Episode Transcript
From the Mormon Priesthood to Trans Advocate Dad (Part Two)
Guest: Blair Hodges
Matthew Remski:
Welcome, Patrons, to Part Two of episode 19 of Antifascist Dad: “From the Mormon Priesthood to Trans Advocate Dad,” with Blair Hodges. My name is Matthew Remski. I’m really grateful for your support. I hope this project brings some joy, hope, and utility to your work and your days.
You can find me on Bluesky and Instagram under my name, and I’m on YouTube and TikTok as @antifascistdad. The Patreon for this show is antifascistdadpodcast. You’re already here if you’re listening right away, because subscribers get early access to every Part Two of the main-feed episodes.
In the show notes, you’ll also find a link to my almost-published book, Antifascist Dad: Urgent Conversations with Young People in Chaotic Times. It drops April 26, and I’m told pre-orders really help with visibility.
In Part One of my conversation with Blair, we explored the cultural and political tensions facing transgender youth and the LGBTQ community in Utah during this period of rising fascism. Blair pulled the curtain back on how the state’s conservative legislature employs what he calls the “Utah Way”—a method of enacting restrictive, MAGA-aligned policies under a veneer of Mormon politeness. The end result is that marginalized groups are targeted, despite local resistance and progressive hubs like Salt Lake City, where Blair lives.
He also unpacked his own journey from devout missionary to advocate for his trans kid. The amazing—or ironic—part of the story is that it was driven by a personal commitment to what he understood as the faith’s original values: supporting the persecuted.
We also took a closer look at Mormon theology—specifically how The Family: A Proclamation to the World and the concept of eternal gender serve as foundational barriers to queer acceptance. And Blair filled me in on how Mormonism shifted from early communalist roots to embrace white supremacy and nuclear-family ideals in exchange for mainstream access to American capitalism.
In Part Two, we jump back in with an examination of Mormon masculinities.
I need to ask you about what part of Mormon masculinity allows a preacher—or a person in authority—to be publicly vulnerable, or to weep. I didn’t know any Catholic clerics, for example, who were able to do that. I didn’t know anyone in authority who could do that.
In fact, I’ll tell you: one of the things that probably hooked me into the first high-demand group I got involved with was that the leader, Michael Roach—a pseudo–Tibetan Buddhist—would regularly weep while giving discourses on meditation or philosophy. I thought it was incredible, and I wanted to learn how to do that. I didn’t understand the performativity or everything else going on. I just didn’t grow up with the kind of male authority you’re describing.
What do you think accounts for—or permits—that kind of vulnerability within an obviously patriarchal system?
Blair Hodges:
I see it as an outgrowth of Mormonism’s birth in a highly charismatic spiritual era. It came out of the Burned-over District, where there was speaking in tongues, glossolalia, big displays of emotion. That was a big part of it.
As Mormonism became increasingly acceptable to broader society, it left a lot of those things by the wayside. Mormons will still talk about the early days—visions of angels, speaking in tongues, and all these spiritual expressions—but those have largely fallen away. What hasn’t fallen away is the emotionality.
The Spirit—the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit—Mormons believe it verifies truth, points you in the right direction, directs your life. And it often comes through emotional expression.
I hadn’t really thought to bring this up, but for me it became weird when I started taking antidepressants and ADHD medication. That element of religiosity kind of stopped—like the tears wouldn’t come. I didn’t feel emotions in the same way. I still felt religious and connected, but I thought: huh, it’s interesting that pharmaceuticals affect how the Holy Ghost can communicate with me.
And I’ve had times when I’ve wept bearing my testimony. It’s not disingenuous. You’re opening yourself up, expressing vulnerability, connecting with the community. And that can lead to tears. Instead of speaking in tongues, that becomes the visible sign of truth: you’re feeling the Spirit. How do you know? The voice is shaking and the tears are coming.
Matthew Remski:
My prediction would be that as conservative elements of the Mormon Church double down on normativity, that emotionality will gradually fade—because it will lose its relationship to charismatic and communal roots.
Blair Hodges:
We’re seeing a rise of alt-right Mormons online who really want to be accepted by the broader alt-right mainstream. They call themselves DezNat. Don’t look it up, folks. And don’t say it—because they will come after you, and they’re relentless.
They also have guns. One of them was an assistant attorney general in Alaska and lost his job after being doxxed for transphobic, queerphobic, racist things he was saying online.
So there’s a wing of Mormonism buying into this new “asshole Christianity” we’re seeing from MAGA and the religious right. I don’t know if it will spread enough to tamp down the emotionality overall. They’d still say it’s great if the president of the church tears up—because whatever he does is great. But as for them, they’re not going to. They’ve got their guns and their “fuck you” attitude—though in Mormonism it would be a “frick you” attitude.
Matthew Remski:
Okay.
Going more broadly: one thing you’ve clearly had to unlearn—and retool yourself for—is that if you’re going to focus on human rights in general, or the rights of children in particular, you have to realize something about child autonomy that goes way beyond putting kids into a priesthood pipeline at twelve. That means learning what co-learning is. It means dismantling the typical assumption that adults know better than kids.
How did you navigate the impulse—or the heritage—of authoritarianism?
Blair Hodges:
I have the advantage of having a wife who’s a social worker. She went back and got her master’s degree at Brigham Young University—where I was working at the time—and she started looking at different ways to think about kids.
We already weren’t authoritarian. We weren’t “iron fist, my way or the highway” parents. Then we found research and communities that backed it up and gave us better ideas. And having a neurodivergent kid will open it up for any parent—on a pragmatic level—because the typical ways we work with kids are kind of bullshit. The things that work better for my neurodivergent kid would actually be great for pretty much every kid.
Matthew Remski:
And it’s not just bullshit. It’s punitive. It’s harmful.
Blair Hodges:
It’s cruel. I agree.
I started a podcast originally called Family Proclamations—with an “s” on the end—as a tip of the cap to the Family Proclamation, but also to say: there’s no singular proclamation. There are proclamations, plural. I wanted to interview people from divorced families, queer families, adoptive families, foster families—different kinds of families, different gender identities and sexualities.
As part of that work, I started looking at children’s rights. I interviewed Adam Benforado, who wrote a terrific book on children’s rights. I started looking at child protective services and how it often functions not to protect children’s rights, but to protect the ownership rights of particular parents—often privileged parents.
I started realizing that many of the systems around us are built by structures of power that need kids to be vulnerable—needing rescue, lacking voice, needing control—so they can become little soldiers in the economy. Neurodivergence, social work frameworks, therapeutic parenting approaches, and neuroscience all converged. It’s like the trans stuff: first I heard stories and saw what was happening. Then I looked at the research, and it all lined up. It just makes sense.
Matthew Remski:
If your cosmology is based on the eternal nuclear family, I don’t actually know how that works across generations—like, are you with your two kids, or with your parents and grandparents too? Maybe that’s the hidden communalism of it: in the end, you’re all one family.
Blair Hodges:
Sorry—the Garden of Eden was in Missouri.
Matthew Remski:
Right. Okay.
What I’m trying to understand is whether that cosmology becomes an additional barrier: if your understanding of death and the afterlife includes your children, it can sound like extended ownership—ownership in perpetuity.
Blair Hodges:
I didn’t experience it that way, but I know Mormons who did.
My wife was raised by a single mom, so the nuclear-family ideal wasn’t her lived reality, even though it was preached. She was taught to pursue an ideal she didn’t have.
I hadn’t thought about it as ownership through eternity, but the language we use around kids is telling: we have “custody” of our children. Custody is used in parenting and imprisonment. The framework is ownership.
In Mormonism, you’re sealed—your kids belong to you. But I experienced that as welcome, especially as my dad was dying. I wanted to see him again and be with him again.
I’m not thinking about populating worlds with spirit babies, or any of the weeds Mormons don’t really get into. I’m more of an agnostic hoper: I hope in some way we persist, and we’re in relation to each other. I don’t know. But I hope so.
Where Mormonism took a wrong turn, in my view, is becoming so exclusivist. It went from “families can be together forever” to “families can’t be together forever unless you do what we say.” That’s a big difference.
Matthew Remski:
I wonder about the timing of parental death here. Losing a parent young creates a different kind of hole—an amputation. When my mother died four or five years ago, I’m materialist about it: not because she’s “gone,” but because her memory is in my body—in daily actions, in humor, in judgments and neurotic patterns. She soaked into my cells and disappeared as her own individuality. I don’t think I would have felt that if I’d been sixteen.
Blair Hodges:
Some stuff definitely pops up for me. Often it’s negative: “Oh, that’s just like my dad.” And I try to resist it.
When you lose a parent at that age, it hasn’t sunk into the marrow the same way. But a lot of development happens when we’re kids, so there’s residue that might not be consciously connected. I was still figuring out who I was.
Matthew Remski:
I should name the positive things too, because it connects to my next question. My mother would have hated Jordan Peterson. She had a working-class consciousness. She never forgot who was in control and who couldn’t be trusted. Those values are inside me instinctively.
And that creates a paradox: we want to preserve relationship skills—attachment, repair, not throwing each other away. We want security in family and community life. But fascism is rising, and it repudiates everything we value about relationships. Fascism is the end of persuasion; it’s pure power.
Do you feel that tension—between preserving relationship skills and learning when we need to shut fascists out?
Blair Hodges:
I want to frame it through the privilege of disengagement. Growing up white, middle class, in the majority religion in a conservative state, I didn’t have to think much about oppression or fascism. Fascism was Nazi Germany. Racism was “fixed” after Martin Luther King. That was my mindset.
I became a Democrat with Barack Obama’s candidacy. I didn’t really think about how state power does harm—especially internationally—or about failures around immigration. I still respect him, but I was in a position not to have to think much.
It’s like I lived on the ground floor of a house. The basement has been flooding, but I didn’t live down there. Now my carpet’s getting wet. The basement has always been flooding—now it’s rising to my level. I think a lot of white people are experiencing it that way.
After George Floyd’s murder and the uprisings in 2020, I realized “anti-racist” isn’t just a belief. It’s a practice. I used to think, “I’m not prejudiced, so of course I’m anti-racist.” That’s just skipping out.
History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. We’re rhyming. And now the shock is: what do I do?
As I’ve dug into anti-fascism, I’ve learned to listen to marginalized people. They’ve been having these conversations forever. There’s wisdom there—grit, tragedy, sorrow, determination. If I can listen to those experiences and amplify them, then I’m engaging in anti-fascist practice—not as a white savior, but as part of a collective movement that realizes the house is flooding. Everybody will be hurt if we don’t do something.
Matthew Remski:
Finishing up, Blair: I think one difference between us is background. You still live in Salt Lake City. You’re surrounded by Mormon community; it’s part of extended family life.
Over the years, I’ve noticed you reach across aisles. You can talk with people at different stages of that journey. That’s crucial, especially as radicalized groups fall apart and members need a hand.
Another difference: I’m probably more Marxist than you—more materialist. I think capitalism’s material conditions shape where we are. But if I talk like that all the time, it can make me inaccessible to a lot of people. You’re a more moderate, fluid communicator. Is that fair? Do you have any advice for me—as the friendly Mormon?
Blair Hodges:
It’s funny, because I feel like I’ve become more radicalized over the past five years.
But I’ll put it in Mormon terms. I’m still a member of record—I haven’t removed my name—but I stopped attending a while ago. The reason I kept attending, even though I disagreed with the church on racism, queer and trans issues, and women’s exclusion from authority, was that I still saw goodness in the community and potential for change.
I taught Sunday school. I loved teaching. I heard things at church that hurt, but I could also make comments. And in that context I had to learn how to communicate difference without burning all my social capital. I couldn’t just say, “That’s transphobic.” People would shut down. So I learned to speak in Mormon language—using Mormon scripture, Mormon reasoning, prophetic voices—to say, “God values all humans. I’m uncomfortable with how we’re talking about trans people. Whatever you believe, they’re still children of God.”
That gave me practice communicating difference in a setting where it wasn’t welcome. It goes back to the mission too: connecting on shared beliefs, then building from there.
It’s harder now. I have less patience, and less belief that some MAGA folks can be persuaded. Still, there are places where connecting in shared language can work. But it can also be used to shut marginalized people up—to tone-police: “Trans people are being too mean,” or “If they’d just be nicer and more normal…”
Matthew Remski:
If they’d be more Mormon.
Blair Hodges:
Exactly. So there’s a balance.
My advice: keep doing what you’re doing. You bring in many different voices. You don’t have to convince everybody—that’s not our job. I’m tired of policing everybody’s efforts, except reactionary centrists, who I’ll criticize at every opportunity because I think they’re the worst.
Matthew Remski:
We both have that impulse. Why? Someone like Ezra Klein really gets our goat.
Blair Hodges:
Yeah. I think part of it is we reserve our harshest feelings for what we recognize in ourselves—our past inclinations—in that behavior.
Matthew Remski:
One hundred percent. I go after toxic charismatic male figures because I understand it—and what I had to face in myself.
Blair Hodges:
I love what you’re doing. You’re reconnecting with Catholic tradition in nuanced ways. You talk across differences—even within Conspirituality—and that can’t always be easy.
And it doesn’t have to be forever for anybody. I don’t have to be everywhere all the time, and I don’t have to stay the same.
When I was still attending church, what changed was one week when I was walking out the door to teach Sunday school. My then twelve-year-old—who I understood wasn’t just queer but nonbinary—was sitting on the couch looking at me with this expression of love, but also: “Why is dad doing this?” They knew what the church taught. They knew the church opposed their existence.
And I couldn’t, for the hundredth time, explain: “This is how the church changes from within.” I think that can be true. There still need to be people there doing it, and I root for them.
But in that moment, a thought hit me: stop trying to be a hero to the church. I realized part of what I was doing was heroic self-concept.
I wanted my allegiance to my kid to be unquestionable—to not require explanation. I would stand by them wherever they are. Mormonism taught me family is everything. And if Mormonism creates places—temples, edifices—where my child isn’t allowed to go, then I’m not going either.
I hope others keep going and keep pushing for change. But it’s not going to be me. And it doesn’t have to be Blair Hodges.
Matthew Remski:
Thank you so much. It’s so great to talk with you.
Blair Hodges:
Thanks, Matthew.
Matthew Remski:
As I mentioned in Part One, there’s a section in my upcoming book about how Blair’s moment of becoming aware of trans people echoes my own experience. I want to close by reading from that section.
I didn’t know any trans people until I was well into my thirties—or at least I wasn’t aware that I did. I remember a friend posting on social media asking for financial help with the medical costs of transitioning. We hadn’t spoken about this before, and I was surprised. It was hard for me to wrap my head around at the time.
But why was that? I’ve never had strong feelings about a friend getting cosmetic surgery, changing jobs, becoming a parent, or even joining a new religion.
So what was it about my friend wanting to affirm her gender with medication and surgery that felt so different?
The only answer I have is that her desire to no longer live and be seen as a man made me question what being a man meant to me. What did it mean if this was a state of being that could change? Was this part of my life—which I’d never questioned—suddenly a zone of uncertainty?
For the week after my friend posted, I wandered around the city in a daze. I began to see what feminist philosopher Judith Butler calls gender performativity: the process by which humans, cued by culture, assemble gendered appearance and act it out in relation to each other.
Every day on the subway I looked at people and realized that, if I was honest, I couldn’t know for sure who was a man and who was a woman. But I’d spent my life assuming that I could. Based on that assumption, I’d made unconscious decisions about who people must be and what they should do with their lives.
And I realized that if I wanted to “confirm” who was a man and who was a woman, I would have to inspect their bodies—and make a decision about their genitals. How creepy is that? What business is it of mine?
Could I imagine moving through the world without caring what other people’s sex or gender was? Wouldn’t it be better to relate to everyone simply as people?
Over time, it dawned on me that trans people belong to the group that has always known gender is a performance. For a cis person like me, I’d been trained to accept the appearances and behaviors of manhood as natural, normal, and invisible.
Trans people are just people. They’re not magical unicorns here for the spiritual education of cis people. But I will say this to all you cis antifascists out there: if you can recognize that transness is part of the human family, your understanding of how gender expectations have both privileged and harmed you will expand. And that puts you in the mindset of smashing the fascist demand that men and women be frozen into opposing roles so that inequality can fester.
It will encourage you to stand up for trans people—a minority among us who deserve life, respect, and freedom, just like everyone else.
Take care of each other, everyone.
