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Postmormon Postmortem
By Hannah and JessReligion & Spirituality
Postmormon Postmortem episodes
- Remembering Carol Lynn Pearson: Mormonism, Feminism, and LGBTQ Advocacy
Carol Lynn Pearson spent sixty years writing the truth about Mormon patriarchy, Heavenly Mother, and loving a gay husband through AIDS — without ever fully leaving the church that caused her pain.
Carol Lynn Pearson died July 29, 2026, at eighty-six, after nearly sixty years as one of the most widely read Mormon writers alive — a poet, playwright, and LGBTQ advocate whose debut collection "Beginnings" sold more than 150,000 copies. Jess and Hannah trace her life: her marriage to Gerald, a gay man she cared for until his death from AIDS, later published as "Goodbye, I Love You"; her feminist search for Heavenly Mother in "Mother Wove the Morning" and "Finding Mother God"; her advocacy for gay Mormon families in "No More Goodbyes"; and "The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy," her reckoning with a doctrine still built into LDS temple sealings. She never got a real answer for the harm. She got the words for it — and that was the beginning of getting free for a lot of people.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
17 min - LGBTQ Members and the Mormon Church: The Conditional Welcome
Gay and Mormon isn't a contradiction — the church says so. But the welcome runs out fast: celibacy for life, a mixed-orientation marriage, or you lose the temple recommend, the calling, the family.
Jess and Hannah trace the architecture behind the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' "conditional belonging" for LGBTQ members: the same-sex-attraction-vs-gay language rules, North Star and Encircle, decades of church-counseled mixed-orientation marriages, Utah's suicide data, John Dehlin's 2015 study on orientation change efforts, and the 2015 exclusion policy that barred children of same-sex couples from baptism — reversed in 2019 with no apology. Part three of the institutional harm series, following "The Grammar of Harm" and "The Architecture of Exclusion." The welcome was never unconditional. This is the fine print.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
40 min - The Mormon Mother Who Killed Her Sons To Send Them To Heaven: Tanya Adams
In 1979, Tanya Adams threw her two young sons from Washington’s Cable Bridge into the Columbia River. A devout Mormon experiencing psychosis, Tanya believed that killing Ryan and Christopher before they reached the age of accountability would guarantee them a place in the celestial kingdom.
She confessed hours later and never denied what she had done. The legal question was whether she could be considered insane when she understood that murder was illegal but believed killing her children was morally necessary.
Hannah and Jess examine Tanya’s collapse after her husband abandoned the family, the Mormon doctrines that structured her reasoning, the church leaders who recognized that she was suicidal, the jury that felt compelled to convict her, and the extraordinary sentence that placed her on lifetime probation rather than sending her to prison.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
39 min - The Mormon Reformation: Blood Atonement, Polygamy and Home Interrogations
The Mormon Reformation of 1856–1857 brought mass rebaptism, home interrogation, pressure to enter plural marriage, and blood atonement sermons to Mormon Utah.
In this episode of What Do You Know Wednesday, Hannah quizzes Jess on the seven-month campaign led by Brigham Young and Jedediah M. Grant. They trace how crop failures, food shortages, grasshopper infestations, and fear of divine punishment became a churchwide campaign of mass repentance.
They cover the 27 questions home missionaries asked Mormon families, the sharp rise in plural marriages, Brigham Young’s blood atonement preaching, the castration of Thomas Lewis by Bishop Warren Snow and local men, and the Reformation’s connection to the siege mentality surrounding the Utah War and Mountain Meadows Massacre.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
23 min - Dallin Oaks Wants Mormons Marrying Younger. BYU Is Building the Housing
In January, Dallin Oaks said he wanted Latter-day Saints marrying younger. Six months later, BYU broke ground on 240 married-student apartments. Jess and Hannah just put the dates next to each other.
BYU is tearing down nine 1962-era buildings at Wymount Terrace to build 240 new married-student units, while BYU–Hawaii pours $117 million into its own married-housing expansion on a campus that isn't growing. Six months earlier, church president Dallin Oaks told a crowd in Burley, Idaho that the lowered missionary age for women was meant to bring marriage ages down. Jess and Hannah trace the timeline from Oaks' own words to the ground-breaking, then look at what the data says about the risk on the other side — degree attainment, income recovery, and what it costs a woman to have built nothing of her own by the time a marriage ends.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
10 min - The Psychologist Keeping Mormons Mormon
Jordan Peterson has never said a word about Mormonism. But the demythologizing argument he's known for is letting believing Mormons stay despite doubting the church's own history.
We trace the demythologizing move from Rudolf Bultmann's 1940s theology through Paul Tillich and Joseph Campbell to Jordan Peterson, whose audience is 91% male by his own count. We cover the Sam Harris/Peterson Making Sense exchange on truth and fitness, Pew retention data showing younger Mormon women now leaving faster than Mormon men, the Strengthening Church Members Committee documented by D. Michael Quinn, the SEC's 2023 Ensign Peak Advisors settlement, and Helen Mar Kimball's sealing to Joseph Smith at fourteen. The church doesn't need the myth to hold up. It just needs you to keep showing up.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
26 min - The Mormon Family Problem: Five Stress Points in LDS Culture
In 1972, faithful Mormon sociologist Harold T. Christensen published a warning about the pressures built into LDS family culture.
Using decades of research on marriage, sexuality, fertility, and family life, he identified five major stress points: sexual repression, young marriage, guilt surrounding premarital sex, pressure to have large families, and patriarchal authority in the home.
Christensen found that Utah’s divorce rate was higher than the national average, even though Mormonism placed extraordinary emphasis on marriage and family. He argued that the Church’s usual response—asking individuals to repent and try harder—ignored structural problems within the culture itself.
In this episode, Hannah examines Christensen’s research on temple marriage and divorce, Mormon purity culture, early marriage, birth control, gender roles, priesthood authority, and the gap between the idealized Mormon family and the reality many families experience.
More than fifty years later, his analysis remains strikingly relevant.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
48 min - Mormon Leaders Knew About Wade Christofferson. None of Them Told.
Wade Christofferson, brother of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apostle D. Todd Christofferson, pleaded guilty to child abuse. Six church leaders knew first. None called police.
This episode traces the Wade Christofferson case chronologically: the earliest documented abuse allegations in a Crystal Lake, Illinois ward in 1985, two bishops who heard direct disclosures four years apart, the 1996 excommunication and confidential membership record annotation meant to bar him from children, its unexplained removal between 1998 and 2006, and the five church leadership callings he held in Ohio afterward. We cover what apostle D. Todd Christofferson knew starting around 2020, the Area Seventy told in early 2025, the coded language in letters to a Utah child, and Wade's July 2026 guilty plea in federal court. Six officials knew before his arrest. None called police.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
36 min - The Surprisingly Messy History of the Mormon CTR Ring
Two men went to their graves arguing over who invented the LDS CTR ring — and neither of them designed it alone. Jess traces the real, messy origin story on this WDYKW.
Every Mormon kid got a CTR ring, and almost none of them know it came from three separate committees fighting over credit for decades — the "Choose the Right" hymn from 1909, Gordon B. Hinckley's 1970 primary announcement, and jeweler Coy Miles, who claimed the whole thing was his idea. When Miles and artist Joel Isaac both died, their obituaries told two different stories about who really owned it. Jess and Hannah dig into the trademark filings, the 1990s Ring Masters gold rush, and the ring's stranger unofficial afterlives — including as a queer signaling symbol in 1990s Utah.
Support the show: buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
Ad-free listening from $2/month: patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TikTok & Instagram: @postmormonpostmortem
postmormonpostmortem.com23 min - Why the Mormon Church Wants to Own Martin’s Cove
A new nonprofit wants to give the LDS Church outright ownership of Martin's Cove — brokered by a man who sold the ranch bordering it during the same window he pitched the deal.
Jess and Hannah trace the 1856 Willie and Martin handcart disaster, Franklin D. Richards' decision to call a vote instead of halting departure, and Brigham Young's public rebuke that followed. Then they dig into the current push by Wyoming Friends for Martin's Cove to finally secure outright Church ownership of the site — a deal brokered by Ryan Lance, whose own ranch sale to the Ensign Group closed in January 2026, and whose land controls one of the only two routes into the "public" acreage being offered in exchange.
SHOW NOTES, including all sources mentioned in this episode, are available on Patreon with a FREE membership. FREE members also get our monthly newsletter. Paid memberships start at $2/month for AD-FREE listening. https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
TO SUPPORT THE SHOW (Thank you!)
- Venmo: https://venmo.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Buy Me a Coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/postmormonpostmortem
FIND US HERE
- Website: https://postmormonpostmortem.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@postmormonpostmortem
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/postmormonpostmortem
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/postmormonpostmortem
Theme song | Vocals: Hannah W. | Guitar: Dr. Dave | Audio: Mick
17 min
About Postmormon Postmortem
From the publisher's feed
Mormonism gave you a complete universe, with charts, diagrams, and a plan for everything. Leaving can dismantle all of it at once. Postmormon Postmortem is hosted by Hannah and Jess, two women who…
left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and wanted more honest conversations about what comes after. We cover Mormon history, doctrine, culture, true crime, institutional harm, religious trauma, and the messy work of rebuilding a life outside the church. Whether you're freshly out, years removed, or trying to understand someone you love, you're in the right place.