To Be Gay — And Mormon

As he got older, it became more difficult to keep his feelings hidden. He enrolled at Brigham Young University in Utah, spending hours in the library looking for a technique for becoming straight. After graduating, he eventually landed a job at Andersen Consulting back in California in 1996. Handsome and single, he seemed a perfect catch. At church, he avoided well-meaning members who gently prodded him to settle down with a nice Mormon girl.

Finally, early last year, his agony spilled into the open. Depressed and desperate, he had begun for the first time to conclude that maybe the church was wrong. He thought about leaving it. He approached his local bishop, Russell Hancock, and told him he was gay and had thought about killing himself. Hancock, who counseled Matis for several months, says he "pleaded with Stuart. I said if this is a choice between life and the church, he should choose his life."

Hancock urged him to tell his parents he was gay. Matis had told only one other person, his friend Clay Whitmer. The two had met in Italy, when both were serving their obligatory proselytizing mission for the church. Back in California years later, Whitmer and Matis confided to each other that they were gay. Matis's brother, Bill, and sister Katherine began wondering aloud about their brother's sexual orientation. Their mother went to Stuart's room early last year to settle the matter once and for all. "Stuart, are you gay?" she asked. "Yes, I am," he said.

To Matis's surprise, his family accepted his homosexuality. They spent many evenings talking and crying into the night. He was able to tell them how much he loved them. Unburdening himself to his family was a relief; yet it did little to lift his depression. He struggled to figure out how to live as a gay man without disobeying the teachings of the church--which requires gays and lesbians to remain forever celibate. He went to a few gay dance clubs and parties but didn't dare consider intimacy with men he met, and apparently remained celibate his whole life.

Matis's despair mixed with anger. He lashed out at the church's teachings in a blistering, 12-page letter to a cousin. "Straight members have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up gay in this church," he wrote. "It is a life of constant torment, self-hatred and internalized homophobia." Matis stopped going to church altogether, but would not let go of his faith in the church. "He was able to [reject Mormon teachings on homosexuality] intellectually," says Alejandro Navarro, a gay friend, "but emotionally he couldn't." Late last year, he told his parents he'd bought a gun, but warned them that if they tried to put him in an institution he would never speak to them again. The last week of his life, in a final act of separation, he stopped wearing his "garments," the ritual shirt and shorts many Mormons wear under their clothes.

Matis's parents found the suicide note on their son's bed the morning of his death. They frantically called his friends, hoping they'd know where he went. One person did: Clay Whitmer. Matis had told Whitmer of his plans to commit suicide. Whitmer planned to cheer up his old friend, but didn't get there in time. A few weeks later, anguished at his friend's death and tormented by his own long-term depression, Whitmer put a gun to his own head.