Kelly Kate

American feminist, activist, human rights lawyer, and Mormon feminist who founded Ordain Women, an organization advocating for the ordination of women to the priesthood in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Kelly was excommunicated from the LDS Church in 2014. Both her parents were converts to the LDS Church, and her father at one time served as bishop of a local congregation. Kelly graduated from Brigham Young University (BYU) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 2006. Kelly earned a J.D. degree from American University Washington College of Law, she graduated cum laude in 2012. In May 2013, Kelly founded Ordain Women. Local church leaders requested Kelly to cease her campaign. Kelly subsequently demonstrated on Temple Square during the churchs April 2014 General Conference, after which she was excommunicated in June 2014 in absentia after declining to attend a disciplinary council. In January 2017, Kelly helped plan the Utah contingent of the Womens March on Washington and helped organize several hundred women to attend the march in Washington D.C. She also organized and emceed one of the largest marches in Utahs history on the State Capitol in Salt Lake City. Kelly served an 18-month LDS mission in Barcelona, Spain, and as a result is a fluent Spanish speaker. She has also lived and worked in San Jose, Costa Rica and San Cristobal de Las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. Kelly married J. Neil Ransom in the Salt Lake Temple in 2006. The couple were "childless by choice". On 14 March 2016, Kelly confirmed she and her husband had divorced. On 15 April 2019, Kelly came out as queer on Twitter. She is dating Catholic writer and theologian, Jamie Manson, who she initially met at a womens ordination conference in 2015. Kelly no longer claims religious affiliation with any particular denomination, and in 2018 she founded her own feminist/womanist interreligious and inclusive celebration of women and nonbinary people of all faith traditions called Sacred Space, with Yale Divinity professor and Baptist preacher Eboni Marshall-Turman and trans Jewish activist Abby Stein. Link to Wikipedia biography Read less