Chris Wayne Beers, Mormon Missionary - and Suicide

d. March 18, 2012

According to stories posted on several Mormon blogs, Chris Wayne Beers, a returned missionary and former church employee, took his life on March 18. He was 38 years old.

Beers was a returned missionary and had worked for years at the Church Office Building in the missionary and travel department, and at the time of his passing he was working at the University of Utah Hospital.

A native from Bountiful, Utah, Beers graduated from Woods Cross High, where he played football and other sports. After serving an honorable mission for the LDS Church, he touched the lives of countless youth as an EFY counselor. "If we, as Mormons, did what we were supposed to do for all of our brothers and sisters--love them unconditionally--Chris would never have been stripped of his family of faith," wrote Mitch Mayne on a Facebook entry. "He would not have been forced to choose. He would have had a deeper, richer and more spiritual support network to walk him through what life brought his way. Sadly, like many, he was given the 'Sophie's Choice:' live life according to a heterocentric cultural practice and do so alone, without a partner--or live life without your family of faith and the strength of that spiritual community."

- from "Affirmation" (LGBT Mormons)