Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons

“Nightline” Story Features Gay Mormons
“We began to realize this doesn't go away. This is who I am.”

June 2006

A story aired June 7 on ABC's Nightline focused on the experiences of gay Mormons and featured returned missionaries and partners Daniel Holsinger and Jay Christianson as well as a group of Gamofites including Russ Gorringe, Ernie Horstmanshoff, and others.

"I felt huge love and fulfillment, love and fulfillment in the church in many ways," Holsinger said. "I loved the values that were taught. I love things about the church, but there was obviously this very strong sense of what is being said about, fundamentally, who I am that doesn't make sense to me."

Jay Christianson's background was similar - he is from a devout Mormon family, but he had a feeling his whole life that something was wrong with him.

"I was confused because I was, I was being told one thing but I was experiencing a completely different thing," said Christianson.

"There is no place for me in the Gospel as a person who never married. So I did what I was to do and we got married," Gorringe said. "During this time we struggled. Intimacy was difficult. In order to perform, I would have to fantasize about a man. It was such a demoralizing experience that after it was over I would roll over and cry myself to sleep."

Gorringe eventually told his wife he was gay, and then he spent years in church-sponsored "reparative therapy," hoping for a cure.

"So the last 12 years of a 25-year marriage we had no sexual intimacy at all," he said. "We began to realize this doesn't go away. This is who I am."

To download a video version of the Nightline segment on gay Mormons, go to http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2051907

To read a transcript of the story, visit http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2051422&page=1