Last week, I wrote this. It was published in the BYU Student Review, a new independent student-run newspaper at BYU, as a letter to the editor. It was my initial response to a string of letters about homosexuality published in the Daily Universe, BYU's official newspaper.  The letters were insensitive and hateful toward gays in the Church, one even going so far as to equate gays with prostitutes and serial killers. I do know, however, that every person, on each side of this debate, has good intentions. The solution will be found on a middle ground. I have been so happy with the response. My family and I have discussed it, my friends and I have discussed it, and many others I'll never know have discussed it with their friends and family. That's the best I could hope for. Open dialogue is the first step in moving toward greater inclusiveness and love. 
I have to say I’m pleased to see a running dialogue in The Daily Universe about homosexuality and the Church.
In the aftermath of Prop 8, we’ve heard a number of Church authorities speak on the subject. Last week, a “Circling of the Wagons” brought together local Church leaders and members of the gay community to talk openly about homosexuality within LDS faith and culture.  Mitch Mayne, an openly gay church member living in San Francisco, was given a calling assisting the ward’s bishopric. The Church’s “I’m a Mormon” website featured Norbert, a gay member of the church living in California, who shares his testimony and his thoughts on growing up, serving a mission, and remaining a faithful member of the Church.
My point is it’s high time for an honest and intelligent discussion about how Church members are to reconcile what the scriptures say about homosexuality and the unavoidable fact that boys and girls in the Church are growing up gay, even when they’ve been raised by loving parents in Gospel-centered homes.
Although the letters treat homosexuality with varying degrees of sensitivity, they mostly refer to same-gender attraction as unnatural and susceptible to reversal. This line of thinking is, firstly, soundly refuted by science. Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies show homosexual desire to be rooted deeply in biology and environment and not choice or preference. The Surgeon General, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and all major mental health associations in the U.S., have each issued statements that there is no evidence that any amount of therapy can change one’s sexual orientation. We must accept the fact that gays in the church did not choose their orientation. We need to drop comparisons to alcoholism and drug addiction.
Secondly, couching any dialogue about same-gender attraction in terms of its deviance is subversive to any sort of fruitful discussion on these matters. When we think of gays as moral delinquents we assume the tension that needs resolving is within the gay person rather than a Church whose membership is hemorrhaging due, in part, to its historic inability to reconcile itself with the gay community.
Now is the time for Church leaders and members to find new ways to incorporate single and married homosexuals (back) into the work of the Church. That gay Church members have natural urges their family members, friends, and church leaders call unnatural and vile is a tragedy, and it invites our deepest sympathy, sensitivity, and compassion.
- Bryce Johnson