David Archuleta’s Mormon Story w/ Apostle M. Russell Ballard | Ep. 2114

Um, uh, and I, I don't know if you know this, David, but when I, um, I, I, I ... on Mormon Stories, just incidentally before we jump into your story, like, I, uh, my own story with LGBT stuff is I had a couple, uh, cousins who came out as gay in the early '90s, and, uh, they were Mormon, and they left the state and moved back east, and we pretty ...

They stopped coming to family reunions.

And then my, my wife's cousin, Scott, uh, came out to us before he came out to his own family, and just told us he was suicidal.

While I was at Microsoft, this man, um, Ty- uh, Stuart Mattis, a Mormon, drove himself up to the steps of his local chapel in California, pinned a note to himself that said, "Do not resuscitate," and shot himself on the, on the steps of his church.

So these were the types of things that really woke me up to LGBT issues way back in the 2000s, and so when I started Mormon Stories in 2005, this is one of the first issues I started discussing.

And a lot of this time where you're young and growing up in the church, I'm doing research, uh, as a psychologist on the LGBT stuff, and so yeah, I've been tracking this stuff for a long time, wondering if anybody's seeing it or hearing it or learning about it.

And we're gonna get into your story about [laughs] how you probably weren't aware of a lot of the stuff we were doing for a long, long time, and that's how the bubble works, right?

Yeah, I didn't realize ...

You said you've been having this podcast since 2005?

Yeah, Mormon Stories is over 20 years old.

Wow.

It's, it's one of the longest running podcasts.

And we did, and LGBT issues in 2005.

Um, you know, so we, we've been covering this for a long, long time.

Wow.

[laughs]

That's amazing.

Yeah.

Anyway, uh, it's been so, uh, powerful and, uh, enjoyable to read this amazing book.

Um-

Oh, thank you

...

I, I guess, uh, uh, we'll, we'll definitely make sure and include a link, uh, to purchase the book in the show notes as well.

It's being published by Simon & Schuster, and I think February 17th is the release date, right?

Yes.