Daniel C. Peterson wrote:[SNIP!] I’ve just noticed your attempt to sum up the alleged anti-Quinn gossipmongering campaign in which I and others were supposedly engaged:
Dr. Shades wrote:“Judging by what you and Mister Scratch have said, let's see if this is the most likely scenario:
A) Rumors of Quinn's bisexuality swirled among the apologetic intelligentsia for X amount of time. B) It remains unclear who started them or how they began. C) When it was discovered that Quinn had moved back to Utah, one of them jumped at the opportunity to tell Quinn's stake president about it for punitive reasons.
Does that sound about right?
No. It’s crucially wrong at points A and C, though B is accurate.
A. Mike Quinn’s sexual orientation was widely known among people involved in Mormon studies (not merely, or even primarily, among “apologists” or faithful Church members) for many years prior to his official “coming out” in 1996. My impression is that just about everybody seriously involved with Sunstone and the Mormon History Association, for example, seems to have been aware of it. I suspect this to be the case because, when he finally announced his homosexuality, I heard not a single exclamation of surprise. Not one. Precisely how the news got around or how his homosexuality came to be recognized I could not begin to say. As I’ve noted before, I first heard that Quinn was gay when, with Todd Compton, sometime (I believe) between 1982 and 1985, I was visiting in the home of a person in southern California (where I then lived) who would be widely recognized as more sympathetic to Quinn’s theological and historical views than, say, to Bruce McConkie’s. This man was astonished that Todd and I were unaware of something that he thought was universally known. As it turns out, Quinn’s homosexuality truly was just about universally known in (believing and unbelieving) Mormon studies circles, and
Todd and I were simply among the last to hear about it. (In my case, the explanation may reside in the fact that I had been living in the Middle East essentially from the end of 1977 to the middle of 1982.) Neither Todd Compton nor the man who told us about Quinn would typically be counted among the “apologist community.”
C. Unless I’m much mistaken,
Quinn’s stake president had never met Quinn when my friend spoke with him, but he was already well aware of Quinn’s sexual orientation. (And, frankly, of more than merely his orientation. A sad incident within his stake had brought the matter very painfully to the stake president’s attention.) And I don’t believe that it was my friend who raised the issue of Quinn’s homosexuality, nor even of Quinn in general. As I recall,
it was the stake president, an old friend of his, who broached the subject. The visit was not about Quinn, but was simply an encounter between two long-time friends, and the topic of Mike Quinn emerged in passing.
[SNIP!] In the small and close-knit community of people involved in Mormon history or Mormon studies, a community containing both faithful believers and dissidents, there’s a lot of informal conversation. That’s how human communities work. It would have been astonishing had Quinn’s sexual orientation not surfaced in some of those chats. But that’s all there ever was. There was no rumor-mongering crusade, and I certainly wasn’t involved in one. I would guess that the subject of Quinn’s homosexuality came up in conversations in which I was involved on maybe half a dozen occasions between the time I first heard of it and his formal “coming out.” I don’t recall ever, not even once, initiating the discussion, and I don’t believe that any of those instances went much beyond mere mention of the fact.
It’s deeply ironic for me to be accused as the impresario of a conspiracy to besmirch Mike Quinn, because,
although I knew about his sexual orientation for 11-14 years before he openly acknowledged it, I consciously chose never to write or publish anything at all referring to it. I sat on it, quietly.
I’ve said this repeatedly. I can’t think of any clearer way than what I’ve already said to state that I was involved in no smear campaign against Mike Quinn and that, in fact, so far as I know, there was no smear campaign against Mike Quinn.
[SNIP!]Best wishes,
Dan Peterson
P.S. On reflection, 1982-1985 seems a bit early to me for my having heard about Quinn’s homosexuality, though I can’t rule it out. Perhaps the conversation occurred during a subsequent visit to California (which I typically visit quite often, because I grew up there and still have family there). So that would mean that I may have known of Quinn’s sexual orientation for as little as, say, only around five years before he came out of the closet. But no less. For various reasons, I think it cannot have been any later than the beginning of the 1990s when I was told of Quinn’s being gay by a very liberal figure in the Mormon studies community, in company with another very liberal member of that community.