Earlier this year, Nate Tisa became the first ever gay student body president at Georgetown University, a big accomplishment at a Catholic school.
Tisa chatted with HuffPost Live's Ricky Camilleri about the strides Georgetown's LGBTQ community has made and the progress his election represents. He also told his personal story of how he reconciled his homosexuality with his strong Catholic faith.
That faith turned out to be the impetus behind Tisa becoming comfortable with himself. The first time he ever admitted he was gay came during a conversation with the lay minister of his high school youth group. The youth leader encouraged Tisa to love himself and find confidence in the knowledge that God accepts him as he is.
"The message was basically, 'God loves you and he wouldn't have created something that he doesn't love,'" he said.
Still, Tisa waited until November of his freshman year at Georgetown to officially come out of the closet.
"I waited a few months. I wanted to see what the institution was like, because at the time, when you Googled Georgetown and gay, the first articles that would come up were the hate crimes that happened around 2008," he said.
But once he was living as an openly gay man, Tisa said his Catholic faith helped him more than it hindered him in accepting himself and finding the same sentiment from others.
"If every single person has the inherent dignity that the Catholic religion says they do, then you should respect that, you should treat that with love and compassion," he said.
Watch the full segment about the LGBT community at Catholic schools at HuffPost Live HERE.
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