35 years ago today - Aug 17, 1983-Wednesday

[Leonard Arrington]
This summer Carol Lynn arranged for [her 15-year-old daughter] Emily to spend a week with some church young people in Provo Canyon, a little beyond Sun Dance. A good experience. Then Carol Lynn joined her for Sunday-a worship service They had Elder Hartman Rector to speak to them. It proved to be a disaster. He gets up to speak and tells them about all the evil forces, Satan's way: abortion, birth control, homosexuality. These are all Satanic. No birth control except willpower for birth control. Satan himself is a homosexual and homosexuality is peculiarly satanic for that reason. And so on. Emily [whose father is gay], who was sitting with other girls, got rigid, then ran over to sit by her mother and started sobbing. Her mother suggested they leave, but she wouldn't. Insisted on staying through it, sobbing. Her mother, after the meeting, tried to talk to her, explaining that Elder Rector was not necessarily preaching church doctrine, but giving his own view, etc. Her daughter finally calmed down.

[Source: Confessions of a Mormon historian : the diaries of Leonard J. Arrington, 1971-1997, Gary James Bergera, editor, Signature Books, 2018]

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