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
