Suicide is the the leading cause of death among 10 to 17-year-olds in Utah, a state where 60 percent of residents are Mormon. But some are arguing that the reason for the suicide spike among Utah youth — it’s tripled since 2007 — is the altitude.

In the 27 years I lived as a practicing Mormon, at churches in Washington State, Utah, New York City, London and Madrid, I never once saw someone cut off in the middle of his or her testimony. Not once.

We sat through some truly crazy testimonies, politely biting our lips and making eye contact like: Well, this is going off the rails. Jean, an earnest English woman, once bore her testimony in song, which she freestyled. There was a guy named Andy who regularly used his time to air his grievances. “I’m not saying any names, but someone in this congregation cheated me out of a sum of money, I won’t say how much, but they know who they are.” No one cut his mike.

One Sunday, a regular, an older woman with long bright-white hair named Pandora got up and told the congregation that the angel Moroni visited her the night before and he told her some new stories that she needed to share with us. I remember my little brother and sister looking at my mom like: Wait, this is breaking news! And my mom whispering something to the effect of: Not true. But no one cut the mike.

Think about it. How often do we ever cut the mike, really? It’s an action reserved for the drunk bridesmaid toast, when Becky decides to just “get real” for a minute and confess she slept with the groom. Or that scene in “The Fugitive” when Harrison Ford crashes the convention to tell the crowd who the real killer is (though, O.K., there isn’t technically a mike in the scene, but you get the gist). Or the first time Peter Finch goes haywire on air in “Network.” We cut the mike when someone is truly unhinged. Not when a 12-year-old girl asks her community to love her.

Mormons are genuinely conflicted about gay people. Members of the church sincerely want to be good people, and Jesus teaches us to love one another. But the current prophet says being gay is a sin. So the compromise that Mormons have struck is to love the sinner and not the sin. The problem is that when you actually love a person, you want them to be free. And then everything gets really confusing. It’s much easier to do those mental gymnastics when there isn’t a little girl in front of you, giving a speech about how much being in the closet has made her suffer.