You are still here—still believing, still searching, still holding onto a faith that, by every measure of institutional convenience, has given you reason to let go. That you have not let go tells me more about the depth of your testimony than a thousand temple recommend interviews ever could.
“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.”
Confession, in its original and most sacred form, is not punishment. It is not the anxious recitation of sins in a bishop’s office, waiting for judgment. It is the act of bringing what has been hidden into the light—and discovering that the light does not destroy you. For a gay Latter-day Saint man, confession has often been a site of trauma: the bishop’s interview where you first admitted your feelings and were told they were sinful, the disciplinary council, the quiet conversations that ended with instructions to marry a woman or remain celibate forever. If the word “confession” makes your stomach clench, that reaction is understandable. It is a wound.
But confession, properly understood and freely chosen, is one of the most powerful healing tools available to you. Not confession of sin—confession of truth. The truth of who you are. The truth of what you have endured. The truth of your faith and your doubt and your love and your longing. When you speak your full story to someone who can hold it without judgment, something alchemical happens: the secret loses its power. The shame begins to dissolve. The isolation—that terrible, suffocating isolation of being the only person in the room who knows the real you—begins to lift.
The person you choose for this step matters enormously. This is not a step you take with your bishop unless your bishop has demonstrated the capacity to hear you without pathologizing you. This is not a step you take with a family member who will receive your truth as a crisis. This is a step you take with someone who has earned your trust—a therapist who understands LGBTQ issues, a friend who has already shown you unconditional love, a support group of fellow gay Latter-day Saints who know exactly what it costs to tell the truth in a community that has punished truthfulness.
The scripture from James says to confess your faults to one another, that you may be healed. Notice: the purpose of confession is healing, not punishment. And what you are confessing is not a fault in the moral sense—it is a fault in the geological sense: a fracture, a place where two tectonic plates of your identity have been grinding against each other, creating earthquakes in your soul. By speaking the truth of that fracture, you begin to relieve the pressure. You begin to integrate what the institution told you could not be integrated.
This step also includes confessing to God, and here is where many gay Latter-day Saint men encounter a beautiful paradox: God already knows. He has known since before you were born. The confession is not for His benefit. It is for yours. Speaking your truth to God—out loud, in prayer, without euphemism or apology—is an act of radical intimacy. It is saying: I trust You enough to show You the real me. And in that trust, you may discover something extraordinary: that God’s response to your truth is not disappointment, but relief. Relief that you have finally stopped pretending. Relief that you have finally come to Him as you are, rather than as the performance you thought He required.
If you are not ready for a face-to-face confession, start with a written one. Write your story—your whole story, from the first stirrings of attraction to the present moment—in a journal that only you will read. Write it without editing, without censoring, without performing for an imagined audience. Let it be messy. Let it be angry. Let it be sad. Let it be true. The act of writing your story is itself a form of confession, and it will prepare you for the day when you are ready to speak it out loud.
Write your story. Not the version you have told others—the real one. Begin with your earliest memory of feeling different, and write through to this moment. No one will read this unless you choose to share it.
Who in your life has earned the trust required for this step? If no one comes to mind, write about what qualities you would need in a person before you could share your full truth with them.
Write a prayer of confession to God—not confessing sin, but confessing truth. Tell Him everything, as if He has been waiting to hear it. Because He has.
My story is sacred, not shameful. I have the right to tell it, and the telling of it will set me free. I trust that God already knows my truth and loves me completely within it.
There is a reason that the scriptures are, above all else, stories. Not policy manuals. Not doctrinal handbooks. Stories. The story of Nephi leaving everything behind. The story of Alma in chains. The story of the brother of Jared seeing the finger of God. The story of a young boy walking into a grove of trees and asking which church was true. God teaches through story because story is how human beings make meaning of their experience. It is how we transform pain into wisdom, isolation into connection, chaos into coherence.
When you tell your story—your real story, not the edited version—you are doing something sacred. You are taking the raw material of your experience and shaping it into something that can be understood, shared, and learned from. You are not just recounting events. You are making meaning. And in the making, you discover things about yourself that you could not see while the experience was happening: patterns, turning points, moments of grace you missed the first time through, evidence of God’s hand that was invisible in real time but unmistakable in retrospect.
This is why journaling is not optional in this program. It is therapeutic, yes—countless studies have demonstrated the psychological benefits of expressive writing. But it is also spiritual. Writing your story is a form of testimony. It is bearing witness to what God has done in your life—not the sanitized version the institution prefers, but the full, messy, complicated, beautiful truth. And that testimony, whether shared or private, has power. The power to heal you. The power to heal others. The power to change the conversation about what it means to be gay and Latter-day Saint.
If you are not ready to share your story with another person, share it with the page. Write without stopping. Write without editing. Write without performing for an imagined audience of bishops and Relief Society presidents. Write for yourself, and write for the boy you were at twelve—the one who needed to hear this story and did not have anyone to tell it. You are telling it now. That matters more than you know.
Not everyone has earned the right to hear your story. Vulnerability is a gift, and like all gifts, it should be offered to people who will treat it with care. Here are some qualities to look for in a safe person:
A safe person listens without fixing. They do not immediately launch into advice, solutions, or theological corrections. They hold space for your words and let them be enough.
A safe person does not pathologize your identity. If someone hears your story and responds with recommendations for therapy to change your orientation, or with scripture references about the sinfulness of homosexuality, that person is not safe—regardless of their intentions.
A safe person can tolerate ambiguity. They do not need you to have all the answers. They can sit with you in the uncertainty of not knowing how your faith and your identity will ultimately be reconciled, without rushing to impose a resolution.
A safe person keeps confidences. Your story is yours to share when, where, and with whom you choose. A person who would share your story without your permission—even with good intentions, even for prayer circles or fast lists—is not a safe person.
A safe person loves you regardless of outcome. They do not love you on the condition that you reach a particular conclusion about your relationship with the Church, your romantic life, or your theological positions. They love you in the process, wherever it leads.