Growing Up Transgender and Mormon | Short Film Showcase

Wake up! Yay! Hi, my name is Eddie, little Eddie H. I'm thinking, what's the rest of my name? There's Eddie boy, there's Eddie boy. Okay, should I stop?

Then, that's how I get ready every morning. Tada! This is my house. This is 8:51, uh, 851 and A2. Sorry, my parents is 851, and, uh, this is my small apartment SL bedroom. This is also where I've lived for like the past 12 years now, which is kind of a big part of who I am. I spent a lot of time swimming in that pool, playing all sorts of games, and kind of one of the funniest things is one year I just got so girly that my friend was like, it's really weird when you swim without a top on. So, even before coming out as trans, I wasn't allowed to swim topless.

Hi Dad! Hi Lucky! When I was four or five, I realized that I wasn't a girl. You know, it was supposed to be that I was going to become a father and not a mother. And so, that's kind of where things sort of started.

Ed's talking about video Cinderella castle and the scene where the stepmother tears off the dress that Cinderella has been wearing. We're going to it? No, not going. Ball? You're not going to the ball. For the longest time, I kind of had this fantasy that I'd escape. A fairy godmother would come and, you know, turn me into a girl and make everything better. It was kind of such an escape for me.

She came to me one time when she was probably about four years old, crying and saying, "Daddy, I want to be a girl." At the time, I just thought she was going through some kind of a phase. I think she was 10 years old when she said something about feeling like I'm like a two-person inside of me—feeling one like a boy, Eddie, and then the other is a girl.

When I was explaining to myself that I was a boy, it was because God had made me that way, which didn't make a really great relationship as a 5-year-old between me and God, along with the Mormon culture and how it can be really, really difficult to understand something when it's either not prevalent or it's just hidden.

Then when she got to be about 16, she had a girlfriend. So, he had a girlfriend, and things seemed like they were getting better. She was less effeminate in the way she did things, and I thought, okay, it was just a phase. Everything's fine. In our church, the LDS church, she was ordained to the priesthood and was the first assistant to the bishop. So, she was, you know, very involved.

I came home one day because she hadn't shown up at church, and she was still in bed. I came in and I said, "Hey, what's the deal?" She started crying and she said, "Dad, let's face it, I'm gay." I came out as gay, but that was sort of my excuse to be myself, which was a woman. So I wore women's clothing, but I told everybody that I was gay. And, you know, I had feminine features. Even though I was a boy, a lot of people would think that I was a girl, and they would stop me from going into the bathrooms.

I was just, I was you know, loud and proud of being gay and not being very good at being gay. On top of being really conservative LDS, we also went to a Mormon private school, my sister and I both. So, being LDS was our life. It's one of the reasons that, you know, I didn't find out about what being trans was until I was an adult and out of high school.

A lot of people, they think you didn't know what gay people were until you were 14 or 15 years old. Like, where have you lived? Well, I was living in Utah, in a Mormon, you know, saturated Mormon community and homeschooled or going to a Mormon private school. So, you know, there was not an opportunity to learn about the things that were different or inappropriate.

Even before I came out, I always spent tons of time getting ready. My sister, who was much more just sort of relaxed and in herself, wouldn't take as much time getting ready. My dad had this like, this joke that he would tell: "Eddie spends all this time getting ready because Shirley is so beautiful." Normally, you know, you say that with a brother and sister involved and it's not a big deal. But to me, I was a boy, but I didn't really feel like a boy.

To hear my dad say that I wasn't as beautiful as my sister was hard, and I didn't have any confidence in my appearance growing up. Seeing my sister get asked out on dates and taken to the dance—at 15 years old, that's important—and that was really hard. It was like, of course, I'm this ugly boy and my sister's this beautiful girl. So, that was really a difficult thing for me to deal with.

You know, being in a Mormon private school, I didn't graduate. I just stopped going when I came out. We sent Eddie to Japan to stay with his grandparents for about six months. I was watching TV with my grandparents, and they had this panel of 100 trans people. My grandma turned to me and was like, "Oh, this is all about you." I thought, no grandma, this is not. I'm different than that.

Then all of the sudden, that really hit her, and she started to watch what's going on, and she really realized it—that that's what she has. It was months later that she came to me and she said, "Dad, I want you to know I'm not really gay. I'm a, you know, I'm a woman that's trapped in a man's body, and that's why I thought I was gay."

Then she immediately said, "But don't worry, I'm not going to get a sex change operation or anything," because I think she was worried about me. One event that was a real turning point was one night I was sitting on the couch, and Eddie came walking in. She sat down on the couch and she had, you know, a really strange look on her face.

"I had this dream that—and it was a reoccurring dream—that I chopped off my penis. I was in a really dark spot, uh, space and, and not necessarily logical. Her plan was to perform the operation on herself, and we lived just across the street from a hospital. She said that she knew I could get her to the hospital before she died, and then she wouldn't have this thing anymore that she hates.

She said I started to do the operation and then I realized that I had a serious problem. I think they took it more seriously and realized they need to take some more serious steps and we got her into counseling. After being diagnosed, she was then able to start taking hormones, change her name, and all those things, and work towards surgery.

Gosh, there came—(laughter)—we believe that the church leaders are receiving revelation that helps them to be able to better serve in the callings that were given in the priesthood. We have the proclamation of the world on the family, which states very clearly that a marriage is between a man and a woman.

In my opinion, Eddie's a woman, and so I don't see a problem with that. I'm hoping that the leaders of the church are going to see it that way and that she'll be able to get married. She won't be able to have children; she can hopefully adopt children. I'm willing to do all these things, but even if I were to do all them, there are specific limitations whether it be biological or, you know, the church principles that say that a trans person, even after SRS, can't go to the temple, which means can't have a temple marriage, can't have kids. It's like, why try if you're going to fail?

She hasn't been coming to church with us for quite a while. I think it's difficult for her to come there because she does feel like she's judged sometimes. She has a strong belief and a strong faith, and I just want the obstacle removed that keeps her from being able to, you know, live the faith that she's always believed in her whole life. Some parts of the religion still filter through and are a part of who I am today, but a lot of that kind of got filtered out.

I should go back and sort of see if those are parts that I want to reincorporate in this person that I am now. But, at the same time, I'm really busy with transitioning. I think maybe being so unhappy in my body for the longest time helped me really separate what are physical things and what are my spiritual components.

I don't think that I succumbed to my body; I think I succumbed to my spirit and what it needed. It was just like letting go and letting the picture come into focus by itself without me trying to force it to be something that it's not. When it comes down to it, the only thing that I can believe in is the relationship between me and God.

If something happens and I was wrong, then that's okay, because at least I made that decision myself. If we were to all die and be resurrected tomorrow and this young man comes up to me and says, "Dad, look, I got resurrected as a man," but I'm okay with that, I don't know that I would be okay with that because I would say, "Where's my daughter?" And, who’s this young man that I don't know?

I'm hoping that this documentary that you're shooting will be watched by some parents and that maybe something that we've said will help them, and through helping them, we'll help their children.