Mormon author Carol Lynn

Pearson tries to separate church and hate

Saturday, August 18, 2007 (SF Chronicle) Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts

and Culture Critic

    It's the question Carol Lynn Pearson hears just about every time

she appears in public. She heard it again last weekend, during an

audience discussion that followed a packed-house performance of her

play "Facing East" at Theatre Rhinoceros.

    How, one woman asked, could Pearson justify her own membership and

involvement in the Mormon church?

    The question was prompted by several things. One was the action of

"Facing East," which takes place at the funeral of a young gay Mormon

man who committed suicide under the shadow of church and family stigma.

The other was the story of Pearson's own life, detailed in her 1986

book, "Goodbye, I Love You," and retold in brief, as it was to the

Theatre Rhinoceros crowd, many times since. The mother of four young

children at the time, Pearson divorced her gay Mormon husband in 1978.

He died of AIDS in 1984.

    Pearson, a slim, forthright woman of 67 who wears her silvery white

hair jauntily short, nodded along as the question was posed. "I love

the Mormon community," she responded, "and I have a unique opportunity

to build bridges." A number of her church ward leaders, Pearson noted,

had attended the opening of "Facing East" the night before. "They've

been nothing but supportive," she said. "I believe the Mormon heart is

a good heart. I feel comfortable with my role in the Mormon church."

    Whether the church and wider Mormon population feel entirely

comfortable with her, as an advocate for gay rights and recognition, is

another matter. Doctrinally opposed to a "homosexual lifestyle" that is

"not normal," as the high-ranking Mormon elder Dallin H. Oaks has put

it, the church addresses a reality it would probably just as soon avoid

altogether in a carefully constructed way.

    A new Mormon church pamphlet on the subject that was issued last

month puts the official Mormon position on homosexuality like this: "If

you avoid immoral thoughts and actions, you have not transgressed even

if you feel such an attraction." The document goes on to advise, "The

desire for physical gratification does not authorize immorality for

anyone." True happiness, according to the pamphlet, "depends on more

than physical urges. These urges diminish as more fundamental emotional

needs are met - such as the need to interact with and serve others."

    Pearson, as the Theatre Rhinoceros audience affirmed in a post-play

session that soon became more like a tear-filled, pan-denominational

testimony meeting, has undeniably served others. One man, a

fundamentalist preacher who left his wife and three children 15 years

ago when he embraced his own homosexuality, told Pearson she had spoken

to him on the phone for an hour at the time and dissuaded him from

suicide. "You saved my life," he said. Pearson stepped offstage to hug him.

    A gay Mormon whose parents refuse to speak his partner's name said

"Facing East," which focuses on the grief-torn mother and father, had

helped him see his own parents' perspective. "I've been semi-selfish in

my own journey," he said. A woman in the second row stood up to

express, between heavy sobs, her gratitude for the play and its author.

    Pearson took it all in graciously, with neither self-importance nor

false modesty. As a prominent Mormon author of some 40 books and plays,

she's been in plenty of crowds like this one over the years. Her sense

of purpose is apparent when she ticks off facts about suicide rates in

Mormon-dominated Utah - the highest in the country for males ages 15-24.

She assesses her own work with straightforward clarity. "I'm not an

artist's artist," she says. "Issues are more important to me than art

itself."

    Pearson's equipoise didn't come easily. In a recent conversation at

her ranch house on a sunny cul-de-sac in Walnut Creek, the Utah native

and longtime California transplant spun out the improbable narrative of

her own life. Born a fourth-generation Mormon in Salt Lake City in

1939, Pearson was a happy and optimistic child, she began. Her family

spent some time on a Ute Indian reservation, without electricity or

running water, before moving to Provo.

    By the time she graduated from Brigham Young High School and went

on to Brigham Young University, she was immersed in theater and

writing. She met Gerald, her husband to be, when they were both cast in

a BYU production of Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth." It was

during their engagement that Gerald first told her of his attraction to men.

    "This was 1966," Pearson said with a measured sigh. "We were so

naive and so Utah. We accepted the promise that you just repent when

you get off track and everything will work out."

    After an engagement that was broken and resumed, the couple married

in Salt Lake's Mormon Temple on Sept. 9, 1966. Their first child was

born two years later. By then, Pearson was something of a local

celebrity. Her first book of inspirational poems, self-published with

Gerald's prodding and a $2,000 loan, sold an impressive 25,000 copies.

"Nobody but some outrageously gay man would decide to publish his

wife's poems," Pearson said with a laugh. She has supported herself and

for many years her entire family as a writer ever since.

    Pearson recalled her marriage as one of mutual devotion and fun -

"in many ways a cut above the marriages of my friends." But, she added,

"what Gerald had hoped would happen didn't." He still wanted to have

sex with men. Apprehensive about her marriage ending at the heart of

the Mormon world, Pearson proposed that the couple relocate from Utah

to California.

After they did, Gerald moved to San Francisco while Carol Lynn and the

children remained in Walnut Creek.

    Pearson maintains a complicated double-view about this fissure in

her life. "It was hell," she said, "the resentment, the anger, the

confusion, the divorce. But we also remained close. He was a wonderful

father." A small smile came and went, ghost-like, across Pearson's

face. " 'If I could just find a man like you,' " he often said, " 'I'd

be in seventh heaven.' With my interest in women's issues and Gerald's

being gay," she said, "it's occurred to me that gender is what brought

us together in the first place - possibly, maybe."

    After Gerald's AIDS diagnosis, and just a month before his death,

Carol Lynn was facing a house payment she couldn't make. An 11th-hour

sale of a Christmas story to a Mormon publisher saved the day and

proved to be a major financial gusher in the years to come.

    Her ex-husband came back to Walnut Creek to die, Pearson said. It

happened in the very room where she and her visitor were sitting.

Composed in her recounting until this point, Pearson teared up as she

began to describe how the members of her Mormon community rose to the

occasion. Every night one of her church "visiting teachers" told her to

make a list of what she needed the next day.

    "It was always done, whatever it was - food, transportation, yard

work,"

said Pearson. "There was no shunning of me or Gerald, not ever, not once.

Mormonism can not be easily dismissed in any direction." In Pearson's

own cosmology, "we're all in the correct classroom, working out the

story problems that we should be doing. And the answer to all of them

is: 'How much do you love?' "

    With the publication of her marriage memoir, "Goodbye, I Love You,"

Pearson became a spokeswoman and inspirational leader on homosexuality

in the Mormon world. A subsequent book, "No More Goodbyes," tells a

range of stories about gay Mormondom. One deals with Bruce Bastian, a

married gay Mormon who was also the wealthy co-founder of WordPerfect.

Bastian became a confidant and close friend and later a financial angel

for "Facing East." The show opened at Salt Lake City's Plan-B Theatre

before traveling to New York and San Francisco. Singapore in the next

scheduled port of call.

    Pearson has never remarried. "That has been a disappointment in my

life,"

she said. There's also been grief along with joy, bafflement and a

strange sense of wonder in the lives of her children. One son is an

unmarried animator; the other is a rock musician and the divorced

father of two. Her youngest child, Katy, died of a brain tumor seven years ago.

    As for her oldest, Pearson drew a deep breath before relating this

chapter. Like her mother, Emily married a gay man and subsequently

divorced him. That man is Steven Fales, creator of the widely traveled

solo show "Confessions of a Mormon Boy." Fales performed it locally, at

the New Conservatory Theatre Center, in 2002. Emily, hewing to her

mother's past, is now writing a book about her life with a gay Mormon

husband.

    Pearson offered a wry half-smile. "There are days," she said, "when

I think that either everything is a very bad joke or everything has a

hidden sense to it. I do melt down and rail at the heavens. But I don't

stay there long. I always have to come into a place where there is sunlight."

    Facing East:

    Plays through Aug. 26 at Theatre Rhinoceros, 2926 16th St., San

Francisco.

Tickets $20. Call (415) 861-5079 or visit www.therhino.org. Playwright

Carol Lynn Pearson

    will appear in a post-show discussion with the audience following

tonight's performance. Learn more about Pearson's work and connect with

her at www.clpearson.com.

    E-mail Steven Winn at swinn@sfchronicle.com.

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Copyright 2007 SF Chronicle