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The 2005 Mortensen Award 2005 Affirmation Conference, Denver, Colorado
October 2005
The selection committee for the award is composed of past recipients. Each year, around July, a call is sent out to all Affirmation leaders, chapters and groups asking for nominations. Anyone may nominate any individual or you may even nominate yourself. The receipt of nomination letters constitutes the only people considered for the award. The award was established and intended to always be an award for service to Affirmation. This is the only consideration in the selection of the recipient. We greatly applaud those wonderful souls in our midst who also make great contributions to the gay and lesbian community at large. We especially applaud those people who have made outstanding efforts in the Mormon community through related groups such as Family Fellowship, Gamofites and others in increasing the understanding of the gay and lesbian Mormon community. But because the Mortensen Award is intended to honor only service and leadership to Affirmation, the winner is decided totally on the merits of the nomination letters received and the contributions to Affirmation as spelled out in those letters. The following is Hugo's nomination letter that was read by Mike Miner:
It is my honor to present the recipient of this years Mortensen Award for outstanding leadership and service to Affirmation Gay & Lesbian Mormons. This year's recipient has quietly and without much fanfare, done a phenomenal amount of work for Affirmation for the past five years. He has been instrumental in helping Affirmation take advantage of new media, develop an international presence, preserve gay Mormon history and meet the new challenges presented by changing times. At a time when the Internet has become Affirmation's most important tool for outreach and community building, he has played a key role in developing Affirmation's electronic media. He is the creator and editor for E-Affinity for which he writes many of the news stories. He has been in charge of redesigning the Affirmation website and has spent countless hours reformatting and reorganizing hundreds of individual web pages. As a native of South America, he has been a great asset in the formation of an Affirmation presence within the Spanish-speaking world. He has served as an advisor for gay Mormons forming Affirmation groups in Spain, Mexico, and Chile. He has produced many high-quality Spanish translations of Affirmation pamphlets and articles. The very successful Mexico conference was in a large part because of him. As an associate director for Affirmation, he has been involved in important Affirmation initiatives designed to help the organization expand its outreach and meet the challenges of changing times. In addition to all this, he has spent many hours of his time helping to preserve Affirmation's history. All that Affirmation history you see on the web site was largely collected by him through countless hours of taking oral histories and going through mountains of papers and notes and endless historical detective work. His enthusiasm and willingness to work for Affirmation has been marvelous to behold and we are honored to have him. The actual hours he has spent working for the organization is probably un-paralleled. He has shown a willingness to go the third and fourth mile in pushing forward Affirmation's mission. So it is with great pleasure that I present the recipient of the 2005 Mortensen Award for outstanding leadership and service to Affirmation to Hugo Salinas.
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