But Easton, valedictorian of Brigham Young University’s political science department, put aside fears that he could be expelled and found the courage he said was inspired by a presidential candidate.
“I stand before my family, friends and graduating class today to say that I am proud to be a gay son of God,” he said last Friday in a commencement speech before 10,000 people inside the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah.
To his surprise, the crowd erupted into cheers.
“I am not broken,” he continued in a speech that immediately went viral. “I am loved and important to the plan of our great creator. Each of us are.”
Easton’s declaration — imbued with religious devotion and a call for social equality — came as the church and Brigham Young are wrestling with how to reconcile gay members of the Mormon faith. It came on the heels, too, of an academic year that has included the church’s reversal of a contentious policy that had condemned members in same-sex marriages as apostates and subject to excommunication, and in the wake of a grassroots movement on campus to change the university’s honor code.
Indeed, Easton’s coming out signals the emergence of a younger generation demanding that its views and identities be heard and embraced.
Patrick Mason, chairman of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University, said Easton’s coming out marked “a sea change” happening both nationally and within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“It shows how rapidly the culture is changing,” he said, adding that the speech highlighted how the shift was being driven from the ground up, with conversations happening today “that would have been unthinkable even five years ago.”
Easton, 24, was raised in Salt Lake City in a family that has been members of the church for generations. After serving a mission in Sydney, he enrolled at Brigham Young. As a student, he was a member of its Political Science Honors Society and acts as the Republican state delegate for his home precinct in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.
In an interview Monday, he said he had always known he was gay. He told his parents two years ago, but never expected to come out while at Brigham Young, where any exploration of his sexual identity could result in losing his chance to earn a degree.
While the university states that “same-gender attraction is not an Honor Code issue,” the policy prohibits — and punishes — violations like immodest attire, premarital sexual activity and homosexual behavior. “Homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings,” the honor code reads.
Despite his fears — and the advice of his parents to conceal his sexuality from the university — Easton said he began to change his mind a few months ago, inspired by how Pete Buttigieg, the Democratic mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who is running for president, had spoken about his faith and sexuality.
A turning point, Easton said, was watching the 37-year-old gay mayor’s speech in April to the Victory Fund, a group that supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender politicians, in which Buttigieg challenged Vice President Mike Pence on his opposition to gay rights.
“That was the first time I had seen myself in a role model,” Easton said. “Pete was just like me, Christian and gay. It gave me a lot of courage.”
But he was also inspired by something much closer to home: For years, the university has not allowed its LGBT group to meet on campus. At a rally to protest the university’s honor code, attendees observed five minutes of silence for gay and transgender students, a moment that cemented for Easton why coming out was so important.
“There were 500 people saying we see you, we hear you,” he said. “I thought maybe I can give the same hope to other LGBT students who are afraid.”
Easton submitted his commencement speech to the dean’s office for approval two weeks before graduation, which included the words of church apostles who were supportive of LGBT Mormons. Easton said he prepared for the speech to be rejected, but to his surprise, the dean’s office told him, “Go for it.”
The required theme was “celebration for all,” but he said he was anxious until he approached the lectern and looked out at the crowd that had gathered for BYU’s College of Family, Home and Social Sciences ceremony.
“As soon as I started speaking,” he said, “I knew it was exactly what I wanted to say.”
Easton began by congratulating his undergraduate classmates for obtaining rigorous degrees and praising those who had married or raised children while attending classes. He then addressed LGBT students, and others “who stood in the face of adversity to make our campus better for future generations.”
“You are seen,” he said to cheers. “You are loved.”
He heard the cheers, but expected his own coming out to be met mostly with silence. After he shared some of his own struggles, like surviving a hit-and-run accident with a deer that required hernia surgery and learning that his mother had terminal cancer, he said he had triumphed over “the quiet moments of pain and confusion.”
And then he came out, speaking the words that his sister had never heard him say. People cheered and screamed and clapped, and many rose from their seats.
In a video of the speech he posted online, Easton smiled as he waited for the applause to die down.
“Four years ago, it would have been impossible for me to imagine that I would come out to my entire college,” he continued. “It is a phenomenal feeling. And it is a victory for me in and of itself.”
Thinking back to that moment, Easton said Monday that he was overwhelmed by the vocal support.
“It was better than I ever imagined,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.