‘Life is good when you’re not being tortured by your own demons’ — How a trans woman found peace outside the LDS Church
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In 2017, Laurie Lee Hall publicly shared her remarkable journey as a transgender Latter-day Saint.
It took her through joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving a two-year mission, marrying and having children, being called as a bishop and stake president and becoming head architect for the faith’s sacred temples.
Transitioning to her “authentic self,” she said, caused her to lose her job, her marriage and her church membership. Yet she is more at peace with herself than she ever has been.
Hall details the twists and turns her life took as she moved inexorably toward acceptance of her real identity in a new memoir, “Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman.” She also discusses the stricter limitations her former faith has imposed on its transgender members.
Here are excerpts from Hall’s interview on The Salt Lake Tribune’s latest “Mormon Land” podcast.
It really comes down to the inspiration I felt and the desperation I was feeling in both the political and the religious climate in which we were living in even these past couple of years in which we saw large-scale denial of the reality of gender identity. I wanted to humanize gender identity, to put a face to it, and to use my story as a vehicle to help others who might need to know and understand that gender dysphoria is a real medical condition that can be treated with proper gender-affirming health care — to educate and inform that social transition, medical transition, and even surgical transition at many times is necessary for an individual who experiences gender dysphoria to mitigate the challenges that are faced and to be able to go on to live healthy, normal and thriving lives.
Content retrieved from: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2025/02/02/trans-woman-discusses-her-journey/.
