Blog

I came out in high school in 1990 when I was in 10th grade. I grew up in a progressive community but was convinced I was the ONLY teenager to have figured this out so early. All the LGBTQ+ folks I knew were adults and many had not come out until they were well into adulthood. Then I met another young gay person in choir at school. I figured if there were two of us there HAD to be more. With the help of a school counselor I set out to start a support group in our high school.

By Noel Baldovino When Sarah, my daughter, was younger I told her bedtime stories. I started them like this – “Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, in a faraway land, there lived a princess and her name was Sarah. Sarah was a good little princess, but always very curious.” This story is about Sarah’s journey. I had known for a very long time that Sarah was struggling with coming out to me. There were some obvious things that stood out to me. For example, one of her most f

Photo by Jonathan Canlas Hey y’all, my name is Marion McClellan, and I am so grateful/thankful/blessed to be a Mama Dragon. I live in Payson, Utah, where my husband, David, and I have raised our six (mostly) perfect, beautiful and brilliant children.  Our two oldest kids are married and we now enjoy the gloriousness that is being grandparents to four of the most perfect grandchildren on earth.  David and I are both life-long members of a conservative Christian faith community

At 14 years old, my son was bottled up inside himself and wouldn’t talk to me, so I begged him to write down whatever was bothering him. He went to his room and a couple hours later walked by me, tossing a folded, tear-stained piece of notebook paper in my lap before disappearing to his room again. As I read the note, my heart broke. He felt completely alone and outside every circle that should have been a welcoming, safe place for him. The last line on the two-page note conf

What I Wish I Would Have Done Differently When My LGBT Child Came Out: Our son came out to us in a long letter when he was eighteen and a freshman at BYU. Looking back, there are several things I wish I had done differently. Reading that letter, I felt overwhelmed and sad about his news. I was so steeped in living my religion that this news was a severe blow to my plans for him and me. At the time I did not know how to reconcile it to my faith and God. When he first came out