Troy Williams: The gay mayor of Salt Lake City | The Salt Lake Tribune
Williams met with Utah conservative demigod Cleon Skousen, but he also attended Sunstone, the conference of Mormon intellectuals, and visited polygamist fundamentalist churches. He was bouncing back and forth between Eugene and Provo hating his job as a real-estate appraiser. By 1998, Williams had come out to himself and was attending the University of Utah, where he would earn degrees in anthropology and filmmaking. He also was losing his religion. Within a year of coming out, the zealous returned missionary formally resigned from the LDS Church. “It’s like peeling an onion,” he says. “I held onto the Gold Plates. Then I held onto Jesus. Then God. Each thing starts to fall away.”
By the turn of the new millennium, Williams felt he was a new person, “saved” by his gayness. “Being gay rescued me from the Mormon church, from conservatism, from the Eagle Forum,” he says, laughing. “It saved me from living in the suburbs.”