Welcome to Questions from the Closet. I'm Charlie Bird, and I'm Ben Shalatti.

Each episode we discuss a question that we commonly get asked is LGBTQ plus

clarity scenes. We are not trying to answer this question or come to a consensus,

but simply sharing our perspectives. Today's question is, how do I create a safe

space for youth in seminary? Charlie and I are not terribly diverse, we share many

opinions in life experiences. For example, we both graduated from early

morning seminary. However, there are some pretty big differences, for example,

Ben was the president of his seminary class, and I definitely, definitely was not.

It's true. I was actually president of my seminary class when I was a freshman,

and I was kind of a Hermione Granger, like I know it all annoying.

Yeah, Ben you. I know who I really was.

So I never thought, but my first year in seminary we studied the doctrine of covenants,

and that year I was also reading the work in the glory. So I knew every answer to all the

church history questions. I got to the point where I learned how to drive with my knee

to seminary, and it was not as dangerous as it sounds because I lived in the middle of nowhere.

So there wasn't really any traffic, but I was eating breakfast in the car, and I would always

roll in at like 6.35. It started at 6. But I was charismatic, so the teachers let me get away with it.

Well, I was awful, also often like, because I'm just not a morning person, but we just

have like four blocks from the church, and in the Seattle area there's always fog in the morning

in the winter, and so like my window, like my windshield would be iced over and there'd be fog

so I couldn't see it out at all, and I would just like drive the four blocks of the church

in my head out the window. Somehow we survived. We survived, and we both graduated from seminary.

...