I’m a musician and three years ago I was in between bands, Wes is also a musician and he was looking for a more permanent artist to join his band. My belief that homosexuality was negative began to change when I met Wes. (Side note – I later learned sexually predatory behavior generally has nothing to do with sexual orientation but everything to do with power dynamics… a discussion for another day!) Unfortunately, many of these ideas became even more cemented in my mind when I was sexually harassed, then assaulted and abused by my mission companion while serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I was never outwardly hateful of LGBTQ+ people, but internally I definitely harbored a lot of negative feelings. Hi, I’m McKay, and like many of you, I was raised believing homosexuality was “wrong”, “sinful”, and “unnatural.” I had heard and parroted all sorts of well-intentioned yet incredibly harmful phrases like “hate the sin, love the sinner.”