Brigham Young's son Brigham Morris Young publicly performing as a cross-dressing singer under the pseudonym Madam Pattirini. He could produce a convincing falsetto, and many in the audience did not realize that Pattirini was Young.

Evan Stephens was 36 years old when he was called as the Music Director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a position he held for 26 years (1890-1916). Stephens used to perform also as a cross-dresser singer with bonnet and veil to impersonate an old maid soprano.

Stuart Matis, a pious churchgoer, prayed and worked to change his sexual orientation. He died trying.

It had become an all too familiar sound. Late on the night of Feb. 24 2000, Stuart Matis’s mother lay awake in bed, listening to her 32-year-old son pacing his room unable to sleep. She worried that his depression was worsening. A year earlier Matis had told his parents he was gay, and all three, devout Mormons, had struggled to reconcile Matis’s homosexuality with the teachings of their church. Matis found little comfort in Mormon doctrine, which regards homosexuality as an ‘abominable’ sin. A church therapist instructed him to suppress his sexuality or to undergo ‘reparative therapy’ to become a heterosexual. Matis was especially frustrated by the church’s energetic efforts to pass Proposition 22, California’s ballot measure banning same-sex marriage. The YES ON PROP 22 signs dotted his Santa Clara neighborhood, many placed there by church members, were a reminder of his failure to find acceptance as a Mormon and gay man.

Matis concluded he could not be both. That night, his mother got out of bed and wrote a letter asking the church to reconsider its position on gay Mormons. Only later would she learn that her son had been up writing his own letter, to his family and friends, explaining why he couldn’t continue to live. Early the next morning, 11 days before voters would overwhelmingly approve Prop 22, Matis drove to the local Mormon headquarters, pinned a DO NOT RESUSCITATE note to his shirt and shot himself in the head.

See - Mormon Church: The Powerful Force Behind Proposition 22

This is the Los Altos LDS chapel, where Stuart Matis took his own life in despair over the Mormon Church's aggressive fight against marriage equality.

Matis’s death galvanized gay activists, who accused PROP 22 supporters of driving him to the grave. Friends and family agree that the church’s active support of the measure contributed to his decision to end his life when – and where – he did. Clearly, they say, he was trying to make a statement.

But that is only part of the story. Though gays and lesbians enjoy more rights and protections than ever before - last week Vermont approved same-sex partnerships akin to marriage - gays in search of spiritual support often find their church, synagogue or mosque to be far less accepting. The Mormons, who adhere to a strict moral code of conduct, disapproval by the church can be especially devastating. For Stuart Matis, it apparently was too much to bear. (The Mormon Church declined to comment about Matis. "Suicide is a tragedy of great personal loss for family and community," said a spokesman. "We express our sympathy and have respect for the privacy of the families.")

Even as a young boy, friends recall, Matis cherished his Mormon identity and the church’s moral demands. But at 7, Matis began harboring a terrifying secret: he realized he was attracted to boys. For the next twenty years he kept the secret from everyone he knew and prayed fervently for God to make him heterosexual. He tried to make up for what he considered his shortcoming by being perfect in other areas of his life. He studied hard in school and attended every church function he could. Though he deeply loved his family, he showed little outward affection, fearing he would blurt out his secret in an avalanche of emotion. "He would punish himself if he had a [homosexual] thought," said his childhood friend Jenifer Mouritsen. "He wouldn’t allow himself to go to a friend’s birthday party or [wouldn’t] watch his favorite TV program. " Instead, he would sit in his room, and read Scripture. He set goals and read scripture. He set goals for himself not to think about boys for a certain length of time.

In some ways, being a Mormon made it easy for Matis to conceal his homosexuality. The religion strictly forbids contact between men and women before marriage. As a teenager, Matis hung out with a group of boys and girls who went to parties and school dances together.

As he got older, it became more difficult to keep his feelings hidden. He enrolled at Brigham Young University in Utah, spending hours in the library looking for a technique for becoming straight. After graduation, he eventually landed a job at Andersen Consulting back in California in 1996. Handsome and single, he seemed a perfect catch. At church, he avoided well-meaning members who gently prodded him to settle down with a nice Mormon girl.

Finally, early last year, his agony spilled into the open. Depressed and desperate, he had begun for the first time to conclude that maybe the church was wrong. He thought about leaving it. He approached his local bishop, Russell Hancock, and told him he was gay and thought about killing himself. Hancock, who counseled Matis for several months, says he pleaded with Stuart. I said, "If this is a choice between life and the church", he should choose his life."

Hancock urged him to tell his parents he was gay. Matis had told only one person, his friend Clay Whitmer. The two had met in Italy, when both were serving their obligatory proselytizing mission for the church. Back in California years later, Whitmer and Matis confided to each other that they were gay. Matis’s brother, Bill, and sister Katherine began wondering aloud about their brother’s sexual orientation. Their mother went to Stuart’s room early last year and to settle the matter once and for all. "Stuart, are you gay?" she asked. "Yes, I am," he said.

To Matis’s surprise, his family accepted his homosexuality. They spent many evenings talking and crying into the night. He was able to tell them how much he loved them. Unburdening himself to his family was a relief; yet it did little to lift his depression. He struggled to figure out how to live as a gay man without disobeying the teachings of the church - which requires gays and lesbians to remain forever celibate. He went to a few gay dance clubs and parties but didn’t dare consider intimacy with men he met, and apparently remained celibate his whole life.

Matis’s despair mixed with anger. He lashed out at the church’s teachings in a blistering 12-page letter to a cousin. "Straight members have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up gay in this church," he wrote. "It is a life of constant torment, self-hatred and internalized homophobia." Matis stopped going to church altogether, but would not let go of his faith in the church. "He was able to [reject Mormon teachings on homosexuality] intellectually," says Alejandro Navarro, a gay friend, "but emotionally he couldn’t." Late last year, he told his parents he’d bought a gun, but warned them that if they put him in an institution he would never speak to them again. The last week of his life, in a final act of separation, he stopped wearing his "garments", the ritual shirt and shorts many Mormons wear under their clothes.

Matis’s parents found the suicide note on their son’s bed the morning of his death. They frantically called his friends, hoping they’d know where he went. One person did; Clay Whitmer. Matis told Whitmer of his plans to commit suicide. Whitmer planned to cheer up his old friend, but didn’t get there in time. A few weeks later, anguished at his friend’s death and tormented by his own long-term depression, Whitmer put a gun to his own head.

"Mother, Dad and family, I have committed suicide," Matis’s note began. "I engaged my mind in a false dilemma: either one was gay or one was Christian. As I believed I was Christian, I believed I could never be gay." Stuart Matis struggled his whole life to resolve that dilemma. The people who dressed him for burial were struck by the sight of his knees, deeply callused from praying for an answer that never came. (More about Stuart can be read here)

The Murder of Matthew Shepard

In the evening hours of Oct. 6, 1998, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student who was openly gay, went alone to the Fireside Lounge in Laramie after a meeting of the campus LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) student group and a quick stop at the Village Inn. In less than two hours’ time, he became part of a chain of events that attracted international media and political attention, spotlighted the ongoing public debate over hate crime legislation, and became one of the most prominent cases in Wyoming judicial history.

At the Fireside, Shepard sat at the bar drinking from a bottle of imported beer. After somewhat more than an hour, he was approached by two men his own age: Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, high-school dropouts with roofing jobs. They had purchased a pitcher of beer with small change and eventually engaged Shepard in a conversation. Shortly after midnight, Shepard left the bar with McKinney and Henderson; police and prosecutors would assert that the two men lured Shepard, perhaps under the pretense of themselves being gay, but in fact with the intent of robbing him. In his police confession, McKinney repeatedly described Shepard as “a queer,” “the gay,” and “fag.”

McKinney and Henderson drove Shepard to a remote area in the Sherman Hills development east of Laramie. By McKinney’s own confession, corroborated in most details by Henderson, McKinney told Shepard that the two men were not gay and that he was going to be robbed. McKinney began punching and pistol-whipping Shepard before continuing the assault at a buck-rail fence on Warren Livestock Company land. Investigators and an autopsy would later determine that Shepard was struck 19 to 21 times in the head with the butt of a .357-caliber Magnum Smith & Wesson pistol, the final blow irreparably damaging Shepard’s brain stem.

At McKinney’s direction, Henderson bound Shepard’s wrists with white clothesline from McKinney’s truck and left him tied—unconscious—relieving him of his wallet, identification, and shoes. The two assailants returned to Laramie at approximately 12:30 a.m.

Other studies have shown that LGBTQ Mormons and former Mormons experience higher rates of certain mental health disorders such as PTSD, major depressive disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder than the general population. These are positively correlated with suicidality. One snowball sampling study of 1,612 LGBT Mormon and former Mormon respondents in 2015 found that involvement with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) and being single and celibate or engaging in a mixed-orientation marriage are both associated with higher rates of depression and a lower quality of life for LGBT individuals. A nonprobability sampling technique observed clinically significant symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder related to religious beliefs and experiences at high rates among affiliated and disaffiliated LGBTQ Mormons in the study. Many have stated the belief that LDS teachings have contributed to the suicides of LGBTQ members. For example, LDS historian Gregory Prince stated that by condemning homosexuality as "evil, self-inflicted, and impossible in postmortal existence" LDS church leaders have enabled harsh behavior by its members with the alarming number of LDS LGBT homeless and Utah's highest per capita teen suicide rate in the country manifesting the effects of this cruelty. A prominent openly gay member Mitch Mayne wrote in 2012 that his LDS mother told him it would have been better for her if he had been born dead (i.e. stillborn) rather than live and grow up and be gay.

Mormon No More