Editor’s Note: This article is the third in a series exploring patterns in the increasing number of stories being published about people coming back to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Why fight this anymore?” Bennett Borden remembers thinking. Due to his attraction to other men, he concluded at the time, “I know that the gospel is true, but there is nothing I can do to live it.”
That led him to step away from his faith. “Look, I’m gay. I can’t do anything about it.”
Julio Ospina likewise told his father he wasn’t coming back to church, right after deciding he was “not going to be able to love a woman.”
His father hugged him and said, “I know you will be back.”
Bennett and Julio’s stories are part of a growing collection of personal accounts being shared about returning to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This includes a number of stories of LGBTQ+-identifying people coming back to church.
Leaving something they loved
Linnette Bakow recalls how much she loved her faith — “to throw that out would have really been devastating to me.” But it was equally discouraging to imagine what she worried at the time would be “living a life without love.” After feeling “ecstatically happy” in a relationship with another woman, she remembers beginning to feel a growing “division” with her faith.
Julio likewise loved the church dearly growing up — the temple, the Book of Mormon, seminary. “Nobody had to force me to go.” So, his announcement of stepping away from the faith surprised those who knew him best.
“Mom, there’s nothing I can do,” Julio said. “I’m sorry, but I decided to be happy.”
“I was in love and I was enjoying all these amazing feelings. I thought I had found happiness,” he reflected — this, despite assuming his long-held dreams of having a family were “done with. … It’s not happening anymore.”
His best friend, his sister, “cried a lot. She couldn’t understand.” Yet the family never abandoned him, Julio said. “They were always there when I needed them.”
Wanting more
Linnette said she had “never felt anything like” these early relationships, which felt “very fulfilling.” But she kept thinking about something she learned at Brigham Young University about the “magnificence of an eternal relationship,” where two people “grow together” emotionally and spiritually and “become one with the Savior” in eternal “oneness.”
“This oneness is what I wanted,” she said. Over time, she began to realize she wasn’t finding that outside her faith.
Julio likewise struggled to find meaningful love and connection, eventually starting to think this path was “probably not” where he would find that deeper closeness. “I was tired of the parties,” he said, recalling the day he asked, “What am I doing with my life?”
“I wanted more,” Julio said. “I knew of the Spirit. I knew of being in a temple. I knew of Heavenly Father answering my prayers. I knew of his hand on my shoulder.”
Bennett arrived at a similar longing in his late 40s, even with great success professionally, lots of friends and a loving partner. “I had all the things,” he said. But in a 2017 talk, he said, “There was this piece of me inside that simply wasn’t happy.”
Bennett remembers being invited to the house of a Latter-day Saint family member with young children for a party to celebrate their finishing the Book of Mormon for the first time. Everyone was dressed as their favorite person from the scriptures. “There was never any pressure,” he reflects, with the impact coming from “simply being around them” and experiencing “the love they shared, the spirit that was in their home.”
“I walked out of that room and went back to my Mercedes, fancy suits and a life that felt empty by comparison.”
Not long after, Bennett’s relationship also ended. Amidst the sadness and grief, he began to recognize an “ache and longing” that had been “growing for a few years in his heart.”
“I missed the gospel.”
Insurmountable barriers?
Bennett soon reconnected with a close friend of many years, Becky, whose relationship had also recently ended. They consoled each other, and began talking about what they wanted most out of life.
The possibility of returning to the church came up. Although he had continued praying after stepping away from the faith, Bennett said, “I couldn’t seem to figure out how to live my life and be a member of the church at the same time. Those two things seemed at odds and the path back to membership had mountains that seemed impossible to climb.”
Becky felt similarly stymied. “I had the desire to believe again, but couldn’t reconcile my budding faith with the knowledge of my sexual orientation.”
“If the church was true,” she said, “then something had to be different about my life in order for me to be a part of it.
“I couldn’t see how it would work, so I didn’t think it was possible.”
Reaching for more
This sense of impossibility is common in many situations, according to professional clinicians. Jeff Bennion, a marriage and family therapist in Salt Lake City, describes a sense of feeling “trapped” in clients coming to therapy for different reasons, where they “can’t see any way to escape.”
“One of the most exciting things I get to do as a therapist is open people’s minds and hearts up to their multiplicity of options,” he said. Compared to the idea that “there is no other way,” this Latter-day Saint therapist shared his reassurance that “it’s God who liberates the captive, opens up highways from the deep, and promises unending abundance.”
Scholar Ty Mansfield is part of the research team conducting the most in-depth study to examine healthy and sustainable life paths for sexual minorities. He points out that while having a sense of inner congruence is important, “everyone experiences conflicting feelings, desires and values to one degree or another in one domain of life or another.”
“Part of the important growth we experience in this life,” he says, “is learning how to sort through all of those feelings, desires and values, figuring out which to prioritize and how to relate healthily to all of them.”
This “dissonance between where we are and where we want to be” is something Linnette now sees as a “good thing.”
Despite our natural tendency to “blame those incongruent feelings on all sorts of things,” her own experience was that these feelings hold the potential to “lead us to where we need to go.”
As Linnette “started keeping the commandments one by one,” she recalls becoming “happier and happier” as the dissonance simultaneously began to dissipate. “I could easily see the contrast in my life. I was experiencing real joy in my life. … That is how I knew I was on the right path.”
Approaching the gospel with fresh eyes
When talking on the phone, Bennett suggested to Becky they begin to explore scripture together “under the assumption that it is all true.”
“I’d never done that before,” Becky admitted. “I’d always read with a skeptic’s eye, with a skeptical heart.”
“It really is different,” she said. “Things changed in my heart. I realized that I could trust Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father, I could expect their help … to the point that I didn’t have to live in constant fear of failure.”
As they spent more time praying and searching spiritually, Becky and Bennett spoke of things slowly starting to change. “I stopped thinking it was no longer possible for me to live inside the gospel,” Bennett summarized, describing this as a “veil that lifted from my understanding.”
Bennett and Becky later served in leadership at North Star, which describes itself as “a faith affirming resource for Latter-day Saints addressing sexual orientation and gender identity who desire to live in harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ and the doctrine and values of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Julio likewise remembers learning about “another way that didn’t involve going against church teaching.” That prompted him to attend church one time and then a second time, and a third time. Going to church felt “just so hopeful,” he recalls.
“There were a lot of things I was resistant to and didn’t understand,” Linnette admits about her early return to church. Yet despite feeling some discomfort, she describes embracing what she could and “leaving the rest for later.”
“I didn’t worry about what I didn’t understand. I just grew with what I could take in.”
Reuniting with other believers
“For some reason,” Bennett said, “the idea of going to church when you are on the outside is like the scariest thing you’ve ever done in your life.”
That fear quickly evaporated upon meeting with his bishop. “He could not have been kinder,” Bennett remembers. When Bennett asked the bishop what would happen next, he said, “I don’t know. Let’s just take this step by step. We will figure this out together. Do you want to come to church on Sunday?”
Becky’s experience with her soft-spoken bishop was similar. “The first thing out of his mouth was, ‘Let me be the first to say welcome back. … I’m so glad you’re here.’”
“He didn’t tell me I needed to do anything in particular or admonish me to change anything yet.” Instead, he said, “Let’s talk again. Can you come back next week? … I’d be happy to tell the Relief Society president about you and make sure you have somebody to sit next to.”
When Becky walked into church next Sunday, the Relief Society president “put her arm around me and gave me a big hug” —saying, “Come, sit right here. This is where I’m sitting.”
Linnette said her Bishop “just personified kindness,” describing her repentance as “one of the most gentle and sweetest processes,” which was “not at all how I thought about it.”
“Never once did anyone condemn me, there was no harshness,” she said, adding with some surprise in her voice, “As we change our hearts, God lets go of the past quite easily.”
Fearful days arrive
The road ahead clearly wasn’t simple or easy in any of these stories. Bennett recalls feeling overwhelmed at times by piercing thoughts. “How can you do this? This is stupid. How are you ever going to be happy? What if you can’t do this and you’re miserable for the rest of your life?”
These worrisome questions would come up “faster than they could get resolved,” Bennett said — describing a “what-if hamster wheel” of ceaseless rumination, “Well, what about this, how am I going to do that, what’s going to happen with this?”
Amidst “these storms of anxiety” he described feeling surprised at starting to notice “this utter peace at the center of our souls.”
At a certain point, Bennett decided, “I don’t care what the questions are. I don’t care what fears I feel. I don’t have to have those answers right now in order to move forward in faith.”
The next right step
One day a scripture verse came to Bennett’s mind, reassuring him that God’s guidance could “distill upon” his soul “as the dews from heaven.”
“All you have to do today is take the step the size of a dewdrop,” he said. “The only thing I can control is what is going on right in front of me today. So, get up, read your scriptures, say your prayers, feed yourself, put some clothes on, go to work and focus on today.”
“I stopped trying to predict the future,” Bennett said. “From that moment, things really started to change for me.”
From his own experience reconciling faith and sexuality, Dr. Mansfield shared one of his life mantras being “today’s manna today” — hearkening to the Old Testament story where God promises his people “that He will give them today the manna, or sustenance we need, only for today.”
New promises, new identities
Linnette recalls a formative experience singing “I am a child of God” in a Primary chorus at stake conference, when the visiting Apostle asked all the children to stand up and “told us how much God loved each one of us” and “how important we were to God.”
“I remember being enveloped with an overwhelming sense of God’s love for me,” she said. “There has been nothing in my life that has been able to shake that moment and its power.”
In another story, Paula Achuo remembers assuming at first she had to “get rid of these feelings” (of same-sex attraction) in order to stay in the church. Even though she felt she was “doing everything I was supposed to,” she began to feel it was all too much, “I’m just gonna live that way, I don’t really care anymore.”
Yet after a period of inactivity, she experienced a turning point when remembering the Young Women’s theme about being a daughter of Heavenly parents. “You always say those things but I never really thought about what it really meant.”
“And then I really thought about it one time, like, I’m a daughter of Heavenly Father. Which means ... I have a divine potential ... which means that we can do things that we cannot even imagine.”
“Just the knowledge that I am a daughter of my Heavenly Father and Mother and that they really love me. They know me. They know everything about me. ... Knowing that gives me so much strength.”
On the day he was rebaptized, April 7, 2013, Julio invited many friends, so they could see that “I’ve been able to be born again and be a new man.”
“I am so much more than just an attraction,” Julio said. “I’m a child of the most powerful being in the universe. … He’s my Father and it’s an honor and a privilege to be his son.”
“He loves me and is wise beyond my wildest imagination,” he said. Julio said he felt “more genuine now” and “more connected” with himself. “I’ve learned to know myself better.”
Holding family dreams gently
Julio described a sacred moment where he saw himself in the future “holding my baby.”
“I will be able to say it was worth it,” Julio thought at the time — “all the effort, all the struggle and the pressure of people saying, ‘No, you need to be who you really are.’”
“It’s been worth it because all these options are now available for me,” he says now. “I am giving everything in order to obtain it.”
When he met Brittany a year and a half later at a church activity, Julio still wondered, “How could I ever love a woman — how could I ever feel attraction to a woman?
“It happened slowly,” he said — describing all the moments where the love grew steadily, including feeling reassuring “chemistry.”
“It was gradual. It was miraculous.”
Aware of his background, Brittany said, “I could see who he really was.” After lots of experience together and prayer, she said, “I didn’t worry about other things.”
“I just loved him.”
In many other stories, now-faithful members point out they didn’t find a marriage partner or a romantic relationship after returning to church activity. Linnette struggled with the possibility that full church activity meant she may not be partnered in this life. “While I was very happy to be making this commitment (to return),” she describes feeling sad about it at first. “I came home and I had a good cry.”
Having friends and a family connections helped, she said, but the “number one thing by far” that made a difference was “being connected to God in a different way than I had in the past.”
“There was no denying His presence in my life,” Linnette said, describing how she “felt God in my life on a daily basis.”
“My desire for a relationship did not go away, but I felt very fulfilled in so many areas that there was no lack.”
Twin terrors
Bennett and Becky admit feeling “terrified” at the thought of being alone the rest of their lives after returning to church. But they feared even more the thought of being in a heterosexual marriage.
Responding to those who say that these kinds of marriages “don’t work,” Ty Mansfield says “that’s a fundamental untruth.”
“While there are certainly marriages that end — and it’s important for us to be sensitive to these — there are also many marriages that thrive.” Instead of presuming that such marriages are somehow “destined to fail,” this scholar suggests, “it’s far more productive to investigate why some thrive and why others don’t.”
Despite the confusion and trepidation that arose as their feelings progressed beyond friendship, Bennett and Becky decided to pray for understanding and move forward in faith, even if they didn’t know how things would turn out.
Bennett and Becky were married in 2013 by their bishop in Arlington, Virginia, after both received a spiritual witness they were meant to be together.
Several months later, Becky and Bennett were rebaptized in what they describe as a “sacred day full of joy and renewal.”
“If you would have told us any of this a few years ago,” Becky said smiling, “we would have laughed and poured another drink.”
Staying close
The people who had the biggest influence on their lives, Bennett said, were believing friends “who stayed involved in our lives.”
“The people who didn’t love and include and invite us into their lives and homes just had no influence in my life at all,” he added.
One family member who kept Bennett at arms length for fear of “condoning” his choices, never hesitated to take the opportunity to share warnings about his future.
“Finally, one day I said to him, ‘What possible good does that do me? It’s like telling a drowning person: ‘Don’t drown, drowning is not good for you. You shouldn’t breathe that water!’”
What they needed, Becky said, was for people to “hop in the water” to directly support them, with the biggest impact coming from those who “honored our agency, included us, got involved in our lives, and loved us at the same time.”
“You can’t influence people you don’t have access to,” Bennett added.
Staying open
This long experience has created sympathy in Bennett and Becky for others who assume they only have limited options such as, “they can act on their feelings and lose their covenant relationship with Heavenly Father, or they can stay in the church and be lonely.”
“Everybody thinks those are your two options,” Becky said. “And that’s not true. It isn’t. You have no idea what the Lord can do. You have no idea what is going to happen.”
“Stay open to what the Lord brings you and trust Him.”
That may not mean marriage in this life, which is something Bennett said he could hardly contemplate beforehand. “The thought of being in a heterosexual relationship that is beautiful and fulfilling in every way was impossible for me to comprehend. I never in a million years thought that I would ever be in that or even want that.”
“Yet once we focused on our feet and turned the future over to the Lord, believing he can do anything,” he said, “that’s when the love started to blossom between us. Now we have this beautiful, wonderful, eternal marriage.”
Both of them are quick to reiterate that marriage is not the final goal, and encourage others to focus on God and follow His lead. When people approach Becky and say, “Oh, you’re so amazing,” she’s quick to say, “No, I’m not. It’s not about me. God is amazing. I just listened. That’s all I did.”
“Focus on the choices you can make today,” Bennett reiterated. “Develop a trusting relationship with God today and he will be with you to help you navigate the challenges that come tomorrow.
“You have no idea what miracles the Lord is preparing just for you.”