Casey Lee Moore and Dan Reynolds grew up like most good Mormon boys did — together, they went to high school, did student council, and attended daily seminary, which Casey describes as “Sunday School, but every day.” They were close with their families, and (as most Mormons do) knew practically everyone in their faith community. Casey even sang at church functions, lending his voice to help carry those good thoughts and prayers that went up to God. At some point during the school year, Dan says, it became clear that Casey was struggling emotionally. “I hated seeing that, but I didn’t know the answer,” he later recalls.
Nonetheless, after high school, the two continued on the good, Mormon path: embarking on their missions, a two-year service trip strongly encouraged of young men by the Church. But while Dan set his sights on a potential career in music, Casey had other plans. As the storybook-of-Mormon goes, he met a girl, and he fell in love.
That is, until Casey finally came to terms with the fact that he was gay.
“I knew something was missing and I couldn’t give her 100% of what she deserved,” Casey tells me over the phone. “A few months after that, I met a man and we fell in love over the phone, and I really felt love for the first time in my life.”
Casey had grappled with his sexuality for most of his adolescence, but it was hard to reconcile his thoughts and feelings with what he’d been taught in the Church — that being gay is wrong, and “acting on it” is a sin. “When I was 16, I remember my mom was crying because she’d had a dream that I’d been with a man,” he says. “She made me promise that I’d never act on it, because it would tear our family apart. It was something I was always trying to fight.”
When Casey announced to his mother that he’d be leaving home and moving in with his sister, she quickly realized what was happening. “She told me I was living a sin and going against everything she knew to be right, and told me I was dangerous for my niece and nephew to be around.” Afterwards, many in Casey’s family stopped communication with him altogether. Members of his Church began to message him on Facebook to share their disappointment in the “choices” he was making.
Somewhere in another part of the world, Dan would start to form a band called Imagine Dragons. Just four years after the band’s inception, Dan would go on to win a Grammy, collaborate onstage with Kendrick Lamar, and nab spots at the top of the Billboard charts (including two Billboard Top 10 hits this year so far). For much of his rise to fame, Dan was focused on making music and achieving success, which included finding balance in his rapidly-changing world. Still, he clung to his Mormon faith: “There are so many beautiful things that have come to me from Mormonism,” he explains, “whether that be family values or the two years of service I did on my mission.”
As these things used to go, Imagine Dragons’ meteoric rise to fame came with a very 2012-seal-of-approval: Darren Criss used their song, “It’s Time,” to serenade his boyfriend Kurt (played by Chris Colfer) in Glee. Teenagers all over the world started playing the song on repeat, inspired by their favorite onscreen gay couple. Naturally, they began to write to Dan in droves.
“Someone named Tom wrote me these letters, and they said all of these things, like, ‘Hey, I really love your music because I hate myself. I hate my sexuality, I hate who I am, and I’ve been hiding that I’m gay from my family, and I’m ashamed of it. And I know that you’re Mormon and you don’t support me, but that’s okay. I still love your music,’” Dan recalls. “That was the first time my heart broke open.”
Tom wasn’t exactly off-base in assuming a devout Mormon would be an unlikely ally. Utah, perceived as the capital of Mormonism, is not the most welcoming space for queer people — something that came to national attention last year, when the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the state’s suicide rate has tripled since 2007, making it the leading cause of death among 10- to 17-year-olds there. (Queer advocates noted that the state’s strong religious affiliation made it an inhospitable place for LGBTQ+ youth.) Outreach Resource Center in Salt Lake City notes that more than 50% of the homeless youth they serve are LGBTQ — which is notably higher than the nationwide average. For Mormon communities in particular, attitudes around queerness are formed at the pulpit; the Church’s recently reformed stance on homosexuality, for example, states that identifying as gay is not a sin, but “sexual relations between people of the same sex violate one of our Father in Heaven’s most important laws.”
After hearing from his fans, and after many difficult conversations with his wife, Aja (who Dan says “opened his eyes and heart in a lot of ways”), Dan decided that it was partially on him as a high-profile Mormon in the public eye to start building these bridges. Last year, he formed a foundation and music festival called Love Loud to promote LGBTQ+ equality and acceptance. The festival was held, of course, in Orem, Utah, and featured acts like Neon Trees, Krewella, and Joshua James.
Since the festival, which debuted to much fanfare in August, Reynolds has been flooded with messages from Mormon fans who said they never could have imagined anything like his event happening in their backyard. “I think 20,000 people in Orem, Utah — the home of Brigham and Young University and what people see as the headquarters of Mormonism —coming out for this event made people feel loved,” he says.
Reynolds earned a Trevor LIVE Hero Award for his advocacy, and the festival was covered everywhere from Vanity Fair to Pitchfork, earning major visibility for the cause. Even if it was for a brief moment, queer Mormons were in the headlines for a positive reason — maybe for the first time ever. Reynolds used the occasion to openly call out the church in a very candid interview with Billboard, calling its doctrine on homosexuality “dangerous and hurtful and hateful…to preach and to teach our children.” The buzz around the event was so significant that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints released an official statement, “applauding” the festival for its “aim to bring people together to address teen safety and to express respect and love for all God’s children.”
The festival barely wrapped two months ago, but Dan is already planning his next big move. “What I’m thinking about is next year,” he says, growing animated. “We’re doing a stadium, we’re doing 60,000 people. We’re going to keep pounding this over and over until there’s not a need for it — which I hope will be the case at some point.”
In the meantime, buzz has already started swirling around another one of Love Loud’s projects, a documentary that follows LGBTQ+ Mormons and helps to tell their stories. That’s when Dan and Casey finally reunited, talking on camera about Casey’s journey, and how to help kids who are in a similar position.
Casey, for his part, had to build bridges all by himself in order to survive. Eventually, his family came around, and his mom told him that she just wants him to be happy in life. He frequently performs as a singer at Mormon churches in Las Vegas, where he currently lives and has been embraced. “The Church has come a long way, and it continues to take steps in the right direction,” he explains. “Just the fact that they endorsed Dan’s event — I think things will continue to change.”
“I don’t know how it’ll happen, or when,” he says, with a pause. “I guess you could call it faith.”
Phillip Picardi is the Chief Content Officer and a founding editor for them. and Digital Editorial Director of Teen Vogue and Allure.
