'I'm proud to be gay

Mariah Brown’s Realitystar Parents Are Mormon Polygamists. But When She Came Out, They Responded With Unconditional Love.

- Emily Strohm

By starring in Sister Wives,TLC’s show about funda-mentalist Mormon polyg-amists, the Brown family became famous not just for its unconventional relationships but for its adherence to strict religious beliefs. So when Mariah Brown asked all five of her parents—her father, Kody, her biological mother, Meri, and her mothers through polygamy, Janelle, Christine and Robyn—if she could talk with them about something deeply personal, the group feared what would come next. “I wondered if she was going to drop out of school and move to Europe,” Kody recalls. Janelle, his second wife, was even more worried. “My head was racing,” she says. “I was terrified something was really wrong and she was sick.” Instead, the Westminster College senior stunned everyone by announcing she was a lesbian. “I remember thinking right before I told them, ‘If I don’t spit it out now, I’m not going to be able to,’” says Mariah. “Like when you go cliff jumping: ‘If I don’t jump now, I’m not going to jump at all.’ It was one of those things, and I just blurted it out.”