Laurie Lee Hall

LAURIE LEE HALL was raised in New England and trained in architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her career included managing design and construction programs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as its chief architect. She simultaneously served in several ecclesiastical leadership capacities until her church excommunicated her following her gender transition. Since then, she has served on the executive committee of Affirmation: LGBTQ Mormons, Families & Friends. In 2023, she became the first transgender recipient of Affirmation’s Paul Mortensen Award for leadership within the LGBTQ/Mormon-adjacent community. She and her partner, Nancy Beaman, live in Kentucky and have nine children and twenty-four grandchildren.

Eternal Identity Misunderstood: A TransgenderWoman’s Journey Through Faith, Revelation, and LDS Policy

Articles/Essays – Volume 59, No. 1

For much of my life, I tried to be the man everyone expected me to be—faithful, successful, and called by God to lead—but inside, I struggled with gender dysphoria. My journey toward self-acceptance, detailed in my memoir Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman (Signature Books, 2024), led me to transition while serving as a stake president and working as a church architect.