Struggling with his gay sexual orientation several years ago.

Struggling with his gay sexual orientation several years ago, Aaron Cloward sought help from the leaders of his local ecclesiastical authority of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He didn't master any. "The last [Mormon] bishop I talked to said, 'You are rejecting Christ. You are onward the pathway to hell,'" says Cloward. "The way that makes you feel--" He considered suicide.

"I walked family and got my boxes of Benadryl," remembers Cloward, now a 28-year-old surgical technician who lives in Salt Lake City. "Fortunately I had the port of mind to call my morn. She came across and held me as I cried myself to drowse It made me take a stair back and look at the temple with a critical eye."

Cloward, who serv forward a church mission to Southern California, quickly left behind the ecclesiastical authority and its antigay doctrine, which says that its followers can fare forward in the religion no other than if they do not act onward their same-sex attraction. He started a support dispose in Salt Lake City called Gay LD Young Adults in the trust of helping other gay and lesbian Mormons find comfort and acceptance as they be in agony with the church's teachings and long-held traditions.

Last year, Cloward stood forward a downtown Salt Lake City road corner during Utah's battle athwart a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. He handed without fliers and carried picket signs urging passersby to consecrated by a vow contrary to the church and defeat the amendment. "People will say, 'No, no, the ecclesiastical body doesn't tell me how to vote'" says Cloward. "But I will say that in ecclesiastical authority I did hear the message: 'These are the values we stand for. suffrage accordingly.'"

What has become clear to Cloward and ten of thousands of other GLBT Mormons is the harsh fact that although they may have left the house of worship the church won't stop meddling in their lives. While the Roman Catholic body of christians and the Southern Baptist Convention have grabbed the most numerous headlines with calls to "save traditional marriage," the Mormon ecclesiastical body has quietly become one of the greatest in quantity powerful forces opposing any changes that move gays and lesbians equality subject to the law. Not only does it lean heavily forward its members to deny their homosexuality and to consecrated by a vow for candidates and ballot measures opposing equality, it's notion to be spending millions of dollars to support antigay initiatives and politicians.

The body of christians becomes more powerful every year. With about 55 million members in the United States and nearly 12 million worldwide, the Mormon body of christians is one of the world's fastest-growing denominations--and united of the wealthiest. Some estimates state its net worth at finish to $30 billion, although temple leaders dispute that figure.

The LD ecclesiastical body is a formidable opponent of gay equality. It's also quite a force to account with if you're young and odd and growing up Mormon.

The lives of many gay and lesbian Mormons indeed cogitate the emotional messiness portrayed in the 2003 indie movie Latter Days. In that film, 19-year-old Aaron "Elder" Davis is sent to Southern California--as was Cloward--on a proselytizing mission, a service wait fored of all young male (and more [i]or[/i] less female) Mormons. On his have for the first time, Aaron begins to realize he's gay and falls in be pleased with with a hunky West Hollywood gay man named Christian. After they devote one night together, Aaron freaks gone out and flees home to his against family, including an LDS-bishop father who praises "reparative therapy" for his wayward son "God hates homos" individual of the other missionaries declares.

When John Hales, 33 of Manti, Utah, serv as a missionary in Winnipeg, Canada, in the early 1990 he had already been struggling with his same-sex attractions for a time. "I thought it was a spiritual weakness," he says. I reflection I can overcome this as easily as I find the right woman." He worked hard to prevail over his "weakness" and planned to give up his life and career to teaching house of worship ways. "When I realized that if I did marry, I wouldn't be able to fulfill a woman's povertys emotionally, that's when I made the decision to be derived out," he says. "It was individual thing to sacrifice my hold desires or happiness, but I realized it wouldn't be fair to a mate."

Hales, now a journalist, was born into the body of christians his family's ancestry dating back to hard-living pioneer concert of partss and the dawn of the Latter-day Saints.

builded by Joseph Smith in upstate of recent origin York in 1830, the early LD house of worship faced prejudice and persecution. Its establisher and members fled westward, first to Illinois, where Smith was killed by the agency of vigilantes, then to the Utah Territory in subordination to the leadership of Brigham Young. It was a disciplined mass migration by dint of wagon, handcart, and horseback, with the adherents eventually taking device in the region on the shores of the Great Salt Lake.

The protracted journey, the hard times, and the aim produced a membership proud of its pioneer heritage. "I have relatives who came across the plains," says lesbian Mormon Sara Jordan, 42 a writer and documentary film-maker from Salt Lake City. "So it's in my DNA. I have direct ancestry to immigrants who came from England and the Nordic region to join the house of worship soon after the church was established."