ABSTRACT
Eri grew up as a boy named Eddie in an LDS family in Utah. From a very early age, Eddie felt frustrated with his gender identity. His father recalls that when Eddie was about four years old, he came to him crying, “Daddy, I want to be a girl.” By age 16, Eddie, who had been ordained to the LDS priesthood, concluded that he was gay. That decision led to him dropping out of the private LDS high school he attended, at which point he was sent by his parents to spend time with relatives in Japan. There his non-LDS Japanese grandmother suggested, without judgment, that Eddie was not gay but transgender. Returning to the United States with this new understanding of his identity, Eddie persuaded his parents to let him receive hormone replacement therapy and eventually gender reassignment surgery, to transition from male to female – from Eddie to Eri. In a documentary about Eri’s experience, Transmormon, Eri’s father expressed his view that “marriage is between a man and a woman. In my opinion, Eri is a woman. . . . I’m hoping that the leaders of the [LDS] church are going to see it that way, and that she’ll be able to get married [in the temple].” In fact, LDS leaders maintain that gender is an eternal trait, and they therefore regard individuals who try to change gender as living contrary to God’s plan. As of 2014, Eri had stopped attending church with her
parents. As she moved forward with her new gender identity, she was uncertain what would become of her LDS identity.
