A 12-year-old girl was not allowed to
finish her coming out speech to her Mormon church in Utah.
Church leaders asked Savannah Ward to
leave the rostrum shortly after she came out lesbian.
“I believe I am a child of heavenly
parents. I don’t know if they talk to us, but I feel in my heart
that they made me and that they love me. I believe I was made the way
I am, all parts of me, by my heavenly parents,” Ward told the
congregation.
“They did not mess up when they gave
me brown eyes, or when I was born bald. They did not mess up when
they gave me freckles or they made me to be gay. God loves me just
this way because I believe that he loves all his creations,” Ward
continued. “No part of me is a mistake. I do not choose to be this
way and it is not a fad. I cannot make someone else gay and being
around me won’t make anyone else this way.
“I know I can have all of these
things as a lesbian and be happy. I believe that if God is there, he
knows I'm perfect just the way I am, and would never ask me to live
my life alone or with someone I am not attracted to,” she added.
Video
of Ward's testimony has received nearly 400,000 views on YouTube.
In it, we see a man interrupt Ward and ask her to leave the stage.
“Brothers and sisters, I ask you to recognize that we are all
children of God. We are loved by our Heavenly Father,” another man
tells the congregation.
Ward said on the podcast I Like to
Look for Rainbows that she was sad that she was unable to finish
her thoughts.
Ward's mother Heather told HuffPost
that she was proud of her daughter.
“I'm proud of her, even now, she
doesn't want any of this to be about her. She wants it to be about
protecting other LGBT kids,” Heather said. “She wants her story
told so that this doesn't happen to other kids.”