Humorist Eli McCann and his husband discuss the laughs and love they find in LDS culture | Episode 428

Faithful Salt Lake Tribune readers know Eli McCann well. He’s the award-winning columnist who has them cracking up about coming out as a coffee drinker one minute and tearing up about the Latter-day Saint youth group in the western Pacific who won his heart the next.

Now his monthly humor columns have been compiled into one bright, breezy book. Titled “We’re Thankful for the Moisture: A Gay Guy’s Guide to Mormon Faith, Family, and Fruit Preservation.”

It’s a valentine of sorts to Latter-day Saint culture, containing classics like his first date with his future, non-Mormon husband at, of all places, the Kirtland Temple; his adventures — and misadventures — in the kitchen after unearthing a missionary cookbook; and the awkward — but somehow appropriate — chuckles he shared with a bishop when he signed his resignation letter from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

A practicing attorney, Eli lives is Salt Lake City with his husband, physician Skylar Westerdahl, their toddler son, West, and, as Eli puts it, “two naughty (yet worshipped) dogs.”

On this week’s show, Eli and Skylar talk about his writings, their life and why Eli still finds laughter and love in the religious culture that bred him.