Laurie Lee Hall is an American architect, author, and transgender woman whose professional life was closely interwoven with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Raised in New England, she studied architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before spending roughly a decade practicing in New York. In 1996, she moved with her family to Utah to work for the Church, eventually becoming its chief architect and overseeing the design and construction of temples around the world. Alongside her career, Laurie served in several Church leadership roles, including bishop and stake president, all while quietly wrestling with a gender identity she had carried since childhood.
In 2011, while still serving as stake president, Laurie began studying gender identity in earnest and started
coming to terms with who she was. Her transition eventually cost her a career she had built over decades and,
in 2017, her Church membership through excommunication. She has since become deeply involved with Affirmation:
LGBTQ Mormons, Families & Friends, receiving its Paul Mortensen Award in 2023 as its first transgender
recipient. Her memoir,
Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman, was published by Signature Books in November 2024. Laurie continues to practice architecture, write, and speak
publicly, and lives in Kentucky with her partner, Nancy Beaman, and their combined family of nine children and
twenty-four grandchildren. It is my great pleasure to welcome her to The Heroines of My Life.
Monika: Laurie Lee, welcome to The Heroines of My Life, and thank you for agreeing to share your story. Being a
grandmother to twenty-four grandchildren must be quite an adventure, especially when you have to remember all
those birthdays and somehow find the right presents for everyone at Christmas!
Laurie Lee: Thank you, Monika, for this opportunity to share. Nancy is truly the best gift-giver, which makes all the
difference. It's been very important over the years to find ways to be present in their lives. That's been a
challenge, too, since they live all over the country, including Utah, Florida, and California, as well as here
in Kentucky.
Monika: You discovered your artistic abilities when you were young, at a time when your understanding of your
gender was still unsettled. What was it about drawing and creating things that made art such an important part
of your life?
Laurie Lee: Drawing, creating, and taking things apart to learn how they fit together came as naturally to me as
being left-handed or having freckles. By the time I was a teenager, I wasn't athletic or very social. My artwork
became not only my outlet for expression but also a place where I found acceptance and praise. It became my
identity, one I could lean into.
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"Whatever you decide to do, you're
going to be doing it for a long time." |
Monika: You eventually chose architecture as your profession. Do you remember the moment when you thought,
"This is what I want to do with my life," and what attracted you to architecture rather than another creative
field?
Laurie Lee: It happened relatively early on, when I was fourteen. I felt deeply drawn to the study and design of
buildings, and though I hadn't met an architect until I reached university, I somehow knew I wanted to be one.
My dad once shared a piece of wisdom with me, saying, "Whatever you decide to do, you're going to be doing it for
a long time, so do something you really enjoy."
Monika: You studied architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, then spent about a decade practicing in
New York before moving to Utah. What did those early years teach you about yourself as a professional?
Laurie Lee: As a youth, I always saw creativity as a very personal thing I did by myself. At Rensselaer, and during
my early internship in Albany, I realized the power of creative collaboration, working with and even leading
creative teams.
Monika: Your path into Mormonism began when another student gave you a Book of Mormon. What did you find in
that book and in the LDS community that made you decide to convert?
Laurie Lee: That all happened at a time when I had decided I could never live as a young woman and was searching for
how I needed to live as an adult. Beyond the spiritual connection the Church offered, which had been absent in
my early years, Mormonism offered a very clearly defined path to becoming a successful young man, eventually a
priesthood leader, husband, and father, the whole patriarchal thing. I threw myself into that with determination
and rigor.
Monika: You later served a mission in Buenos Aires. What do you remember most vividly about that period, and
did living in another culture change the way you understood yourself or your faith?
Laurie Lee: Before my mission service, I hadn't traveled beyond the American Northeast and had lived only in a small
town. Buenos Aires, by contrast, was a vast, stimulating, culturally rich city. Learning to communicate in
Spanish broke me out of my shell and gave me confidence in public speaking and presenting, skills I used
throughout my life. In
Dictates of Conscience
, I describe how I came to design and build a portable public exhibition to reach crowds all at once. That
process foreshadowed much of what I later did for the Church throughout my career.
Monika: You eventually became a bishop and then a stake president. What qualities do you think made people
trust you with those responsibilities?
Laurie Lee: For those who called me to serve in those positions, I think they saw a young man who worked hard and
was driven to excel, someone who was very much "on script" in the Mormon way. That was exactly who I was trying
so hard to be.
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"Looking back, I was an undercover
agent for women fighting the patriarchy." |
Laurie Lee: Deciding, before I left for Rensselaer in 1979, that I would never be able to live as a young woman was
a clear, conscious choice, a life commitment made at a young age. Over the years, though, I realized I could not
extinguish the yearning to feel feminine. The conflict became a classic good-versus-evil scenario, especially in
the context of my life in the LDS Church: secret forays into female expression, followed by crushing guilt over
my sin, then sincere repentance and a deepened commitment to the Church's straight and narrow path.
Monika: You described Mormonism as giving you a clear script for how to live as a man. Looking back, what
parts of that script genuinely suited you, and which parts became increasingly difficult to maintain?
Laurie Lee: You often hear stories of trans women who, earlier in their lives, immersed themselves in very
"masculine" roles, such as the military. In my case, the Church was a similar outlet. Church leadership became a
context where it was easy for me to appear as a successful man. Within those roles, though, I discovered deeply
satisfying ways to serve as a compassionate listener, to raise up women's voices and causes, and to channel my
energy into supporting women's roles in the day-to-day work of the Church, far more than other male leaders
typically do. Looking back, I was an undercover agent for women fighting the patriarchy.
In my memoir, I describe how I silently ignored specific leadership directives to promote the Church's stance on
California's 2008 Proposition 8. I could not use my voice to amplify that kind of discrimination. In those
priesthood roles, I also refused to take on the responsibility of administering what the Church calls "church
discipline." I would strive to guide people toward change, but I was deeply uncomfortable with punitive
measures. Ironically, the Church was ultimately punitive toward me.
Monika: Your professional career eventually brought you to the Church's headquarters, where you became its
chief architect and worked on temples. What did it mean, on a practical level, to be responsible for
designing and constructing some of the Church's most important buildings?
Laurie Lee: Back when we were Mormon architecture students at Rensselaer, we mused, "Wouldn't it be amazing to
someday design a temple?" Twenty-five years later, I wasn't only doing that; I was leading the entire process.
It perfectly blended the two identities I had devoted my life to: being Mormon and practicing architecture. I
often said it was my dream job, the pinnacle of my aspirations.
Monika: You have worked on many temples, but the Paris temple complex has a particularly interesting story
involving a difficult site and complicated local regulations. You have described the solution appearing in
your mind before you translated it into a plan. How does that kind of sudden architectural insight work for
you?
Laurie Lee: In a letter of reference from an architecture professor at Rensselaer, I was described as "intuitively
knowing how to proceed" with a design solution. It's a gift that was recognized in me early on, one I knew was
there and needed to be developed with attentiveness. Its source is beyond me, I acknowledge that. It makes me
better than I would ever be on my own. I know that when I'm still and open, it comes. Bob Dylan once described
his early songwriting as verses that magically flowed into him, with the songs "exiting out there by themselves"
and waiting for someone to write them down.
Monika: Your memoir is titled
Dictates of Conscience. Why did that phrase become the right title for your story?
Laurie Lee: The phrase, within Mormonism, comes from a foundational tenet, Article of Faith 11: "We claim the
privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience." During my Church
disciplinary council, when my privilege to worship within the LDS Church was being challenged, I turned this
phrase back on my accusers, adding that my conscience and spiritual witness affirmed that I am female and that
I asked only to worship God accordingly. I was excommunicated. In the end, freed from Mormonism's dogma, I was
able to do just that. As a memoir title, we decided it was a powerful declaration of living my authentic
identity with deep personal conviction, a serious title for a serious subject, rooted in my culture.
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"A serious title for a serious
subject, rooted in my culture." |
Monika: In 2011, while you were still serving as a stake president, you began researching gender identity
more seriously. What was the first piece of information you encountered that made you think, "This might
actually explain me"?
Laurie Lee: Early on, I encountered personal stories by Melanie Anne Phillips and, especially, Jennifer Finney
Boylan. I was enthralled to realize I wasn't the only person assigned male at birth who could live as a woman.
Monika: Your transition ultimately meant leaving a professional position you had spent years building and
losing your membership in the Church. Was there a particular moment when you realized you could no longer
preserve both your established life and your identity as Laurie?
Laurie Lee: I had been on probation at work for four full years before I could no longer maintain the pretense of
presenting as male. Church leaders who governed my employment had forbidden me from engaging in any activity
related to my transgender identity, or I would be fired on the spot. I also knew the Church's policies at the
time regarding transgender members well. It was clear the day would come when the conflict would reach its
climax. I hoped that, because of my former leadership roles and especially my ongoing proximity to senior Church
leaders at work, I might be best positioned to persuade Church leaders to reconsider their opposition to members
who transition away from their sex assigned at birth. Unfortunately, that was not the case, and in the ten years
since, they have only doubled down on their opposition to transgender Church members.
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