Ted's Story

Ted is one of my best and dearest friends. His story is as beautiful as he is. I can't thank him enough for sharing. Enjoy.

I mean, look at this guy! <3

I’m honestly humbled Kelly has asked me to be part of this project she started. She already knows this, but I would do most anything for her, so of course I agreed to share my story.

If you’re here, there’s a good chance you are not straight while also involved with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You might just be curious to read what someone has to say on this topic. Maybe you’re scared or alone, or feeling broken. I know what you would like for me to say: to stay or to leave. You would like for this to be a WikiHow for navigating your way through your feelings right now. I can’t promise that I can do that for you, but I can promise you that you are not alone.

I should come out with it now that I do not consider myself an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am gay and cisgender (pronouns he, him, and his). I left the Church nearly two years ago after more than 27 years of activity. I was born and raised a member and attended Brigham Young University for seven years, pausing only to serve a two-year proselyting mission. Kelly and I came out to each other just a few months before I left, and it’s one of the memories that still stands out to me.

We were in the middle of our last semester at BYU when I chose to join a panel of students from USGA (Understanding Sexuality, Gender, and Allyship) to discuss our LGBTQ+ experiences at BYU in one of our classes. I was not a frequent visitor of USGA, and merely decided to join because it felt more unnatural sitting in the audience. Kelly didn’t “know” know I am gay at that point, and neither did most of my classmates. After that class, Kelly and I got ramen and we’ve been sharing our stories with each other over noodles ever since.

That was not the first (or last) time I came out. The first time was nearly five years before. It was June 2012 and I had been back from my mission for almost a year. After returning from my mission, I thought I was invincible, that spending two years pushing down my sex drive meant I could do it the rest of my life. It didn’t matter, though — within a year I was still as gay as ever. Upon realizing those feelings weren’t going away, I felt overwhelmed. I needed to talk to someone. A friend and I went for a walk and I must have started and stopped almost a dozen times before I spouted out the words “I’m gay”. I didn’t know what to expect, although I was pretty certain she would react well. She had keen emotional intelligence and had proved to me over the years that I could trust her with my emotions. Sure enough, she told me she didn’t see me any differently, and that she loved me. After opening up to her, I didn’t feel quite so alone.

I always worried what others would think of me if I told them I’m gay, and I entertained the worst circumstances in my head. I couldn’t tell you exactly what kept me from coming out until I was almost 22. For one, I had only ever explored my sexuality in private, in shame. What started as an online curiosity became my own dirty little secret. I knew that I wasn’t supposed to be viewing pornography or masturbating, but that didn’t stop me from trying it out. I got in a habit of feeling remorseful, which turned to self-punishment. I would inevitably find myself pleading to turn back time, vowing never to give in again.

I also had internalized homophobia stemming from others, even though it wasn’t always very obvious. In addition to hearing negative talk about “homos”, I can remember being told to “act more like a man” or to “toughen up”. I remember a friend telling me I “think like a girl”. I took it all in, simultaneously rolling my eyes at “no homo” jokes while also using the phrase myself. I wanted desperately to fit in, knowing that if others knew I am gay they might say those things to me or about me. To keep people from finding out, I would practice religious overindulgence, showing I was very strictly reading my scriptures or attending my meetings on Sundays. Surely, I thought, if I could appear to be adhering to the Gospel norms, no one would know I was actually non-conforming. I heavily connected masculinity and heterosexuality to spirituality: The better I was at appearing masculine and straight, the more I thought I could pass as a “good Priesthood holder”. I kept the illusion up for a long time, even though it was all an act just to get by unharmed at Church, in Scouts, at school, and before God.

Fast-forward to post-mission life and the only thing that changed was that I felt more convinced that I truly am gay after unsuccessfully becoming straight through my mission — the culminating religious overindulgence experience. If that wasn’t going to stop me from being gay, I assumed it was meant to be.

My friend encouraged me to come out to my parents. I couldn’t think of anything more nerve-racking. I didn’t have any reason to believe that they would throw me out, but unfortunately it’s not uncommon. A couple weeks later, I moved home for a summer internship. After returning from a run, I told my parents I had to tell them something. I sat them down while I sunk deep into my chair and told them that I am gay. My mom’s eyes widened — she was shocked. My dad didn’t know what to say. At that moment, I realized I could no longer feel my fingers or toes. They were tingly like I struck a nerve. I told my parents that although I am gay, I would continue to remain active in the Church and even try to marry a woman someday. I knew that’s what they wanted to hear, but it was also something I still wanted to believe could happen. My dad seemed to find his words and told me that they loved me no matter what. My mom (eyes back to normal size now) seemed to find comfort in concluding that my brain wasn’t fully formed yet and wouldn’t be until I was 25, so I may still find things to change. (Thanks for that false conclusion, mom.) We hugged and I went upstairs to disappear until the morning. On my way up, I could hear my parents talking downstairs and I listened from the top of the stairs like I was five years old again. I remember my Dad saying he regretted that I had been holding this secret for so long, all alone. Looking back now, it wasn’t a perfect coming out experience, but hearing him recognize my pain helped me know that they really loved me and that there would be no disruption to our relationship.

I stayed true to my promise for another four years while at BYU. During that time, I continued to come out to friends, all of them just as loving as my first friend, some of whom came out to me as well. Some of them came out to me years later. I had recruited an army of affirming voices in my head that I could rely on whenever I had difficulty loving myself — whenever I felt alone. However, no matter how kind and sympathetic my friends were, it seemed at times that I was still alone. In fact, I felt not unlike a prisoner being kept in a cell. My friends and religious leaders acted as prison guards who would stop by periodically to offer up encouraging words and to celebrate the fact that I am gay. Occasionally, they would leave the prison to attend trainings that would help them understand how to be better prison guards by better understanding my crimes and need for penance. In other words, while my friends had no control over the doctrine that led to me feeling conflicted, they were caught between loving their friend and following the doctrine they believed in. Most expressed to me that although they didn’t know what is “right”, they chose to love me and support me no matter my decisions. It was comforting, in a way, to know that most of my friends weren’t trying to dissuade me completely from some choices. They recognized that they never personally experienced being gay and couldn’t provide me the advice I needed at times. But non-judgment and excited encouragement are two things, I found, and some did not hide their excitement when I said I was still trying to make things work in the Church.

I continued to go on dates with girls, usually close friends I had an emotional connection with. Some of them knew I am attracted to men and seemed okay going on a date anyway knowing I was trying to marry heterosexually. Some did not know, and I regret not being more upfront with them about my intentions. I spent four years wishing I could develop deeper feelings for them while continually fighting back my feelings for guy friends.

I felt confused and ashamed. I felt like I had to distance myself from certain guy friends to make sure I didn’t catch feelings. It’s what eventually landed me in counseling through BYU’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). It took me four therapists before I found one I really felt comfortable opening up to. My therapist helped me normalize my feelings for guys and to examine my impulse to label homosexual emotions as “bad” or “out of place”. He helped me unravel my internalized homophobia. He was also the first person I came out to who encouraged me to consider a life outside of the Church. I wasn’t ready to commit to that at the time, but he helped me open my mind to other possibilities.

After two years of therapy, I developed something I never had before: the ability to be my own voice of affirmation. I didn’t realize how scared I was to live as an out gay person and how dependent I was on others’ approval in order to feel safe. My doubts and fears kept me from not only accepting that I am gay, but also accepting the significance of it. Living gay meant living authentically, and that meant I could no longer pick and choose the people in my life who knew I am gay. But I finally felt self-reliant enough on my own voice to walk out into the world as my true self.

I updated God. I knelt in prayer and told Him that I would no longer be able to marry a woman. I told Him I had to find some meaning in my life other than heterosexual marriage, and I had to let my feelings thrive in a homosexual relationship. I felt a sense of approval, which was convenient because that’s what I wanted to feel. I entered my final year at BYU, ready to live more authentically.

Not long after that, a friend introduced me to a guy who was in a similar place as me. As we became closer friends, I realized I had feelings for him. I enjoyed our conversations, and we had a lot in common. He was funny and smart, and it was easy. It was clear to me that my feelings for him were far more advanced than anything I had felt for the girls I went on dates with. I felt a range of things, and for the first time, I let myself feel them all. I ended up telling him how I felt and he didn’t feel the same. I was disappointed, but I was more convinced than ever that homosexual dating was going to be right for me.

I graduated BYU and moved home for a summer while I searched for jobs. During this time, I started to question my doctrinal understanding more seriously than ever before. My whole life, I had heard that God’s Plan of Salvation is made for anyone, and that even gay people can enjoy all the blessings of the Celestial Kingdom — as far as they receive the highest covenant of heterosexual marriage within the temple. This seemed to differ, suddenly, from what it seemed God was willing to let me do. I was perplexed at the evolution of my relationship with God. Ten years earlier when I was in high school, I imagined God’s purpose was to reward or punish me. If I ever thought about another guy romantically, I turned to Him for retribution and repentance. If I ever resisted a thought, I waited for blessings to come. As I contemplated on it ten years later, it seemed more likely to me that my interpretation of God relaxed whenever I allowed myself to follow my feelings. What became clear to me was that my concept of God and my relationship to Him changed congruent with my ability to love and accept myself. The more I accepted myself and allowed myself to have homosexual feelings, the more it seemed God welcomed it. For so long, I looked to God as the arbiter of what was appropriate and inappropriate behavior, believing it to never change. When it started to change, though, I wondered who was actually doing the approving: God or me. I thought on this and discovered that I was, in fact, constructing God in my mind to act as my moral center. At first, the moral center rewarded internalized homophobia, shame, and fear, so that’s the purpose that God took on in my mind. Later, as I learned to let go of those things, my moral center became focused on emotional stability, self-love, and vulnerable expression — and God’s purpose became to reward myself for practicing those things. The more I became comfortable with my choices as an out gay person, so did God. The end result was that I doubted the voice in my head that I used to attribute to God was anything more than my own voice.

I took a break from Church and from believing in God. I examined everything I thought I understood about the Plan of Salvation and the Gospel. I recalled the feelings I felt for my friend, and how pure they were. I could not, in good faith, believe that the doctrine as presented to me could be completely true, in addition to doubting the existence of God. And that’s where I am today.

While I personally have not found it helpful to interpret my life and choices through an LDS lens, I believe strongly in allowing anyone to figure things out for themself. It may feel daunting to be faced with the prospect of blazing a new life. You may not feel completely at home at Church, but you aren’t ready to embrace something else either. I hope you find what you’re looking for, and I hope you make life better for others along the way. You deserve to feel at home wherever you are, and wherever that is, you are not alone.