page_title: LGBT Mormon people and organizations
section_title: Living former Mormons
hierarchical_section_title: LGBT Mormon people and organizations / Prominent LGBT Mormon people / Living former Mormons
caption_attribution_description: English: Senator Jim Dabakis
context_page_description: Although the historical record is often scarce, evidence points to LGBT individuals having existed in the Mormon community since its beginnings, and estimates of the number of LGBTQ former and current Mormons range from 4 to 10% of the total membership of the LDS Church. However, it wasn't until the late 1950s that top LDS leaders began regularly discussing queer people in public addresses. Since the 1970s a greater number of LGBT individuals with Mormon connections have received media coverage.
context_section_description: Christina Aguilera is a singer who was raised in an LDS home by parents who met at the church-owned university BYU and married in the Washington D.C. Temple, though, Aguilera has not self-identified as Mormon. On several occasions Aguilera has mentioned her physical attraction to women as well as men.
  Bruce Bastian served as a church missionary to Italy, graduated from BYU, and married in a church temple before coming out. He and a BYU professor developed and co-founded WordPerfect software for word processing. He currently serves on the Board of the Human Rights Campaign, America's largest lesbian and gay rights political action committee. In 2008, Bastian donated $1 million to fight California Proposition 8, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
  Martha Nibley Beck, daughter of Mormon apologist Hugh Nibley and author of bestseller Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith.
  Dustin Lance Black is an American screenwriter, director, film and television producer and LGBT rights activist. He who wrote for the HBO Series Big Love on a polygamous Utah family, created the LGBT history ABC docudrama miniseries "When We Rise", and narrated the documentary "8: The Mormon Proposition". In 2008, he won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay for Milk, a movie about the 1978 assassination of gay civil rights leader and San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk.
  Patrick Califia is a writer on the topic of sexuality and identifies as a bisexual trans man.
  John Cameron is a former BYU student who participated in electro-shock aversion therapy sessions on campus in 1976 with the goal of changing his sexual orientation. The controversial therapy was conducted by PhD student Max Ford McBride under the direction of Dr. D. Eugene Thorne of the Psychology Department. While hooked to electrodes, the subjects were shown pornographic images of men while simultaneously being shocked. The experience was so traumatic for Cameron that he left Mormonism. In 2006, he finished writing a play about his experience, titled 14, in reference to the number of men who were the subjects of this particular experiment. The play was first staged at the University of Iowa in 2007.
  Jim Dabakis is a Utah state senator married to his husband Stephen Justeson and enrolled in BYU in 1971, but left after his mission when he came out at 23.
  Andrew Evans is a National Geographic journalist who wrote about his compulsory year of conversion therapy and "traumatic moments" as a student at BYU.
  Levi Jackman Foster is a queer artist/photographer, social media influencer, and LGBTQ activist raised Mormon in Alaska. Levi left home at age 16 to escape conversion therapy and has since been an important voice in LGBTQ rights working with organizations such as Trevor Project, GLAAD, FIERCE NYC, SAGE , Marriage Equality USA, No on 8, Human Rights Campaign, Ali Forney Center, Los Angeles LGBT Center, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, New York LGBT Center and has created multiple social media campaigns raising funds and awareness for at-risk, marginalized, ex-Mormon, and homeless LGBTQ youth and elderly.
  Michael Glatze is a former gay rights activist and publisher of Young Gay America's YGA Magazine. Glatze renounced his homosexual relationships and was baptized into the LDS Church. He stated that "Jesus, however, is what, ultimately, changed me." Glatze left the church within two years of his conversion and now considers himself a conservative Christian and serves as a pastor of a small church in Wyoming. His story is told in the independent film "I Am Michael" starring James Franco and Zachary Quinto.
  Tyler Glenn is the lead vocalist of the American rock band Neon Trees and came out as a gay Mormon in Rolling Stones magazine in March 2014, but has since stopped identifying as Mormon since at least April 2016.
  Laci Green is a bisexual sex educator and online video creator for Seeker and MTV. In 2016, Time named her one of the 30 most influential people on the Internet.
  Jesse Havea is a drag queen with the stage name "Brita Filter".
  Stephen Holbrook 
caption: Senator Dabakis sporting rainbow pride glasses in 2013.
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