Are Gay Mormon Kids Safe in the Mormon Church? What the Data Actually Shows

It's the most serious accusation made against the Church today: that it endangers its own gay kids. We wanted the actual answer — not the internet's. So this study starts where honesty requires: gay and LGBTQ youth face elevated risk everywhere, stated without flinching. Then it opens the largest representative dataset ever gathered on the question — 86,346 Utah teens — its independent replications, and the finding at the center of all of them. The answer is not what most people expect.

By Todd Noall · Mormonism Explained · July 2026 · 14 minute read · Sourced to the Utah SHARP dataset, BYU Studies Quarterly, and the peer-reviewed literature

Crisis Resources

If you or someone you love is struggling, help is real. Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, US) anytime. The Church also provides suicide-prevention resources and counseling referrals at churchofjesuschrist.org/study/life-help/suicide. You matter, and help is real.

The Short Answer

Are gay Mormon kids safe in the Mormon Church — or does growing up Latter-day Saint put them at greater risk?

Two facts are true at once, and we're going to state both plainly. First: gay and LGBTQ kids face elevated suicide risk everywhere — including inside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In Utah's statewide data, LGBTQ students were far more likely than straight peers to have seriously considered suicide (40.8% versus 15.6%) or attempted it (19.1% versus 6.0%). Nothing here softens that; a lower relative risk is still a risk. Second: the claim everyone has heard — that a gay Mormon teenager is in more danger inside the Church than outside it — is contradicted by the best data that exists. In the largest study ever run on the question — 86,346 Utah students, surveyed by the state, not the Church — gay and LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth reported the lowest suicidality of any LGBTQ group measured: roughly 10% reporting an attempt versus 23% of LGBTQ peers with no religion. It held under controls. It survived the researchers' attempt to kill their own finding. And a team with no ties to the Church — Bowling Green State University, publishing in an APA journal — read the same data and found the same thing. The engine, in study after study, isn't membership as a talisman. It's what membership tends to build: close, connected, low-conflict families. That's where this study ends, because it's where every side's data points. One note before we begin: suicide is never the result of a single factor — and this page carries crisis resources throughout.

What to Know

The Short Version

The elevated risk is real and stated first. LGBTQ youth report far higher suicidality than straight peers everywhere — across all religions and none. We do not soften this.
The best data contradicts the accusation. In Utah's representative 86,346-student SHARP survey, LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth showed the lowest suicidality of any LGBTQ group — roughly 10% reporting an attempt versus 23% of no-religion LGBTQ peers.
Non-Latter-day-Saint researchers replicated it. A Bowling Green State University team analyzed the same dataset independently and likewise found LGBTQ Latter-day Saints at lower suicide risk than peers of other faiths or none.
The "they all left" objection was tested. The researchers modeled disaffiliation directly and found it very unlikely (under 2%) that departures explain the difference.
The mechanism is families. The differences were almost entirely explained by family closeness and lower substance use — the same lever LGBTQ advocacy research identifies. Both literatures point at the same thing.
Suicide is never single-cause. This study makes no single-factor claims in either direction — the same standard we hold critics to.

The Critics' Reading

"The Church is dangerous for LGBTQ youth — its teachings drive them to despair"

The claim: a faith that cannot affirm same-sex relationships necessarily harms LGBTQ young people, and Utah's youth suicide problem is the proof.

Steelmanned in §06

The Record

"In the best representative data, LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth are as safe or safer than LGBTQ peers of any faith or none"

The documented picture: elevated LGBTQ risk owned everywhere; the lowest measured suicidality among LGBTQ Latter-day Saints; independent replication; and family closeness as the engine.

Risk owned · Data replicated

The risk is real. The accusation is testable. It was tested — and the data runs the other way.

Why This Page Exists

The Accusation, Taken Seriously

No accusation against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints carries higher stakes than this one. The claim is not that the Church is mistaken about history or doctrine; it is that the Church's teachings actively endanger the lives of its own LGBTQ children — that a Latter-day Saint upbringing is, for a gay or lesbian teenager, a risk factor for suicide. That claim circulates in documentaries, celebrity statements, and viral death counts — and in the quiet fears of Latter-day Saint parents. It deserves neither defensiveness nor dismissal but the two things it has rarely received: complete seriousness about the suffering underneath it, and complete precision about the evidence. This study commits to both. It also commits, at the outset, to the standard responsible suicide research demands: suicide is never the result of a single factor. No church membership, policy, teaching, or identity — alone — causes a suicide, and none alone prevents one. That standard binds everyone — the loudest causal claims against the Church violate it, and this study will not violate it in the Church's favor either. What the evidence can establish is comparative and specific: whether LGBTQ Latter-day Saint young people, as a group, fare worse than LGBTQ young people outside the Church. That question has now been asked of the largest representative dataset ever gathered on the subject — and the answer is the opposite of the accusation.

No Flinching

The Hard Facts First

Before any comparison between groups, the fact that frames everything: LGBTQ young people report dramatically elevated suicidality compared with their straight peers, everywhere researchers have looked — and that includes inside the Church. In Utah's statewide SHARP survey, LGBTQ students were far more likely than straight students to have seriously considered suicide (40.8% versus 15.6%) and to have attempted it (19.1% versus 6.0%). They reported more family conflict, more bullying over their sexual orientation, and higher rates of household and personal substance use. That elevation appears across every religious affiliation and among those with none — being a Latter-day Saint does not erase it, and no honest treatment pretends otherwise. This page will not argue that LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth are "fine," and it will not treat a lower relative risk as if it were no risk. A second honesty note concerns scope: the strongest data measures sexual orientation, while transgender youth appear in far smaller numbers (about 1.2% of the sample) and show higher risk generally; the findings below carry that limit marked, not stretched. And a third: these surveys measure suicidality — thoughts and attempts, reported anonymously — because no dataset anywhere records suicide deaths by both religion and sexual orientation; anyone claiming death-count precision, on any side, is claiming data that does not exist. With the hard facts stated, the comparative question can be asked honestly: within this elevated-risk population, how do Latter-day Saint youth compare?

Figure 1 · Suicidality, LGBTQ vs. straight students — Utah statewide, all affiliations

Seriously considered — straight

15.6%

Seriously considered — LGBTQ

40.8%

Attempted — straight

6.0%

Attempted — LGBTQ

19.1%

Share of students reporting

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

The elevation appears across every religious affiliation and none. No honest account softens it. Verified

The Best Data That Exists

The Largest Study: 86,346 Students

The central evidence is not a church survey, an advocacy poll, or an online convenience sample. It is the 2019 SHARP survey — collected by the Utah Department of Human Services from 86,346 students in grades 6, 8, 10, and 12, anonymous, weighted to represent all Utah youth. Within it, 7,205 students identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning. Researchers Dyer, Goodman, and Wood analyzed it in BYU Studies Quarterly, asking directly whether gay and LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth fare worse than LGBTQ peers of other religions or none. The results ran opposite to the accusation. LGBTQ Latter-day Saints were not at higher suicidality risk than LGBTQ youth of any other affiliation — and were significantly lower than several groups. In the study's religion-only models, an estimated 10% of LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth reported having attempted suicide, versus 23% of LGBTQ youth reporting no religion — the lowest of any LGBTQ group in the data; the same pattern held for suicidal consideration and depression. The researchers then attacked their own finding. The obvious objection — that the numbers look favorable only because the most distressed members had already left and been counted elsewhere — was modeled directly, using separate data on how many no-religion LGBTQ teens are former Latter-day Saints (60.5%). Recoding those former members as Latter-day Saints, the analysis found it very unlikely — under a 2% likelihood — that disaffiliation explains the gap. The finding survived its own strongest objection; and what elevates it further is what happened next — replication, on the same data, by researchers with no connection to the Church at all.

Figure 2 · LGBTQ youth reporting a suicide attempt, by religious affiliation — SHARP, N=86,346

Latter-day Saint

~10%

No religion

23%

Share reporting an attempt

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

The Latter-day Saint figure is the lowest of any LGBTQ group in the data. Pattern holds under demographic controls; survives the disaffiliation test (<2% likelihood). Verified

Figure 3 · The disaffiliation test — the objection, charted

Current Latter-day Saint

~10%

Former Latter-day Saint

11.5%

No religion (all)

23%

Share reporting an attempt

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

LGBTQ attempt rates: even former members report far below the no-religion group — the recoded gap persists (<2% likelihood). Objection Fails

Not One Study — A Pattern

The Replications and the Wider Record

The single most important fact about the Utah finding is that it does not depend on Latter-day Saint researchers. A team from Bowling Green State University — James McGraw and colleagues, publishing in the American Psychological Association journal Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity — independently analyzed the same statewide dataset and likewise found that LGBTQ Latter-day Saints had lower suicide risk than LGBTQ peers of other faiths or no faith. Their framing differed: the Bowling Green team emphasized that LGBTQ youth of all affiliations remain at elevated risk and that family conflict tracks with worse outcomes everywhere — emphases this study shares. But on the comparative question, the two teams read the same data the same way. The pattern extends beyond one survey. Using federal Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, sociologist Stephen Cranney found that Latter-day Saint sexual-minority adults in Utah reported better mental health than sexual-minority adults outside the Church — the adult echo of the youth finding. A 2023 review of the research literature from 2005 to 2022 found that studies of Latter-day Saint sexual minorities generally reported better mental health than their non-member counterparts. And in a study designed around the stay-or-leave question itself, psychologist G. Tyler Lefevor — who is himself a former member and a leading researcher of LGBTQ Latter-day Saints — grouped 815 current and former members into engaged, moderately engaged, and lapsed profiles and found the three groups did not significantly differ in mental health, physical health, or life satisfaction. That null is quietly devastating: if the Church were the engine of suffering its critics describe, leaving should measurably help. In Lefevor's data, it did not. The accusation has now been tested repeatedly, by believers and non-believers, on government data — and it keeps failing.

Figure 4 · The replication record

Dyer/Goodman/Wood · BYU Studies Qtrly · SHARP N=86,346 → lowest LGBTQ suicidality

McGraw et al. · Bowling Green (non-LDS) · same data, APA journal → same result

Cranney · J. Homosexuality · federal BRFSS, adults → better mental health

2005–2022 literature review → same direction; Lefevor N=815 → stay/leave null

One conclusion

Two teams from opposite institutional worlds, plus the wider record — one conclusion.

Four independent lines of evidence, two of them from researchers with no connection to the Church, read the same way. Independently Replicated

Where the Safety Actually Lives

The Mechanism: Families

The most useful finding in the Utah data is not the comparison — it is the explanation. When the BYU researchers added family and lifestyle variables to their models, the differences between religious groups largely dissolved: religious affiliation, by itself, stopped predicting suicidality once family closeness, family conflict, and substance use were taken into account. Some readers will mistake that for a weakness in the finding. It is the finding. Membership in the Church is not a talisman; nothing about a name on a record protects a struggling teenager. What the data shows is that Latter-day Saint LGBTQ youth, on average, live in homes with markedly more connection, less conflict, and less substance use — and that those homes are where the protection lives. The researchers put it directly: religion appears to exert its greatest influence on youth wellbeing through its effects on family life. This is also where the Church's data and the strongest LGBTQ advocacy research converge. The Trevor Project — the largest LGBTQ youth crisis organization, no ally of religious conservatism — finds year after year that family acceptance is associated with dramatically lower attempt rates. The Bowling Green team found the same in Utah. Everyone's data points at the same lever. And it is a lever the Church pulls constantly: a faith organized around the family — a theology in which the family is the eternal unit — produces, on average, precisely the environments the research literature identifies as protective. For the Latter-day Saint parent of an LGBTQ child, the instruction of every dataset is identical: stay close. The Church's current teaching says the same — rejection is the danger; love is an expression of faith, not a compromise. The data does not ask parents to choose between covenants and child; the covenant-keeping home, kept warm, is the safest place the data can find.

Figure 5 · The environment behind the outcomes — LGBTQ vs. straight students, statewide

Family drug use — straight

32.8%

Family drug use — LGBTQ

49.0%

Personal drug use — straight

26.4%

Personal drug use — LGBTQ

44.4%

Not living w/ both parents — straight

23.1%

Not living w/ both parents — LGBTQ

35.7%

Bullied for orientation — straight

0.8%

Bullied for orientation — LGBTQ

19.3%

Share of students reporting

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

These are the variables that explain the outcome differences — and the home is where most of them live.

Steelmanning the Critics

The Strongest Objection

The strongest form of the critique does not rest on viral death counts; it rests on the national research literature and on minority-stress theory, and it deserves its full weight. Across national samples, the protective association between religiosity and mental health — one of the most reliable findings in public health — weakens, disappears, or reverses for sexual minorities. One national study of college students found that among those who rated religion as very important, sexual-minority status was more strongly associated with suicidal ideation, not less. Another, using federal survey data on more than 160,000 adults, found religious attendance associated with higher suicide risk among sexual minorities even as it predicted lower risk for heterosexuals. Minority-stress theory explains why: for a young person whose identity sits in tension with their community's teachings, the community itself can become a source of chronic stress — and a church teaching that same-sex relationships are outside the law of chastity, the critic argues, builds that tension into the architecture of a gay member's life. On this reading, the Utah findings are the anomaly requiring explanation, not the national pattern.

The response is not to wave the national literature away — it is to notice what the best of it actually says, and what the Utah data adds. Lefevor's meta-analysis of 73 studies across five decades, published in Psychological Bulletin, found the full picture: religiousness is, on net, positively associated with health for sexual minorities — at roughly half the strength of the association for heterosexuals — with wide variation, including real harm in rejecting environments and real benefit in connected ones. The national pattern, in other words, is not "religion harms sexual minorities"; it is "context decides." And that is precisely what the Utah data illuminates: in a community whose religious life is built around family cohesion, the context comes out protective — not because doctrine changed, but because connection is the active ingredient and Latter-day Saint family life supplies it in unusual quantity. The minority-stress mechanism is real, and section 02's disparities are its footprint; but the theory predicts LGBTQ Latter-day Saints should fare worse than LGBTQ youth outside the Church, and in the best representative data they do not — they fare as well or better, a result replicated by researchers with every incentive to find otherwise. A theory is entitled to its mechanism. It is not entitled to override the direct measurement of the very outcome it predicts. The critic's strongest argument, taken all the way to the data, ends as a finding about which environments protect — and the measured answer includes the one the accusation says cannot.

The Honest Answer

So — Are Gay Mormon Kids Safe in the Church?

Yes — and the data isn't close. In the best representative data that exists — 86,346 Utah youth, replicated independently by non-Latter-day-Saint researchers — LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth report the lowest rate of suicide attempts of any religious group — an estimated 10% versus 23% among peers of no religion — and are as safe or safer than their LGBTQ peers outside the Church. The claim that the Church endangers its LGBTQ youth is not supported by the record; it is contradicted by it. And the protection is no accident: the factors researchers found doing the work — close, connected families and far lower substance use — are the very things a Latter-day Saint life is built to cultivate. As the study's own authors put it, religion exerts its greatest influence on a young person's wellbeing through its effect on the family. The one-sentence version: the accusation runs opposite to the data — and the reason is families. We went looking for the danger everyone talks about. What the record showed us instead was the lowest measured risk of any faith — and a lever every parent, in any pew or none, can actually pull: stay close. That's the whole finding. Check it yourself; every source is on the last page.

The Shareable Summary

The Record at a Glance

The whole study on one page — the hard fact stated first, the finding the accusation cannot survive, and where every research tradition converges. These figures also appear beside the sections that establish them; this page assembles them for sharing. Nothing is charted that is not documented on the sources page.

Recap I · The risk is real everywhere — stated first — Utah statewide student survey: share reporting suicidality, LGBTQ vs. straight students (all affiliations)

Seriously considered — straight

15.6%

Seriously considered — LGBTQ

40.8%

Attempted — straight

6.0%

Attempted — LGBTQ

19.1%

Share of students reporting

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

The elevation appears across every religious affiliation and none. No honest account softens it.

Recap II · The comparison the accusation predicts — reversed — LGBTQ youth reporting a suicide attempt, by religious affiliation (86,346-student SHARP survey)

Latter-day Saint

~10%

No religion

23%

Share reporting an attempt

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

The Latter-day Saint figure is the lowest of any LGBTQ group measured. Pattern holds under demographic controls; survives the disaffiliation test (<2% likelihood); replicated independently by non-LDS researchers on the same data.

Recap III · Where every research tradition converges

Utah data (BYU + Bowling Green) — affiliation effects run through family life

LGBTQ advocacy research — family acceptance tracks with lower attempts

Close, connected families

The protective factor both sides document. The practical instruction of every dataset, on every side, is the same: stay close.

At a Glance

Quick Answers

Are LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth at higher risk than LGBTQ youth outside the Church?

No — in the largest representative data (86,346 Utah students), they showed the lowest suicidality of any LGBTQ group: ~10% reporting an attempt vs. 23% of no-religion peers.

Lowest of Any LGBTQ Group Measured

Are LGBTQ youth in the Church still at elevated risk?

Yes. LGBTQ youth everywhere — including Latter-day Saints — report far higher suicidality than straight peers (19.1% vs. 6.0% attempts statewide). We state this without qualification.

Yes — Owned Not Softened

Was the study just BYU defending the Church?

No — a Bowling Green State University team independently analyzed the same government dataset and found the same comparative result, published in an APA journal.

Independently Replicated

Don't the struggling members just leave?

The researchers tested that directly, recoding former members back in; the disaffiliation explanation had under a 2% likelihood. Lefevor also found engaged and lapsed members didn't differ in wellbeing.

Tested Under 2% Likely

What actually protects LGBTQ youth?

Family closeness and connection — the finding of the BYU team, the Bowling Green team, and LGBTQ advocacy research alike. Affiliation alone predicted nothing once family variables entered.

Families Every Dataset Agrees

Does any data track suicide deaths by religion and orientation?

No such dataset exists anywhere. All findings here are suicidality (thoughts/attempts) from anonymous surveys; anyone claiming death-count precision is claiming data that doesn't exist.

No A Limit Both Sides Share

Frequently Asked Questions

Are LGBTQ youth safe in the Mormon Church?

Two facts are true at once. LGBTQ youth face elevated suicidality risk everywhere — including in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and no honest account softens that. But the accusation that the Church makes its LGBTQ youth less safe than outside it is contradicted by the best data: in Utah's 86,346-student survey, LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth reported the lowest suicidality of any LGBTQ group (~10% attempts vs. 23% of no-religion peers) — independently replicated by non-Latter-day-Saint researchers. The engine is family closeness.

What is the suicide rate for LGBTQ Mormons compared to non-Mormons?

No dataset anywhere records suicide deaths by both religion and sexual orientation, so death rates cannot be compared — by anyone. What can be compared is suicidality (reported thoughts and attempts) in representative surveys: there, LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth reported attempts at roughly 10% versus 23% for no-religion peers, lower than or equal to every other LGBTQ group measured.

Did the study account for LGBTQ members who left the Church?

Yes — directly. The objection that suffering members disaffiliate and get counted elsewhere was modeled using data showing 60.5% of Utah's no-religion LGBTQ teens are former Latter-day Saints. Recoding those former members as Latter-day Saints, the researchers found it very unlikely — under a 2% likelihood — that disaffiliation explains the gap. Separately, Lefevor's analysis of 815 current and former members found engaged and lapsed groups did not significantly differ in wellbeing.

Doesn't research show religion harms LGBTQ people?

The national literature is genuinely mixed: some studies find religiosity's protective effects weaken or reverse for sexual minorities, especially in rejecting environments. The most complete summary — a 73-study meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin — found religiousness positively associated with sexual-minority health on net, at about half the strength seen for heterosexuals, with context deciding the direction. The Utah data shows what a family-centered religious context produces — with family closeness as the mechanism.

From the DMs • Tough Questions, Straight Answers

The Harder Questions, Answered

"BYU professors studying whether their own church hurts kids — of course they found what they found."

The data is not BYU's — it is the State of Utah's, collected anonymously from 86,346 students. And the finding does not depend on BYU's analysis: the Bowling Green State University team, publishing in an American Psychological Association journal, read the same dataset and found the same result. When two teams from opposite institutional worlds reach the same conclusion on government data, the affiliation of one team stops being an argument.

Verdict: the same data was analyzed independently by non-Latter-day-Saint researchers at Bowling Green — who found the same thing.

"Even if the numbers are true, teaching a kid their feelings are sinful is harm all by itself."

The premise misstates the teaching: the Church's doctrine is that same-sex attraction is not a sin; the law of chastity governs conduct, for every member, in every orientation. One can believe that standard is too demanding — many do — but "your feelings are sinful" is not what the Church teaches. As for the harm claim: it is an empirical prediction, and outcome data is where predictions get tested. If the doctrine functioned as described, LGBTQ Latter-day Saint youth should fare worse than peers outside the Church. In the best data they do not — while the disparities that remain point at the actual work: family closeness.

Verdict: the Church teaches that attraction is not a sin — and the outcome data is how we test claims of harm rather than assume them.

"Utah has one of the worst youth suicide rates in the country. That's the Church's fingerprint."

Utah's elevated youth suicide rate is real, and it deserves better than to be a rhetorical fingerprint. Utah sits in the Mountain West "suicide belt" — states with persistently elevated rates attributed to altitude, rurality, firearm access, and care availability, factors with no religious denominator. Within that context, the denominational data runs the other way: Latter-day Saint youth report suicidality at less than half the rate of non-member peers, and areas of strongest Church presence show the lower rates. A state-level correlation cannot carry a causal claim the individual-level data contradicts.

Verdict: Utah sits in the eight-state "suicide belt" — and within it, the Latter-day Saint population shows lower, not higher, suicidality.

Sources

  1. Dyer, Goodman & Wood, "Religion and Sexual Orientation as Predictors of Utah Youth Suicidality," BYU Studies Quarterly 61 (2022) — the SHARP analysis and disaffiliation check.
  2. McGraw et al., "Family, Faith, and Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors Among LGBTQ Youth in Utah," Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (2021) — the Bowling Green replication.
  3. Stephen Cranney, Journal of Homosexuality — BRFSS analysis of Latter-day Saint sexual-minority adults in Utah.
  4. G. T. Lefevor et al., 73-study meta-analysis, Psychological Bulletin 147:7 (2021); and latent profile analysis of 815 Latter-day Saint sexual minorities, The Counseling Psychologist (2023).
  5. M. C. Lytle et al., American Journal of Preventive Medicine (2018); K. Park & N. Hsieh, AJPM (2022) — the national-sample counter-literature, engaged in §06.
  6. 2019 Utah SHARP survey, Utah Department of Human Services; Church suicide-prevention resources: churchofjesuschrist.org/study/life-help/suicide.
  7. Companion studies: Can You Be Gay and Mormon? · Did 34 Gay Mormon Kids Die? — both Mormonism Explained.

Crisis resources

Call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, US) · Church suicide-prevention resources: churchofjesuschrist.org/study/life-help/suicide. Help is real.

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