The age of the Mormon wife is near. In 2025, it seems Utah’s primary export will be traditional female roles, as embodied in the carefully prepared, carefully managed, yet strategically intimate realms of social media and reality TV. While the number of Mormons in this sector has been large since the rise of “mom blogs” in the early 2000s, the trend accelerated with the explosion of visually-oriented platforms like Instagram and then TikTok. Today, Utah homesteader and mother of eight, Hannah Neeleman, whose social media fame is Ballerina Farm, has a lifestyle brand, 60 staff and more than 20 million followers. courtesy of Hulu The Secret Lives of Mormon Wivesa reality show chronicling the fallout from a “soft swing” scandal involving a group of attractive young LDS mothers on TikTok, became an instant hit when it premiered last year. The cast has published memoirs and competed Dancing With the Stars; Taylor’s breakthrough Frankie Paul would be next Bachelor.
But before the series returns, on Thursday, for its third season in just 14 months, Heather Gay has something to add to the discourse. Like anyone who’s ever watched it on Bravo’s Real Housewives of Salt Lake City or read his memoirs Bad Mormons And Good Time Girl know, Gay left the LDS Church after the dissolution of her traditional Mormon marriage and has since become one of its most vocal critics. His three-part documentary series is cleverly timed Surviving Mormonism With Heather Gaywhich is now streaming in full on Peacock, is not a direct attack on the merchant influencers who appear in the montage that introduces the first episode. What Gay objected to was their subtle content, which he described as “intoxicating,” serving as propaganda for a church whose hierarchy, Gay argued, had many dark secrets to hide. Only slightly damaged by RHOSLCits silliness and reality star persona, the series’ emotional interviews with alleged victims of homophobia and child sexual abuse effectively reveal what remains untold about the Mormon wife mania.
The essence of each Surviving Mormonism this episode is an in-depth conversation with someone who feels—and can cite a lot of evidence—that the LDS Church failed them. The first was David Matheson, once a supporter and practitioner of gay conversion therapy, who, after decades of fighting against homosexuality in accordance with religious authorities, ended his marriage to a woman, rejected Mormonism, and came out of the closet. “I was overwhelmed with the arrogance” required to assert that sexual orientation was a treatable affliction, Matheson said, watching himself in an old recruiting video. He and Gay exposed the pseudo-psychology underlying the conversion programs promoted by the Church. “The belief is that gay men have no sense of their own power,” he explains. Matheson also echoes the perspective contained in the series, explaining why so many Mormons choose to remain in communities where they are marginalized or worse, rather than start a new life in the secular world: “When you’re raised Mormon, there’s no future outside of Mormonism. That’s everything.”
Matheson’s mix of hatred of the Mormon establishment and guilt about how many men he faked therapy for makes him a fascinating subject. Gay’s other interviews are more heartbreaking. Ben, the husband of her friend Shane, told a harrowing story of alleged sexual abuse by a male member of his neighborhood that began when he was just four years old. A pair of sisters, Jennie and Lizzy, can’t even remember when their now-imprisoned father was abused. In both cases, survivors say they dutifully reported these horrors to Mormon leaders, but the leaders allegedly not only failed to notify authorities, but also appeared to attempt to protect the interests of the Church and those accused. (The sisters sued the Church over its handling of their allegations and ultimately settled the case.) Ben’s alleged abuser was not excommunicated until 2019, following lawsuits from other alleged victims that were settled.
Surviving Mormonism struggles a bit to expand his case beyond this infuriating case study, which was of course chosen in part because it had an extensive document trail (Gay has run afoul of Church lawyers before). Video chats and letters from current and former Mormons who have contacted Gay show that stories like those of Matheson, Ben, and Jennie and Lizzy may be extreme, but not anomalous. But each is so quick that it feels more like a box-checking quote than a humanizing profile. Segments on the history of the Church, its beliefs, and the tithing system that has put hundreds of billions of dollars into the hands of LDS leaders are also brief, as if to avoid boring viewers who are stuck after watching the SLC Housewives screaming at each other on a cruise ship previously Below Deck crossover episode.
It is Gay’s presence that is most instrumental in integrating the subject’s stories into the larger picture of a suffocating religious culture. We see him identify their fears, fueled by Mormon doctrine as well as community pressure, about leaving the Church. He reflects on his teenage years, remembering how he convinced himself that unwanted sexual attention from a bishop and a family friend was not, in fact, scary. RHOSLCThe most frequently heard voice of reason (although, considering who his colleagues are, that’s not saying much), Gay exudes the kind of warmth, empathy, and self-deprecating humor that are the basis of daytime talk show careers. The baffling choice to film her monologue about Mormonism while driving feels like a contrivance to remove her from the plush interiors that are Bravolebrities’ natural habitat. However, the sincerity of his struggle is also visible. Surviving Mormonism is not just a brand extension exercise.
Is there still cognitive dissonance inherent in the series? Of course. RHOSLC not exactly Mormon Wifewith depictions of 20-something mothers drinking dirty sodas, sending pictures of their own tradwives, sorting themselves into devout “saints” and irreverent “sinners,” and confronting sexism in their romantic relationships with determined business moms. For its part, Housewife does not sugarcoat Gay’s run-ins with the Mormon Church and subsequent estrangement from some friends and family members, nor the painful ostracism of teammate and cousin Whitney Rose. But it also perpetuates a more permissive image of Mormonism, from “Mormon 2.0” Lisa Barlow—who sees no conflict between owning a tequila brand and sending her son on a mission—to Britani Bateman, a twice-divorced mother in an on-again, off-again relationship with an Osmond whose attitudes toward drinking alcohol seem to change depending on who’s around.
All this Mormon pop culture has helped create the impression of a religion comparable to, say, Catholicism, with adherents ranging from orthodox to casual and a history of covering up abuse that has tarnished its founding without fundamentally discrediting its belief system. Gay wanted to go further; the stated inspiration for the series is Leah Remini’s Scientology and Its Impact. Surviving Mormonism may have failed to expose its targets as a cult, but it certainly served as a counterweight to the camera-ready momfluencers who provided free publicity to the Church. “What’s strange about Mormonism,” says Matheson, in an observation that effectively sums up the case the show manages to make, “is this: It’s the cruelest and kindest culture.”
