Romney’s Gay America Dissects Mormon Religion Related to Gay Rights Under Romney Presidency

Mormon Temple/Temples

Michelle Beaver, a journalist and associate professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, released an e-book in July that debuted at No. 1 on Amazon’s list of gay-and-lesbian nonfiction. The book is called, Romney’s Gay America: Mormon Leaders, Same-Sex Rights – Bridging the Gap.

Romney’s Gay America predicts what a Mitt Romney presidency would mean for gay rights, offers solutions for how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints could better deal with homosexuality and advises that non-Mormons should accept Mormons.

The book is based on a two-day series Michelle Beaver wrote last year for 12 San Francisco Bay Area newspapers, including The Oakland Tribune and The San Jose Mercury News. Bay Area News Group, which ran the series, is America’s fifth-largest market. The newspaper series covered Proposition 8, gay Mormons in the San Francisco Bay Area and the LDS Church’s relationship with homosexuality.

Beaver started covering the Mormon church’s relationship with homosexuality in 2002 through an in-depth article that won a first-place national award for in-depth reporting in 2003 from the Scripps Howard Foundation. Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, and moderator of Washington Week, called the article “impressive,” and said Michelle Beaver has the best traits of a great journalist including “curiosity, tenacity, and a desire to shed light on under-covered issues.”

In that 2002 article, Michelle Beaver broke a story about how torturous experiments were conducted on gay Mormons at Brigham Young University in the 1970s. She covers this topic in depth in her book and offers solutions for how Mormons can heal this dark past.