Hey everybody, this is Aubrey Chavez from Faith Matters. For today's episode as

June and Pride Month come to a close, we brought on two really special guests

Ben Chalatti and Charlie Bird. Charlie and Ben are both gay,

Latter-day Saints, as well as authors published by Desert Book. They host a

podcast together called Questions from the Closet. In this conversation, Ben and

Charlie share a little bit about their backgrounds and faith, what Pride really

represents and why it's important to them. Their thoughts on the process of

coming out to faithful friends and family, and how leaders, friends, and left

ones can be effective allies to the LGBTQ community. To give you just a little

bit more background on these two, Ben works as an Honor Code Administrator at

BYU and as a therapist at Family Services in Provo, Utah. He holds three

degrees from BYU and a PhD in Second Language Acquisition and teaching from the

University of Arizona. He serves as a high counselor in his stake. Charlie was

Cosmo the Cougar at Brigham Young University from 2016 to 2018 and was the

Cosmo from the original viral dance with the Cougarettes that was viewed

over a billion times across social media platforms. He graduated from BYU in

2018 and is an active LGBTQ advocate, involved with multiple nonprofit LGBTQ

organizations nationally and across Utah. We're so grateful to Ben and Charlie

for coming on and learned so much from them. We hope that you enjoyed this

conversation. All right, Ben and Charlie, thank you guys so much for coming on

the podcast. Super excited to have you here. Yes, and just a year

where our listeners will have heard a line or two about you guys in the in

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