It's better than what it was. Yeah. But honestly, I look at the track record of those three churches. Right. And how they've handled abuse internally. And legally, I don't think we should let them retain that. that power to deal with that internally. They haven't done a good job, and their track record approves it. Yeah, it's like those are the last three churches that should get exemptions. Exactly. I mean, them and the Boy Scouts. Yes. It's like leaving a fox in the house, basically, it seems. Exactly. Yeah. Saying that the Scoutmaster can receive confession from an assistant Scoutmaster for something like that. Yeah, no, it doesn't make any sense at all. Legally, they've claimed it under the First Amendment religious freedom. And it passed the Washington State Supreme Court. They got that exemption. Yeah, that is telling. I mean, that's where the church's money and power can be. But 41 states don't allow that. Yeah. But where the church can wield its influence. Yeah, I don't think that will ever change in Utah. Yeah. But I'm just... You're saying 41 states are like Utah. No, 41 states don't... 41 states, clergy are mandatory reporters. Okay. It's just nine. It's just nine states that are... I guessing many of those states are going to be ones where the Mormon Church has its heaviest influence like Utah So the first question that they ask you when you call the abuse hotline at least I experienced was where did this occur Where did you hear this? What state were you in? It's jurisdictional dependent, which if we're talking about repentance and God's law, why does it depend on what state you're in? yeah I also just want to say that it seems to me that when the church flags someone for apostasy they track those people down to make sure church discipline happens they don't just let them disappear or go to some other ward and continue being members in good standing so it just it does not seem like the church feels anywhere as motivated to let's just say spiritually prosecute a child sexual abuser as they do someone who disagrees with the church on LGBT issues or on historical interpretations and has spoken about that publicly. The church is going to go after someone who doesn't believe Joseph Smith practiced polygamy or who criticizes the church and its problems. They're going to track them down to the ends of the earth. And we could even say having experienced the power of the church surveillance efforts, we know they can. Yeah. But with your case, they did not seem to have any concern about tracking this person down to make sure there was at least annotation on their record, if not church discipline. Yeah. And maybe I'm to blame for the lack of the annotation. I don't know. It didn't even occur to me at the time. I mean, you didn't know that the Gospel Topics essays existed. You had never heard of the CES letter. You were not trained to handle LGBTQ issues. And you were not trained to, you didn't know the law as it related to the church and reporting. Yeah. And you didn't know about, did you know about the church's history of child abuse cover-ups? No. You know, you didn't know about that either. Like, you were, it's kind of like you were set up to be ignorant. I still don't know about the church's history of cover-ups, but I've learned a little bit in the last week or so. I mean, one of the main reasons the Boy Scouts of America went bankrupt is because such a huge percentage of Boy Scouts were victims of child abuse. And tens of thousands of Mormon boys were sexually abused as Boy Scouts while the church, again, was trying to hide and cover up child abuse, including the Boy Scouts. So, yeah, the church had a heavily disproportionate involvement in Boy Scouts, which means a heavily disproportionate percentage of boys abused. And the Boy Scouts were all the yes. and the church appointed high-level leaders in the Boy Scouts throughout its history to help manage and govern the Boy Scouts. So anyway, you didn't know any of that as a bishop. I mean, I knew what was happening with the Boy Scouts, what was in the press and things. I thought it was, honestly, I wanted to defend the church in my mind and so I thought it was more other troops that weren't part of the church that was probably having the issues. I never experienced it. I never saw any of it. You know, I went through the youth protection training every year because I was a scoutmaster for years. I loved my involvement with the scouts, and I was sad to see it go. So I didn't have a firsthand knowledge of that. I think it's sad that they fostered that sort of environment that that could breed in the Boy Scouts. Given the prevalence that we now know of of child abuse in the Mormon Church, it's a testament to its lawyers' skillfulness that so few members know about the prevalence of abuse or how to handle it. And so in your case, I think your case is a perfect case of how the church knows exactly how to deal with it to get the exact response that they want, which is minimal accountability for the perpetrator and minimum, minimal knowledge for the rest of the membership about the existence of a predator in their midst or the existence of the problem of child abuse. generally, they have the attorney talk to the bishop and give the impression that they really should just kind of quietly handle it. But all of those interactions, plus your ignorance, minimizes the number of people that even know about this and maximizes the chances that it's going to happen again, unfortunately, and be handled inappropriately. And that's from the laws to the policies to the hotline. They've carefully influenced all of it. And so really quickly, there's kind of an apologetic argument that the church supporting priest penitent laws in states actually leads to more reporting and more protection of children because if a member feels safe reporting to their bishop, knowing that they won't necessarily be turned into the police, then more children get protected because more abusers feel comfortable confessing their abuse to their bishop. Do you have a response to that? I do have a response to that. the problem with that argument is the track record. I mean, if the church had a history of receiving that information and preventing future abuse with it, I could totally get behind that. That, yeah, if we're going to prevent more abuse by people feeling more comfortable confessing and repenting and changing their ways, sure. But from what I've seen, that hasn't been the case. And it's a subject that's very difficult to study, but from my experience and how I was counseled in this, that wasn't the focus. the system in my experience is more set up to protect the name of the church and not to protect the victim. And to protect the church from legal liability. Correct. Right? It's the name of the church and its legal liability. Correct. Yeah. So, yeah, they haven't been trustworthy with that responsibility. so they shouldn't have it. What about the idea that the atonement can be the solution for a child abuser? Like, just get them the atonement, and that will be what the child abuser needs, not the law, not legal justice. They just need the atonement. you have to protect the victim first you can't allow someone to work on their repentance and still have access to their victims you can't let the victims continue to be abused while somebody is trying to change their ways yeah I mean if you want I can get into further on how I feel about the atonement and things no I mean in this context for now we can talk about your own faith journey after sure a couple more questions do you have any sense for whether before we talk about Bo Do you have any sense or experience for whether your experience was similar or dissimilar to other bishops or state presidents in the church? The only other experience I've heard about, talked about, was Bo's. Okay. And what he described was very similar to what I experienced. Now, let's talk about that. So how did you hear about Bo's experience, Bishop Bo Euler's experience? He went on soft flight underbelly. He told his story. So he told the story of having a member confess to him that they had abused a child and that his interactions with the hotline were that he, you know, he left with the impression that he wasn't to report it to the police. Yeah. Okay. So how did you even hear about Bo Euler at all? Or if you remember. I was, so when I started on my faith journey, I, my wife asked me to examine both sides or listen to both, continue to listen to both sides. So I was actually listening to a podcast. I can't remember exactly what podcast it was, but it was a faithful podcast. and they started talking about this press release and how the church proved this bishop was a liar and all this stuff. I'm like, that's interesting. And they were talking about his interaction with the abuse hotline. I'm like, that's interesting. And so that made me go look up the press release, and I read it, and I was like, well, what he's asserting is exactly what I experienced. And so then I went and watched the soft white, I had never heard of the soft white undervillage at that point, and I went and watched his interview, and there was a lot of things in his interview that rang true with me. I was almost that bishop that died on the trail you know when he became bishop I also had a heart attack when I was bishop but luckily I was at home but yeah just him telling his experience was almost exactly like what I experienced now except that the abuse was was different and I didn't have a victim that was continuing to be abused and that I needed to protect. But the way he talked about his interactions with the hotline was similar to yours. And it really rang true. And I went back and I reread the, um, the press release and I became very angry. Um, what about the press release made you angry, feel angry? Cause I felt like Bo was telling the truth. and it felt like the church was trying to cover it up and now Bo may not have told everything. He was in a... He couldn't have, I mean, that whole interaction to tell all of the story just about that... he was telling the story of his life and the story with his reporting to the hotline was like 10 minutes you know but I could totally see his first interaction with the church saying no you should report and then him saying well I'm not going to do that and I'm sure there were some social workers involved and stuff in my case there weren't he doesn't remember a social worker being involved and then the church is insisting that there was. And you're saying there wasn't with you and that's important. I was never offered that. There was never a social worker involved. I would like to see the evidence. I've listened to all the apologetics podcasts on this. They're all calling Bo a liar based on a press release that the church has released. And it could be all fiction. the church is good at producing fiction. I don't believe it unless they want to show us the actual records. That's the only way that I would trust them. And this part's complicated because when other people have sued the church for covering up child sexual abuse, they've asked for the notes that the person fielding the call, the hotline, the notes that they take when the bishop calls in. And what the church has said, as I understand it, in past lawsuits is we instruct the people fielding those calls from the hotline to destroy the notes at the end of each day, which in and of itself is deeply suspect. Why wouldn't they keep those notes? But I'm sure lawyers set up that process to destroy those notes, at least in part, so there would be no evidence of what was advised or what was counseled or what information was obtained. And so the church is on record as telling the world, we don't keep those notes. And that came out in the Michael Resendez AP report from several years back. Well, in Bo's case, bizarrely, the church used as evidence for them calling Bo a liar, their possession of the very notes that they've told the world, they destroy at the end of each day. Which means either they've been lying about destroying those notes, or they were lying about having notes to have justification for calling Bo a liar. So it seems to me as though they've lied in either case. Or there's a third option, which is the attorney's keep notes. And so now they've potentially sacrificed attorney-client privilege because they were relying on attorney's notes to call Bo a liar, which would then mean they should be sued and we should now have access to those attorney records. I suspect that latter is the case that the record of me calling in and talking to that secretary was destroyed but then I spoke to a lawyer and they keep those notes separate and those fall under attorney-client privilege so that they can have deniability yeah, those records were destroyed but what about the record between the lawyer and the client and that's protected by attorney-client privilege. I could be completely off base on that. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm... Anyway. Yeah, okay. So, and it may have very well been that a social worker was involved in Bo's case at some point, but my understanding is when he was on the line with the hotline, no social worker was involved, and I think that's what he was trying to say in his interview. But let me just make another point in addition to how, well, just problematic this whole system seems to me of hotlines caring about protecting the church, not caring about victims, suggesting or counseling bishops not to report to the police, claiming that they delete the notes or destroy the notes so there's no evidence. Like all that's super problematic. There's something else that's deeply problematic. I'm unaware of the Mormon church ever releasing a press release to warn the membership of the world about a perpetrator abusing children. And yet they're going to issue a press release about an actual former bishop who was doing his best to tell an honest story about what he experienced when he tried to handle an abuse story. They're going to issue a press release about that and to smear that good individual who served the church for no pay for five years and who gave his life to the church. That person the church is going to smear with a press release and with an army of dozens of social media influencers, all smearing Bo by name, calling him a lawyer without providing any evidence. A lawyer. What did I say? A lawyer. Wait, I'm not going to. I'm not going to disperse lawyers. I've already done enough of that. Yeah, they're going to use dozens of social media influencers to smear Bishop Bull Euler and call him a liar without providing any evidence. But they would never, they don't even tell the membership that there's an abuser among them frequently, let alone have they ever issued a press release or dispatched dozens of social media influencers to smear an actual child abuser. To me, that's pretty horrific and telling about what the church's priorities are. They would much rather smear and destroy the life of a whistleblower calling the church to account for its mishandling of abuse. They would much rather smear and destroy that person than the thousands of actual child abusers that are out there. And I'm personally aware of many, many, many child abusers who never received any excommunication. And yet Boiler is being threatened with excommunication in part, largely for just telling his authentic story on South White Underbelly. Yeah. While many, many Mormon child abusers have never been excommunicated. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's difficult to understand. unless you look at it from the perspective of they're only interested in protecting the name of the church. And it's money. Yeah. So you decided to make a phone call in the past week or two. I did. That was your own decision. That was your own idea. You know, I'm under the radar. I'm still an active member. Just to be clear, you are active in the church. I am active. You're attending the church right now. Okay, keep going. And I, yeah, I was, I just called them and said, hey, I called you three, four years ago. Is this the hotline you called? I called the hotline. Okay, same hotline. Well, I first talked to my bishop, and I was just like, you know, this never sat right with me. What do you recommend? And he said, well, here's the address of the church in Salt Lake. Can you write him a letter? And, you know, of course, I know the handbook of instructions say that all letters addressed to Salt Lake will be returned to local authorities. So I then the next thing I did was I texted my state president. And just with a link to the press release and just said, hey, this press release came up. It doesn't sit right with me. Can I talk to you about it? And he said, yeah, I'll find some time. Well, I didn't give him enough time, honestly. I'm here doing this anyways. His executive secretary texted me Saturday, actually, for an appointment for tomorrow evening, which I told him I was going to be gone in Utah here. So I didn't really give him a chance to talk to me. But the next thing I thought of was, well, I could just call the hotline and just see if I can resolve my concerns with them. You know, maybe I just misremembered it. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. I want to be fair. So I, yeah, just called them one morning and said, hey, you know, I called you three or four years ago about this. I had this case where, and it never sat right with me, the results of that. Can you look it up and talk me through it here? You know, just trying to be fair with them and give them a chance to respond. They actually couldn't find any record that I had called. I spoke to Kurt McConkie, a lawyer there. They couldn't find the secretary couldn't find it. and the lawyer couldn't find it either. But I told them the situation as I remembered it, and they told me pretty much the same thing. I did ask more questions this time, though. They told me again that, you know, I was not a mandatory reporter at the time and didn't have any obligation to report. They never told me whether I should or shouldn't have reported. but they did then I asked a question well you know I understand legally I wasn't required to report but the question is ethically should I have reported and he told me that no that the clergy confessional privilege is sacred and we need to protect that Oh, wow. Is what they told me. So more sacred than protecting the children. Interesting. That's old. And that's in February of 2026. That was last week. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And miraculously, they don't have any records of your call. No, they couldn't find any records. I imagine that if you, I mean, if Soft White Belly or some other podcast blew up your story enough, maybe magically they would be able to find some records that contradicted your story too. I don't know. I know two people told me on the phone that they couldn't find any record that I had called. Yeah. Yeah. And. Yeah. We'll see if they come up with records. great. Show me them. If you have records, I'll stand corrected that I misremembered it or something. Same with Bo. I mean, show us the records. Bo seems like a reasonable guy. If you misremembered it, I bet he would have issued an apology. But I don't think so. You know, I... Yeah. I don't think they'll release records, because I don't think they'll reflect what they've told us. Is there any part of you that's concerned that, like with Bo, threatening him with excommunication, your church leaders might try to punish you for telling your story and for supporting Bo? Like I said, I came here to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. If that happens, then that happens. I'm not going to be afraid of telling the truth. If they want to punish me for that, then it's not an organization I want to be affiliated with. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And that's from someone who's currently attending. Yeah. I still love singing the hymns. I have the bass part memorized on most of the hymns. Love singing in primary and playing Play-Doh with sunbeams. And I'll just say really quickly, I want to invite any other current or former bishops or stake presidents, or anyone who has experience calling the hotline and being told, it's not told not to report. It's being led to believe that they shouldn't report is how they do it. And we've already done an episode where we read like 200 accounts. I'm going to ask Brooklyn to include that in the show notes because we did an episode where like 200 people sent us their accounts of being led to believe they shouldn't report abuser to police either. But if others want to tell their story to support your story and to support Bo's, please reach out and we will consider. I thought I was the only one until I saw Bo's story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So please just email us at mormonstories at gmail.com and we want to hear your story as well. Anything else you want to say about abuse or Bo before we talk about your own faith unraveling? Because I think that's important too. I think I've said enough. Okay. So then, so did you finish out five years as bishop or? I did not. Okay, what happened? So about six months before I was released, I had a heart attack. I had a 100% blockage of my left anterior descending artery, which is the Widowmaker. Luckily, I was at home. My wife drove me to the hospital, had a stent place, and I'm here to talk about it. I had some resulting depression after that that I was dealing with, and just a lot of apathy. Actually, in an interview with my stake president, I told him, you know, I'm not going to be, I would never ask to be released, but I won't be offended if you release me early. And they were already planning a consolidation of wards at that time. So I was released right at the four-year mark for my being a bishop. That was just about two and a half years ago. The same day that I had an interview to be released with the state president, I got online on the temple worker recommendation portal and recommended myself as a temple worker. I kind of knew that I was going to get released. So I became a temple worker right at that time. The new bishop called me as a young men's advisor to the priest. So I got to continue to hang out with my priests as well. I can tell. They need a lot to you, yeah. So, yeah, our temple is an hour drive for me. So I would get up every Friday at 4.30 and drive to the temple and work the morning. and then I'd drive home and go do my medical practice. And I did that for two years. Wow. That's really something. It sounds like your faith is very different now than it was when you became bishop. Yeah. Do you want to tell the story about faith? It's very different than September 1st of last year. And also how your kids' evolution in terms of their relationship with the church has also impacted you. All that. And them. And your family. So, I have three children who left the church, stopped attending. The first one to stop attending was my third child. Yeah, when she brought, the one that brought the seeds. When they came out as non-binary, they also told me about an experience as a 12-year-old in young women's being, she wasn't out at the time, but being very uncomfortable and being told that what she was feeling was evil and wrong. You know, the same-sex attraction and whatnot. So she became very anxious at church and didn't want to go to Young Women's. We didn't really know what was going on with her until, with them, sorry, until they came out to us. We tried to continue to get them to come to church with us. but, you know, as much as a 14-year-old can put their foot down, and they've always been very determined, and we didn't feel like it was a fight we wanted to make. So they stopped coming to church, and then their older sister followed them, And then a younger sister also, she just decided that she didn't believe the church was true and didn't want to go anymore. And we worked at trying to keep her going to church at the time. And I think along the lines, I kind of resolved that the relationship was more important than getting him to come to church. And, you know, as a faithful parent, I said, you know, someday they'll come back, right, if I can maintain the relationship. That's kind of what I had in my mind. And so through all that, I was still, you know, very much faithful, believing. Like I said, I was a temple worker after being a bishop. And, yeah, we didn't get much into my profession, but I, you know, work as a physician in long-term care. I have nursing homes that I am a medical director of. It makes it very flexible on my schedule. After having a heart attack, I kind of scaled back and turned more over to a couple mid-levels that work for me. And they do a majority of the work, and I only actually spend approximately 12 hours in the facilities a week. So the other time I spend on some real estate work that I do, and I pretty much buy old houses and I fix them up myself. And I do all the work myself because I enjoy doing that, and it's kind of therapy for me. I tell people it's my Prozac. So, but during that, I can work all day, many days, just by myself, and I listen to podcasts all day. So, I don't know, I was listening to, I think, Word Radio of all podcasts. and the next thing that came up on my feed was it was just suggested by Google or YouTube. Algorithm. The algorithm came up was something about I can't even remember what it was but it was something about Joseph Smith's polyandry. I was like, how long ago was this? This was October 27th of last year. Wow. So four or five months ago. Four or five months ago. Okay. That's very recent. Yeah. So like up until five months ago, you hadn't really dug into the church's history of truth claims. Okay. And all this time, a word radio video leads you to... It wasn't word radio. I was a subscriber for word radio. or a word radio video leads you to a video about polyandry. Yes. Okay. That's important. And I'm just listening to something like polyandry. I think I know what that means. Yeah. What? Joseph Smith was marrying other men's wives. What in the world? How am I 48 years old and I had never heard this before? I've gone to seminary and religion classes at BYU and Sunday school all my life. I've never heard this. What else do I not know? When my friend at Microsoft back in 2000, 2001, when I asked him why he left the church, he's like, oh, it's the polyandry. And I'm like, oh, you mean polygamy. And he's like, no, I mean polyandry. And I'm like, what? What's that? I had a very civil experience. And it wasn't polyandry per se. It was the fact that I didn't know about it. Yeah. and which was the what the right state of regards to joseph smith well what was it that you didn't know that i didn't know he had married 11 or 13 women who were married to other men i mean it just didn't fit into what i knew about polygamy and the purpose of polygamy and you know why it was practice and stuff. It didn't. It didn't. It was incongruous. And so then I was like, okay, what else about polygamy don't I know? And I went into a deep dive into the history of polygamy in the church. Which led me to everything else. Like what? I don't know. Where do we start? The Truthfulness of O'Kamoran, Joseph Smith's First Vision. You know, what really, but I kept going back. I was still going to attend the temple. And I kept going back to the polygamy. and you know in the temple you only have the scriptures so in break time that's the only thing you have to read and so I kept going back to 132 so Doctrine and Covenants section 132 Doctrine and Covenants 132 which is the revelation on polygamy and I read it probably a dozen times ouch and every time I read it after about the third or fourth time I was like you know, this is so manipulative and it's so damning. It just cannot be from God. And every time I read it, it just became so comical. I've never heard it described as comical before. Well, verse 8 says that, you know, God is a God of order. in this revelation that's the most confusing, chaotic, you know, secretive, lying to everyone, lying to Emma, and it just doesn't make any sense. But, you know, two of the verses in there say God is a God of order. I mean, I laugh when I hear that. It's like, no. You can't put this into this scripture because it's not. This is not any order. This is just confusing. There's a reason. You know, and I tried to give the church benefit of doubt. I went and I read the Sunday School manual on that section. It doesn't go beyond verse 40. It just stops. And then I went and listened to John, by the way, and Hank Smith, their podcast. on it. And they stop at verse 40. I mean, they don't even get into Emma being threatened with destruction and all that manipulation in there. And then one last chance, I went and listened to Jared Halverson. I love Jared Halverson. But his podcast on that was nauseating. It was so hard to listen to. It was so, there was so much emotional, pleading to emotion in his reasoning. And it turned me away even further. those those two podcasts on DNC the fact that you can't even address the last 25 verses 23 verses whatever it is and if you do your reasoning is so suspect that anything else you say is discounted now I I can't listen to either of them anymore because it's just not. They lost all credibility. And then I started thinking about it more from the. All the manipulation, the manipulation of Emma. And the fact that she didn't know about this until Joseph had married 20 some women. and he was lying to her the whole time. The fact that she denied it later in life that he ever practiced polygamy tells me of the deep codependent relationship they must have had and how narcissistic he was I'm sorry and then reading the happiness letter it's like you know I know you can't make a diagnosis of narcissism based on 100 year old documents but there's some significant narcissistic traits in there it's just all manipulation of of Nancy Rigdon I mean Nancy Rigdon is one of my heroes now She was awesome. Yeah. She turned him down. Yeah. And then. Called him a liar. And like with Bo Euler, he, Joseph Smith, and his followers smeared her publicly as a punishment for telling the truth. Yes. About what he was doing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she's my favorite person from all of the restoration. Nancy Rigdon. Also, there is another tie to the hotline sexual abuse story when you were a bishop, and that's that the core theme is that the church's handling of sexual abuse seems to be to keep, as much as possible, any knowledge of the abuse happening from the membership. and the church history, church truth claims stuff seems to be handled the similar way because not only were you a bishop for four years, a missionary, seminary graduate, BYU graduate, 49, 48? It wasn't until you were 48, had given a half century to the church, that you just started learning some of the basics about its founding prophets' marriages and polygamous behaviors and illegal behaviors and abusive behaviors, honestly. Yeah. So you must have felt not just repugnant about Joseph Smith's behaviors, but about the fact that the church had hid that information from you. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And so, yeah, I looked into everything. I weighed both sides. Honestly, if I listen to an apologetic podcast anymore, it drives me further away from the church. You know, their arguments don't make any sense. They're reaching for straws. I see why they're doing it. Do you have examples? Just so that we know who you're talking about, or is that not worthwhile? I mean, off the top of my head, I don't want to misquote anyone. I just mean the personalities that have not been helpful to you, I guess. Word Radio. Their reporting on Bo Euler was disgusting. They were so hypocritical in that podcast. I will never listen to them again. Sorry, they just they're taking the church's word for it as gospel truth and not asking for actual proof and calling Bo all these names when they're guilty of the same I won't listen to them again. There's others. I actually tried to watch everything that anybody put out on Vogue, so I was wanting to learn more, get everybody's take on it. I'll listen to all sides. It sounds like the LDS Discussion Series on Mormon Stories was helpful to you as well. It was. I went through all of those probably in two or three weeks. I don't remember exactly. Tell me how much. Tell you how much. 60, 65 episodes. And they're all like two hours long. It's 120 hours. Or three, two or three. Yeah. Yeah, no, but I thought they were great. I still, I haven't read the CES letter. I have a little bit of, you know, the way it was presented to me, it still is kind of emotionally, it was hard when I learned about it because, you know, and so it was an emotional thing for me. And so I still have a little bit of an emotional resistance to it. But, you know, I think I got the same information through the LDS discussions. How have you processed the church's handling of LGBT issues now that it's part of your family and the treatment of people like your children in the church? Yeah. I'm still processing that, and I probably still have a lot of work to do. because I mean there was so it was so ingrained in me the proclamation of the family came out in a really vulnerable time for me leaving on my mission, preaching that that that idea of that marriage can only be one way and you know that gender is binary and definite and defined previous to this life I mean that was ingrained in me And so when my children start choosing different paths, there was a lot of resentment, and I didn't understand it, and I tried to rationalize it in different ways. And, you know, I still try to love and accept my children, but it's impossible from that context, that framework. I don't think it's possible to love an LGBTQ child. if you hold so tightly to that context. And so, you know, giving up that and not recognizing the church as the only authority on truth, I can say, okay, I may not understand same-sex attraction myself, not having experienced it. I may not understand gender identity myself, not having, but I can understand that what the church taught me was not correct, wasn't the truth, and that I can accept them and wherever they're at. Your kids. My kids. and I can love them where they're at. And I don't think I could fully do that before. Before discarding that, the context of gender and marriage in the church. Powerful. I also, I took the opportunity yesterday driving down, I listened to David Archuleta's book. And that was, I kind of resisted listening to the perspective, that perspective, for a long time. I hadn't really wanted to see my kid's perspective, unfortunately. But listening to him and talk about his story was helpful for me to see what my kids have gone through and see them in a more loving light. Do you remember when the November policy came out? No, I don't. I wasn't paying attention at that time. And do you remember when it was removed? No. I think that was all done quietly. I was working as Scoutmaster at the time. I wasn't a bishop. You were oblivious to it all. I was oblivious. My kids were too young. So then when David Archuleta admits that Elder Ballard told him that the entire November 2015 policy was a mistake, that probably doesn't even really emotionally register with you because you weren't... No, I wasn't. I can see why it was such an issue for so many people. But it wasn't on my radar at that time. My child came out in early 2020. I do think that's sometimes how it is, right? Until, for many people anyway, it's like until it hits your immediate sphere of experience sometimes humans can be slow to that. And until five months ago I probably would have been 100% defender of it I just didn't realize what an impact it had on so many people so you mentioned asking to be released as a temple worker and as a ward mission leader you've decided to stay active in the church for now. Do you want to talk about your resolution, you know, reconstruction, healing, specifically how you've tried to talk to your kids and even maybe reconcile with your kids? Yeah. Part of my deconstruction, I wrestled with the fact that I've had these spiritual experiences, that have affirmed my faith in the church, and then I find out it's not exactly. And I started questioning, okay, people all over the world have faith-affirming experiences and things that are completely opposite from our church. How do they resolve that? I actually read Sapiens, which, you know, very science-based, anthropological book. What's his name? Yuval Noah Harari. Yeah, Yuval Harari. And I... It just kind of made sense to me that, you know, it's all chemicals in my brain that have reaffirmed my connection with my... current community and reaffirm that community. And we've evolved to affirm community and these stories we have to promote our community. And it comes down to emotions and chemicals in our brain. And then on, I think, listening to one of your Mormon Stories podcasts, you spoke to somebody about Britt Hartley, and so I started listening to some of hers, and I realized that, okay, if I'm not going to believe in this, I can replace, I can have other spiritual experiences and it doesn't have to revolve around the church. So I actually stopped going to testimony meeting. I didn't really want to listen to that anymore. And I started taking my daughters out to brunch on the first Sunday of the month. That's the new ritual for us. I still love to sing, and I kind of view it as singing along to the songs on a Disney movie like Hercules. They have good messages. It's a fantasy. It's a fable, but it has a good message, and I can still sing these hymns and I can have an emotional response to them and feel good about it. I'm actually singing in a local Lamb of God production we're doing. I don't know if you've heard of the Lamb of God. It was this big Easter production that a member of the church actually wrote orchestra and vocal choir. and some of the sisters in our state organized an interfaith production of this. And, you know, I don't have to believe in it to enjoy the beauty of the music and the beauty of the story. Another thing that's influenced me is my wife told me I needed to read The Life of Pi. And so it has such a slow start, it was hard. But it's not something I normally draw to. But the meaning in it was very, you know, just that there's different stories we can tell ourselves. And you can choose to believe what story you want. And that really helped me. Okay, I can choose to believe this story. My wife can choose to believe a different story, and that's okay. My kids can choose to believe their own story. it's what we need it's the story we need at that time in our life to get us through we don't have to believe the really nasty story I don't have to have anger towards the church I don't think anybody at the church has deliberately tried to harm me personally I can still be associated with it I can still go and attend and sing the hymns I don't think they're going to want me in Sunday school because I might be tempted to tell my true honest opinion and they probably won't hear that. But I'll be part of that community as long as, you know, I see it's a good enough influence on me and my family. Two of my or three of my kids don't want to have anything to do with that and that's okay. That's half your kids, right? Half my kids. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of split the family a little bit. Yeah. But I don't know. We're learning to have different rituals that include everyone. You know, our family night doesn't include reading the scriptures or prayer, but we're religious about family game night. And we even, with our kids moving off to school, we do jackbox with them online, you know. And Sunday night is sacred in our house because we have family game night, which includes everyone. I really love that. I think what I see as an underlying current to what you're saying is, you know, the shift from, let's just say, conditional love to unconditional love, moving to a larger space of love. and then also the shift from sort of we need to be the same to acknowledging that's impossible, acknowledging reality, which is we are all different. That's what I'm hearing. Would you say that's so? Yeah. And going back to your emotional maturity, it's, you know, five years ago, I was emotionally immature. I'm not saying I'm that much more emotionally mature now, but I think I have grown. But I recognized my immaturity then in wanting my kids to all be in the same box, following the same path. But now I can learn to love them where they're at and the beauty they bring to the world in their own way. you mentioned seeking connection with post-Mormons why has that been important for you? well I haven't even though you're not technically post-Mormon I know I'm post-Mormon in belief I will claim that they call it PMO these days physically and mentally I know that's for our audience I haven't told anyone except my three kids that were already out and my wife and my bishop. And last week I told my brother and then yesterday I told my sister. And there were other than people that were already out. And so I reached out. I was like wondering what to do. So I reached out to people who I'd known had already left, and I just said, hey, I think I'm in the same boat as you regarding the church. Can we talk? And, yeah, that's been helpful. How has that been helpful? we still need community I don't feel like I can talk and be honest with anybody at church I don't necessarily want to be talk and be honest with anybody at church if they're happy in their faith I don't want to destroy that I don't want to take anybody down take anybody down like I'm taking them down with me I don't feel like I've gone down. I feel like I've just changed. And so I recognize that we still need people to talk to and connect with. You know, my wife is loving and supportive, but I don't necessarily want to tell her everything I'm thinking because that's not where she's at. and we are very honest and open about everything, or most everything. I just didn't feel like that was... And I probably told her way more than she wanted to hear, but I just recognized, especially from Britt Hartley's work that connection is still important we're wired for connection this is a community I've been in for 48 years and I'm considering leaving it where do I go from here? or, you know, if they do find out how I truly believe am I going to be accepted in this community anymore? It might be you're just about to find out once this episode's released. You know, like I said, I was wanting to just toast for a while and see, but felt I needed to speak up. You mentioned that you view the Holy Ghost and the Spirit and emotions differently now than you used to. Is that worth mentioning? Yeah. yeah, I view it more, like I said, in the context of emotions that are driving us to have community. We have emotions that draw us into these stories and these fables that we can establish larger communities over. And whatever reinforces that is positive emotions. And so what do you do when evidence of truth and those emotions contradict? Yeah. And that's where I'm at. Yeah. And I've already asked you this, but there is a chance your bishop or state president won't like that you did this interview. both because I'm sure of it. Yeah. That's become clear to you. Both because you're telling your own bishop experience with the hotline, but also because you're supporting Bo and then also because you're talking about losing your faith. There's all sorts of reasons why they may call you in. And what are your thoughts about how you'll handle, you know, being threatened with excommunication or actually being excommunicated? That's an interesting word, threatened. I don't think it would threaten me. I mean, if they don't want me in their community because I go out and tell my truth, then it's not a community I want to be in. I mean, I'm happy to continue being a part of their community. and I'm not except for this I haven't preached anything really against the church I'm not trying to take down the church I mean I think it needs to change in some ways you know I think if they were completely honest I don't know that anybody would still believe but you know yeah your response reminds me of do you know Brené Brown the work of Brené Brown when she talks about the difference between fitting in and belonging and what I'm hearing a bit in your response is you know there are moments where it becomes very clear that you're fitting in and you're willing to take the hit of whatever comes because you realize it really would be sacrificing the idea of behind fitting in is that you're part of something but it's oftentimes it's sacrifice to your you know your welfare your well-being your sense of authenticity being able to show up fully as yourself and so you sacrifice some of that to be part of this group whereas belonging, you show up fully as who you are, you're able to. And what I'm hearing you kind of say is it will become apparent to me that I'm in a fitting in space and I'm not willing to sacrifice that level, this level of being able to say my truth. Is that kind of what you're... Yeah. No, I was feeling that in the last few weeks at church. I was like, I don't believe this anymore. I'm happy to... I mean, I still enjoy coming here, but I can't be truthful here. And the honesty has become a bigger priority for me in the last. Being honest, you know, I'm a recovering nice guy. I don't know if you've read No More Mr. Nice Guy. You know, really do everything to keep everybody happy with me. very shame based, very do what I'm supposed to do. Pleaser? Is there a pleaser in there? Yes. And so to, I mean, I, after that first YouTube video I watched about polyandry, I, I've been completely honest with my wife. I was like, this is what I ran into and this is what I'm thinking, which is a complete, It's a significant change from a few years ago for me. Otherwise, before I probably would have hit it and just come out later and say, I don't think I want to go to church anymore. But I let her know where I'm at all the way through. I try to, to a reasonable extent. but yeah no I completely get the fitting in versus belonging and I don't know that I feel like I belong I think if I could be honest I could feel like I belong but I don't people at church don't want to hear this story it's not not faith promoting so therefore it's not welcome what happens when the truth isn't faith promoting well that's where I get into the inherent dishonesty in because we always we can't be truthful at church we just we're always putting on a show we're always you can't talk about your doubts you can't talk about what's hard you can't talk about you know I couldn't talk about my how hard it was for my kids to leave the church. Heaven forbid you ever mention sex at church. We just can't be honest. And that's what I was getting at with the difference in going to that conference, the men's sexuality conference. It was mostly members of the church or people who had been members of the church. and we were I mean we were sitting down talking about really intimate things and being honest and it was just so refreshing it was one of the best weekends and I was just there with a bunch of men I had never met before and I'm still friends with some of them but yeah the honesty is lacking. And I don't think anybody in the church is willing to recognize that. I mean, you look at the apologetics podcasts and they're lying to themselves, they're lying to everyone else. And they're making up stories to cover up the discomfort they have when faced with the faults and the truth claims. Well said. Powerful. We really appreciate your reaching out and your courage to want to both speak up for Beau, who I think has been grossly and unfairly maligned and smeared systematically by the church, much like Nancy Rigdon and others. So we appreciate your courage. It's even self-sacrifice to speak up, even if it comes at a personal cost to you. So thank you for that. And also, congratulations. I think you're going to have a better relationship with your kids as a result, at least many of them, as a result of your faith journey. Is that true? Yeah. Yeah, the church doesn't take my counsel often, but they think somehow that bad apologetics are a good response to problems, but bad apologetics just informs people about the problems and then more often than not turns them off to the church because the answers are bad or abusive. They highlight the logical fallacies that, and I watch them and I'm driven further away from the church by the apologetics. The truth wins either way. Yes. Yeah. Whether they hide it and whatever or don't respond or get bad responses. Truth wins. That's that's the good way. In this case, the house always wins. We have three final questions that we like to ask. The first was, what is a book, podcast, TV show, etc. that you have enjoyed lately? And you list a lot of things and tell me if you need me to help cue you. Oh, you mentioned Sapiens already. I mentioned Sapiens. I mentioned David Archuleta's book. Devout. Devout. Those were both excellent. I listen to books. I don't actually sit down and read much, but I listen to books a lot. And I've been listening to, what is it, Nexus? Do you all know his newest? Talking about it's been very interesting the chapter I'm on was talking about the organizations that are have little adaptability to change and he specifically talks about the Catholic Church and then never admit to change when they do change and I just saw a lot of parallels versus science who's always looking and admitting change and changing and how much healthier that is. It's seeking the truth or trying to ignore the truth until you can't anymore and then changing and pretending like you were always following the truth in the first place. I heard Greg Prince, historian Greg Prince, give a talk on Saturday, and he told the story of him asking a Catholic leader whether women in the Catholic Church will ever receive the priesthood. And Greg Prince says that Catholic leader said, when it happens, the one thing we know for sure is that when they give women the priesthood in the Catholic Church, the statement will begin by saying it has always been so. I believe it. Not to disown the Catholics, but it's a human thing. It is a human thing. That's my point. It's a human thing. There are no droids here. These are not the droids you're looking for. It's a human thing. It's not just Mormons. All right. Who's someone you admire, a hero? Oh, I already mentioned Nancy Rigdon. Yeah, that's right. I think she was awesome. Yeah, she was. She called Joseph Smith a liar to his face. So he called her a whore in the newspapers. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, she stood up for truth. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I can name. I also put down my wife, just, you know, and her putting up with me through all this in such a loving way, honestly. You know, that it, I never felt like I was going to sacrifice our relationship in going down this road. and you know I've heard stories of women divorcing their husbands for a lot less than just losing their faith each of my kids are my heroes too one way or another I have three that left the church before me I mean you think of that a 13-year-old kid in an interview with their or a 15-year-old kid in an interview with their father who's the bishop how much courage it takes to say, I don't believe this, Dad. Yeah. Absolutely. I didn't realize at the time. To their dad who's a bishop. That's right. Yeah. That is courage. The courage of that. So she's my hero. And then to come out and tell us that she was trans a year ago. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And then what's something that's been lighting you up lately? just seeking truth and not having to worry about where the source is coming from I guess oh that's anti-mormon I can't read that I can't read anything and assimilate it for what good in it and not worry about it if it's I can just see the good in that. And I can see the good in the church, too. And just enjoy the music, if that's the only thing that I'm going to enjoy that day. And breakfast with your daughters. Breakfast with my daughters. Beautiful. We have to get done early enough that I can still make it to Sunbeams. so. Team teach. Yeah, team teach with my wife. Well, I hope the church doesn't go after you like they went after Bo Euler and others. If they do, they do. Yeah, I'm sensing that. I mean, I, I'm not going to hide anything, and, yeah, you know, it's such, you know, this is, kind of my coming out, right? Coming out of the belief closet, I guess. Or the lack of belief closet. And acknowledging it publicly. My change in faith. That's right. And it's freeing. Yeah. And it feels good. That's right. beautiful and you know just to reiterate if you are a Mormon bishop or you know relatively recently have been tried to report abuse to the Mormon Church's hotline and you've received suggestions or counsel to not report the abuser to the police we would also consider your story for Mormon Stories because as long as the church is going to deny that they handle things that way and smear people who say otherwise, we think as many stories like this should be shared until the church is more willing to admit, at minimum, stop smearing people that tell the truth, but at best, admit that they have been doing that and change their policy. So please reach out at mormonstories at gmail.com. We would appreciate it if you were about 1,000 away from 300,000 subscribers on YouTube. We would love it if y'all would subscribe to this YouTube channel and Spotify and Instagram and Facebook and TikTok because that helps promote this work and it helps with the algorithms, et cetera. So please, please do subscribe and apply. If you have a story you want to tell on Mormon Stories, just go to mormonstories.org slash apply, and you can apply to be on the podcast. And, of course, we do all this at the generosity of our donors. So if you are not a donor and you want to see this type of content continue, you can go to mormonstories.org slash donate and become a monthly donor. but mostly today Christopher Jenkins thank you for traveling here to Salt Lake City, Utah and for being willing to reach out to us and to tell your story at such short notice and to stick up for Bo who deserves to be supported Thank you We wish you all the care Thank you Any final words? No? No All right. And, Margie, thanks for being here. You always make our interviews better. Thank you. Yeah. All right, everyone. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. We've loved having you. Thanks to Brooklyn and Julia for all they do in post-production. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care.