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Where I used to suffer from self-hatred and debilitatingly low self-esteem, I have found love for myself and have started to heal, becoming proud of who I am and what I can accomplish. Where I used to be medicated for desperation and sought the services of therapists and psychiatrists, I now enjoy peace and happiness beyond anything I’ve felt in the past. Where I used to feel like I was living a double life, hiding who I was from everyone I loved in fear and shame, I now have removed the fake

Taking a break from the church and shedding this horrifyingly depressing and incomprehensibly offensive doctrine, I was finally able to imagine a future for myself where I could be happy and I could progress with a family, with kids, with love and happiness and companionship and a future. I can now start to set goals and make plans and be motivated to work for a better life. But I can’t have these things if I remain a member of the church.

these terrible thoughts and views poisoned my mind to the point that I attempted to end my life. Looking back I am terrified to think how that night could have come to a horrific end. Coming out of that experience, I realized that something needed to change if I wanted to survive. I took the scary and lonely path of distancing myself from the church and the unacceptably degrading reality of being a gay man in the church. The resulting 15 months have proven to be literally life saving.

The church has no answers. No help for someone that is pleading for guidance and direction. No place for a gay man in the kingdom. The church’s official website on Mormons and gays is misleading at best – I personally know several of the people on the website and I know that the image that the church pushes is falsified and full of deception. In each case there is a dark side that is never acknowledged by the church – depression, secret love affairs to fill unmet needs, double lives...

During the journey of my life, I have literally tried every option to find peace, love, acceptance, and a place in the church – mission, active church service, attentive general conference study, institute classes and one on one conversations with every institute teacher I had, meetings with bishops, years of church-approved therapy... – it has been literally an entire life given to the church. But I have found that there is no place for me in God’s great “Plan of Happiness.”

I deserve to be happy. I deserve to have love in my life. I deserve to have peace and hope for a future. My life in the church prevented me from accomplishing this and made me feel like I wasn’t worthy or capable of attaining happiness or love or peace or hope. This is why I must resign. I’m resigning because I deserve a future. #exmo #exmormon #lgbt #lgb #gay #mormon #mormonfaithcrisis #mormonlies #worthy