What LGBTQ+ Latter-Day Saints Wish Others Understood

All Out in the Open

All Out in the Open, Questions from the Closet

Latter-day Saint, Christ, Society & Culture, Mormon, Gay, Religion & Spirituality, Faith, Lgbtq, Transgender, Church Of Jesus Christ, Christianity, Lgbt, Lds

5 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this week’s OPEN Up episode, Ben Schilaty and Charlie Bird share heartfelt and powerful insights gathered from a survey of LGBTQ+ Latter-day Saints. What do they wish their families, leaders, and fellow Church members understood? From deeply personal reflections to recurring themes of faith, pain, and hope, this episode gives voice to experiences too often overlooked. Whether you’re part of the LGBTQ+ community or seeking to better support someone who is, this episode is a must-listen.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to All Out in the Open.
0:11.2	I'm Charlie Bird here with Ben Shalati, and this week we have an open up episode where we talk about opening up and kind of like sharing our experience being LGBTQ members of the church.
0:20.0	And on this episode we're doing something super different.
0:22.4	We reached out to our listeners and said, what do you wish people knew about your experiences
0:28.2	being LGBTQ members of the church?
0:30.3	And we got a lot of responses and Charlie's going to share some of his favorite ones.
0:34.4	Yeah.
0:35.4	Also, before we start, we do want to remind you about our podcast live
0:38.2	event coming up on ben what's the date it's friday june 27th at the utah valley convention center in provo
0:43.4	utah thank you this is a free event we would love to have you there it's kind of part of the gather
0:48.6	conference it's a free session of the gather conference totally sign up for the conference too
0:53.2	it's going to be incredible but if you can't make that we really still want to see you on Friday June 27
0:59.9	yeah it better be on your calendar yeah we hope to see you there you know what's funny
1:06.7	Ben what's that we've been doing this for like five years. And for some reason,
1:12.5	I'm like nervous because the like this is a different format. And I was just thinking like,
1:18.1	you can do something for so long and still feel inadequate. And I don't know, I just,
1:21.9	I guess I'm starting with that because like ally ship, change is kind of rarely comfortable even when you're super
1:30.0	used to it that's true this is these are tough things to do and so I hope we can swing
1:34.7	this that's in a good way let's do it yeah so we put out the survey just asking LGBTQ
1:42.4	saints what they wish people understood about their experience.
1:45.0	And a ton of people responded.
1:47.0	It was only out for 24 hours and we have like 290, almost 300 responses.
	...

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