By the time he was a teenager, he had become "very shy, very quiet," and "very depressed." His experiences mirror research showing the stigma LGBT people face is linked to an increased risk of developing mental illnesses like depression. When Dalley was growing up, he would try to distract himself as soon as he felt those "bad" feelings for boys. According to its website, the church "acknowledges that same-sex attraction is a sensitive issue that requires kindness, compassion and understanding." It "does not take a position on the cause of same-sex attraction" and doesn't regard "same-sex feelings" as sinful but says "acting on it is." Newsweek has contacted the LDS for comment, which has changed its stance on homosexuality since Dalley was a child. "That was when I connected that it was something that the church considered wrong," Dalley recalls. "The messaging that I always received was definitely one of people that are gay are lesser," Dalley says.Īround the time Dalley first noticed his feelings towards boys, voters in California passed Prop 8 on prohibiting gay marriage in 2008, which the LDS allegedly donated $20 million towards. What's more, " The Family: A Proclamation," a statement made by the LDS in 1995, spelled out to him that marriage-a defining part of Mormon life-was only between a man and a woman in the eyes of God. Although no one explicitly told him that being gay was viewed as wrong among some members of his community, he had noticed family friends who used to be members of the LDS weren't around anymore, and were dating men. He explains Utah has historically been a state where conversion therapy was most widely practiced-especially before the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) condemned it as abusive-because of its staunchly conservative culture which was not supportive of LGBT people.ĭalley grew up as the youngest in a Mormon family of eight children-including his twin-in the city of Lehi, about a 30-minute drive south of Salt Lake City.
Practioners would, for example, make people look at erotic gay images and force them to vomit and endure electric shocks in baseless attempts at aversion therapy. Historically, what is accurately called "sexual orientation change efforts" but more commonly known as "conversion" or "reparative therapy," saw people locked up and castrated, explains Xavier Persad, senior legislative counsel at the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) non-profit organization Human Rights Campaign.
Looking back, the now 20-year-old University of Utah student never meant to become a poster boy for the push to make his state the nineteenth to legislate against dangerous attempts to change a child's gender or sexuality. On Wednesday, it will become the most conservative state in America to ban the practice. Surviving, he went on to campaign for the outlawing of conversion therapy for minors in Utah. In that moment, the 9-year-old couldn't have envisioned how his attraction to that boy and others-and the ways in which adults would react to those sparks-would go on to shape his life.Īt barely 16, a conversion therapist would push him to breaking point in a pseudoscientific attempt to "fix" the fact he is gay, leading him to try to end his life. He had never felt a connection with another person quite like it.
Nathan Dalley had his first crush on a boy when he was in fourth grade.