Welcome to questions from the closet. I'm Charlie Bird and I'm Ben Shalati. Each

episode we discuss a question that we commonly get asked as LGBTQ

Latter Saints. 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 talk to

youth about LGBTQ-plus?

Ben and I are not terribly diverse,

and we share many opinions and life experiences.

For example, we both have photographs of ourselves

featured on the covers of our books.

However, there are some pretty big differences. For example, Charlie's is a picture of his books. However, there are some pretty big differences. For example,

Charlie's is a picture of his face and mine is just a picture of my feet. But if you

put our books together it almost makes a whole person. Would you like to expound

on why there's a picture of your feet on your book cover?

So my book is called A Walk in My Shoes.

And I wanted something that showed that I was like, that this was like a book about being gay,

but also incorporated shoes that also showed that I was a

Latter-day saint and so my brother came up with a great idea of having like me

sitting in a church chair like a metal chair wearing rainbow socks so that's what

is it's like my shoes and feet and

socks and legs sitting in a church chair. That's the cover of my book. Can I tell the

embarrassing but slightly arrogant story of how my face is on my book cover? Of course. Yes I love the story. So I was in a meeting with the editors and they were like we have an idea for your book cover and we're not sure if you're going to be comfortable with it and they kept like beating around the bush and I was like just

ask what it is and they were like well you do have a certain marketability and we're

...