Bryan Michael Egnew was excommunicated from the Mormon church after coming out, he committed suicide later.
Pride Utah has the story:
40 year old Bryan Michael Egnew spent the last decades of his life building up the courage to come out to his family and Mormon church. Once he did his life, family and religion were stripped away from him, and he committed suicide within a matter of weeks.
Growing up in the Mormon (aka LDS) Church as a gay man isn’t easy. The pain and guilt pile-on as for years you are hammered with lessons telling you that unless you live a perfect heterosexual life, marry in a Mormon Temple, and follow the Church’s laws perfectly, you run the risk of never seeing your family again after death. It’s a deep hole that many never escape from.
Unfortunately, we have lost another beautiful person to the man-made hell of depression, created when he tried to be honest about himself.
Bryan Michael Egnew went on a Mormon Mission when he was 19, was married in a Mormon Temple to his wife Amy and had 5 children. He served within his local Mormon congregation for years, and outwardly was everything a Mormon man was expected to be. But inside, Bryan fought a constant struggle over whether to continue pretending, or to be honest about himself.
One of Bryan’s friends, Jahn Curran, tells us that he has known Bryan since they attended college together at BYU. and like Bryan, Jahn was also hiding the fact that he was gay. Years later, Jahn would find the courage to come out of the closet, but Bryan was too afraid of what the consequences would be.
Read the full story via PRIDE UTAH
