Encircle Heber Continues to Champion LGBTQ Youth and their Families

Heber City teenager Ferris Judd describes coming to terms with being transgender as realizing he wanted to be one of the hicks in a “hick town.”

At 17, he’s halfway there. He spends his days surrounded by fellow cowboys and fishermen working at Deer Creek State Park and hopes to one day work for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.

Ferris’ home away from home isn’t just in the great outdoors, but also within the walls of the 134-year-old home at 81 E. Center Street, which serves the Heber City branch of Encircle, a nonprofit organization that serves Utah’s LGBTQ+ youth and young adults aged 12 to 25 and their families.

Encircle was founded in Provo in 2016, and the organization celebrated the ninth anniversary of its first LGBTQ+ center on Saturday.

Each of Encircle’s centers is a home that has been renovated and repurposed to offer therapy services, support groups, activities like art night and Dungeons & Dragons or simply a safe space to relax and be among friends. Since the Provo center’s opening, Encircle has expanded to Salt Lake City, St. George, Heber City and Ogden.

The Heber City location was announced in December 2020 and opened in June 2023. Since its opening, it has received more than 6,100 visits from more than 340 unique visitors.

For Ferris and his parents, Jim and Jan Judd, knowing that an Encircle location would be coming to their home of 26 years was a relief. Jim had been driving Ferris to and from Encircle’s Provo location at least once a week since Ferris was 12.

Ferris described his first time at Encircle as overwhelming in a good way. Meanwhile, Jim likened the “ambience of love and acceptance” to an almost spiritual experience.

Knowing that an Encircle location would soon be within walking distance for the entirety of Ferris’ high school years was a comfort to Jim and Jan because Ferris had been on the receiving end of prejudice since he came out in the sixth grade.

The exclusion began at church. Jim and Jan are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

After Ferris came out, he continued attending church, albeit with a new haircut and wearing a suit instead of a dress. For a time, he helped his parents teach primary — a Sunday school class for children 18 months through 11 years old — but the family’s bishop eventually told them that he did not want Ferris around younger children.

Encircle celebrated the ninth anniversary of the opening of its first home during a Rainbow Brunch at its Heber City location on Saturday. Credit: Christopher Reeves/Park Record

Jim and Jan described the experience as Ferris being “disinvited” from church.

“It was very much a situation where the leadership of the ward that we were in basically put some boundaries in line. Like, ‘Ferris has to be this way to come and participate in youth programs,’” Jim said. “It was an issue of, ‘Don’t live authentically and just mask who you are for the sake of going to church,’ or ‘Be yourself, and let’s find a different journey, a different pathway.’”

For Jim and Jan, Ferris’ coming out has created opportunities to re-examine their relationships with their faith.

“You really have to get deep and examine, what do you believe? What does your relationship with your kid mean? How do you navigate a pathway that at first seems non-navigable?” Jim said. “It’s opened my mind to all kinds of marginalized groups of people. … I think it’s just made us better human beings, and I would say in the realm of religion, that it’s made us better Christians, too.”

Ferris’ older sibling, Jess, who uses they/them pronouns, said their parents have come a long way.

“(Encircle) gave them resources to talk to other parents and learn from them and grow as people so that they could be better supporters for Ferris,” they said. “Having a healthier dynamic, a more accepting dynamic at home and having that safe space that he could always go to with friends and affirming people? I don’t know if he would be around if he didn’t have that.”

Jess said their experience growing up queer was much different to their brother’s. Jess did not identify as queer until they were 19 but had many LGBTQ+ friends throughout high school.

“I was always kind of an outcast from the churchgoers because I just didn’t fit their mold. And so I naturally gravitated to other outcasts at school, who happened to be pretty much all the gay people,” they laughed. “People would say things sometimes, but honestly, it was more they would just ignore us, like they didn’t really care. … We honestly got bullied more for liking anime than being gay.”

Jess said Ferris was bullied more because his gender transition was more visible and because the political climate has become more “intense” since they were in high school.

“You would think the more time goes on, people should be more accepting,” Jess said. “All these kids probably hear things from their parents, and then they go and parrot that at school.”

Jess Judd, an Encircle volunteer, giving a tour of the Heber City home, points to a wall of LGBTQ+ changemakers and celebrities. Credit: Christopher Reeves/Park Record

Jess said that prejudicial climate has resulted in Ferris experiencing “several hate crimes.”

“When he was 15 or 14, we had a Pride flag in the front of our yard, and two of his classmates came and filmed themselves stealing it and then burning it. And the caption they put was, ‘F… you,’ and then his deadname,” they recalled.

A deadname is a transgender person’s birth name that they no longer go by.

But no matter what happened, volunteers at Encircle were there to support Ferris — for example, by buying a new Pride flag to replace the one that was burned.

While Jess and Ferris waited for the opening of the Heber City home, they created an LGBTQ+ youth coalition to fill the gap.

The coalition approached the Heber City Council in April 2022 with a proposal for a city-sponsored event focused on LGBTQ+ mental health. The group imagined festivities and educational booths, with youth designing Pride-themed banners promoting the event that would fly on Main Street.

The coalition’s proposal came nearly two years after the City Council adopted an ordinance restricting the city from flying banners that promoted messages deemed as political. The ordinance was created in response to backlash from some residents after the city flew Pride flags on Main Street in 2019.

When the youth coalition approached the City Council with their event idea, the City Council voted in favor of organizing such an event. But that idea morphed into Unity Week, an annual celebration in June focused on fostering community, which does not include any programming that highlights the LGBTQ+ community in particular.

For Jess, Unity Week was a breaking point that led them to instead focus the coalition’s efforts on smaller get-togethers like meals and movie nights.

Whenever Encircle asked for volunteers to help renovate the home, the Judd family were there planting flowers or tearing up carpet — whatever needed to be done to bring the home closer to completion.

Credit: Christopher Reeves/Park Record

Credit: Christopher Reeves/Park Record

Encircle’s Heber City location has an eclectic interior and is named after Collin Russell, a gay man born in Murray who died of accidental overdose in 2018.

That ended up taking a while. The home was initially slated to open in fall 2021 but was delayed due to factors like construction costs, donor funding and longer-than-anticipated permitting timelines, according to Callie Birdsall-Chambers, Encircle’s vice president of marketing and communications.

Still, the eventual opening forever changed the Judds’ relationship with Heber City.

Jess, who is now an Encircle volunteer, has been surprised by the number of accepting people in the area. Some interactions at Encircle have been surprising, too.

“I remember this lady came in with her two sons and straight-up said, ‘I’m homophobic, but my kids got in trouble for bullying a queer person, and I’m not OK with that. So, we’re here to learn.’ And the two boys ended up coming quite a bit over that summer, and the mom would come to events,” they recalled. “I wish more people had that mindset of actually wanting to learn.”

For Jim, it has been reassuring to know he has a place to refer parents to when they come to him for advice about their own LGBTQ+ children.

Jess and Ferris agreed that what makes the Heber City Encircle center special is its positioning in a smaller community, allowing visitors to form deep connections with each other.

And despite the trials and tribulations the Judds have experienced in Heber City, each family member loves their hometown.

“I really want it to be a better place to live for people that are queer, or people who are different, in any capacity, from the standard,” Jess said.

“Definitely, there’s tension,” Jim acknowledged. “But I would say overall, at least with the people I rub shoulders with, this has been a great community for my kids.”