Singer Justin Utley: Gay Ex-Mormon Tells His Story in Music (tags)
Justin Utley grew up Mormon in a suburb of Salt Lake City. He was raised to believe he was one of the "Chosen People" — until he started realizing that his emotional, romantic and sexual interests lay with men and not women. On the advice of the church, he spent four years in so-called "reparative therapy" trying to "cure" himself of being Gay. Then he decided to be who he was created to be and not what his repressive church wanted him to be, and in two full-length CD's and his inspirational single "Stand for Something" he's set his struggle to powerful, intense music.