Lester Leavitt, his wife Barbara Leavitt and Lester’s partner Mickey Rowe will attend a protest together in front of the headquarters of Evergreen, a Mormon ex-gay organization in Salt Lake City. (Photo by Phil LaPadula)
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By PHIL LAPADULA
Friday, July 06, 2007
Lester and Barbara Leavitt have been married 26 years. They tied the knot in a Mormon temple in 1981. Both of them knew that something was missing in their relationship from the beginning.
“I knew that there was something he wasn’t sharing with me,” Barbara said. “I did everything to be the sexiest wife in the world, but it never made any difference.”
She thought the lack of passionate feeling she sensed during their love making was “just because he was a Mormon.”
Lester, who now lives in Fort Lauderdale, said he believed what his church had told him about marriage — that “the feelings would come once I was married.”
But they never did.
Despite it all, the couple have four children, ages 25, 23, 19 and 17. Lester was never unfaithful to his wife “until she released me from my wedding vows,” he said. Growing up in a Mormon family, Lester never acquired a taste for alcohol and doesn’t drink to this day. But despite living the clean life, running a successful business and raising a family, Lester finally concluded that he couldn’t “pray the gay away.”
In October 2004, Lester came out to Barbara, telling her that he had same-sex attraction.
“I thought I was going to get over it, and we would save our marriage,” he said. “Neither one of us was willing to throw it away without a fight.”
Lester wrote a memoir titled “Forbidden Friends,” in which he talked about how he avoided male friendships because of his fear of same-sex attraction.
“I always wondered why I had girlfriends and he didn’t have any male friends,” Barbara said.
Barbara sent a letter to her Mormon friends explaining that Lester had come out but that she still supported and loved him. A couple of them were supportive and understanding, but she said most were not.
“They told me I was off my rocker and apostate,” she said. “They told me to divorce my husband because he was evil and to keep the children away from him.”
Both Barbara and Lester were stunned by the reactions of some of the people they thought were their friends.
“I had never been unfaithful to her, and they still told her to dump me because I was gay,” Lester said.
In January of this year, the couple separated.
“I realized he will never love me the way I deserve to be loved and want to be loved,” Barbara said.
It was actually Barbara who persuaded Lester to start dating guys.
“She set me up on my first gay date,” he said.
New to the gay scene at age 47, Lester is a Latter-day gay in more ways than one. The couple have decided to divorce but remain close friends.
Barbara will be by Lester’s side July 10 when he leads a protest in front of the headquarters of the so-called “ex-gay” Mormon organization Evergreen in Salt Lake City.
“We want to highlight their part in the many gay Mormons who commit suicide,” Lester said. “When they aren’t cured of homosexuality, they kill themselves.”
Since the 1970s, the gay Mormon group Affirmation has documented 36 cases of Mormons who committed suicide because they were gay.
“At the very least, these ex-gay ministries need to build a parachute into their programs so that those who opt out or fail in their efforts to change can have a soft landing,” Lester said. “I really don’t care what mechanism they use for this parachute, but it has to be affirming of a viable authentic lifestyle, which means that it cannot imply that gay people will be social outcasts if they happen to fall in love with someone of the same sex.”
Barbara pointed out that the ex-gay groups are not only psychologically harmful to gay people but to the straight spouses who become partnered with ex-gay clients.
“It bothers me that these ex-gay people want people like me to marry a gay guy,” Barbara said. “If I had known he was gay, I never would have married him.”
Lester told about the case of one young Mormon boy, Kip Eliason, because he felt guilty over masturbation.
Barbara said the Mormons teach “not to let your children touch themselves.” She said in the Sunday school classes, they were taught “if you were gay or lesbian you would go straight to hell, and if you supported gays and lesbians you would go straight to hell.”
Lester grew up in Cardston, Alberta, Canada. His grandfather had three wives and 26 children.
“I was related to 65 of the 120 kids in my graduating class,” he said.
Barbara was born an Anglican but joined the Mormon church when she was 18.
“I had read about the Osmonds in a teen magazine,” Barbara said. “It seemed like such a loving family. I was attracted to the love and kindness of the Osmond image.”
She said there was a lack of affection and verbal violence in her own family.
She met Lester while he was attending the University of Alberta. They met at a Mormon youth group party. After college, Lester served a two-year mission in Uruguay that involved trying to convert people to Mormonism. He was educated as a CPA and had his own accounting practice for 18 years. The couple then ran their own window-washing and pressure-washing business, which involved rescuing failing franchises. The couple moved to Houston in 2001 and to Naples, Fla., in 2004. Lester is now involved with the Sunshine Cathedral in Fort Lauderdale.
After Lester came out, the couple’s sex life improved for a while “because we both exposed vulnerabilities.” But there was still no emotional attachment, he said.
Despite everything, it’s clear that there is still a lot of love between these two people, albeit not sexual love. Lester proudly exhibits Barbara’s artwork. He reads a poem that he dedicated to her titled “Shorelines”: “I am the ocean. Free within the boundaries that define me. She is the land. Prohibited by nature to ever share my space.”
Lester met his partner, Mickey Rowe, 51, in April at the online site SilverDaddies.com.
Rowe’s first partner was also divorced.
“A lot of people saw me as having too much baggage, but he didn’t,” Lester said. “He told me, ‘I don’t want to replace your wife; I want to come in and be part of the family you have,’” Lester said.
Rowe is now good friends with Barbara as well. Lester is happy with that because “I want to keep the mother of my children in my life,” he said.
Barbara concedes that she has experienced a range of emotions: “anger, love sadness, grief, happiness.”
“All of these are good emotions because they have helped me grow and become a better person,” she said. “By acknowledging these emotions and working through them, I have been able to move forward with faith. As we all continue to support and love each other, good will come.”
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