Jake Angelo

Americans are leaving Christianity because of anti-LGBTQ+ animus. Why now?

Jake Angelo, Uncloseted Media January 18, 2026

When Garth Huelskamp was on his Mormon mission at 19 years old, he journeyed through western Nevada, where he remembers meeting a lesbian couple.

While he remained tight-lipped, his companions quickly jumped into a conversation with them, speaking about how Jesus can save them from all sins, including homosexuality.

“[There was] always an elephant in the room,” he says.

That’s because at the time, Huelskamp knew he was gay. But like many queer religious people, he believed he could pray it away.

“I was hoping that I’d come up from my mission and be attracted to women and be able to live, like this very quintessential Mormon dream,” he told GAY TIMES and Uncloseted Media.

But after knocking on thousands of doors over the course of two years, Huelskamp had zero revelations from God.

After returning home to Utah, Huelskamp came out to his parents, both devout Mormons. Coming out to them wasn’t easy, and he still maintains a difficult relationship with his father.

But that was just the beginning of the battle.

After years of rumination, he couldn’t bring himself to live as an openly gay man and be part of the Mormon Church. So he decided to leave.

The process—which took about five years—was far more challenging than being open about his sexuality. It included hours of therapy, countless conversations with friends and family, years of turmoil and cut-off relationships from friends and relatives.

“I still held a lot of beliefs and values that the Mormon community still had,” he says. “I had to internally question all of that; I had to question a lot of the narratives that I’ve been taught since I was literally a baby. I, quite literally, had to recreate myself from the ground up.”

Huelskamp, now 35 and working in human resources in Seattle, is not alone. In 2024, a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) study of 5,600 American individuals found a growing trend of Americans deconstructing their religion due to the treatment of LGBTQ people.

Forty-seven percent of adults deconstructed and left their faith due to these concerns, up from 29% who left in 2016. In addition, roughly 60% of people under 30 say they left religion for that reason.

Despite this, some conservative Christian religions are digging their heels into anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Earlier this year, the Southern Baptist church endorsed a ban on gay marriage and called on the Supreme Court to repeal Obergefell v. Hodges.

Meanwhile, queer worshippers are increasingly welcomed by more affirming churches and liberal denominations of Christianity, like the Episcopalian church, which allows gay members to become bishops.

According to psychologist Darrel Ray, churches often bend the interpretation of religious text to remain relevant. “Churches follow the culture, cultures don’t follow churches,” says Ray, the president and founder of Recovering from Religion, a nonprofit organization that aids people through the process of leaving their religion.

“The culture makes a change, and then the church has to adjust or it goes extinct.”

U.S. Politics Are Driving People Away

The PRRI study found that one-fifth of Americans who left their religion did so due to their faith’s focus on politics.

“The trend seems to be … substituting rigid fundamentalist beliefs for more liberal, spiritual ideas,” David Teachout, a mental health therapist and a member of the Secular Therapy Project, told GAY TIMES and Uncloseted Media. “This may be due to the association being made between those in fundamentalist groups having an outsized role in American politics, leading to policies that are seen as destructive.”

The line between church and state in the U.S. has grown increasingly blurred. In May, the president signed an executive order establishing a religious liberty commission and questioned the necessity of keeping religion out of government.

Homophobia and Religion

Beyond politics, many interpretations of religious texts carry homophobic implications. For example, the biblical verse Leviticus 18:22 says “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is an abomination,” and is interpreted by many Christians to mean that homosexuality is sinful.

“This narrative of immorality and sinfulness would be where the root of the tension might come from,” Panagiotis Pentaris, an associate professor of social work at Goldsmiths, University of London, told GAY TIMES and Uncloseted Media.

That’s the case for many in the Mormon church. In 2015, Elder D. Todd Christofferson, a member of the second-highest governing body in the church, stated that they regard gay marriage as a “significant, serious kind of sin that requires Church discipline.”

Huelskamp recalls learning that homosexuality was a sin at age 8 during his one-on-one worthiness interview with a bishop, a required step before baptism. Part of that interview required Huelskamp to say he lived by the “law of chastity,” which includes no sexual activity outside of marriage to a woman, no porn, and no masturbation.

More than a decade later, while studying at Brigham Young University (BYU), a college sponsored by the Mormon church, Huelskamp was subject to the school’s Church Educational Standards Honor Code, a set of rules that condemned homosexuality.

The “Same Sex Romantic Behavior” section of the code states that “living a chaste and virtuous life also includes abstaining from same-sex romantic behavior.” In the section’s FAQ, one question addresses whether or not LGBTQ students can be disciplined for dating, handholding and kissing, to which it answers that “each situation will be handled on a case-by-case basis to help each student feel the love of the Savior.”

“The last two years I was there, I was out to close friends and family and because of BYU and their rules, I was looking at losing my housing situation. I was looking at being expelled … I was looking at losing my social standing in the community as well as my family’s,” Huelskamp says.

All of these factors are compounded by more insidious, superficial instances where conservative denominations of Christianity appear open to LGBTQ people, but they’re not.

“Many religions will continuously share the statement that ‘we are very inclusive,’” says Pentaris. But in reality, this is not true.

Huelskamp remembers many of those on his mission using a non-confrontational approach to address homosexuality. “Instead of saying, ‘Hey, you’re going to hell,’ … they’re going to say, ‘Hey, we’d love to teach about the plan of salvation and how Jesus can cover all sins, including homosexuality.’”

It was all of these factors that led him to officially leave the church in 2017.

Other reasons people leave or go to affirming churches

It’s not just the church’s stance on LGBTQ issues that are pushing Americans to exit—31% of surveyed individuals say they departed their faith due to abuse scandals and 32% cited mental health issues.

And a 2024 study by the Survey Center on American Life found that young women are disaffiliating more so than young men, with nearly two-thirds of Gen Z women surveyed saying that churches do not treat men and women equally.

Travis McKie-Voerste, director of the Secular Therapy Project, says he has encountered many young people fed up with faith due to “low-cred behaviors,” where adults and prominent religious figures fail to practice what they preach.

“If [someone has] parents that say, ‘As Christians, it’s important to love everybody,’ and then they see very different behaviors acted out … I think [they] start that questioning [and say] ‘This doesn’t feel right,’” he says.

Social media and the internet have given easy access to those who are questioning their religious beliefs and want to explore leaving their faith.

“They might pop things into YouTube and [explore] ‘what’s the evidence that God exists?’” he says.

McKie-Voerste has worked with individuals who have started to question their faith in their preteens or younger. Many at this age continue to participate out of habit or parental pressure, but possess no religious belief.

He says that it’s more common for people in their 20s to leave their religion, as that’s when most leave their hometown and have the space to explore their identity.

However, Ray says it’s also common to see individuals leave their faith later in life. “We have had 80-year-old people [leave],” he says. “It happens often.”

Leaving Isn’t Easy

Leaving your religion behind often comes with mental anguish, broken relationships and years trying to overturn an ideology that was, at a young age, cemented into one’s consciousness.

“I had to dig deep and really listen to my own personal voice and not the proverbial jargon that you’re programmed to think and feel,” says Huelskamp.

The more fundamentalist the beliefs, the harder it is to leave, according to Ray. He says that those who were raised in a fundamentalist religion often develop a trauma response in their healing process, while those raised in a more liberal sect don’t often experience that same response.

“When a person finally realizes what’s happened to them in their childhood training and church and religion, they go through grief,” says Ray. “They were in a community that they thought was loving and supportive of them until… they realize, ‘they hate me as much as they used to say they love me.’”

This was the case for Huelskamp. “Breaking myself out of the Mormon mentality was excruciating,” he says. “It felt like I had the rug ripped out from underneath my feet.”

What pushed Huelskamp to formally leave the church was his love for his partner. He was engaged and didn’t want to undergo disciplinary action from the church on his wedding day.

“I did not want our wedding day to be overshadowed by my excommunication from my childhood faith,” he says.

Officially leaving the faith requires removing one’s records and information from the church. And so, he had a lawyer help him do exactly that.

Huelskamp, now eight years removed from Mormonism and a father, says that the most prominent emotion he feels toward his former religion is anger.

“Imagine if you were going in a very intense long-term relationship with someone [and] had a really nasty divorce, and then you find yourself in a world where all of your family and friends, quite literally worship your ex,” he says. “And so [I feel] a lot of anger in that regard.”

Huelskamp says there were also periods where he felt isolation, which is common for folks who leave their religion as they are also losing a community and a belief system.

Since leaving, he has cut off many close friends and family who remain in the church, as he believes their participation is an affront to his identity. Today, he only remains in contact with family and friends who have also left.

“Essentially, my Mormon social sphere went from 500-plus people over the course of my adolescence to about 20 to 30 people,” he says.

But for him, the quality of these relationships is invaluable. “Having that support system and having friends that—essentially we’re [now] trauma bonded—they are some of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met,” Huelskamp says. “It’s a silver lining.”

Even for non-LGBTQ people who leave religion, Ray says the journey may take more than five years due to that feeling of loss and the separation from community.

The goal of organizations like Recovering From Religion is to help those who have separated from their faith find a sense of belonging, whether that be with other unaffiliated folks or some other type of community, like student alliances at college.

Huelskamp hopes that younger generations can pave a path forward for the church. At the same time, he recognizes the church’s rigid position on gay relationships and doesn’t believe a change in leadership will extinguish homophobic beliefs.

Dallin Oaks is the next in line to assume leadership of the Mormon church following the death of President Russell M. Nelson last month. Oaks, 93, has a history of anti-LGBTQ comments and activism, and he played a key role in the church’s 2015 gay exclusion policy.

Huelskamp maintains a spiritual sense of self but has steered clear of organized religion. He thinks that unless something changes inside the church, Mormonism will become increasingly obsolete.

“If they can’t acknowledge their own faults, they’re not going to be able to shape a future for their religion,” Huelskamp said. “It’s got to be inclusive.”

National/ News/ Top Stories

LGBTQ Spaces Say ‘All Are Welcome.’ Asian Men Know Better

Jake Angelo, Uncloseted Media August 25, 2025

Cody Seiya did not feel welcome in Provincetown.

“Is that for yellow pride?” a man sneered at Seiya in the middle of Ptown’s tea dance, referring to a yellow bandanna he was wearing around his neck.

It wasn’t the first time Seiya, a 33-year-old gay Asian American, had experienced racism from other queer men. Years earlier at Rage, a now-closed gay club in West Hollywood, another white man asked him what he was doing there.

“It’s not Gameboi night,” the man said to him, referring to the Asian-themed weekly party the venue hosted.

“That was really the first time that I really felt some sort of divide,” Seiya told Uncloseted Media. “We’re already such a marginalized community, and then to just marginalize even further; it was just really disappointing.”

Seiya’s experience isn’t unique. A 2022 report from The Trevor Project found that more than half of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) LGBTQ youth reported discrimination based on their race and/or ethnicity in 2021. And another study from the Williams Institute found that nearly one in five AAPI LGBTQ adults do not feel safe in the U.S.

This discrimination is a silent epidemic, according to Gene Lim, a researcher at the Australian Research Center for Sex, Health and Society.

“There’s a lot of shame around experiencing sexual racism, on top of the fact that it’s an inherently distressing situation,” Lim told Uncloseted Media. “That congeals into a sense of isolation.”

Feelings of exclusion take a mental health toll: 40% of AAPI youth seriously considered suicide in the U.S. in 2021, and 16% attempted it.

Seiya says he’s carried those instances of racism with him and that they’ve impacted his self-perception in queer spaces.

“[It gave] this sense of otherness and discomfort whenever I was in a predominantly white space. It’s still something I deal with to this day.”

Danny Maiuri, a 41-year-old queer Korean American man, says he’s conscious of his racial identity when he visits Fire Island, a popular gay vacation spot on Long Island, N.Y.

“I remember times just getting asked the really basic ‘Where are you from?’ And I just kind of explained, ‘I live in New York,’ and then you get the ‘But like, were you born here?’”

A Long History of Racism

Racism toward Asian people has permeated American society since the first Chinese immigrants arrived in California in the 1800s.

Sexual racism—or discrimination in romantic partner selection—is most common among men who have sex with men (MSM), according to Thomas Le, an assistant professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College.

“A lot of what Asian American men report in the U.S. is some ostracization because of the elevation of white men, and masculinity and muscularity being prized,” Le told Uncloseted Media.

Lim says this fixation on whiteness stems from racialized hierarchies in queer spaces, where Eurocentric features are often favored over Asian features.

“Asian MSM [must] navigate a sexual field where the hierarchy of desire is really racialized,” Lim told Uncloseted Media. “And they can feel disadvantaged in a way that is insurmountable.”

Nineteenth-century immigration laws and cultural norms in the U.S. excluded Asian American men from participating in male-dominant professions like mining and field work. Instead, they assumed roles typically associated with women.

This segregation fomented in the American mind an image of the Asian man as feminine and has translated into the racist stereotypes about body image and dating preferences of gay men.

Asian men are often assumed to be bottoms or twinks or to have small penis sizes because of this emasculated image. And a 2011 analysis on race-based partner preferences among MSM found that Asian men were preferred by 12% of participants, a dramatic drop off from preferences for white and Black men, preferred by 52% and 48% of participants, respectively.

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Racist Stereotypes and the Media’s White Beauty Standard

In American media, Hollywood has reproduced caricatures of Asian people for years. Long Duk Dong, the Asian character in “Sixteen Candles,” was portrayed as sexually inept. Leslie Chow’s diction in “The Hangover” is heavily accented, and his nudity is the punchline of a joke with the implicationthat Asian men are sexually inferior.

While media representations have shifted away from overtly racist caricatures, and have even centered queer Asian male relationships like in Boys’ Love anime, the absence of Asian portrayals in the media and the abundance of white characters have shaped attraction among a generation of queer people.

Le says white, muscular men dominated popular media and defined what it meant to be attractive through the 1990s and 2000s.

“Representation is really important … it has this really understated effect on the erotic habitus for a lot of queer men,” says Lim, referring to the learned component of sexual desire. “A lot of queer Asian men do grow up implicitly measuring themselves against a Eurocentric standard.”

This experience was a reality for Filipino American Kalaya’an Mendoza in college.

Growing up in a majority non-white neighborhood in San Jose, Calif., Mendoza had never compared himself with white people. But at UC Santa Barbara, a school where AAPI people composed less than one-fifth of the undergraduate student body, Mendoza remembers attempting to fit in by adhering to white beauty standards.

“[I was] trying to be as American as possible and not to be seen as the other, not to be seen as a perpetual foreigner,” Mendoza, now 46, told Uncloseted Media. “No matter how much I tried and no matter how many times I bleached my hair, no matter how many blue contacts I bought—I would never be white.”

“I just remember feeling extremely depressed,” he says. “I almost dropped out.”

The pressure to assimilate to a white beauty standard is also ingrained in porn.

“Pornography is generally one kind of common avenue for young queer men to explore sexuality,” says Le. “Some develop racialized attractions based on that.”

White actors are far more frequently cast in porn than actors of color. Because of that, many queer men hold white people as the beauty standard.

This is what Mendoza discovered when he attempted to decolonize his dating preferences, which he describes as unlearning his racial biases shaped by colonialism. He says he questioned why he was so attracted to whiteness even though he grew up around people of color. “A lot of that was, quite frankly, because of the sexualized media or the porn.”

Seiya says he has experienced racism working in the porn industry.

“They just automatically assume that I am a bottom or submissive because I am Asian,” he says. “I just find it demoralizing and very limiting.”

Sex and Dating

When it comes to dating, queer Asian men often find it difficult to decipher if they are being seen for who they are or if they are being fetishized.

Dating apps compound these effects. The design of most platforms are such that users must make quick judgments based on minimal information on a user’s profile. Because of this, Lim says many users fall upon their prejudices.

As a way to receive more matches or chats, some Asian men attempt to fit into stereotypes that paint them as effeminate, such as the “lady boy” or the “femme boy.”

“Gay men do this all the time, they try to embody an archetype,” says Lim. “And an archetype is fertile ground for someone to project their own fantasies onto.”

Maiuri says he constantly questions whether his sexual interactions are shaped by his own desires or if he’s assuming a role based on preconceived notions.

He feels that many men assume that “all Asian men are bottoms and submissive,” and he constantly asks himself, “Am I fulfilling this role because this is what I actually enjoy? Or was this something that was just put on me and I’ve adapted to?”

Although gay culture remains white-centric, there are signs of change.

“A lot of queer Asian American men actually are creating their own communities,” says Le. “[They’re] really being intentional about finding a community with other queer men of color.”

Mendoza says that finding other queer people of color at college helped him to cultivate a positive self-image.

“That’s why, quite frankly, I feel like I’m alive today,” he says.

Maiuri says that while often criticized as a boogeyman of the mental health crisis, social media is actually having positive effects in facilitating connections between young men of similar experiences and slowly providing more examples of queer Asian men.

“The good part of it has been that connection and kind of finding identity and finding examples online for some folks to find ways to navigate [their] identity,” says Maiuri.

Seiya has come a long way from that weekend in Provincetown. He recently returned to the gay vacation hotspot for its fifth annual Frolic Weekend, a queer men of color takeover event.