Queer Places
Warm Springs Plunge, 840 N 300 W, Salt Lake City, UT 84103
Jack Pembroke (October 24, 1913 - September 26, 2000) was a Gay close relative, first cousin twice removed, of Mormon Church President Spencer W. Kimball through his mother Afton Kimball. His father was Adrian Bennick Pembroke. He began cruising the Wasatch Baths for homosexual encounters in the 1920s and told in an interview in 1988 that he had met a man in the 1920s who had been cruising for sex there at the baths since the 1890's.
During the early part of the twentieth century, as Mormonism slowly but steadily grew, problematic issues surrounding isolationism versus universalism arose. Confrontation with homosexuality (which was itself becoming more and more publicized) and what to do with "out" homosexuals was inevitable. For example, in 1945, as reported by D. Michael Quinn, church leaders realized that there were quite a number of Mormon homosexuals who were meeting for sex at the Deseret Gym in downtown Salt Lake. "Cruising for sex" had been going on there since at least 1930. Homosexual activities were constantly occuring in the showers and steam room at the Deseret Gymnasium in Salt Lake throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Several members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, one Tabernacle organist, and at least two General Authorities were participants in the sexual activies there. Quinn claims that First Presidency member, J. Reuben Clark, asked former Bishop Gordon Burt Affleck "to organize a surveillance for possible homosexuals in the steam room of the church-owned Deseret Gymnasium."
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