One of the nation’s most conservative states is the latest to take a stand in favor of LGBTQ equality. 

Last Tuesday, Utah became the 19th state to ban “conversion therapy,” a widely discredited practice that attempts to “change” an individual’s LGBTQ identity. The term refers to a loosely defined set of treatments, ranging from extreme measures like electroshock intended to eradicate impure thoughts to beating a pillow effigy intended to stand in for the patient’s parents.

The law is the first of its kind in the nation. While states like California, New Mexico, Maine, and Illinois enacted regulations on conversion therapy by passing legislation — all aimed at youth under the age of 18 — Utah’s rule was enacted by the Psychologist Licensing Board. 

When a bill to ban the practice stalled in the state legislature last year after lawmakers introduced amendments to remove protections for trans people, the bill’s original author disavowed the new version and Equality Utah executive director Troy Williams accused lawmakers of caving to the interests of “quack therapists.” In response, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert asked the licensing board to intervene by adding conversion therapy to a list of practices termed “unprofessional conduct.” 

The new rule only applies to mental health providers and other professional counselors licensed by the state; it does not regulate faith leaders and religious counselors or legal guardians acting on behalf of an individual.

Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints initially opposed the rule in an October press release — claiming it failed to “protect individual religious beliefs” — Mormon leaders reversed course the following month, endorsing the regulations. That stamp of approval was critical to the proposal’s passage: 60 percent of Utahns are members of the LDS faith, including nearly 90 percent of lawmakers. 

Advocates working to ban conversion therapy across the United States believe Utah’s conversion therapy ban is a watershed moment for the movement. In addition to the ubiquitous presence of the Mormon Church in a state that can sometimes feel like a theocracy, conservatives control both houses of the Utah Legislature, as well as the governorship. No previous state that enacted a conversion therapy ban had to clear such high hurdles. 

Williams thinks Utah is a sign that other Republican states are movable on the issue — so long as LGBTQ activists are willing to reach across the aisle. “I’ve seen it over and over again: When we can get our authentic stories in front of red-state lawmakers, hearts open, defenses drop, minds change, and laws follow,” he told Vox. “That’s the tried-and-true formula, no matter how conservative your state may be.”

The growing movement to ban conversion therapy

The nationwide campaign to ban conversion therapy is one of the fastest-growing political movements in US history. 

Since California became the first state to outlaw the practice in 2012, more than 80 jurisdictions — whether cities, states, or counties — have taken steps to either restrict conversion therapy or ban it altogether. These include the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, where then-Gov. Ricardo Rosselló signed an executive order last year after a legislative effort to outlaw conversion treatments was blocked by the conservative New Progressive Party.

Whereas the fight for same-sex marriage was a generations-long struggle, Mathew Shurka, co-founder of the advocacy group Born Perfect, believes the reason the anti-conversion therapy movement has picked up so much steam in such a short amount of time is the harm the practice causes. In 2019, the national suicide prevention organization the Trevor Project found that more than 42 percent of young people who have been subjected to orientation change attempts had attempted to take their own lives within the past year.

“Marriage equality wasn’t a life-or-death situation, where conversion therapy is for many people,” Shurka told Vox, noting that an estimated 700,000 youth and adults in the US are survivors of conversion therapy.

Although nearly every leading medical and mental health authority in the country — including the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association — has condemned conversion therapy, the majority of victories have been concentrated in the coastal states, areas of the country more politically predisposed to pro-LGBTQ+ legislation. Eight of the states that have banned the practice had Republican governors at the time, but the majority of those, including New Hampshire and Vermont, are either staunchly liberal or Democratic-leaning. Not a single state in the geographic South, the nation’s conservative stronghold, has enacted a statewide conversion therapy law.

That’s why Shurka, who spent five years in and out of conversion therapy clinics after coming out to his parents at 16, believes Utah is the “moment where the tide turns.” Just hours after Utah became the 19th state to enact a ban, he attended a hearing on a conversion therapy bill in Virginia — a former red state that voted for Barack Obama twice and Hillary Clinton in 2016 — and says the newly signed rule was brought up “maybe seven times” during discussion. After the shock that the law was passed with the LDS Church’s approval wore off, he says viewpoints on the legislation quickly began to “change,” even among GOP lawmakers.

“The opinions of the people who are on the fence — for or against — viewed it differently,” he says. “I think that’s where we’re succeeding: How do we make sure that this is not a partisan issue?”

More Republican states could ban conversion therapy in 2020

As LGBTQ advocates advance conversion therapy bills across the country, activists have their eyes on a handful of conservative states during the current legislative session — including Kentucky and Georgia.

Kentucky stands out among the pack, where legislators are weighing a conversion therapy ban for the fourth time. But while in previous years, proposals to outlaw the practice were treated with a pat on the back and a polite shrug, supporters of LGBTQ rights have reason to hope the issue will finally get its first hearing in 2020. This year marks the first time a Republican has signed on to co-sponsor the legislation: state Sen. Alice Forgy Kerr.

On paper, Kerr is an unlikely champion of LGBTQ rights. A former associate minister, she was raised in a Southern Baptist church in southwestern Kentucky and describes herself as “very unabashedly pro-life.” But after stumbling upon Boy Erased, the 2018 film adaptation of Garrard Conley’s memoir about surviving conversion therapy, while looking for something to watch on TV, she immediately texted a fellow Republican in the legislature and begged her to check out the movie. Soon after, Kerr introduced a bill to outlaw conversion therapy — the first pro-LGBTQ bill in the state’s history to be authored by a Republican.

Despite her partisan leanings, Kerr believes this issue transcends thornier, more divisive issues surrounding LGBTQ equality, such as a statewide nondiscrimination bill that has languished in the legislature for two decades. “Wherever people’s hearts and minds are, that really is separate from the issue of conversion therapy — which is torture,” she told Vox. “This is something that any person should feel is wrong.”

Tanner Mobley, an activist who has been pushing for a conversion therapy ban in Kentucky every year a bill has been introduced, says advocates have already seen “significant momentum” on the issue in 2020 — after what was already a groundbreaking session in 2019. Last year, advocates submitted the legislation with 20 co-sponsors in the House, which was about “five times” what they’d had previously. They also submitted it in the Senate for the first time, a milestone he credits to tireless educational efforts by local and national LGBTQ advocates.

Mobley believes that having a conservative build on that momentum by starting conversations with fellow Republicans has been a “game changer.” 

“We know that a lot of Republicans in both the Senate and the House are supportive of the ban on conversion therapy, but they’re not willing to expend the social capital to do so because they live in very conservative districts and they’re worried about how their constituents are going to respond,” he says. “The more folks who are able to stand up and take a stand on this issue, the safer it makes for other Republicans to get on board as well.”

While Georgia has yet to see a Republican officially sign on to its conversion therapy ban, supporters of the legislation say they have witnessed opposition to a statewide ban dissipate in recent years. Democrat Matthew Wilson, the lead sponsor of Georgia’s bill in the state House, says conservative lawmakers haven’t framed it as a piece of LGBTQ+ rights legislation — which would make it dead on arrival in a state where Republicans control both houses of the legislature and the governorship, much like Utah. Instead, his colleagues have labeled it a “suicide prevention bill,” he says.

“The only pushback that I’ve gotten at all is from a single lawmaker who doesn’t believe transgender people are real,” Wilson told Vox. “Every other colleague looks at it as kind of a commonsense thing.” 

At the time of publication, the Kentucky and Georgia bills are still being debated in committee and have yet to receive any kind of significant vote. It remains to be seen if they will, but Mobley remains hopeful that another victory for the conversion therapy movement would show Americans that conservative and Southern states aren’t “hopeless” when it comes to LGBTQ rights.

“I really feel that if we worked to pass the bill here in Kentucky, you would very quickly see other states follow suit, especially states like Florida and West Virginia,” he says. “We’ve proven that with having those difficult conversations and looking across the aisle, you are able to reach people, even if it takes some time.”

Wendy Montgomery’s son buried his best friend in July. There’s a photo Montgomery keeps close, encapsulating their grief: Her son Jordan, just 18, leads a group of men in white shirts carrying the casket. He doesn’t look tearful. He looks empty, as if the shock has drained him of feeling. Jordan bears the look of a young man who didn’t realize this could happen to him — that he could lose the boy who was not only his closest companion and confidant, but his first kiss.

Jordan’s friend’s name was Stockton. He took his own life in June. He played the guitar and loved to ski.

“Watching my son be a pallbearer for his best friend just about undid me,” Montgomery recalled over the phone.

Although 2016 saw several devastating legal and political setbacks for LGBTQ people across the country, few communities felt its immense weight greater than Utah. In the same week Stockton was laid to rest, at least seven other LGBTQ youths died by suicide in central Utah, all within a 50-mile radius. Those numbers come from Mama Dragons, a support group of LGBTQ-affirming mothers who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church.

Montgomery, who co-founded the group three and a half years ago after her son came out, said that she receives at least 100 messages each week from other young people experiencing suicidal ideation. She told Vox that she knows of five young people who took their lives last June, who were Mormon.

“I see my son in every one of them,” she added.

In recent years, suicide has become the leading cause of death in Utah among adolescents between the ages of 10 and 17, whereas national rates of youth suicide are considerably lower. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers across the US each year. Hard data on the youth suicide rate is difficult to come by for 2016 because the year has only recently drawn to a close.

The state has struggled to understand the risk factors that contribute to this wave of tragedies. Kimberly Myers, the suicide prevention coordinator for the Utah state Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health, told Vox in September that the suicide rate may actually turn out to be lower than in previous years.

Andrea Hood, a suicide prevention coordinator for Utah’s Department of Health, surmises that the state’s high suicide rate speaks to the rugged, individualistic nature of Western states, where suffering can often be relegated to the shadows. Perry Renshaw, a neuroscientist at the University of Utah, blames a phenomenon he’s studying called the “Utah paradox,” in which the state commonly ranks among the happiest places to live but has been known to lead the nation in antidepressant use.

But some LGBTQ advocates say there is something else putting youth at risk in the state: the LDS Church. Internal policies passed in recent years targeting queer people highlight the struggle the community faces in Utah for positive recognition.

That burden is particularly felt by LGBTQ youth and their loved ones like the Mama Dragons. Their stories illustrate the gravity of LDS doctrine, as well as what advocates argue is the crucial need for change in the church. Although it’s difficult to know how much of an influence the Mormon faith played in the deaths, they believe creating an open and affirming environment could give LDS youth the hope they so desperately need.

Some say this is the repercussion of Mormon doctrine

In November 2015, an internal document from the church was leaked three days before it was ready to be made public. The proclamation stated that parishioners in same-sex marriages would now be labeled “apostates,” a term the LDS handbook describes as members who “repeatedly act in clear, open, and deliberate public opposition to the Church or its leaders.” That triggers an automatic hearing by the disciplinary council, possibly leading to expulsion from the church.

In addition, children raised by same-sex couples — even unmarried ones — are unable to be baptized in the church until they are 18 and have moved out of their parents’ home. To receive the baptism, they must also publicly renounce same-sex unions.

After days of national outcry, Mormon Church leaders issued a statement to clarify the leaked changes in the handbook. They said children already baptized by the church can continue in the faith if a parent later enters a same-sex marriage. Those with committed or married same-sex parents are “welcome to attend Church meetings and participate in Church activities,” they wrote. “All children may receive priesthood blessings of healing and spiritual guidance.” Overall, though, the church would still operate under the belief that same-sex relationships would be “committing a sin that warrants a Church disciplinary council.”

Montgomery said that in the months after the leak, the damage done was “incalculable.” She estimates that at least 32 youth died by suicide across the state, and every one of the victims’ families that she personally spoke to was Mormon. Those numbers have been contested by the Utah Department of Health, but Montgomery says there’s a reason for that: Families who have lost a child often misreport the cause of their death in obituaries, claiming instead that their son or daughter “had a rare heart condition” or “died peacefully in their sleep.”

There’s only been one instance, Montgomery claims, where she read an obituary that was fully transparent about the reasons the child is no longer there. “I’ve talked to many policemen who are the first on scene to an obvious suicide, and the parent will beg the policeman to write ‘accidental death’ on the police report,” she said.

The sad truth is that we will never have a full understanding of just how many LGBTQ youths take their own lives each year. Although five states are currently in the process of changing their death certificates to list the deceased’s sexual orientation, Utah is not one of them. Such a change would impact the ability of advocates and governmental organizations to track LGBTQ suicides, and perhaps even prevent them by taking action when they see a pattern.

The problem is that Utah’s own policies don’t even recognize many of the suicides that take place. Currently, the state only formally classifies three causes of death as being the result of suicide, as Montgomery explained: “hanging, self-inflicted gunshot wound, and poisoning.” These limited definitions don’t include scenarios like jumping off a bridge or intentionally crashing your car, both of which are classified as “accidental death.”

Growing up Mormon and LGBTQ

John Gustav-Wrathall is the president of Affirmation, a group of LGBTQ Mormons, families, and friends pushing for inclusion in the church. Gustav-Wrathall said over the phone that he advocates for greater compassion and understanding because the issue of suicide is personal for him.

“I was born in the church,” he said. “My dad was a fifth-generation Mormon, which means that on my dad’s side, there have been Mormons as long as there has been Mormonism.”

When Gustav-Wrathall was a teenager, he became plagued by a feeling of difference, as if something unnameable separated him from the other members of his congregation. Having started to connect the dots, he looked up the word “homosexual” in the dictionary one day. After enrolling at Brigham Young University, the largest Mormon-affiliated college in the world, he became depressed and suicidal as the realization continued to plague him.

Gustav-Wrathall said he felt increasingly hopeless, with nowhere to go and no one to talk to openly about what he was going through.

“I had friends who were gay at BYU,” he said. “We never really talked about it. We were all struggling and miserable. At the end of my junior year, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t take this anymore and I wanted it to end.”

Robbie Pierce, who also went to BYU, said he also understands how difficult it can be to be gay and Mormon. After all, growing up is hard enough as it is.

Pierce, a writer for the LGBTQ magazine the Advocate, said he realized he was gay when he was 12. His parents, who lived in California at the time, practice an extremely orthodox version of Mormonism — Pierce didn’t have his first sip of coffee until he was 33. His parents also told him that having gay children would be one of the worst possible things that could happen to their family.

“I kept it hidden for a long time and felt an immense shame and guilt about it,” Pierce said in a phone interview.

Pierce came out to his parents many times. The first time, he told his mother that he was “same-sex attracted,” but his plan was to remain in the Church. The next time, Pierce further explained that he would not be dating women, instead upholding a vow of celibacy to keep from being excommunicated. But the final coming out he remembers being the hardest: When Pierce was 30, he told his mother he would be leaving the faith in order to pursue same-sex relationships.

“The idea of my being Mormon and gay was fine,” he said. “But the idea of my not being Mormon anymore was the struggle. My mom’s vision for me was just to go to the celestial kingdom when I die so we could all be together as a family. It’s been rocked.”

How Mormons’ beliefs about the afterlife drive views on sexual identity

In the Mormon faith, there are three tiers of heaven, also referred to as the “degrees of glory.” The highest is the celestial kingdom, which is structured around the family. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that when the righteous and faithful die, they will be reunited with their families in the uppermost tier of heaven, parents sealed with their children for all eternity. These families are given their own kingdom to rule over, a new world of their own making to repopulate.

“They will essentially become gods,” Pierce said.

Below the celestial kingdom are two lower levels of heaven: the terrestrial and telestial kingdoms, respectively. The middle tier is open to non-Mormons who accept the gospel of Jesus Christ in the afterlife, as well as Mormons who were “blinded by the craftiness of men,” as 76:75 of the Doctrine and Covenants states. The latter are essentially good and noble yet led astray by mortal temptations.

The telestial kingdom is left to the “liars,” “adulterers,” “whoremongers,” and “sorcerers,” as 76:103 reads, who shall not “be redeemed from the devil until the last resurrection, until the Lord, even Christ the Lamb, shall have finished his work.”

The latter is where LGBTQ people, depending on one’s interpretation, might find themselves after death — at the very best. Elder D. Todd Christofferson, a senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, has previously referred to same-sex marriage as “a particularly grievous or significant serious kind of sin.” Such comments from the governing body of the LDS Church suggest that LGBTQ people could then be “cast out” into what’s known as outer darkness. Although it’s commonly synonymous with the Christian concept of hell, it’s more akin to a total separation from not only God but your loved ones.

As Pierce explains, Mormon doctrine isn’t clear on the subject.

But the message that you will be “exiled from [your] family for time and all eternity” can have a devastating impact on LGBTQ youth, according to Troy Williams of Equality Utah. “The threat of that eternal expulsion from your family can do immense psychological damage to a questioning child,” said Williams, who serves as the LGBTQ advocacy group’s executive director.

The dangers of isolation

What exacerbates this harm is a theme that often came up in interviews: the isolation that LGBTQ youth experience, both in the church and in their local communities. Many children fear coming out to their parents, afraid they will be kicked out of their homes. Statistics from the Williams Institute, a think tank at the University of California Los Angeles, estimate that as much as 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ nationwide.

Marian Edmonds-Allen, the executive director of Parity, an LGBTQ faith organization, claimed that on the surface, the numbers in Utah would appear to match those estimates. Many youth in the state, however, may not outwardly identify as queer, afraid of further bias. That means these numbers could be considerably higher.

It’s difficult to underestimate the impact of the LDS Church on every aspect of life in Utah — from churches and families to schools. About 60 percent of the population identifies as Mormon, and more than 80 percent of state legislators are also members of the LDS church. Although Utah became the first Republican-controlled state to pass a statewide nondiscrimination ordinance in 2015, a bill that passed with the church’s blessing, there are extremely few supports in place for LGBTQ youth across the state.

Until this month, Utah was one of eight states with “No Promo Homo” laws on the books that bar faculty from discussing issues related to sexual orientation or gender identity in K-12 schools. In 1995, a group of students applied to start a gay-straight alliance (GSA) at East High School in Salt Lake City. To keep the club from forming, the district decided to ban all extracurricular student groups. That decision was later overturned in 2000 following a lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal, and at least 30 schools across the state were allowed to establish GSAs on school grounds.

But generally, because educators had been legally barred from discussing LGBTQ issues, it can be difficult to counsel students, and many young people find themselves without GSAs at their schools to discuss difficulties they may be experiencing.

Edmonds-Allen said that most of the resources for LGBTQ youth are concentrated in Salt Lake City, an oasis for the state’s queer population. The city has a lesbian mayor and two out city council members. Harvey Milk Boulevard, which was renamed in honor of the famed gay rights activist last year, stretches 20 blocks in the city center. But outside of Salt Lake, there’s just one homeless shelter for LGBTQ youth. Located in Ogden, the shelter is 40 miles north of the capital and has just 14 beds.

That leaves many youth with nowhere to go and extremely vulnerable.

“If there is a homeless youth that is not in Salt Lake and not in Ogden,” Allen said, “what they need to do is to figure out if they know about those resources, and then if they do, how to get there.”

The weight of silence

The isolation LGBTQ often experience — alienated from their families, peer groups, and communities — can have grave consequences. Rebecca Stuart, who lives in Riverton, Utah, said that a year after her daughter, Amelia, came out to her parents as a lesbian, the 16-year-old posted about it on Facebook. As Stuart remembers, the reaction from her friends on social media was “like crickets.” The lack of response was crushing.

“The silence speaks a lot louder than someone saying something,” Stuart said. “People don’t clap and cheer very often.”

Stuart, who says she knew her daughter was a lesbian since Amelia was 3 years old, supported Amelia throughout the coming-out process. There was one question, however, Stuart struggled with: “How can God love my daughter when he created her like this?” If she had to choose between her faith and her family, there was only one answer. Stuart decided then to leave the church.

Despite her mother’s support, Amelia continued to struggle in school. She felt like an outcast, as if she didn’t fit into their predominantly Mormon town. Riverton, a suburb of Salt Lake, is the kind of place people often describe as a nice place to raise your children — clean and friendly. Its good schools and perfectly mowed lawns are set against the astoundingly beautiful backdrop of the vast mountainscape, a horizon fit for a postcard.

But as Stuart explained, that beauty can be deceptive.

“One of the things about Utah is that the culture here is a culture of perfection, based on what the teachings are in the church,” she said. “If you live righteously, you’re not supposed to be sad. Your life is supposed to be successful and happy. They equate any kind of struggle or misfortune as if there must be something that you’re doing wrong. You’re not praying enough or reading your scriptures.”

As her feelings of depression rapidly spiraled out of control, Amelia attempted suicide in 2014. While Stuart sat with her daughter in the hospital, she was ready to say goodbye. “I was ready to accept that she was gone,” she said.

Although many of the other members of her church didn’t understand what her family was going through, Stuart joined the Mama Dragons to help her cope. In addition to providing support for mothers who have lost LGBTQ children to suicide, members of the group often provide shelter and community for youth. Debra Coe lives in Lehi, a small suburb of Salt Lake, where she hosts a weekly “queer Sunday family dinner” at her home. Although the gathering is usually attended by students from nearby colleges, the meal is open to all.

Pushing the church to change

Julie Packer, whose son took his own life in 2015, said it was the Mama Dragons that helped her through a difficult time.

A week before her son’s passing, she found the organization on Facebook and asked members of the group to keep her family in their prayers. Battling drug addiction, her son had relapsed a number of times, and Packer held out hope this time would be different. Her son was starting college. He was excited about his classes. At his funeral, as he was being laid to rest, five Mama Dragons showed up and sat with Packer. She was taken aback by their generosity. She had never met these women, let alone had a conversation with them.

“Out of the people who were there, those were the most important to me,” she explained.

Packer, who is currently the president-elect of the Mama Dragons, pulled away from the LDS Church for a few years following her son’s death. She stayed, though, because she believes the church is worth fighting for. Although church leaders remain decades behind on acceptance, Packer said churchgoers have “becoming more informed, more tolerant, and more loving” in recent years. Many of the members of her church also have LGBTQ children.

There are some signs of improvement from the church, if small. In November, the LDS Church revamped its website addressing LGBTQ issues. Prior to the update, it was called “Mormons and Gays,” which suggested that the two groups are separate and discrete. Its header now reads “Mormon and Gay,” advertising the fact that many LGBTQ people will choose to remain among the faithful. The first message on the church’s site broadcasts a shift toward inclusion: “God Loveth His Children.”

In a statement, Eric Hawkins, a spokesperson for the LDS Church, stressed love and compassion for LGBTQ youth, saying that the church “[mourns] with their families and friends when they feel life no longer offers hope.”

“Each congregation should welcome everyone,” Hawkins said. “Leaders and members are taught to follow the example of Jesus Christ and to reach out in an active, caring way to all, especially to youth who feel estranged or isolated. The Church has repeatedly stated that those who feel same-sex attraction and yet choose to live the commandments of God can live fulfilling lives as worthy members of the Church. We want all to enjoy the blessings and safety offered by embracing the teachings of Jesus Christ and living the principles of His gospel.”

What’s holding back the church?

Despite the progress the church has made, Packer said the hierarchy will continue to hold back the culture. While it’s not in scripture, she explained that many church leaders continue to preach that LGBTQ youth will be “made whole” when they finally reach the telestial kingdom in the afterlife. God will make them straight.

“They have no idea the kind of damage that kind of thinking does,” Packer said.

The LDS Church recently filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of rolling back protections for transgender students, a statement written in conjunction with the National Association of Evangelicals and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. That brief was filed in regards to G.G. v. Gloucester, a case that was scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court until it was sent back down to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month. The case concerns Gavin Grimm, a trans high school student in Virginia, who sued his school district to be allowed to use the bathroom that most closely matched his gender identity.

Hawkins told the Deseret News, the church’s official newspaper, that coming out against protections for students like Grimm doesn’t signal a change in policy by Mormon leaders. Instead the amicus brief is a “restatement” of the religion’s beliefs.

For many, 2017 is already feeling like déjà vu all over again. Montgomery said that in Arizona, she recently visited three families who sat with their LGBTQ loved ones in the hospital following suicide attempts — all within the same week. Two of the survivors were adults, one a child. “My heart feels like it’s in shreds,” she said. “I want to grab a megaphone and shout from street corners. I have a front-row seat to all of it, and I cannot handle this.”

While advocates attempt to make the Mormon Church safer for LGBTQ youth, Montgomery argued that the time for soul searching is now — in order to prevent another year of tragedy.

“We can never say that all of these suicides we can definitively lay at the LDS Church’s feet,” she said. “But if we know that the church is, even in part, culpable, what does that mean about the men who are leading the church? Or the people who are following unquestionably? This is why the church needs to change and get better. Our children are dying.”

​Nico Lang is a national LGBT reporter and a contributor at the L.A. Times, Rolling Stone, Salon, ​and Harper’s Bazaar.

Correction: The article previously stated that suicide claims the lives of 11 percent of teenagers in the US each year. The statistic was incorrect, and has been changed.

Note: LGBTQ youth in need of support can contact the Trevor Project’s Trevor Lifeline at (866) 488-7386. Trans people struggling with thoughts of suicide can reach TransLifeline 24 hours a day at (877) 565-8860 in the US and (877) 330-6366 in Canada. People of all identities struggling with thoughts of suicide or self-harm can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at any time by calling 1-800-273-8255.

It’s Saturday night, and Heartbreakers is empty.

The small bar, which holds 70 people at fire code capacity, is tucked away near the Amtrak station in Williston, North Dakota. During the oil boom that blessed the region in the mid-2000s, that train brought prosperity to the town, with workers arriving to claim the spoils of overflowing black gold. But since the oil dried up near the end of 2014, there’s less to go around these days.

While Williston residents gather for the annual Upper Missouri Valley Fair, complete with wrestling and a performance from the local hypnotist, the town sits silent, as if it’s waiting for something.

Heartbreakers, formerly a strip club, promised a new beginning for Williston. That club closed in 2013, shortly after a New York Times article chronicled the town’s demographic crisis: Williston, with a population of just 14,716, is young and full of men — 60 percent of residents between the ages of 18 and 34 are male. The men, mostly oil workers who came to the area for work, compared it to being in prison.

The Times reported that since the oil boom, Williston had become “unsafe” for the women who live in the city — according to the Times, some women couldn’t even shop “at the local Walmart without men following them through the store.”

In January, the Williston City Council decided to revoke the erotic dancer licenses of the town’s two major strip clubs in hopes of “cleaning up” the city. Jared Holbrook, the owner of Heartbreakers, announced that it would be rebranding as a gay club following the shutdown. “For us to try to compete with the other establishments in town, we have nothing new to offer,” Holbrook told the Williston Herald.

Heartbreakers, however, illustrates the challenges of running a gay bar in a state where there are few resources for LGBTQ people, let alone gay clubs. North Dakota is a state that’s not only legislatively hostile to queer folks but also geographically difficult to live in. Heartbreakers stands in the middle of downtown Williston — and when it opened, it became the only LGBTQ bar in North Dakota. If Williston residents want to go to a gay or lesbian club elsewhere, they have to travel all the way to Billings, Montana, five hours away. Winnipeg, Minneapolis, and Sioux Falls are a day’s journey.

Something that seems ordinary, a local watering hole catering to queer clientele, can be particularly revolutionary when you have few other places to go. If the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando reminded us how important safe spaces are, North Dakota is proof positive.

Heartbreakers is a club in search of its own identity

When Heartbreakers reopened in late May, the stripper poles and stages were replaced with a rainbow-colored beer pong table, but the memory of the bar’s former life looms heavy over the space. The bar is filled with heart-shaped benches, where strippers once got up close and personal with male patrons. Its front windows are covered with boards, designed to prevent having bricks thrown through them. The whiteboard sign out front still advertises ladies’ night: “4 the Ladies Free Drinks.”

The handful of patrons are many of same people who frequented the strip club. At 10 pm on a June evening, a man is yelling about the music selection. “Is this Michael Jackson?” he repeatedly screams over “Billie Jean,” too drunk to realize how loud his question is. He wanders in and out of the bar, unsure if he wants to stay.

Other than the cornhole table folded up in the corner, there’s little that distinguishes Heartbreakers from the town’s group of straight bars. The retro-heavy playlist is dominated by well-worn rock hits of the ’70s and ’80s, and while “Eye of the Tiger” played to the bar’s smattering of patrons, Jeff Dick, a manager and bartender at Heartbreakers, extolls the virtues of the man behind the song.

“Rocky Balboa is the greatest American that ever lived!” he yells over the music.

He is unfazed by the news that the character is fictional.

Stephanie Shults is the general manager of the Penalty Box, which sits next door to Heartbreakers. Formerly known as Whispers, the bar was also forced to shut down and rebrand following the strip club closures earlier this year. Despite — or perhaps as a marker of — the low attendance, “all the feedback I heard was positive,” she said of Heartbreakers’ reopening. “Even if somebody was bothered by it, they weren’t bothered by it enough to say something.”

To Shults, opening a gay bar in Williston is personal. “My moms are lesbians, so I got to be raised in this community,” she said. “This has been my life for 33 years now. These women are just amazing. They opened my mind so much — just to life itself.”

In small-town America, the need for LGBTQ safe spaces is still very real

Shults is part of the organizing committee for Williston Pride, which was held for the first time last July in response to the Supreme Court’s historic ruling on marriage equality. Alex Johnson, who serves as the president of the group, says the location for pride was chosen because the fairgrounds are on the outskirts of Williston, where attendees may be safer from counterprotesters and potential violent actors.

But Heartbreakers? “It’s in the middle of town,” Johnson said. “You have all these bars around. You have people that are drunk. They could come cause problems for everyone.”

Johnson said security was a major concern for pride this year. The group hired private security detail, and had police officers drive by every hour. “They walked people to their cars to make sure they were okay,” Johnson recalled.

Libbi Prestwood, an organizer for Williston LGBTQ Pride, says there was very little backlash from the town following the event. Security didn’t prove an issue.

“I think people have kind of a stigma about small-town USA — the good ol’ boys and the rednecks — but we really haven’t experienced that,” she said. “We’ve been shown a lot of love from the community. When people think of Williston, they don’t necessarily think of gay pride, but we’ve had a lot of businesses offer to donate and a lot of people telling us they think what we do is great.”

Prestwood believes the event was crucial for Williston’s LGBTQ community. “They were super happy just to have a place where they felt comfortable, accepted, and celebrated,” she said.

Those spaces, however, are few and far between in North Dakota. Currently, North Dakota is one of the majority of states lacking nondiscrimination laws that offer protections for sexual orientation and gender identity. That means that while same-sex partners can get married in North Dakota, they could be fired for having a picture of their legally wedded partner on their desk at work.

“When there’s wins on the national landscape, they can be undercut by things we don’t have here yet,” said Jennifer Weisgerber, the vice president of Dakota OutRight. “It feels really bittersweet.”

Because of the few protections afforded to the LGBTQ community, Weisgerber says it can be difficult to speak up about the harassment or discrimination you experience as a queer person, whether it’s in the workplace or everyday life.

“Our city has a human rights commission, but to report through them, your information is made public,” she explained. “You’re outing yourself. You need a certain amount of privilege to be able to complain about discrimination.”

Tyler Fisher recalls a history of being discriminated against because of his sexual orientation. A 28-year-old in-home health care worker who has lived in the state his whole life, he’s pursuing a lawsuit against a former employer after co-workers repeatedly mocked him during shifts, calling him a “queer” and a “dick eater.”

“It happens to me a lot,” he said.

Fisher says he was denied entry from a bar in Mandan, which sits just across the Missouri River from Bismarck, earlier this year after the bouncer called his friends “child molesters.” A woman at a Chinese restaurant asked the manager to wash the tongs after he used them. “I need you to wash this because there’s a homosexual over there and we don’t want to get AIDS,” he remembers her saying.

“I’m the same,” Fisher said. “I’m equal, just like everyone else. I don’t understand why some people have so much hatred toward the LGBT community. I’m the nicest person you will ever meet. I’d do anything for anybody.”

Dan Scott, the state’s oldest performing drag queen, says North Dakota’s LGBTQ community faces unique challenges.

“A lot of it is geographical, because we’re so far apart,” he explained. “It’s not like you can just drive half an hour to be somewhere else. Bismarck is an hour and a half away. It’s especially bad in the winter. You have to pack emergency kits with you in case you get stranded, because it gets 35 below and you can die in an hour.”

The difficulty of being queer in the Peace Garden State is also demographic: North Dakota has the smallest queer population of any state in the country, with just 1.7 percent of residents identifying as LGBTQ. Given North Dakota’s already small overall population (about the size of Indianapolis), it means there are only about 12,500 queer people in the whole state.

“It’s depressing, and you feel totally alone,” Scott said.

The state’s last gay bar, I-Beam, which was located in Fargo, closed down in 2008, and North Dakota’s LGBTQ community has struggled to replace it. On top of the numbers issue, frankly, things tend to move slowly in North Dakota. The state’s legislature only meets every other year, meaning that LGBTQ advocates have been pushing for specific nondiscrimination laws for the past eight years. Following three failed bills, they will introduce new legislation in 2017.

Chris Stoner, who was the show director at I-Beam, remembers it as “a little bit divey.” Housed in a refurbished gas station, the Fargo bar had an industrial vibe, with large windows and booths draped in retro glitter vinyl. The big draws were Desperate Housewives nights on Sundays and its drag shows, which attracted the biggest crowds.

“I-Beam was a little community place that people came to hang out, have drinks, and come to shows,” he said.

Stoner believes another bar “would help build community cohesion,” but that LGBTQ people in North Dakota have done a good job of making public spaces their own. “What’s happened is that because we don’t have our own space, it’s forced us to go out into our community and realize that it’s not as scary as people seem to think it is,” he said. “We’ve found other places that are open and supportive.”

In Bismarck, LGBTQ groups hold queer trivia nights, potlucks, and book clubs, as well as bar takeovers. “We’ve had to create pop-up community,” Weisgerber said. “The joke is that the gay bar is wherever all the gay people show up.”

Things are getting better in North Dakota, if slowly. Minot, the town Scott calls home, held its fourth annual pride weekend on July 8. He says the yearly event, as well as local meetups organized through the group’s Facebook page, has made a huge difference in his life. “Before, I had to drive 109 miles to be where other gay people where,” he said. “Now I have friends that I can call. I’m 61, I’m disabled, and sometimes I need help with things.”

The sudden end of the gay scene at Heartbreakers

Aside from the problem of geography, Heartbreakers faced a conflict. Depending on whom you ask, it might not be a gay bar at all. In an op-ed published in the Williston Herald, Matt Hickman noted that owner Holbrook’s announcement was “little more than a bluff, a publicity stunt to try to get his way in a last-ditch effort of ironic defiance.”

The theory went that Holbrook claimed Heartbreakers would open as a gay club as a gambit to get his erotic dancer license back. After all, what’s the only thing worse than a strip club in small-town North Dakota?

The bar itself did little to dispel that speculation. On May 29, Heartbreakers posted a photo to its Facebook page inviting patrons to “get [your] corn hole on.” One follower commented, “I heard this was a gay bar now,” to which Heartbreakers responded, “Heard wrong, it’s a bar with entertainment for everyone.”

Holbrook declined to comment to Vox, but manager Jeff Dick said that after the bar closed as a strip club, he was told that Heartbreakers would be going in a different direction than what was announced to the public. Dick said he believes the announcement that Heartbreakers would reopen as a gay bar was intended to “screw over the town a little bit.”

He added, however, that going gay would be a good business decision. “When you’re a queer club in [North Dakota], you have the only game in town,” Dick said.

Holbrook perhaps underestimated that a gay bar would be not only championed by his own staff but also supported by a town that simply needed something different, especially during an economic downturn. Opening a gay bar gives the town something no other city in North Dakota has — it puts Williston back on the map.

When he spoke to Vox in June, Dick said he’d operate the bar as a mixed space, against Holbrook’s edict, catering to both women and the gay community. Considering the state’s small LGBTQ population, he surmised it would make sense to run an establishment that’s both queer and inclusive. The bar planned to book its first drag show in July, as well as host the Magic Mike tour. Featuring backup dancers from the film, it would stop at Heartbreakers on August 31.

“I want to bring more drag shows and male reviews in,” he said. “I want to bring everything I can in.” Dick believes that Williston is ready for it. “Where I’m from, they don’t call it a ‘gay bar,’” Dick said. “They just call it a ‘bar.’ Everybody knows, but who cares? It’s 2016.”

Apparently, the owners care.

Dick was let go from Heartbreakers in July. While the bar’s still open, the Dickinson Press reported that the owners of the bar had “decided against catering to any specific demographic,” after bringing in a new general manager.

Heartbreakers, as a gay bar, suggested the possibility for progress in an environment where progress is a Herculean task. In Williston, a lot on the edge of town serves as a graveyard for abandoned RVs, left behind during the oil bust. The town has been hobbled, but people remain hopeful. You can see it in the faces of the people you meet, who know that their town — and North Dakota itself — can be better. They’ve seen it.

But for now, it seems, they’re still waiting.

Dedicated to Kevin Tengesdal, my guide over the River Styx.