SPENCER W. CLARK is the current Executive Director of Mormons for Marriage Equality and a straight, married father of two adorable children.
Though no stranger to LGBT issues or political activism, he was galvanized to speak out more strongly in favor of civil marriage equality while watching Proposition 8 unfold from afar in 2008. Feeling the necessity to counter the perception that Mormons were universally opposed to equality and fairness for gays and their families, he has in the ensuing years contributed to the successful same-sex marriage legalization efforts in two places where he lived: Washington, DC (2009) and Maryland (2012).
Spencer was raised in the LDS Church and named after the prophet when he was born: President Kimball. He served in the France Paris Mission and is currently a counselor in the Elders Quorum Presidency of the only French-speaking Branch in the United States. He has also served as an ordinance worker in the Washington DC Temple since 2008.
Growing up in a musical family, he started his amateur choral career early as a boy soprano in the ward choir until one day in the middle of rehearsal he got up and walked back a row to the tenor section. He’s been there ever since. Particularly through various choirs and high school theatre he has come to know a great many gay individuals, and chose to room with one in college. He was tapped to lead the choir at the first Washington, DC Circling the Wagons Conference in April 2012, where he met Randall Thacker, Mitch Mayne, Carol Lynn Pearson and many other LGBT Mormons and allies.
Spencer has an M.A. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University and a B.S. in Political Science from Northeastern University. By day, he is a public servant, and was featured on the front page of the Washington Post in 2010 as the poster child for a rising generation of young, innovative Federal employees. He has been fascinated since his early teens with the impact that public policies have on society, which helped lay the groundwork for his education, career and recent activism for LGBT civil rights.