On the day in May that Savannah stood up to speak in front of her Mormon congregation, she did not get through everything she had wanted to say.

The 12-year-old was telling other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that she is a lesbian. “No part of me is a mistake,” she said during a testimony meeting, a monthly event at her church in Eagle Mountain, Utah. “I do not choose to be this way, and it is not a fad.”

As Savannah, now 13, was nearing the end of her comments, after she had come out to her fellow worshipers, her microphone was switched off. She tapped it and then looked to a church leader to see what had happened.

He told her that she could return to her seat.

“I think they did that because they didn’t want my message,” Savannah said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “I don’t want to be mean to them if this isn’t true, but I felt like they were scared of me and what I was saying.”