Review
Title: Without the Mask: Coming out and Coming into God’s Light
Author: Charlie Bird
Publisher: Deseret Book
Genre: Biography
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 166
Binding: Paper
ISBN: 978-1-62972-784-4
Price: $15.99
Reviewed by D Christian Harrison for the Association for Mormon Letters
As an out gay man who is also a faithful member of the Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints, I’ve seen scores—hundreds, even—of coming-out stories from queer members of the Church. Most leave the closet and then leave the Church. Some leave the Church and then leave the closet. A few leave the closet then stick around. And of these very few, an astonishing number of them write books, are written up in magazine articles, or are interviewed for podcast episodes.
They are our faith’s black swans.
Charlie Bird is one such black swan—and he’s the author of Without the Mask: Coming out and Coming into God’s Light (Deseret Book, 2020). It’s a thin tome—a scant 166 pages—but it’s already getting all sorts of attention. This is thanks, no doubt, to Deseret Book’s position at the top of the Mormon publishing food chain… and to Bird’s fame as Brigham Young University’s dancing Cosmo—whose on-the-field antics (and countless hours of off-the-field practice) won him the love of fans and begrudging admiration of not a few of BYU’s detractors. Bird’s Cosmo was the Cosmo-est and a mascot among mascots—prompting ESPN to declare the 2017/18 athletic season the “Year of the Mascot!”.
And it’s clear from reading Without a Mask that Charlie put the same amount of energy into writing his book as he does pretty much everything in his life—110%.
But is energy enough?
I must admit that when I was asked to review the book, I was ready/prepared/expecting to hate it. And can you blame me? Those innumerable books, magazine articles, and podcast episodes by the gays-who-stayed were/are—almost without exception—weaponized by desperate Mormons grasping at anything to keep their precious child (or cousin, or ward member) in the fold… no matter the cost to their loved one. You get enough of these unsolicited, shrapnel-filled love bombs… and you could practically write one yourself with the sentence fragments lodged in your heart, soul, and left buttock. After a while, you get to know the schtick… and the schtick hurts.
So before I cracked the book, before I dared ease open its pages… I had to ask myself: what’s the most I could hope for? What is the best that Deseret Book and their avatar du jour—what is the best they could deliver? And with the answer in mind, I began to read—judging the book not just by its cover but by its very specific potential. This book wouldn’t—couldn’t—be an angst-filled screed or a tawdry tell-all. So I couldn’t judge it by a laundry list of could-haves or should-haves. In the end, I realized that the best I could hope for was an earnest, albeit sanitized, story told well.
While Charlie Bird’s story is his alone, it can’t but help sound like so many others. Not because Charlie lacks the ability to tell a story—he’s an able storyteller—or that he’s disingenuous—he’s disarmingly ingenuous—but because there are only so many ways to say “I felt utterly alone”, “I feared what others would think of me… what others would do to me”, or “I feared how this would affect my family”… only so many ways to deliver the essential—but invariably ignored—boilerplate that “this is my story, it’s not a prescription for how others should live”.
So does Charlie bring anything more to the table?
Yes, he does.
It starts with his audience: Charlie is writing to fourteen-year-old Charlie—confused, scared, and self-loathing—and eighteen-year-old Charlie—defeated, broken, and alone. And then he holds a well-polished mirror up to them and urges them to be true to their best selves and to see themselves as their Heavenly Parents see them. He speaks candidly of his fears and also of his epiphanies… of his self-doubt and also his self-love. But Charlie’s earnestness is only possible to the extent that his story doesn’t rub up against his publisher’s brand/agenda. There are simply topics you won’t see breached in something published by Deseret Book. But Bird’s clever writing and his very specific audience allow him to remain authentic while almost entirely avoiding publisher-piquing topics. How? Because if your audience is 14–18-year-old Mormon boys, then you can get away with completely side-stepping the topics that Charlie, himself, is no doubt wrestling with now: dating, sex, celibacy, and on-going affiliation with the Church (to name a few)—you know: grownup stuff.
So we have an earnest, albeit sanitized, story told well. But then Charlie takes it further. And to do this, he uses a little sleight of hand… because while he’s speaking directly to his teenage self and those who now stand where he once stood, he is also speaking to all the adults in the room. And he gives them both the tools they need to weather the storm—a storm we all must weather as we wait for the Church to rightfully embrace the full spectrum of Godly love. For the adults in the room, his stories model, from various perspectives, how to love their own Charlies, and how to do so on their Charlie’s terms. And to all the young Charlies, he lays out an interpretation of Mormon theology that in no uncertain terms tells them that they are beloved of their Heavenly Parents. And that this love is not in spite of their queerness… but that it will manifest more clearly to them as they embrace their own queerness and the full measure of their creation (Chapter 2: Jesus Made Flowers is an absolute gem). And here is the beauty of Charlie Bird’s approach: the well-adjusted, self-loving queer kids of today will be the queer adults who will usher in the Church’s awakening—because they live to see adulthood, because they understand their true value in the eyes of their Heavenly Parents, and because they have seen the Restored Gospel used as true balm in Gilead.