A Walk in my Shoes Quotes

“It was late at night when we first kissed. Jordan went to bed right after, and I sat in the guest bedroom riddled with guilt. I had gone back on a decision that I had made to not kiss him. I felt like a hypocrite. There was comfort in being able to say that I had never "acted on it" before, and now I couldn't say that. I felt like I had done something irreparable—something that I couldn't take back. It wasn't until the next morning when Jordan and I talked that I felt better. The truth was that I had wanted to kiss him. I had wanted to express physical affection. I had wanted to be in a committed romantic relationship with him. But I felt that I wasn't allowed to want those things. It was one of those rare moments when my personal desires were incongruent with what I had been taught.”
― Ben Schilaty, A Walk in my Shoes: Questions I’m Often Asked as a Gay Latter-day Saint

“In recent years I've started to say "orientation" more than "sexual orientation." Yes, I am sexually attracted to men and not to women, but it's about so much more than that. I'm also emotionally oriented towards men, and romantically oriented towards men, and intellectually oriented towards me, and even spiritually oriented towards men. All the parts of me that yearn for connection are directed towards men. And I don't feel that same orientation towards women.”
― Ben Schilaty, A Walk in my Shoes: Questions I’m Often Asked as a Gay Latter-day Saint

“One Church leader explained that these attraction aren't something that people like me would be stuck with forever. Same-sex attraction did not exist in the pre-earth life, he said, and it wouldn't exist in the next. ...
I longed for the day when God would take me home so that I could be free of all this. I would've rather been dead and straight than alive and gay. Being taught that this was an affliction and struggle of this life was comforting at first, but then it just made me wish I could pass on to the next.”
― Ben Schilaty, A Walk in my Shoes: Questions I’m Often Asked as a Gay Latter-day Saint