Episode 286: Matthew Smith, RM, Gay Latter-day Saint

Listen, Learn & Love Hosted by Richard Ostler

Richard Ostler

Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 839 Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2020

⏱️ 91 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

My friend Matt Smith joins me to share his journey as a gay Latter-day Saint. I became aware of Matt with his coming out post titled ‘If you are gay, don’t throw it all way” that talked about his journey and overcoming suicide thoughts. The post is filled with hundreds of kind comments. https://www.facebook.com/matthew.smith.1293/posts/2992903347429656 Matt shares his path to be the very best gay Latter-day Saint he can be. For Matt, that includes his desire marry a man and participate in the Church as much as he can. Matt has helpful insights into the unique and difficult road LGBTQ Latter-day Saints walk, their near impossible choices and what we can do to provide hope and healing. I encourage everyone to listen to Matt’s story. Each story is unique, valid and worthy of love and support. Thanks for being on the podcast Matt. You have a great life ahead of you!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to another episode of listening learning love hosted by Richard Osler.
0:09.9	My guest on today's podcast is my friend Matthew Smith.
0:13.9	Welcome to the podcast, Matthew.
0:15.5	Thanks.
0:15.8	Good to be here.
0:16.8	We're going to call Matthew Matt for the rest of the podcast, even though if you want to find him on Facebook, it's Matthew Smith.
0:24.0	This is a story about Matthews 24. He's gay. He's LDS. He did a Facebook post on June 11th, we'll reference of 2020, where he comes out as gay to a broader group and his journey as a gay Latter-day Saint.
0:38.5	He also shares his honesty about he would like to marry a man.
0:44.2	And so this is a podcast about somebody who is committed to marry a man,
0:50.6	is talking about his sexuality, is staying close with God.
0:55.2	Matt offered a prayer before we started to record in our joint prayers that this will be helpful for you.
1:02.9	The purpose of me doing podcasts with people that are following a path that's outside the teachings of our church is a couplefold. One is,
1:11.7	I want to humanize everybody, pretty much everybody. I don't want to humanize ISIS that wants to
1:18.3	bomb me, but I do want to humanize people like Matt, who is walking a really complicated road. And
1:24.2	hopefully we can see Matt the same way, no matter what road he chooses, is just the
1:31.3	son of God trying to do his best in a pretty complicated situation. We just continue to extend
1:36.9	love and support for Matt. And so I leave any judging of Matt's path up to God who fully understands
1:44.0	the complexity of Matt's road and Matt's heart. And just want to of Matt's path up to God who fully understands the complexity of Matt's road
1:45.6	and Matt's heart and just want to keep Matt as a friend and hopefully we just see him as somebody's
1:52.7	doing the very best he can in contributing to society. The second reason I like to do podcasts like
1:58.6	this is Matt has had some suicidal thoughts and some really dark days.
2:04.2	And some of you listeners may be suicidal. And I thought it would be helpful for Matt to talk about
	...

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