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That We May Be One: A Personal Journey Tom Christofferson. That We May Be One: A Gay Mormon's Perspective on Faith and Family. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book Company, 2017. 154 pp. Paper. $15.99 ISBN: 9781629723914.
Tom Christofferson's That We May Be One exploded onto the LDS book market with a series of news releases, interviews, and appearances.1 It represents a gigantic leap in the Deseret Book LDS conversation on LGBTQ+ (hereafter: gay) members since the publication of Ty Mansfield's In Quiet Desperation: Understanding the Challenge of Same-gender Attraction.2 Even the use of the descriptor "gay" in place of "same-gender attraction" still raises the hackles of many in the faith.3 In contrast to Mansfield's desperate struggle, Tom Christofferson declares "There is nothing intrinsically about who I am that is offensive to God."4 Behind that statement is the strength of Deseret Book Company, its president, Sherri Dew (ostensibly the most powerful woman in the LDS Church), and the author's brother, Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve. That We May Be One can be divided into "Tom's Coming Out Story," "Tom's Advice to the Parents of Gay Youth," "Tom's Rediscovery of the Church," and "Tom's Divine Mandate for Gay Mormons." Tom's "coming out" story is similar to most gay young men in the LDS Church. He believed that spiritual development, church service, serving a mission, and getting married in the temple would change his sexual orientation. Like other gay Mormons, he learned that he was wrong. Shortly after his temple wedding, Tom discovered that trying to be married to a woman was impossible for him. He realized that to be honest with his life, he must travel a different path. In the early 1980s a person could be excommunicated from the LDS Church merely for "coming out," so Tom first called his brother Greg, then his parents and other brothers explaining that he was going to be divorced and ask to be excommunicated because he was homosexual. While this represents the typical tragedy of the young gay Mormon, this is where Tom's experience begins to be atypical.
Tom proceeds to demonstrate how his family's Mormon faith, heritage, and reaction were similar to other Mormon parents who discovered that their son is gay....