As the plane descended above the lights of Salt Lake City, I wondered about the Mormons living below: "What was I getting myself into?"
I (Tracy) was flying from North Carolina into Utah to co-host "Living Room Conversations" between gay people like me and Mormons, with a friend from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jacob Hess. We had recently collaborated on a workshop at the National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation exploring how to work with diverging "sacred convictions" in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues. Since then, Jacob and I had developed an unlikely friendship.
I admit having fewer experiences than stereotypes of "Mormons" -- including "conformist" and "closed-minded." After a decade of working in the marriage equality movement, I had often felt disturbed by the heavy Mormon involvement in opposing a cause I believed in so much.
Despite (or because of) these misgivings, I was joining Jacob in a dialogue experiment attempting to bridge one of our country's most difficult socio-political divides: the debate over marriage for same-gender couples. When I told my friends in North Carolina what we were planning, they would typically say, "Wow. Good luck with that!"
[For more of this story, written by Tracy Hollister and Jacob Hess, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...he-en_b_6670096.html]
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