Episode 224: The Amicus Brief Catalyst with Emma Edwins

Here is the transcript with all timestamps and speaker headers removed:

Hey everyone, welcome to today’s episode of Living Beyond the Shadow of Doubt. I am so honored today to have a new friend with me that, not to sound creepy, but I’ve watched your social posts and interacted and we’ve kind of gotten to know each other a little bit over the years, but I’ve often thought I wonder if she would be a guest on my podcast. So Emma, I’m so thrilled to have you here with me today. Thank you for coming on.

Of course, I’m excited to be here.

Me too, I’m excited you’re here. So Emma, I’m gonna give you the opportunity to introduce yourself and share with us your background. But just briefly, Emma was raised in the LDS faith, same as I was. And I know your pronouns are she, her, correct? But I’m gonna let you share with us a little bit more about how you experience life, how you how you love others and how you identify. So I’m going to give you the mic.

Um, so I didn’t, didn’t, I wasn’t raised, what are they saying? I actually converted in high school, um, then was baptized in college. No, no, no, it’s fine. It’s fine. Um, I actually wasn’t really raised in any particular thing. We didn’t have that in my home, but, um, so I’m, I’m I’m transgender woman. I have been living post-transition for 10 years. think it was. I started hormones 10 years ago this year. And I am a therapist, that’s what I do for a job. I work with, right now I work mostly with either LGBTQ people or people with developmental disabilities, which sort of, I wear both of those hats. But I originally became a therapist so that I could work with transgender people because that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to help trans people and families of trans people so that because there’s sort of this grief process people go through when their children transition genders and it’s really important to do family therapy with that so like that was something that made me want to become a therapist.

So, okay, so sorry, go ahead, tell us a little bit more about your family. Like, did they join the LDS Church as well, or was it only you? Okay.

no, not at all. So I grew up in a pretty… I’ll keep it short, a chaotic type home environment. Parents got divorced when I was relatively young. There was sort of in and out of other partners throughout the years. The only time there was any sort of religious anything was my mother was seeing somebody for a few years and he was Catholic and his family was Catholic. And so we would go to mass sometimes. But I didn’t ever connect with them. I was, I don’t know, was like eight, nine, 10, 11 in that range. So I just found it boring. I didn’t like church. So there was never… Yeah, when you’re nine years old, sitting in churches can be a little boring. Yes. So there was never any religious inclinations really. My mom, I think, was wanting to become Catholic at some point, but ended up not doing that.

So I wasn’t really religious at all until maybe like 12, 13, and that’s when I started. I had a friend who was into like, know, Wicca and magic and that kind of stuff. And that was, you know, as a teenager who’s sort of in a rebellious stage, it was like, this is super fascinating. Like I’m going to go and look into this and learn about it. And it was something that I found fascinating, but like I wouldn’t say I ever like really dove deeply into it. And it wasn’t until, I want to say my freshman year in high school that I became friends with some Latter-day Saints that were in my grade and they invited me to church. And that’s when I first was introduced to the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I met with missionaries and I went to seminary. I actually went to seminaries all throughout high school on and off. Even though, no, no, I actually really loved, I loved getting up at five o’clock in the morning. It was so crazy.

You did, wow. You were not scared away by that.

Yeah, for those that are listening not of the LDS faith background, when the youth become high school age, they attend, you could call it a Bible study, a scripture study, devotional every morning, of the weekdays anyway, for all four years. And in order to fit it in before school and extracurricular, it’s usually around six o’clock that class starts, so.

Yeah, I think I started at 530. So it was extra early because my high school, we started at, I want to say a little bit after 7 a.m. So in order to like get from 630 to 715, like there was a very small window. But I actually, mother was very anti the church. So she, I won’t go too much into it, but she was a sex crimes detective. And it just so happened to be that at the same time that I was starting to go to church, she was investigating a bishop who had been accused of doing some not so good things. And so that really, yes, yes, sexual abuse. Actually, I don’t know that it was the bishop. think that there was somebody in the ward that was and then the bishop was sort of like not really being helpful and kind of pulling the like more what the official church stance kind of is of like we’re not gonna like report this, we’re not gonna do this kind of stuff.

This is just for my curiosity. Was this in the 90s-ish? Early 2000? Early 2000, okay. Just curious.

Um, so this was like 2000. Yeah. So, so it just, was really tragic timing that she had that case and was becoming really familiar with the church in a really not good way at the same time that I wanted to go to church. So she was like adamantly against me becoming Mormon, Latter-day Saint. She didn’t want me to go. She didn’t want me to get baptized. I sort of had to meet with the missionaries in secret for a while. Like it was a whole thing. So I was not allowed to be baptized in high school, but I still went to seminary because I enjoyed it. So, yes.

So my freshman year of college, when I went to school, not my very first semester, I actually—I’ve talked a bit about this in other podcast interviews, but in high school I worked as a lifeguard and one of my coworkers actually I met through seminary. knew him. We didn’t go to the same school. We went to the sort of other schools in the same district, but he and I had gone to the same seminary. And so he had been really pushing for me to get baptized when I went to college. And I went out there and I was a freshman in college and doing all the freshman college things and didn’t go to church until I came back for Christmas vacation. And I worked for a little bit and saw him and he was about to go on his mission. And he was really excited to hear that I had been baptized and I hadn’t. So I promised him that I would. And so when I went back out in January of 2005, that’s when I got baptized.

So this is the first time I’m hearing some of these details really, Emma. And I find myself wondering what it must have been like for you. You found something that there were elements there that you were attracted to of this religion, this belief system. And so much so that even though you weren’t allowed to be baptized, you began to participate and continued to for years. And here’s someone who is a member of your family, you your mother, and she has misgivings and she has concerns. You said she was anti. I mean, considering what her profession was, know, rightfully so, if that’s, you know, what in fact was going on. She was doing her job. And which I absolutely, you know, do not condone any of, there’s, yeah, the sexual abuse issues and scandal that’s been going on. That’s a whole nother talk show, really. However, that presented an opportunity for you and I’m going to guess it wasn’t the first or the last. I mean, wasn’t the last, but you found yourself in this place of trying to navigate. You were trying to self differentiate and you were navigating some new part of yourself. You were shifting, you were evolving and this can be really difficult moment for people on both sides, right? Those that find themselves hurt by the church and feel a real need to distance themselves. Whatever that looks like, there’s going to be a whole spectrum of how people, how that is in real life, right? But the theme of finding some mutual understanding or at least mutual respect, right? So that you could coexist, you could still have a relationship. I don’t know, can you speak to that? What it was like navigating that tension and how you did? I mean, I realized you were younger.

I mean, it was never easy. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, in high school, I think she just sort of, she took a very hard line stance of like, I’m not going to prevent you from going to church if that’s what you want to do, but I’m not going to let you get baptized. You have to wait until you’re an adult and then you can do that when you’re 18. So there was a lot of tension there. There was a lot more tension after I did join the church and I wanted to go on a mission. I never did go on a mission, but there was a point where I was very certain I wanted to go on a mission. you know, having that conversation with my mother and stepfather at the time, I mean, it was by far the worst, most like painful argument I’ve ever had with my mother to the point that they were you know, more or less telling me if you go on a mission, if you drop out of school and you go on a mission, like we’re cutting you off, like you’re done. We’re not gonna, we’re gonna like disown you. Like if you want to go to school after you come back, you’re gonna have to figure out how to do that on your own. We’re not gonna help you pay for it, which is a big deal because I… We were never, we never had a lot of money. So we were relatively poor for most of my life. wasn’t until I was kind of going into later years of high school and college that we started, I guess, moving up into more of a middle class and less of a like lower class socioeconomic. not having them helping me pay for school was like a huge deal.

I ended up not going on the mission in large part because I didn’t want to get disowned. I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to go to college. I was the first person on either side of my family to actually like get a bachelor’s degree. So like it was a really big deal. I had to. Well, thank you. And I had… you know, my mom, we had sort of made an agreement that if I finished school, if I finished my bachelor’s degree and then I wanted to go on a mission, they would pay for it. Right? So that was the deal of if you like, not going to, we’re going to disown you if you go now, but if you finish your degree and then in four years you still want to go, like we will help you pay for the mission because, you know, you have to, I forget how much it is. You have to save up for your mission, but it was not a small amount of money. I think at the time it was at least a couple thousand dollars. I don’t remember though.

So thank you for being willing to open that door, give us a peek inside of your world and the beginnings of this, at that time, new religion, your new faith. Let’s fast forward a little bit. It’s 2025 and there have been a lot of things doesn’t really seem to describe it well. Over the years, but particularly this past year, the church has come out with various policies. People will call them different things. Tenants, rules in the handbook, guidelines, tenants. Some people will, I said tenants twice didn’t I? I didn’t get enough sleep last night. Some people may even consider them doctrine. I’m not really sure. I think people filter them in different ways. I’ve learned that really it doesn’t matter what they’re called because the end result, the outcome is going to be the same. And those policies that I’m specifically talking about are directed against transgender and non-binary individuals. Unfortunately, those types of policies kind of give an easy out to those who might be unfamiliar, never maybe met someone who is transgender or non-binary, maybe are not comfortable. Fill in the blanks. They can point to the handbook and say, well, this is what it says, therefore this is what we’re going to do. This is what I. Sorry, you know, and then they don’t have to deal with a lot of feelings of discomfort is really what it boils down to and challenge their belief system. So, and then just a week and a half ago, the church issued a brief as it relates to a couple of Supreme Court cases, arguing in their own behalf of identifying or acknowledging transgender as, you know, an actual way of being. I don’t know the exact words, but in other words, in insinuating that it would be a quasi suspect status and that to actually acknowledge it as real people, this is the way they identify it would be kind of a breach of their religious freedom. So. That’s hard to say. I’m curious, Emma, how it has been for you. And you can share as much or as little as you would like because these topics, these issues are painful and they affect real human beings.

Yeah. So, I mean, I read the amicus brief. As far as the therapist, actually worked in law. I have a post-grad certificate to be a paralegal. So I worked as a paralegal for, I don’t know, five, six years. And I spent a lot of time when I was studying law reading Supreme Court cases. And my favorite class actually was gender law, which was all about the things that this amicus brief was arguing towards, right? So like the 14th Amendment, Title, I think it’s Title IX, Title X, I don’t remember. I always get them mixed up. But sort of these legal precedents that have protected particularly women, but then later minorities and then gay people, lesbian people, right? Like that have created these constitutional laws that protect them from being discriminated against so that they can’t be fired from their job, they can’t lose their housing, they can’t be discriminated against in like healthcare. Like there’s a lot of different ways that these protections have developed over the years, both through like legislative efforts and case law and Supreme Court decisions, right?

And so the Amicus Brief was all about the church trying to argue that considering transgender people in the same category as a minority or a woman or a gay person created difficulties for the church in a few different ways. The biggest one I think they argued towards was employment. if you make us a protected class, then that means that we as an employer have to employ transgender people, even though that it goes against our fundamental religious beliefs. So on one hand, I can understand a little bit of where they’re coming from. At the same time, when I’m thinking about my reaction to it, I was very, very upset about it because as I said, I understand the law, I understand what they’re going for and what they’re arguing. And I mean, what it kind of boiled down to was we don’t want to treat transgender people the same as everyone else. And we don’t want to be called bigots for not treating them the same. Those were their two big things. We don’t want to have to treat them the same way that we would anyone else. And we don’t want to get the negative social ramifications from it.

Which is very upsetting because as you said in the last year, year and a half, two years, the church has gone much more towards a very conservative, transphobic level in their policy break. So I had left church for a while in my late 20s. found out a bunch of stuff about the church, you know, church history. You know, the typical thing that people who leave the church often leave over of like, you guys didn’t tell me these things, you sort of like conflated these things, you hid these things. So like, I kind of lost my faith for a while in my like, late 20s. And then I decided to transition genders later. And then I had always wanted to come back to church, but as a trans person that was like, there’s no way they’re gonna let me come back to church. So when I did come back, I don’t know if that was three or four years ago, the policy of the church was, if I’m being honest, more open and accepting of transgender people than it was of gay people, which I found very surprising because I—that was not my expectation when I had originally worked. They have since changed the wording. I’ve actually gone and looked at the wording of the website four or five years ago compared to now. A lot of it is still the same, but there were very key things that they changed to make it less about, we’re going to trust you to consult a doctor and to do therapy and to do the things you need to in order to make sure that you’re going to be okay, to—you need to consult with us and if you do this, there’s consequences, right? That was sort of a shift in the language.

And that was really hard. It was really hard for me to see the progression of them walking it back because when I, like I said, when I came back, like I was very, I was just so incredibly happy that I got to be me and go to church at the same time. Like it was—it was sort of this like euphoric feeling. There’s a term—like gender euphoria is something that gets used when we talk about transgender people, getting to exist as their like identified self in a place and actually feel the authenticness of that, like creates sort of this euphoric feeling. And that’s what I had when I came back to church, when I was able to go to Relief Society, when I was able to participate as a woman in the church. And then to have that very gradually repeatedly pulled back again and again until now. I mean it…

When you say pulled back, were there just different responses from different leaders or fellow church members as far as what you were quote, allowed to do?

Yeah, so I mean, like I said, so when I came back, the policy was the most open I think it’s probably ever been. And then I want to say like a year, year and a half in to me coming back to church, they—I started hearing rumors from people who were closer to the church headquarters that they were going to make it more restrictive. And that was really hard to sort of swallow that that was a possibility and then—

So can you kind of give us a timeframe on when you’re talking about, are you talking about like the 2000 teens?

Now this would have been… I want to say… This was 2023, so about two years ago. Yeah, so about two years ago, they changed the policy and they made it very—

Right, you know, they changed the language from like, you can have callings. You can’t have every calling. So I don’t—people who aren’t familiar callings are sort of these volunteer positions in the church, right? Like things that you do to help the church function, to do different things, like whether you’re teaching or helping with, you know, taking care of the children or, know, whatever it is, right? So there were certain limitations on what callings I could have before. Like I couldn’t be the relief society president as a trans woman. Like that was something they weren’t going allow happening. But then they changed it so like I couldn’t even have a calling that had anything to do with children, which was very much was to me it was evident of them buying into this sort of like—right, I don’t want to say right wing, but like this very like hyper conservative, you know, all trans people are groomers. They’re all just trying to groom our children and like—right? it’s like, it was very obvious to me that they had bought into sort of that rhetoric when they changed this policy.

Yeah. Same. For me, big problem with that is then it’s perpetuating the already piles upon piles of misinformation and fear and bigotry and all of those things that transgender and non-binary individuals already are just have an onslaught of that kind of treatment.

Yeah, and I mean it was extra frustrating because as a therapist, I work with adolescents. Like that was my—one of my specialties was working with adolescents. Whether they were transgender or not, it didn’t matter. Like I worked with teenagers, right?

Right. Because when I first came back and what like I went to my bishop and was like, I want a calling like that will help me be active in church. I don’t want to ever fall away. Right. Like I want to stay active. want a calling. And one of the things he was considering initially before they more or less told him he couldn’t was having me be one of the teachers for the young women’s. Right. Because that was something that I specialized in was—I, at the time, I think the vast majority of my caseload as a therapist were adolescent girls. Right. So was very familiar with how adolescent girls think, how they write like the psychology behind them. Right. Like there was a lot of my experience was in that field. so originally that’s what he was thinking he wanted me to do for calling. Now I couldn’t even possibly do that calling. But if he wanted me to, because of the church changed the policies.

Yeah, the reality of all of these policies is a hard pill to swallow. I chose not to swallow. I’ve taken a step back from active participation and whatnot. I appreciate you sharing your viewpoint, your vantage point, especially these past more recent years amidst these additions of these policies.

There was one other big thing that I think I should mention. When I first came back, I was allowed to go to relief society, right? So with the women, when the church splits into the male, female. I was, yes, so I could go to the women’s meeting. Now I’m not supposed to. Now I have to, if I go to church, I’m supposed to go to elders quorum. So I’m supposed to sit with the men.

Right. Which is the second half of church after the main congregation meeting of worship. And so you would, as you are now presenting, be expected to go and sit with all of the males.

Yeah, so you know, in a makeup and a dress and nail polish, I’m supposed to go sit with a man. it just… It’s humiliating. Honestly.

Yeah, and your long hair. Not that men can’t have long hair. I’m not saying that, but… you’ve shared some of your experience and I caught what you said, the hurt that you experienced recently with this brief. I appreciate you bringing in the element of the law. The thing that really bothered me and I didn’t understand was like, they’re a religious institution. They’re already, you know, can claim religious freedom, basically. And so for me, whether the law changes or not, they are still at liberty to, again, you know, put in the handbook, whatever they would like. I do believe, like you mentioned earlier, these policies and whatnot, they’re definitely more fear-based, like you said, transphobic. So knowing that, and correct me if I’m wrong, when the news broke of this Supreme Court brief that they had filed, I thought I saw in your stories, you spoke to this and how hurt you were, but you did find some positive to focus on. that’s, if I remember right, you have a group or some type of nonprofit you have organized and you are wanting to bring to fruition. so that brings me to the next part that I’d love to hear from you. You know, stepping into the unknown, going, we could say, against the grain, following your own path, following your heart can be scary and all of those feelings in the beginning. But often, at least I know for me and everyone I’ve brought on my podcast since January, I ask, what are the moments of joy? What is the living and the life that you have experienced on the other side of stepping in to all that uncertainty? Because it’s there. That’s why our hearts feel called to move in this direction or to do X, Y, Z, in the blank. So share with us the joy that you have found as you have taken back your spiritual journey and you define what that looks like.

Yeah, so I mean, after coming back to church, and sort of watching it progressively slide further and further away from what I was hoping would happen. I did a lot of things to try and get rid of some of the fear, to show me being transgender does not mean that I’m not a child of God, that I’m not, that I can’t be, that I can’t—participants show up in a very authentic way, right? So as that was happening, I just sort of had this growing feeling that—and I had had numerous conversations over the last two years of—did I want to start a church, right? Did I want to start a ministry or a church or some sort of organization that was outside of the church that was going to uphold my ideals while still taking the good pieces of the Latter-day Saint faith that I love so much, right?

And I was really nervous for a long time to do that, even though like there were times, I mean, there were definitely times, especially when they changed the policy and then now after the amicus brief where it was very, it was sort of a a point of making a decision of like, am I going to stay in this and keep trying to change this from the inside or am I going to do my own thing? Because I, I mean, I haven’t talked about this on here and I haven’t talked about it on a lot of places, but you know, I have had a lot of spiritual experiences that I would say are not necessarily typical of people who go to church or who are Latter-day Saint, like some people for sure. And I have found a great community of people who also have had spiritual experiences. And when I say spiritual experiences, I mean like in deep meditation, having spiritual experiences, not necessarily visions per se, experiences that are transformative in a way that connecting. Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, they kind of transcend this earthly experience. They’re spiritual.

Yes, absolutely. And I mean, and when I had first come back to church, I had been having this and like I had been having a lot of them before that happened. And there was sort of this overlying theme that me going back to church was for a reason, right? That it was like that, that there was whether it was a reason for like my own soul’s progression or you know, something that I was supposed to do in this lifetime. You know, I do believe we have sort of soul contracts when we come here. There’s things that we’re hoping to learn, hoping to accomplish, hoping to experience that we wouldn’t be able to experience on the other side, right? We have to come here and live these lives to experience these things.

And, you know, it was really interesting to try and find the balance between how do I participate in this sort of expected norm in this faith, while also having these social, these sort of like very transformative spiritual experiences that contradict in a lot of ways some of the things that the faith like holds true or holds self-evident, right? And so I had been sitting on whether or not I wanted to make a ministry or a church or something. Whether or not I wanted to go back and go to school to become a pastor in a different sort of religious tradition, I’m sort of meandering here. Hopefully you’re following me. When the amicus brief came out, it became very apparent to me that it was time to do that. like, I had sat in long enough, I’d experienced enough in church, I’d experienced enough of the honestly sort of pain and grief of watching this institution that I wanted to live up to its highest ideals, like, continue to fail to do. and I wanted to, I decided that it was time to actually make that happen. Now it’s very early on, so I can’t say that like I’ve been a success at it. I’m still navigating the doubt, if you will.

I think you’re a success just by naming it out loud. Emma, I think that’s wonderful. I think this is where I strongly believe in the both and, right? You do have elements that you appreciate about the LDS faith and you can also create community over here that you know will be safe for you and for anyone who identifies like you or believe similarly as you. Why shouldn’t you create a space for yourself? Because what you’re talking about—that spiritual connection that transcends institutional rules—that is where the real healing happens.

I’m curious, for those who are listening who might be in that middle space—maybe they’re transgender, maybe they’re just questioning their faith, or they’re feeling that “shadow of doubt” that I talk about on this show—what would you say to them about trusting those transformative experiences you mentioned, even when they conflict with what they’ve been told is “truth”?

I think the biggest thing is learning to distinguish between the voice of “should” and the voice of “is.” We spend so much of our lives, especially in religious traditions, listening to the “shoulds.” I should feel this way, I should be this person, I should follow this specific path to be worthy.

But those spiritual experiences I talked about? They aren’t about “should.” They are about “is.” They are about the reality of your soul and the reality of God’s love, which doesn’t have the same borders that humans try to put on it.

I would tell anyone in that space to pay attention to what brings them peace and what brings them expansive joy. If a policy or a handshake or a seating arrangement makes you feel small, or like you have to hide parts of yourself to be “good,” that’s a signal. That’s not the Spirit; that’s the institution.

That is so powerful. “The voice of should versus the voice of is.” I love that. It’s about returning to that inner authority.

Emma, as we wrap up, I want to make sure people know how to find you and how to support this new path you’re carving. If people want to connect with you or learn more about the community you’re building, where can they go?

So, right now, the best place is probably through my social media. I’m on Instagram and TikTok as @EmmaTheTherapist. I’m also in the process of setting up a landing page for the ministry, which I’m calling “The Authentic Soul Collective.”

It’s really just a place for anyone—but especially queer and trans people who have been wounded by high-demand religions—to come and reclaim their spirituality without the shame. We’re going to be doing some virtual meetups and meditation groups soon.

The Authentic Soul Collective. I love that name. It fits you perfectly. Emma, thank you so much for being here, for being so vulnerable, and for sharing your light. You are a gift to this community and to me.

Thank you, Meagan. It’s been a pleasure.

And to everyone listening, remember: your doubt is not the end of your story. It might just be the beginning of your truth. We’ll see you next time.