I do not hate you, and I believe you when you say you do not hate me. But growing up in your religion made me hate myself and believe that god either hated me or didn’t even notice me. You didn’t have the same experience as I did, and I am glad for you. Really, sincerely, truly glad for you.

I agree that to know someone else is to love them. That’s why I wish I could show you a real, first-person view — without your own beliefs and assumptions to shield you from it — of what so many on the other side have felt. When you know what it’s like to have the stones thrown at you, you’re a lot less likely to throw the same stones yourself. But you’re also less likely to hold the coats of those who continue to throw the stones.

When I left the LDS church, it was because I could no longer bear the weight of holding that church’s coats as it threw its many stones.

One example from before my time: for over 100 years, they kept black people out of heaven (not just the priesthood — it was a temple ban) for what the LDS church now admits was a man sustained as a prophet who was speaking as a racist man.

Already, that church’s stance on one of today’s greatest civil rights struggles, homosexuality, has changed drastically from where it was 50 years ago. Back then, doctrine held that it was a choice, and a perverse one, to be homosexual. Now, they admit that it is not a choice. When they admit, in 50 more years, that they were also wrong about many more of their teachings and policies about homosexuality, what damage will already have been done?

The LDS leaders have spoken evil of people who did not choose their sexuality. And they have fought against the civil liberties of homosexual people and lied about the nature of their involvement in that fight. And they continue to mingle hurtful rhetoric into current messages, but perhaps worst of all they have done nothing to correct the mistaken impressions they themselves spread in the past.

As a result, many families and friends and church leaders believe — today, in 2017 — that they are following their God when they reject and despise people who come out to them as homosexual. The blood of hundreds of gay youth, especially in the Mountain West, is on their hands. Period.

Those lives can’t be given back. Those families can’t be healed of the loss and the part they played in the loss. The blood continues to flow. That blood drenches the coats of the leaders of the LDS church. And anyone who holds their coats while they throw their stones is going to get a little on them, too.

I care about you, though I don’t know you. I care about my many friends who are aware of many of the issues with their church but who find that the costs of leaving are too great, and after all, “it works for [them]”. I hope that you and they will one day have a moment on the metaphorical road to Damascus. Whether you meet a god there, or your own moral sense as a human being, I hope it leads you to better paths.