And when he did, in 2011, he unknowingly made space for his brother, Tanner, to feel comfortable coming out about his own sexuality. “Hearing my son – who I knew was a good young man, who was faithful in every way to his church and to everything that we taught – made me realize that what I believed or what I thought I knew about being gay was wrong,” Bryce said in a video from One Community Arizona.īut while Trevor came out to his parents, he didn’t come out to his five other siblings and extended family until years later. But we still had a lot of learning to do.”įor Bryce, Sara, and the Cook family, learning that Trevor is gay was an important first step on their journey toward more fully understanding the LGBT community – and the discrimination people face, often with few legal protections. “But we told him absolutely that we loved him, that this didn’t change anything, and that he would always be a part of the family.
“We called him, and we were flabbergasted and surprised,” Bryce told Freedom for All Americans. “I know this will come as a shock to you, but I am same-sex attracted.” “I had very un-Christlike feelings toward gay people,” Bryce wrote in a personal reflection several years ago, confronting his longtime lack of understanding.īut slowly, over time, his negative feelings about gay people began to change in 2003, when Bryce and his wife Sara received a letter from their son Trevor. If you had told Bryce Cook a few years ago that in 2016, he would be organizing a support group for family members of LGBT people in the Mormon faith, he probably wouldn’t have believed you.įor a long time, Bryce wasn’t comfortable with the LGBT community, following long-standing positions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that spoke against homosexuality. Father in Mormon Family Shares How Two Sons’ ‘Coming Out’ Experiences Propelled Him to Understanding