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We feel the need to be compassionate to all. One Latter-day Saint seminary teacher kept trying to tell him he was Korean, because the instructor knew a Korean kid with a similar last name. But getting to this place of peace with his trifold identity, says Gong, an artificial intelligence engineer in Seattle, has required hard work.

Watch the video “ The Mackintosh’s Story: A Son Comes Out and a Family Loves:” Becky and Scott Mackintosh loved their son as he has grown up, served a mission, come out as gay, and left the faith he was raised in. And he never brought it up.

I confronted and broke down the lies I had been told about what it means to be queer. Sexuality, however, was never discussed. He seemed to remember a conversation with someone or something outside of himself that affirmed he was loved.

Even at school, Gong, who easily passed as straight, grew increasingly silent, afraid of hugs and falling in love. Having crushes on boys in elementary school. Matthew Gong is a minority three times over — in his own words — “Chinese American, Mormon and queer.” All three parts of Gong’s identity have shaped him, including heroic tales of.

That was a message about God that he wanted to share and prompted him to serve a two-year mission for the church, he says in the interview.

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His Chinese American family was also highly academic — both parents have advanced degrees — and had wide-ranging conversations, even heated debates. The entire family has learned to love in new, more inclusive ways. His mother, an avid gardener, once explained the difference between flowers and weeds.

Was he Mexican? Looking back, Gong sees plenty of clues to his sexuality that he failed to recognize at the time:. Staring at a male underwear mannequin when he was a child. He was called to London on a Mandarin-speaking mission in On his 21st birthday, at the start of the final year on his mission, Gong wrote separate emails to each of his brothers and his parents to tell them he was gay.

Still, they often have warred within the psyche of this year-old, leaving wounds that have taken years to heal. His memory is foggy, but he says he woke up four hours later, lying on the floor. Gong had the same dreams as other young Latter-day Saints, serving in callings with a wife and children, and spending eternity in heaven with his family.

Thoughts of not having that became unbearable, he says, and so he repressed them. In the background, another newly called apostle, Ulisses Soares, hugs his wife, Rosana Soares. Gong is hardly alone in such a feeling of being misplaced, of course, but his experience is unusual.

Mormon Stories Podcast is a product of the Open Stories Foundation - a c3 non-profit dedicated to supporting Mormons in religious transition. He is the son of Gerrit W. Rick Egan Tribune file photo Gerrit W. Gong had just been named an apostle.