Another gay white faithful Mormon man wrote a book about being gay, and it reminded me that in the most well-known volume in this genre (the author is the brother of a Mormon apostle), a celebrated plot point in his hero’s journey back to the church was ... leaving his partner.

They had been together for many years by that time, I think, but the author Tom couldn’t be rebaptized as a Mormon without making his beloved partner single and alone in the twilight of his life, so out of the author’s life and home he went, without another word in the book.

It’s not an isolated instance in Mormondom, either. Remember the “inspirational” story from a few years back of the lesbian couple who divorced each other to rejoin the LDS church?

Anyway, as I think about Tom’s book, my mind is drawn to a seemingly dissimilar place: the recent announcement that Elizabeth Smart’s dad (that many of us remember from her kidnapping case) is gay, and that he and his wife were divorcing.

I remember some of the more common refrains I saw from Mormons online after that news broke: “that poor woman!” and the one that still rings in my ear, “well, you know what I’d love to see covered in the news? *Her* story.”

Now, why would that bother me? It’s certainly not that I don’t care about the stories or the pain of the straight spouses in Mormon gay-straight marriages. It’s not even the implication that “the media” only wants the gay and not the straight story here, which is obviously false.

But did Mormons sigh “those poor women!” about the divorcing women I mentioned above, or did they *rejoice*? I’ve never *once* heard a faithful Mormon say, “you know what book I want to read? Tom’s partner’s. I want to hear *his* perspective on being jettisoned.”

Anyway, I guess this is to say: read this new book if you want to. But I’m not going to forget that the Mormon gay devotional complex—in a religion that claims to be all about family—is built on trying to break my family apart and then rejoice about its demise.