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Join Us June 11-13 for a Women's Retreat By Alyson Bolles, Senior Assistant Director One question that always comes up at mixed Affirmation gatherings is, "Why aren't more women involved in Affirmation?" I have sat through many debates on the relevancy Affirmation holds for women, the theories as to why more women aren't involved, etc. I have spoken to women who say Affirmation is not for them and women for whom Affirmation has been a saving grace. I've spent time, as have many women involved in Affirmation (Dorothy Colley, Cathylee Crandall, Michelle Hardgrave, Jennifer Hatch, Ina Mae Murri), writing to and talking with women struggling with issues of Mormonism and Lesbianism. We may seem invisible at times because you don't see many of us at our chapter activities, national conferences, or other obvious Affirmation gatherings. I have my own theories and hypotheses about this phenomenon. Yet, I can say with assuredness that there are just as many lesbians raised as Mormons as gay males. Some of us get through our adolescence, come home from our missions, or come out of divorces, come out of the closet, leave the church altogether, and build our own communities. (Feel free to switch the order of that statement any way it fits.) Some straddle both sides and find a place where we can hold onto our beliefs, accept our homosexuality, and still feel at home in the LDS world. Some stay involved in the church out of guilt, others because they have a strong testimony, others because it is what they know. There are very few who have escaped the entire ordeal of coming out, either publicly or privately, without experiencing both the pain and the joy of finding a way to connect with Spirit in some form or another. The complexity between Lesbianism and Mormonism is great. For some women, because of the sexism we are subjected to in the church, it may be more difficult to feel comfortable in Affirmation. I, on the other hand, have felt at home with Affirmation from the moment I walked through the ballroom doors of the Doubletree Hotel in Portland, Oregon, on a September afternoon to attend the 1998 Affirmation conference. My first introduction to Affirmation came while I was preparing to serve an LDS mission. I had just gone through church court where no disciplinary action was taken and was through the first 3 months of my one-year wait for my mission call. I had been out of the closet for a time in high school, and then again in college, but this time I thought I could suppress my sexuality enough to fulfill my parents' dream of having at least one child out of six serve a Mormon mission. I did not deny being a lesbian and yet thought I could certainly live in celibacy for two years. I told myself that I could certainly sort it all out later. Well, luckily, Affirmation changed all that. I have heard some of the most interesting, heart-wrenching, and courageous stories from Mormon Lesbians. My hope is that Affirmation is a place where more women feel comfortable, accepted and, most importantly, equal. Some amazing things have happened at the last few conferences that have set a tone of respect and equality for women in the organization. I know San Francisco will be more of the same. Lesbian and women speakers and workshop coordinators will play a large role in this conference and our keynote address will again be an amazing gift from a powerful woman. There's a lot happening for women in Affirmation this year.
The retreat will commence Friday evening with dinner enjoyed with other guests of the retreat center. We'll have all day Saturday for connecting, playing, and getting to know one another. (Check-out on Sunday is 11 a.m.) We are hoping to be able to provide an optional tour of the Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area on Sunday afternoon. If there is interest in staying Sunday night, we can arrange home stays, or you may find other accommodations in the area. The price for the retreat ($231) is all-inclusive from Friday's dinner through Sunday's breakfast. There are no provisions available for shorter stays. This is important in order to retain the retreat aspect of the weekend. All women are welcome to join us: Lesbians, bisexual women, transgender women, and all women allies. There is room for as few as 12 or as many as 32. Please contact me if you are thinking of coming. PO Box 1045 Stevenson WA 98648-1045 971-506-7540 alyson  affirmation.org
Event Reminder Join us April 11, 6:00 pm PST, for a session of Affirmation chat. Information on how to register and log in is permanently posted at <www.affirmation.org/chat>.
San Francisco, 8-10 October Now is the time to start making your plans to join your Affirmation family & friends at this year's upcoming National Affirmation Conference. This will be an exciting and vibrant conference with a truly spectacular array of guest speakers, workshops, entertainment, and fun activities! A few of the conference highlights will include: Kate Kendell, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, will serve as Keynote Speaker! Kate Kendell and the NCLR have been involved in such ground-breaking GLBTI events as the Domestic Spousal Rights suit allowing Sharon Smith to receive benefits for the terrible dog mauling of her partner, Diane Whipple, the current suit against Adoption.com for discrimination against a Gay couple, and the allowing of San Francisco Gay Marriages. Mary Ann Benson will conduct a workshop on how we can find personal spirituality outside of the LDS church structure, "Finding Our Own Spiritual Paths"! Connell "Rocky" O'Donovan will provide a workshop presentation on Queer Mormon History!
Well-known gay Mormon artist Trevor Southey will show his wonderful artwork at this year's conference and will present a workshop entitled "The Unbidden Erotic in Art"! Trey Lathe & Guy Berryessa will be presenting two workshops relating to family issues. "Building Our Families": A presentation on the methods and issues surrounding creating our GLBT families through adoption, surrogacy, and donor insemination. "Passing On Our Faith Stories": A presentation about how we as gay Mormons and former Mormons pass on what we learned from our own journeys in faith to our children and others.
Emily Pearson will speak at the Conference Devotional! Emily Pearson, sometimes known as Emily Pearson Fales, was raised as a Latter-day Saint. She is the daughter of famed Latter-day Saint author Carol Lynn Pearson. She was previously married to actor/playwright Steven Fales. Emily is the co-founder of the group Wildflowers. Wildflowers is an organization that exists to support the beauty, strength, courage and rebirth of women who have been or who are currently married to homosexual men. Entertainment Cabaret artist & singer Robyn David Taylor will entertain at our Conference! "Robyn Taylor is an amazingly versatile singer - he can swing a jazz song, intone a Verdi aria, rock your soul with a spiritual and put over a show tune like there's no tomorrow!" —Steve Ross Steve Benson will provide cartoons & comic wit to the conference! Steve Benson will be our entertaining guest speaker at the Saturday Optional Luncheon. Steve has won the Pulitzer Prize as editorial cartoonist at The Arizona Republic. The amazing and wonderful play, "The Almost True Adventures of an Ex-Mormon..." This almost true life story uses puppets, projected images, singing and three women to tell of five generations of Mormon women. From two sisters of Leeds, England who marry the same man and travel to Utah to live a polygamous life, to Heidi Wohlwend, who is estranged from her mother because she chose not to live the Mormon life, these women are connected by their blood and silence, while Heidi struggles to find her voice, and laments the lost voices of all the Mormon mothers who came before.
1231 Market Street (located between 8th & 9th Streets) 1-800-227-4747 <www.ramadaplazasf.com> The special conference rate is $109/night. (That's $124.26 with tax.) That rate applies to Single, (1 Bed, 1 person), Double (1 Bed, 2 persons), 2 Doubles (2 Beds, 2 people), Triples (2 Beds, 3 people), and Quads (2 beds, 4 people). For more than 4 people in a room, there are roll-away cots that can be added, at around $20 extra per cot per night. These prices are good for arrivals on Thus. 10/7, Fri. 10/8, Sat. 10/9, Sun. 10/10. The hotel generally extends that same pricing to additional days before and after the contracted days, but there's no guarantee. It depends on whatever is going on in the hotel, how full they are, etc. Guests are likely to get the same rate on additional days, the sooner they make the reservations. Affirmation Conference Guests can call the 800 number and reserve their room at our guaranteed rate of $109 a night ($124.26 with tax) as long as they mention Affirmation. The credit cards used to hold the rooms will not be charged until guests check in but are subject to the 24-hour cancellation fee. The toll-free reservations number is: 800-227-4747. Local reservations are at 415-626-8000. Please make reference to the Affirmation Conference.
Interested in sharing your hotel room with another conference attendee? Use this Roommate Finder at <www.affirmation.org/RoomMateFinder> Registration Registration costs for full conference will be as low as $139! Conference registration forms will be mailed out to Affirmation members list by June 1. A printable form will also be available on the www.affirmation.org website. The registration deadlines, after the forms become available by June 1, are as follows: The rates above assume: If you're not an Affirmation member, and/or if you aren't staying at the hotel, the $20 discounts for each of those items will not apply, and you will pay higher registration fees. This will be spelled out clearly on the registration forms and instructions, available beginning June 1. Other registrations and rates besides "full conference" will be available as well, including single-event-only registrations for friends and family members. Note: Because we need to give the hotel caterers our guest count by certain deadlines, anyone registering after September 15th will pay the same fees, but not have conference meals included with their registrations. Remember, to get the absolute lowest possible price for full conference registration, you must register early by July 15! To have meals guaranteed to be included with your registration, you must register no later than Sept 15. Mark your calendars now! Full conference registration as low as $139 is a fabulous price for a conference this size and we encourage you to prepare for when the registration forms become available! The conference committee hopes to see all of you there! Important Dates June 1: Registration Begins July 15: Deadline for lowest-cost registration Sept 15: Deadline for registration with guaranteed meals and separate special events Oct 7: Pre-Conference Special Events Begin Oct 8: Conference Starts For more on the conference, photos, and monthly updates, please visit our Conference Website at <www.affirmation.org/SanFrancisco2004>
As members of Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons, we want to express our outrage at comments made by Sheri Dew, president of LDS-owned Deseret Book, during a February 28 meeting near Washington DC. Speaking to a conservative religious coalition, Ms. Dew compared the gay rights movement to the rise of Hitler. She also described a picture of a same-sex couple with infants which she saw in Newsweek (1 March 2004, pp. 40-41). The couple was getting married in the San Francisco City Hall. Ms. Dew said, in disgust, "I just can't stomach this—the thought of those girls being raised in that kind of a setting." Meridian Magazine <www.meridianmagazine.com> later reported her remarks as being that she was "heartsick"—a more genteel version of her actual remarks. Ms. Dew rejects the fact that the baby girls are the couple's daughters. She refuses to recognize them as a family. Her remarks are an escalation of the attack that LDS leaders have launched against gay and lesbian families. In an ironic twist, one of the grooms Ms. Dew was decrying turned out to be Eric Ethington, a fellow Mormon who served an LDS mission in Korea. While Ms. Dew, who has never married or raised children, pontificates about families, Eric Ethington, with his husband and his daughters, shows to the world what it really means to have one. We agree with LDS Church president Gordon B. Hinckley when he says that families are under attack. But when we see LDS leaders provoke disgust at our families, spend millions of dollars so that we will never be able to marry, and lobby so that our children will never have two legal parents, we arrive at a different conclusion about who is the aggressor and who are the victims. We encourage the LDS Church to strengthen families by counseling members to create happier marriages resulting in fewer divorces, by combating spousal abuse, and by other sensible means. But we challenge any religious leader to demonstrate how same-sex marriage will be detrimental to the American family. Olin Thomas, Alyson Bolles, James Morris, and Hugo Salinas Executive Committee Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons
Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons P.O. Box 46022 Los Angeles, CA 90046 National Phone Line: (323) 255-7251 To see a directory of current Affirmation chapters, visit www.affirmation.org/chapters Executive Director: Olin Thomas AFFIRMATION GAY & LESBIAN MORMONS is a non-profit support group serving
Gay and Lesbian Mormons, their families and friends since 1977. AFFINITY
is the official publication of the Affirmation National Executive Committee.
About AFFINITY and E-AFFINITY AFFINITY is available both as an email text and as a web-based document. Although both versions are free of charge, we encourage you to become a dues-paying member and thus help us advance Affirmation's important mission. If you wish to receive a text version of AFFINITY by email, simply
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