Description

At the Sunstone Symposium 40 years ago, some 1,500 people gave Carol Lynn Pearson a standing ovation after she gave the keynote address about her new book, Goodbye, I Love You. The bestselling memoir—about her marriage to a gay man, their family and eventual divorce, and her caring for him in her home until his death after he contracted AIDS—changed the way Americans viewed the gay community and the AIDS crisis. Twenty years later, Pearson wrote the play, Facing East, about a Mormon couple grappling with the suicide of their gay son. Plan-B Theatre’s world premiere ran in Salt Lake, San Francisco, and off-Broadway, and the play has received 17 other productions in the US and Mexico. In this session, four panelists who witnessed and experienced the effect of these powerful works reflect on their life-saving and life-changing influence. Pearson was not able to travel to Sunstone, but recent recordings of her thoughts on these works will also be shared.

Until his retirement in 2022, Bob Rees was Visiting Professor and Director of Latter-day Saint Studies at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He has also taught at UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Berkeley. Bob’s most recent publications are: Imagining and Reimagining the Restoration(2025) and Making Space for Mormon Thought ad Culture: The Enduring Influence of Eugene England (2025). Currently he is co-editing a collection of essays titled “Pillars of My Faith” and a collection of poems about Joseph Smith. He is also the co-founder of two non-profits—The Bountiful Children’s Foundation and FastForward for the Planet.

Connell O’Donovan is on the board of the Mildred Berryman Institute for LGBTIQ2S+ Utah History, and has known Carol Lynn Pearson since 1987. After devouring Goodbye I Love You in a couple of days, he cold-called her from Salt Lake, suicidal and pleading for help. They have remained beloved friends ever since, have broken bread together in her home, and even met with a General Authority together in the aftermath of California’s anti-Gay Prop 8. Connell has often said that Goodbye, I Love You is the single most important event in the history of homosexuality and Mormonism

Jerry Rapier has served as artistic director of Plan-B Theatre since 2000. He is the first person of color to lead a professional arts organization in Utah history and has directed more than forty productions for the company. The greatest honor of his professional life was developing and directing the original production of Carol Lynn Pearson’s Facing East. He and Plan-B Theatre are reviving the play this fall to commemorate its 20th anniversary.

Barbara Jones Brown is the director of Signature Books, the publisher of The Diaries of Carol Lynn Pearson. Barbara credits Goodbye, I Love You, which she read as a teenager, as the first influence that led to her becoming an LGBTQ+ ally. The book also had a profound effect on Barbara in another way—after reading it she wrote in her 1987 diary that she wanted to pursue her dream to become a writer like Carol Lynn Pearson. That teenaged girl would have been astonished to know that some 40 years later, she would be privileged to work with Pearson to publish her diaries.