Masculinizing Mormon Patriarchs: A. Dean Byrd and Reparative Therapy with Latter-day Saint Men

Abstract This article analyzes how A. Dean Byrd, an assistant commissioner of LDS Social Services, advanced reparative therapy for Latter-day Saint (LDS) men at the turn of the twenty-first century. Byrd argued that Mormon men’s “unwanted same-sex attractions” stemmed from deficient gender identities that could be “repaired” by cultivating traditional masculinity. Rather than originating these ideas, he synthesized gender-essentialist themes from LDS pastoral discourse into a systematic therapeutic program grounded in the doctrine of eternal gender. Reading Byrd’s writings along the grain, this article shows how his model masculinized Mormon patriarchs while rendering women less visible as therapeutic subjects, framing conversion therapy in LDS contexts as a gendered project aimed at restoring male ecclesiastical authority. Byrd’s collaborations with Catholic and evangelical therapists through organizations such as the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality further reveal reparative therapy as a shared gender ideology that united conservative Mormons with a broader family values coalition amid a moral panic over homosexuality. Yet Byrd’s distinctly Mormon cosmology exposed the limits of conservative Christian ecumenism. Situating Byrd at the intersection of LDS soteriology, gender, and the religious right, this article illuminates how one Mormon therapist participated in and unsettled the networks shaping late twentieth-century responses to queer belonging.