I loved reading the courageous HuffPo article today,

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gay-suicide-prevention_n_6137732de4b0aac9c01c11c3

"I Was A Gay Boy Who Tried To Kill Myself. Now I Know It Wasn’t My Fault."

“For a long time, I thought I was the problem. I now know the problem was never me.”

Where the author said, "Some of my earliest memories involved church leaders preaching that homosexuality was immoral, an abomination, that God did not love gay people. How was it possible for anyone to love me if an “all-loving” God could not?"

"Research is clear that growing up in a stressful or challenging household can have dire and long-lasting consequences for adult health. In their groundbreaking work in 1998, Dr. Vincent Felitti and colleagues demonstrated that exposure to child abuse and neglect, as well as household challenges such as domestic violence (events termed adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs), dramatically increased risk for all kinds of health issues, including poor mental health.

More than two decades later, we are starting to understand why. Exposure to ongoing traumatic or stressful events during key points in human development can alter brain structures and neural pathways. This shift in neurodevelopment increases someone’s risk for issues with impulse control or emotional regulation, which in turn can lead to any number of health problems in adulthood.

LGBTQ+ adults are more likely to report having experienced ACEs compared to cisgender heterosexual adults. Similarly, recent research suggests that adverse community experiences are equally important to brain development as adverse childhood experiences — and that, again, marginalized youth are more likely to be exposed."

Sounds a lot like the church I was born into, Mormonism, which has a lot of blood on its hands.

The article reminded me of the Dan Reynolds "Believer" documentary, which sheds light on the suicide crisis in Utah, caused largely by Mormon leaders preaching that homosexuality is immoral and an abomination, still, to this day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex0CN9DRwN8