POST-MORMON STORIES

Why I Relate to Tyler Glenn’s “Trash”

Yes, the controversial music video defaces sacred LDS symbols, but in doing so it brings to visceral life the nightmare journey of the apostate.

This essay was written in 2016.

Tyler Glenn confronts Joseph Smith and his insane aesthetician posse in a still from “Trash.”

Watching Tyler Glenn’s video for his new solo single, “Trash,” the anger is palpable and inescapable. But it also brims with pain and grief.

“Trash” exploded across the online Mormon world last week, causing the faithful to recoil and apostates to jump up and down in a fever. Glenn is the lead singer of Provo’s Neon Trees. A lifelong member of the LDS Church, he made headlines two years ago by coming out as gay in the pages of Rolling Stone. He still believed, though — until six months ago, that is, when the church issued draconian new guidelines for the ecclesiastical treatment of children of same-sex couples.

Now comes “Trash,” a video in which Tyler Glenn drinks liquor from the bottle, spits on a defaced portrait of Joseph Smith, enacts all four of the secret handshakes from the temple endowment ceremony, draws a red X on his face, and ultimately crumples amidst a blizzard of printed pages possibly meant to represent Mormon scripture.