Book Notes | David Archuleta
🎙 Show: N/A 📌 Episode: N/A 🏷 Tags: #Devout #DavidArchuleta #LDS #Faith #Identity #MentalHealth
Below are my thoughts from reading the book “Devout: Losing My Faith to Find Myself”
The One-Line Summary
A pop star raised as a devout Mormon spends years trying to pray, marry, and obey his way out of being gay — until a policy admission, a suicidal night, and a family secret force him to start questioning everything he was ever told was “from God.”
Why This Book
This one hit me in a lot of directions at once. It’s not just a book about being gay in the LDS church — it’s a book about what happens when you’re taught your whole life to obey and not question, and what it costs you to finally start asking “is this actually true?” instead of just accepting it because someone with authority said so.
Ideas Worth Keeping
1. Calling it a “struggle” implies it’s something to overcome
The church uses the term “same-sex attraction” instead of gay or lesbian, because those words imply an identity — and an identity is something you can’t just overcome, while a struggle is. But why does being gay take away from being a child of God, when being straight doesn’t impact that at all? You’re still a child of God regardless of being gay or straight. That shouldn’t matter.
2. “It’s not the feeling, it’s acting on it” — except that’s not actually equal
Elder Holland’s 2007 Ensign talk lays out the church’s actual position: same-gender attraction is not a sin, but acting on those feelings is — just as it would be with heterosexual feelings. Sounds fair on the surface. But a straight member can actually get married and act on that attraction righteously. A gay member can’t. So what’s even the point of dating if you can never get married and express yourself with another man? It’s not the same standard at all.
3. Scrupulosity is a real thing, and it explains a lot
There’s a part where it’s almost like an OCD or obsession with doing everything right, taught to you through scripture and religion. I looked it up — it’s an actual clinical term: scrupulosity, a recognized subtype of OCD involving religious or moral obsessions, where you become pathologically anxious about whether you’re violating doctrine. Pair that with being taught your own sexuality is a “struggle” to overcome, and you’ve basically built a machine for anxiety and self-punishment.
4. He could see his brother couldn’t switch it off — but thought he could
His brother Daniel has schizophrenia, and David never once thought Daniel had a choice about it, or that Daniel could just switch it off. It’s a real medical condition. But when it came to his own sexuality, he believed he could turn it off like a switch, that he could overcome it. That double standard — recognizing an involuntary condition in his brother but not in himself — says everything about how deep the indoctrination went.
5. Sometimes it takes an outside voice to see what’s normal isn’t
His dad wrote him a long, angry letter/email. David printed it out and gave it to his mission president, who told him directly that what his father was doing was emotional, verbal, and mental abuse. David was totally surprised — it took a while to even talk through it. When you have no outside view, your life just is normal. You think this is just how it is. Then someone points it out, and the ground underneath you shifts, and you have a completely different perspective on your world.
6. The night he chose between being gay and being alive
After years — maybe ten — of wrestling with being gay and feeling unworthy, he got to a point where it was basically: decide between being gay or not being here. And he was leaning toward not being here, because being gay felt dirty, bad, like God didn’t love him, like he’d been abandoned. That’s how badly religion can frame being gay — that someone who loves God can be so torn between wanting to follow God and being made the way he was. In that moment, something broke through — a sense that God was telling him to stop asking to have the gayness taken away, that he was loved as he was, and that it was okay to make mistakes. That was the real turning point — not because his reality shifted before that (he’d believed being gay meant God didn’t love him), but because for the first time he heard something that said otherwise.
7. If the apostles were wrong once, what else are they wrong about?
He met with Elder Ballard, an apostle, who told him the brethren have been praying about how to handle gay members and haven’t gotten an answer. But they’d already released the 2015 policy that barred children of same-sex couples from being baptized until they were eighteen — and Ballard admitted, “We realize that was a mistake.” The church’s own 2019 press release backs this up: the First Presidency reversed the policy, saying the changes came after “fervent, united prayer to understand the will of the Lord on these matters” — the same claimed process that produced the original policy four years earlier. That’s the crack in the whole foundation. If the prophet and apostles speak on behalf of God, and that policy was wrong, what else that they’ve taught as God’s word isn’t actually true? That’s the moment you have to have the wisdom to question what you’re being told — just because someone says this is from God doesn’t mean it actually is.
8. The point isn’t just “the church should do better”
It’s not just that the LDS church needs to do better for gay members. Based on his experience with his brother Daniel, he also makes the point that the United States needs to do better with people who have mental illness — instead of lumping people with schizophrenia in with criminals, actually find real treatment options. And with his sister Claudia, who is really sensitive and was abused as a kid, the same point applies: people who don’t fit the norm need real support, not to be left to families or systems that fail them.
Passages That Hit Hardest
“What I did best was obey and follow the instructions given to me, to be obedient and compliant.”
That’s the posture he was raised in — obedience without needing a reason, because church leaders’ words carried presumed divine authority.
“We realize that was a mistake.”
Elder Ballard, on the 2015 policy. Six words that undo an entire claim to speaking for God.
Who Should Read This
- Anyone raised in a faith tradition who’s ever felt the tension between obedience and their own conscience
- Anyone who’s gay and religious and has been told their feelings are okay but acting on them isn’t
- Families dealing with mental illness or abuse who feel like the systems around them — church or otherwise — aren’t built to actually help
- Anyone who needs permission to question something just because it was labeled as truth
Rob’s Take
The thing that stuck with me most is that to find more truth, you need to ask questions, search, and think about things — not just accept them. It’s easier to just agree and not think critically, but that’s the key thing he’s trying to get across: you have to question and struggle versus blindly accept. And the more he let himself sit in that doubt and despair over his family’s religion, the better, poorer, and happier his family actually became.
You have to have the wisdom to question what’s being told to you and ask: they’re saying this is from God, but is it actually true?
Notes and Quotes
- Same-sex attraction vs. gay/lesbian — the church’s language choice implies identity is the problem, not the feeling itself
- Scrupulosity — real clinical term, an OCD subtype tied to religious/moral obsession
- The brother Daniel parallel — schizophrenia isn’t a choice, but he believed his own sexuality was
- The bishop’s email — outside perspective is sometimes the only way to see what’s actually not normal
- “What I did best was obey and follow the instructions given to me, to be obedient and compliant.”
- “We realize that was a mistake.” — Elder Ballard, on the 2015 policy
- “You’re making decisions for people like me on behalf of God” — his pushback to Ballard
- The dating question — what’s the point if marriage and sexual expression are never on the table
- Mental illness and the justice system — Daniel deserved treatment, not to be lumped in with criminals
- His sister Claudia — sensitive, abused as a kid, deserving of real support
- The family got better, poorer, and happier the further they moved from the religion’s grip
Posted on ClickReads — part of the ClickRost network. Have a book recommendation? Drop it in the comments.
otes | David Archuleta
🎙 Show: N/A 📌 Episode: N/A 🏷 Tags: #Devout #DavidArchuleta #LDS #Faith #Identity #MentalHealth
Below are my thoughts from reading the book “Devout: Losing My Faith to Find Myself”
The One-Line Summary
A pop star raised as a devout Mormon spends years trying to pray, marry, and obey his way out of being gay — until a policy admission, a suicidal night, and a family secret force him to start questioning everything he was ever told was “from God.”
Why This Book
This one hit me in a lot of directions at once. It’s not just a book about being gay in the LDS church — it’s a book about what happens when you’re taught your whole life to obey and not question, and what it costs you to finally start asking “is this actually true?” instead of just accepting it because someone with authority said so.
Ideas Worth Keeping
1. Calling it a “struggle” implies it’s something to overcome
The church uses the term “same-sex attraction” instead of gay or lesbian, because those words imply an identity — and an identity is something you can’t just overcome, while a struggle is. But why does being gay take away from being a child of God, when being straight doesn’t impact that at all? You’re still a child of God regardless of being gay or straight. That shouldn’t matter.
2. “It’s not the feeling, it’s acting on it” — except that’s not actually equal
Elder Holland’s 2007 Ensign talk lays out the church’s actual position: same-gender attraction is not a sin, but acting on those feelings is — just as it would be with heterosexual feelings. Sounds fair on the surface. But a straight member can actually get married and act on that attraction righteously. A gay member can’t. So what’s even the point of dating if you can never get married and express yourself with another man? It’s not the same standard at all.
3. Scrupulosity is a real thing, and it explains a lot
There’s a part where it’s almost like an OCD or obsession with doing everything right, taught to you through scripture and religion. I looked it up — it’s an actual clinical term: scrupulosity, a recognized subtype of OCD involving religious or moral obsessions, where you become pathologically anxious about whether you’re violating doctrine. Pair that with being taught your own sexuality is a “struggle” to overcome, and you’ve basically built a machine for anxiety and self-punishment.
4. He could see his brother couldn’t switch it off — but thought he could
His brother Daniel has schizophrenia, and David never once thought Daniel had a choice about it, or that Daniel could just switch it off. It’s a real medical condition. But when it came to his own sexuality, he believed he could turn it off like a switch, that he could overcome it. That double standard — recognizing an involuntary condition in his brother but not in himself — says everything about how deep the indoctrination went.
5. Sometimes it takes an outside voice to see what’s normal isn’t
His dad wrote him a long, angry letter/email. David printed it out and gave it to his mission president, who told him directly that what his father was doing was emotional, verbal, and mental abuse. David was totally surprised — it took a while to even talk through it. When you have no outside view, your life just is normal. You think this is just how it is. Then someone points it out, and the ground underneath you shifts, and you have a completely different perspective on your world.
6. The night he chose between being gay and being alive
After years — maybe ten — of wrestling with being gay and feeling unworthy, he got to a point where it was basically: decide between being gay or not being here. And he was leaning toward not being here, because being gay felt dirty, bad, like God didn’t love him, like he’d been abandoned. That’s how badly religion can frame being gay — that someone who loves God can be so torn between wanting to follow God and being made the way he was. In that moment, something broke through — a sense that God was telling him to stop asking to have the gayness taken away, that he was loved as he was, and that it was okay to make mistakes. That was the real turning point — not because his reality shifted before that (he’d believed being gay meant God didn’t love him), but because for the first time he heard something that said otherwise.
7. If the apostles were wrong once, what else are they wrong about?
He met with Elder Ballard, an apostle, who told him the brethren have been praying about how to handle gay members and haven’t gotten an answer. But they’d already released the 2015 policy that barred children of same-sex couples from being baptized until they were eighteen — and Ballard admitted, “We realize that was a mistake.” The church’s own 2019 press release backs this up: the First Presidency reversed the policy, saying the changes came after “fervent, united prayer to understand the will of the Lord on these matters” — the same claimed process that produced the original policy four years earlier. That’s the crack in the whole foundation. If the prophet and apostles speak on behalf of God, and that policy was wrong, what else that they’ve taught as God’s word isn’t actually true? That’s the moment you have to have the wisdom to question what you’re being told — just because someone says this is from God doesn’t mean it actually is.
8. The point isn’t just “the church should do better”
It’s not just that the LDS church needs to do better for gay members. Based on his experience with his brother Daniel, he also makes the point that the United States needs to do better with people who have mental illness — instead of lumping people with schizophrenia in with criminals, actually find real treatment options. And with his sister Claudia, who is really sensitive and was abused as a kid, the same point applies: people who don’t fit the norm need real support, not to be left to families or systems that fail them.
Passages That Hit Hardest
“What I did best was obey and follow the instructions given to me, to be obedient and compliant.”
That’s the posture he was raised in — obedience without needing a reason, because church leaders’ words carried presumed divine authority.
“We realize that was a mistake.”
Elder Ballard, on the 2015 policy. Six words that undo an entire claim to speaking for God.
Who Should Read This
- Anyone raised in a faith tradition who’s ever felt the tension between obedience and their own conscience
- Anyone who’s gay and religious and has been told their feelings are okay but acting on them isn’t
- Families dealing with mental illness or abuse who feel like the systems around them — church or otherwise — aren’t built to actually help
- Anyone who needs permission to question something just because it was labeled as truth
Rob’s Take
The thing that stuck with me most is that to find more truth, you need to ask questions, search, and think about things — not just accept them. It’s easier to just agree and not think critically, but that’s the key thing he’s trying to get across: you have to question and struggle versus blindly accept. And the more he let himself sit in that doubt and despair over his family’s religion, the better, poorer, and happier his family actually became.
You have to have the wisdom to question what’s being told to you and ask: they’re saying this is from God, but is it actually true?
Notes and Quotes
- Same-sex attraction vs. gay/lesbian — the church’s language choice implies identity is the problem, not the feeling itself
- Scrupulosity — real clinical term, an OCD subtype tied to religious/moral obsession
- The brother Daniel parallel — schizophrenia isn’t a choice, but he believed his own sexuality was
- The bishop’s email — outside perspective is sometimes the only way to see what’s actually not normal
- “What I did best was obey and follow the instructions given to me, to be obedient and compliant.”
- “We realize that was a mistake.” — Elder Ballard, on the 2015 policy
- “You’re making decisions for people like me on behalf of God” — his pushback to Ballard
- The dating question — what’s the point if marriage and sexual expression are never on the table
- Mental illness and the justice system — Daniel deserved treatment, not to be lumped in with criminals
- His sister Claudia — sensitive, abused as a kid, deserving of real support
- The family got better, poorer, and happier the further they moved from the religion’s grip
Posted on ClickReads — part of the ClickRost network. Have a book recommendation? Drop it in the comments.
Robert Rost 
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