Story highlights Cox apologized at a vigil Monday in Salt Lake City a day after Omar Mateen killed 49 people in a gay nightclub

"It's amazing when you try to reach out and get to know and love someone who is different than you," Spencer Cox told CNN

Washington (CNN) Utah's second-highest-ranking public official says the Orlando massacre has prompted him to apologize to the LGBT community for his role in perpetuating homophobia.

"As I've gotten to know more people from the LGBT community, their love, their kindness, their patience with me -- it's amazing when you try to reach out and get to know and love someone who is different than you -- you find out remarkably that we're really not that different," Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox told CNN's Don Lemon Friday.

Cox apologized at a vigil Monday in Salt Lake City a day after Omar Mateen killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando. A video of the speech has gone viral.

"I'm here because yesterday morning, 49 Americans were brutally murdered," Cox said Monday. "I'm here because those 49 people were gay. I'm here because it shouldn't matter. But I'm here because it does."

The Republican told CNN that he regretted not standing up for gay people in his youth.

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