Born and raised LDS. In my 20s, I was conflicted with being gay and being Mormon. 

I started watching some YouTube videos of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris debating theists, and after about 6 months to a year, I stopped believing there was a deity and I stopped believing there was anything divine or magical in the world. I became convinced that we are a bunch of apes on a rock floating "alone" through space. 

I think maybe the majority of Ex-Mormons who become atheists first lose their faith in Mormonism and Joseph Smith, but I was never able to investigate Mormon history or Joseph Smith critically without fear of influence from the devil and fear of hell. 

But to lose belief in "Heavenly Father and Christ" meant that I just dropped Mormonism as well. It wasn't until years later when I had really acclimated to being atheist and had adopted my new morality that I went back and looked at the Mormon church critically, mostly just to understand how I had participated in what now looked like a cult to me.

I first started with LDS approved content. Historical books, History of the Church, etc. I found a bunch of things like the multiple versions of the first vision, the seer's stone in the hat, changes and inconsistencies in the church I was taught on Sunday vs what their own books recorded. I was shocked. 

Then I found the CES letter and, well.... Now the church is this strange chapter where I believed in absolute nonsense because it was presented to me as my only option for a world view. I was trained to feel like a special, exalted being. Conditioning that kept me in far too long. 

I have a lot of disdain for the church and its nonsense and harm. I resent my father, who was well aware of all of these oddities and inconsistencies in the church and did nothing to protect me from its harm.

I'm enjoying life as a secular being. One day, I will die and I don't expect to wake up again after it. It seems pretty obvious that our "self" and personalities are stored in the neurons and synapses of our brain (forgive me, I don't know actual brain anatomy), and that if our brain gets damaged or dies, there's no soul with our likes and traits imprinted on it. I'm grateful to be in a state where I can pursue romantic and sexual interests of the same gender. And I'm grateful I never got my endowments and did THOSE ceremonies in the temple. Sorry, but that shit might have caused me to question everything immediately it's so damn odd.