As gay and lesbian Americans continue to strive for broader acceptance and greater legal rights in the United States, many of them are also seeking acknowledgment in religious circles.
 
Currently, a group that includes many gay Mormons is pushing for the Mormon Church (known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or LDS) to do more to open the dialogue with them and to more fully embrace them within the church.
 
Affirmation, an international support group for gay Mormons, has been working for months to get a meeting with church officials. It was announced this week that a meeting, which had been scheduled for this week, is now indefinitely postponed as the church fills the position of the outgoing director of LDS Family Services, who would be present at such a meeting.
 
Leaders of Affirmation say they've been told a meeting would not occur until sometime in 2009, and they claim that is too long to wait to get their issues addressed. So they are expressing their concerns in a public forum.
 
They claim that too many LDS gays are shunned by their families, with many ending up homeless or committing suicide.
 
This week, I spoke with some of the leaders of Affirmation to find out what factors are motivating their sense of urgency. They told me that the notion of not being fully accepted by the church has caused some severe problems, especially among youth.
 
"We would like to meet with a General Authority of the church as soon as possible," said David Melson, Affirmation's assistant executive director, who is also a member of the LDS Church. "Right now, we have suicides going on. We have teenagers being thrown out of their homes because they're gay. We have families that are being broken up every week over this issue."
 
The church has said little other than that it plans to meet with Affirmation in the future. In a statement released this week, church spokesman Scott Trotter wrote, "It has always been the intent of the church to engage in an open and honest discussion with Affirmation leaders to listen to their concerns."
 
When that meeting comes, the church's leaders will go into it knowing exactly what Affirmation wants. The group is seeking an unambiguous statement in General Conference--a semiannual gathering of Mormons to hear from church leaders on a range of topics--that homosexuality is "not a sin" or a disease. They also want the church to clearly state that mothers do not cause it.
 
In addition, the group is advocating working with the church to develop training materials and more uniform guidelines for leaders to use when counseling gay and lesbian Mormons.
 
"What will happen a lot of times is someone will tell their bishop, 'I think I might be gay,'" Melson said. "In many cases-- and the church has counseled them not to do this--the bishop's solution is well, 'Go get married in the temple, have a couple of children and you'll get over it.' And then 12 or 15 years later, they figure out the bishop was wrong; it didn't work; and they have to sit down and tell their spouse and their children, 'Dad is gay, or mom is a lesbian.' And they end up leaving the church bitter."
 
Matt Jensen, 26, is a member of the LDS Church who is straight. Jensen has previously served a religious mission for the church. He said that when young members reveal to their bishops they are gay, "Nine times out of 10 that church leader is gonna say, 'So what? If you have those feelings, we'll deal with it. But if you engage in homosexual activity, that is a sin.'"
 
Jensen does not think the church will ever budge on that stance, adding it does not view an individual as a "gay" or "straight" person, but rather, in the case of one who is gay, as a person who commits "homosexual acts."
 
"I never see the church coming back and saying, 'We no longer consider homosexual activity a sin,'" Jensen said. "Just like they're never going to say, 'We now think it's OK for people to have premarital sex.'"
 
George Cole, director of the young adults program for Affirmation, works mainly with group members ages 18 to 30.
 
"I believe that most non-straight members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not feel accepted by the church, including, and possibly especially, young adults," Cole, 27, said.
 
He noted that he was "enthusiastic" about serving a religious mission for the church, but after coming out just before his 19th birthday, he was not allowed to serve a mission. He was ultimately excommunicated because he was gay, he claims.
 
Cole contends that younger Mormons who are gay often deal with different circumstances than gay Mormons of prior generations.
 
"Unlike previous generations, they come out of the closet earlier; they don't wind up marrying someone of the opposite sex and having children," Cole said. "They want to come out early. They want to be true to themselves and true to their faith, and that still is not a complete possibility."