I’ve read Quinn’s Same Sex Dynamics and am convinced that he is wrong — slanderously wrong — about several of the people in Mormon history he wrote about (Evan Stephens may or may not have been gay; he most certainly was not the predator that Quinn paints him), and that’s really the only scholarly thing I’ve read on the topic.

Please, readers, do not defend Quinn here, or abuse Stephens’s memory, or carry on this thread. It’s fine to raise it, Julia, but I’ll delete further comments by others. If you have exactly what Julia needs to answer her question, send it to me privately — I’ll pass it on, or summarize it here, but I don’t want to open Keepa to what could potentially follow from this question.

In that time period, were homosexuals usually referred to as bachelor uncles and maiden aunts? I was reading an article about an organization in Portland, in the 30s and 40s, named BUMA, that sponsored social events. In trying to look it up, I found very little, but there was a reference in an article about the first Gay Pride parade, where BUMA was cited as a sponsor, and the initials explained. It is the only place I have found which explains the initials.

In rereading chapter 1 because of Kevin’s comment, I wondered if her uncle’s understanding of love might have been for another man, rather than a woman who did not love him in return. A completely side ramble, but I was wondered in the pre-same sex attraction language, if Mormons had a side language way of referring to men and women who were homosexual and not interested or able to enter into a mixed orientation marriage.

Hen & Lin would be in trouble nowadays with their planting of an invasive species.

Sam Potter, whose mother kept the one telephone in town, poked his head in at the door.

I have this vision in my head of a woman herding a phone around the garden, shepherdess’s crook in her hand.

“But I know about my father, Uncle Peter – that he wasn’t the kind of man Mommy could go on with.”