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The 2005 Mortensen Award
2005 Affirmation Conference, Denver, Colorado

October 2005

The Mortensen Award was established, under the direction of Ron Kershaw, in 1987. It was decided the award would be given annually to the one individual who had given outstanding service and leadership to Affirmation. It is the only continuing award Affirmation presents and it tries to recognize the best people in the organization. The past recipients are:

1987 - Paul Mortensen
1988 - Clifford Barnes (†)
1989 - Ina Mae Murri (†)
1990 - Irwin Phelps (†)
1991 - Ron Kershaw (†)
1992 - Larry Gates
1993 - Rick Fernández
1994 - Tere LaGiusa & Jacki Riedeman

1995 - James Kent
1996 - Duane Jennings
1997 - Ricky Gilbert
1998 - David Johnson
1999 - Henry Miller
2000 - Alan Blodgett
2001 - Scott MacKay
2002 - Olin Thomas

2003 - Ben Jarvis
2004 - Mike Miner
2005 - Hugo Salinas
2006 - Brus Leguás Contreras
2007 - James Morris & Aaron Vinck
2008 - Jason Giles
2009 - David Melson
2010 - Bruce Maughan

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:

2005 Mortensen Award Presentation

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.