(RNS) — Transgender Americans make up just 1.6% of the nation’s population, yet in the past few years they have found themselves the center of outsized and unwelcome political attention. As trans woman Laurie Lee Hall put it in a recent interview, trans issues have replaced abortion rights as the new “bogeyman of choice” for conservative politicians.
At the time of our interview, 24 states had banned gender-affirming health care for minors, and Hall feels that keenly. Now 63 years old, she grew up in a time when there was no care available for a young boy who knew she was a girl — and she couldn’t speak about it to anyone.
“In my mind, it’s only gotten more frightening coming up to today and not less,” said Hall, a former stake president for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the author of the new memoir “Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman.” “I alluded to some cases that have occurred in state legislatures particularly regarding gender-affirming health care for young people. But it’s also starting to affect the ability for adults to get gender-affirming care as well.”
We conducted our interview on Nov. 5, the day of the presidential election, and politicized transphobia was very much on Hall’s mind. It was, in fact, a major reason why she wanted to write this book in the first place in 2022.
Hall didn’t grow up in the LDS church; she converted as a young adult while she was in college learning to be an architect. She was attracted to its strong community and religious teachings and soon served a mission and married in the temple. At that time, she would sometimes secretly dress in women’s clothing, then feel guilty about it.
In the years that followed, she rose in the ranks of local church leadership and eventually came to oversee the construction of the church’s temples, a major role that put her in regular contact with general authorities during the presidencies of Gordon B. Hinckley and Thomas S. Monson.
The middle chapters of her book provide some of these behind-the-scenes details, such as how involved Hinckley was in construction minutiae during his ambitious building spree (even needing to know the exact kind of screw being used when the Tabernacle was renovated).
Monson, who succeeded Hinckley in 2008, turned his attention away from the “mini-temple” building campaign toward the culture wars. This meant getting church members to support Proposition 8 in California, which would define marriage as being solely between a man and a woman.
This put Hall in an awkward position. “The church’s efforts to help pass Prop 8 became a full-court press and a bona fide loyalty test for its members,” she wrote in “Dictates of Conscience.” Even though she had not yet come out as trans — or even acknowledged that reality to herself — she felt strongly that people should have equal rights under the law. By then a stake president in Tooele, Utah, she endured painful meetings in which she and other stake presidents were instructed to get their members to donate money and time to the Prop 8 cause. Hall instead quietly determined to never mention it from the pulpit or in a church meeting, and she never did.
Meanwhile, she was gradually exploring her female identity. On business trips for the church, she experimented with women’s clothing and makeup in her hotel room at night. Sometimes she also did this at home when her spouse and children were out of town. That’s what she was doing when, in June of 2011, she received a call from the church’s presiding bishop to oversee transforming the recently damaged Provo Tabernacle into the Provo City Center Temple. She immediately set to work on the design, and she did so as Laurie, her authentic self.
“I did not understand then, as I do now, the affirming experience it was for me to create the design of such a unique project while being my authentic self,” she said. “As I sat and designed this new repurposed temple, I was redesigning and repurposing myself.”
She began coming out of the closet, first to family, and then — because a distraught family member reported it — to her supervisors working for the church. She was released as stake president, having served for nine years, and continued to work for the church, dressed in men’s clothing. At her first regular construction update with the First Presidency after the news of her gender became public knowledge, she was nervous and arrived early. How would they react?
Also arriving early was President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, one of Monson’s two counselors, who approached Hall with what Hall thought would be a handshake. It turned out to be a bear hug. “Vee are so glad that you are here vith us!” he said in his German accent.
It was a beautiful moment of acceptance and peace, but not, unfortunately, the norm. As Hall’s commitment to living authentically as Laurie grew, so did the church’s institutional resistance: The church took away her temple recommend, then her church membership. She was excommunicated by some of the exact men she had called into their positions when she was a stake president. Her wife also divorced her.
Today, Hall lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where she continues to work as an architect and has found love again with her partner, Nancy. Another reason she wanted to write her memoir is that she believes that hers is an uplifting story. “Coming to know Nancy and being accepted and loved for exactly who I am is a hopeful story,” she said. She no longer attends the church, though she tried to make it work for years after her excommunication.
“I certainly tried to continue to attend on my own terms. I had already been told by two stake presidents that I wasn’t welcome in Relief Society, that I was not accepted as a sister. And in fact, they were treating me as though I was some sort of — if not a danger, then at least a distraction in their church services.”
This “trans people are dangerous” mentality became officially codified in the church’s handbook in August 2024, just as she was doing the final edits to her book. The new trans policy stipulates that church members who transition medically or socially (e.g., by dressing according to their gender rather than their biological sex at birth, or changing their pronouns) cannot hold callings in which they work with children, use the bathrooms that align with their gender identity or obtain a temple recommend.
Hall and her publisher, Signature Books, “pumped the brakes” on their production schedule so that Hall could pen a new afterword that specifically addresses the church’s new hard-line policies to restrict transgender members’ participation. “Until then, bishops had some latitude to allow for transgender participation,” she said. “That seemed to be working well. I have a number of friends who were active in their wards and had callings, including one good friend who recently passed away. She and her wife were teaching Primary for quite some time in the ward where she was once the first counselor to the bishop.”
But now, she says, “there is no wiggle room whatsoever. The church’s language expressly targets those who have transitioned away from their sex assigned at birth. It’s the concept of transitioning that the church is currently hanging their hat on — you can be transgender, but don’t act on it.”
But “acting on it” is what has brought Hall happiness at last. She still holds onto many of her LDS beliefs — including, notably, the idea enshrined in the 1995 Family Proclamation that gender is an eternal characteristic, though she now sees gender identity as more of a spectrum than a binary proposition.
“I haven’t thrown out many of my Latter-day Saint beliefs,” she said. “I still adhere to them.”
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