The Confession of an Unrepentant Lesbian Ex-Mormon, Or, Hanging Out with Gay Mormons in Salt Lake City

Book excerpt: In June 2003 Sue-Ann Post was invited to be the keynote speaker at the annual Affirmation conference in Salt Lake City. Affirmation is a group of gay and lesbian Mormons, a group that is reviled by the mainstream church body. As a lesbian ex-Mormon she simply had to go. Her early life had been shaped by her mother's fundamentalist devotion to the church, but she forcibly rejected it all when she realised that she was a lesbian. She became aggressively atheist in her views and took to ridiculing the religion in her stage show. Visiting the epicentre of Mormonism was bound to be a major head-spin ... The Confession of an Unrepentant Lesbian Ex-Mormon is Sue-Ann's intensely personal account of her time in Salt Lake City and her inner grapplings with notions of faith, redemption, honesty and sexuality. As befits a stand-up comedian, it is frequently funny, unflinching and acerbic. It is also searching and heartfelt: a passionate interrogation of the capacity of religion to both enrich and distort our moral understandings.