Article Lead Image

Gay Mormon captures yearlong coming-out on video

Mormonism is not the most progressive religion, to say the least, but Jimmy Hales is doing his part to make it more accepting.

 

Jordan Valinsky

Society

Posted on Feb 21, 2013   Updated on Jun 1, 2021, 11:58 pm CDT

Mormonism is not the most progressive religion, but Jimmy Hales is doing his part to make it more accepting.

A student at Mormon bastion Brigham Young University, Hales came out to his friends and family over a course of a year and recorded each encounter. Genuine, surprising, and candid, the five-minute video charts the different ranges of emotions everyone experiences.

Writing that he only dated women because he “needed an excuse to eat at a restaurant that I really wanted,” Hales blogs that his feelings of denying himself to be with a man just didn’t sit right, so he had to come out. 

“I finally decided to come out and stop living a lie,” he writes in the video’s description. “I’m still, and will forever be, a faithful Mormon, so it looks like I’m not going to marry and therefore live a single life through this mortal existence.”

He expands further on his blog detailing on when he first told a Bishop about his same-sex attraction, his first reaction was “that sucks,” that there are pro-LGBT supporters in the church (albeit very few and not outspoken), and how the It Gets Better campaign helped him.

“I know for a fact that I would never have had the courage to come out,” he said.

Photo via FacetiousFaceProd/YouTube

Share this article
*First Published: Feb 21, 2013, 2:33 pm CST