I saw this on the request list for IAmA.
I’m not really sure what to explain about the situation. I was raised LDS until I was 18 and my family was trying to convince me to go on a mission. I simply couldn’t keep a clean conscience about being gay and continuing further down the LDS path.
I’m not particularly good at predicting what people want to know, so ask some questions, and I will be sure to answer them as well as update the relevant information up here.
EDIT: I’m including up here some of the important specifics so people don’t have to jog around the entire comments just to get a gist of the situation.
I grew up in South-Eastern Idaho; Idaho Falls, ID specifically. Mostly people think that communities that are mostly Mormon exist only in Utah. However, over half the population of my city is LDS. It’s even more when you take the subdivision I was raised in. My subdivision alone was about 90% LDS.
The reason I decided to come out was after my choir teacher cornered me and said, “You need to watch this movie.” The movie was called Latter Days. Go Here for a full synopsis. Watching that movie was like watching my future life through a Crystal Ball. And I didn’t want my life to be like that. The movie was creepy accurate. My mom looks and sounds just like the mother in the movie. And my dad was a Bishop.
I stopped going to church one month before I turned 18. Then came out on my 18th Birthday… right after high school graduation. I was never openly gay in the church. A member of the Quorum of the 70 lived across the street from me at the time. And while I was never openly gay in the church, he and I have had some choice words with each other.
I was outed to my family a couple of days before I was going to tell them myself. I was outed by someone who heard it through the grapevine, as happens in small communities.
They didn’t react very well. They told me I had two weeks to move out of the house. They took away the car they were going to give me for graduation. They told me not to expect any support through college. So, I bought a car for $500 and moved to Logan, UT for a couple months. Then moved across the country to PA for school. After living on the other side of the country, they realized that they could either have a Gay son, or no son at all.
They don’t guilt trip me anymore. Things got really nasty during prop 8 in California. I wrote several letters to the editor of publications in the area outlining exactly how I felt about the LDS church requiring its members to donate and help with prop 8. I wrote a letter against Prop 8 and sent it to every Mormon person I knew. Many of them refuse to talk to me now… Things got really nasty.
My family knows now not to broach the subject else they get a leftist commie lecture about self expression and human rights.
Some interesting stories:
Because it’s a small city, everyone know’s about me coming out… As a result, people assume that my family MUST be ok with it… which they are NOT in any sense of the way. However, because of this assumption, my mom has become a sort of “fruit fly.” If you will. Random people will corner my mom and come out to her in awkward situations. At the store… at work… Even my mom’s doctor cornered her during a scheduled doctor’s appointment and came out to her… Every time it happens, she’s not very good at handling it… usually she runs away.
When I first left Idaho, I moved to Logan, UT and attended Utah State for a semester. I thought it would be more accepting and tolerant… little did I know that the only place it was MORE accepting and tolerant than was BYU. I was one of 10 or so openly gay people on a campus of over 20,000. While I didn’t experience any active discrimination, there was a lot of passive agressive things… Random notes calling me a fag under my door… And then I figured out that most of it was coming from the closet cases. They would admit to slipping notes under my door and then ask if I wanted to sleep with them… and of those I did date, they would immediately ask if I wanted to go to church with them… I had to get out of there as fast as I could!
There are a few questions about how I was “outed”, so I will describe it in detail here:
The first person I came out to was my best friend in high school. She was a hippy who was raised in Oregon. The second person I came out to was my choir teacher. She lived in San Francisco all her life before moving to Idaho to teach choir… need I say more?
My choir teacher is the one who gave me the movie “Latter Days” and told me to watch it. Which I did. I indicated to her that I wanted to come out, and she put me in touch with several people in Idaho Falls who also grew up Mormon and decided to come out.
One of these guys has a big party at his house during the 4th of July. And the 4th of July is THE biggest holiday in Idaho Falls. Come see the fireworks… they will blow your mind! (And I say this even after seeing NYC and DC for the 4th of July) Anyway! His house is right along the parade route and he invites all his friends over for his party. Well, unknown to me, this guy’s niece was dating my brother’s friend. And the niece always comes to her uncle’s party. Well, she brought along my brother’s friend and I was caught off guard holding hands with a guy I was dating at the time.
We made eye contact and I immediately knew I had to go into damage control. I took my brother’s friend out back and explained to him the situation. I wasn’t out to my family yet, just to a couple of friends. He said he understood, and I left it at that. Later that day, I was off with the guy I was seeing at the time while my brother’s friend was attending a picnic my family holds every 4th of July for friends and family. He took it upon himself to tell my family that I was gay and saw me at a gay party earlier that day.
The day after that is when the shit hit the fan and my parents told me to move out.
