Ed Smart Says He Never Wanted To Be Gay
December 18, 2019Ed Smart, father of the kidnapping survivor Elizabeth Smart, told an LGBT+ conference that he never wanted to be gay. He even identified himself as a homophobe for a big part of his life.
“I didn’t want to identify myself that way. I didn’t want to be that person. I stayed in the closet. I suppressed that. Out of shame, out of hate for myself, I just didn’t want that to be me,” Smart said, according to the ‘Advocate’.
Ed Smart opened up about his sexuality earlier this year and rejected his faith, leaving the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Days Saints.
“That change is what enabled me to be able to come forward and accept myself for who I was,” Smart said.
In a recent discussion as part of a presentation called ‘Coming Out. Coming Clean.” Smart compared his coming out to his daughter’s capture.
“I thought Elizabeth’s ordeal was very difficult, but this one is more difficult,” he said.
“I wanted to do what is right, and what was right was something that was ingrained in me. I wanted be faithful and do all those things that would enable me to be in a place that was the best place that I could be, whether it was being the best person I could be here on Earth or whether it was being in the best place in the hereafter,” he continued.
“As broken as I had felt for years and years trying to deal with this struggle inside of me I found that no, I’m not broken. The situation is I’m gay and I’m trying to be straight. I’m trying to be the straightest I possibly can be.”
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