After Holland publicly shamed me, he wrote a personal letter to my father apologizing for possibly hurting his or my mother’s feelings—and to continue in their orthodox (read: tithe-paying) commitment to the church.

He still hasn’t even tried to touch base with me.

https://twitter.com/tad_walch/status/1576608069462548483

After my dad got that letter, I hoped I would get one too—esp because I had already written to him asking for a reply.

I’m not surprised he never reached out, but apologizing to my parents instead of me makes this claim of “weeping for” and “with” LGBTQ+ people feel so hollow.

Well, it’s official—I have monkeypox.

This disease has put me through the wringer (and if I’m being blunt, may be the worst pain I’ve ever experienced). It is no joke. Even being in Berkeley, I’ve still been met with a lot of roadblocks, red tape, and confusion regarding my health status and treatment.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like getting MPX in a city or state that doesn’t have the same progressive health infrastructure.

This is my Mormon Story.

I had the immense privilege of being interviewed for @mormonstories yesterday to share my experience growing up gay in the church and coming out at BYU.

I invite you to listen with an open heart and mind ❤️

In some ways, I’m grateful for last week in that it has given me a chance to reclaim my story in hopes that it will make someone else feel a little less alone.

Please hug your loved ones tight, especially those who are LGBTQ+. Let us know that you are here for us.

Today was my niece’s baby blessing, and it took place in the ward I grew up in.

It was really great to be with my family and the community that raised me, especially after such a challenging week. However, as the last speaker began his talk, he noted how it would be about ‘defending the family’. It quickly became focused around how ‘gender is an essential characteristic’ and ‘marriage is between a man and a woman’.

I bit my lip and prayed it would just be brief,

For those who are interested, here is the copy of my BYU graduation speech.

Personally, I believe calling my remarks “divisive”, “selfish”, and “unrelatable to the student body” is a mischaracterization.

I invite you all to take a look and decide for yourselves. There is only one thing I regret about my speech, and that’s the obvious grammatical error 😅 (“Each of us are” should be “Each of us is”).

Besides that, I stand by my words and believe strongly that they were appropriate for the venue.

it’s not every day that you get subtweeted by an apostle of the church 🙃 In all seriousness though, his remarks today were as disappointing as they are hurtful.

I am proud of what I did two years ago, and I stand by it.

Thank you everyone for your love and support today ❤️ I feel so so lucky to have had a chance to share some of my story with so many people. If you didn’t get the chance, you can check out some clips of my speech below :)