March 1, 2020

Coming Out | Honest Answers

I started pondering over my sexuality while still in the seventh grade. An incident occurred between a really close friend and me. My friend sat next to me and told me that she was in love with someone in our … Read the rest here

Latter Gay Stories

Real Stories. Real Talk. Real People
IN or OUT of Mormonism.

Latter Gay Stories is with Natasha Helfer, LCMFT, CST-S.

7 hours ago

Five years ago today, I was on a flight from Salt Lake City to Kansas—traveling to support a friend and cover the excommunication of Natasha Helfer, from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was the kind of disciplinary council the Mormon church likely hoped would pass quietly, without much attention or thought.

We still think about it—even five years later.

Natasha Helfer wasn’t trying to burn anything down. She was a therapist, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and someone who spent her career helping people—especially LGBTQ members—work through shame around their identity and sexuality.

And that’s what put her on that path of excommunication.

She talked openly about things most people in the church only whisper about (if they talk about them at all.) She pushed back on ideas she believed were hurting people. Not to be provocative, but because she was sitting across from real people dealing with real damage. And she was trained and certified to recognize the harm.

That’s the part that stuck with me when I got there. This wasn’t theoretical. It wasn’t some online argument about doctrine. It was a real person, with a real life in the church, being told she didn’t belong anymore because she helped people in a way different than the church claimed was necessary.

She didn’t back off. She didn’t clean it up to make it easier to digest. She was rock solid in her profession.

And she lost her membership for it.

You can frame that however you want—discipline, disagreement, protecting beliefs. But sitting there, watching it unfold, it felt a lot more personal than that.

It made me think about what it actually costs to stand next to people when it’s inconvenient. When it’s not abstract. When there’s something real on the line.

Natasha chose to stay in the work. She chose to keep showing up for LGBTQ individuals and others who needed someone in their corner.

The church made its decision.

That trip changed me. Not in some dramatic, overnight way. But it forced me to see things more clearly—what support looks like, what it costs, and who ends up paying for it when institutions are challenged.

Pay attention to those actions. It tells you more than words ever will.

Thanks Natasha, for being a friend. ... See MoreSee Less

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Latter Gay Stories

12 hours ago

This question never really goes away. And recently, it’s popped back up because of the renewed interest in the documentary “Lover of Men”, (and the follow up commentary by Glenn Beck and even TMZ.)

So was Lincoln really gay?

There’s not a hidden diary or a smoking gun. But the documentary builds a case from what does exist—Lincoln’s relationships, his letters, and the cultural norms of his time. The focus is largely on Joshua Speed, a close companion Lincoln lived with and shared a bed with for years. And many historians point to the emotional tone of Lincoln’s relationships with certain men, intimate letters, and the language he used, which can read as deeply sexual even by the standards of that era.

From there, historians raise the possibility: that Lincoln’s relationships with men may have included romantic or emotional depth we’d recognize today, even if it wasn’t labeled that way at the time.

That’s it.

A possibility built on historical evidence, but not a definitive claim.

For some people, the claim that Lincoln was gay needs to be shut down immediately. Not debated. Not explored. Just dismissed. You’ll hear “there’s no evidence,” which isn’t accurate. There’s evidence. There just isn’t certainty, and people tend to treat those two things like they’re the same.

And that’s really what keeps this conversation alive.

Not Lincoln.

Not even the documentary.

It’s the reaction from heterosexual people with a dominant narrative. If Lincoln was straight, nothing really changes. If he wasn’t, nothing really changes. His presidency, his decisions, his impact—they stand on their own.

To me, the resistance to even researching the question is the headline. Because it exposes how badly some people need history to stay simple, predictable, and aligned with a very specific version of reality. It’s more about their comfort instead of the truth.

We likely will never know for sure, but we do know that people have always been more complex than the stories we tell about them. And every time this question comes up, the reaction says a lot more about us than it ever will about Lincoln.

"Four swords, and seven queers ago.”
-maybe Abe ... See MoreSee Less

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Latter Gay Stories

1 day ago

This is what LGBTQ people have been told for years—just reversed: “It’s okay to be gay, just don’t act on it.” And more often than not, it comes from religious people in their soft, Sunday School voice.

This phrase has never been spoken out of kindness. It’s always about control, dressed up as morality.

What it’s asking is for people to live half a life—you’re allowed to exist, but not to love, not to build relationships, not to be whole. Basically: be who we *need* you to be, not who you really *are*.

Turn that same message around on straight people and it immediately sounds ridiculous. Because it is. ... See MoreSee Less

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Coming Out | Honest Answers

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