I think what the Church should ideally do, and does appear to do in the context of straight relationships, is to support people in crossing from the easier pleasure of momentary carnal satisfaction, into the more difficult pleasure of love and family and relationship.

The strengthening of faith, I think, is the ultimate goal of organized religion altogether.

The thing that makes me really outraged, is the idea that the Mormon Church would presume to get involved in decisions that have little to do with Mormonism.

If you are married and you go off and have an affair with someone, if you are a husband who does that, it may potentially hurt your wife enormously. But it seems to me likely also to compromise your marriage. That seems to me to be a harm.

I'm not studying everything that can go wrong. What I'm studying is how much love there can be, even when everything appears to be going wrong.

Religion is so focused on family. These days, for many people, being gay is also focused on family. The Mormon Church is especially focused on family, and I'd have hoped, therefore, that the Mormon Church would especially have celebrated how all of these people who might have been lonely and suicidal and childless are now able to lead this other life. I would have thought it would be a cause for immense celebration. Instead it has been, obviously, a cause of great concern to the Church and its leadership.

Antonio Gramsci said that social reformers should have pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. This means that one must have the intellectual ability to see how bad things are and the emotional ability to look forward with hope. It's a hard combination to sustain, but if you can do it, you can change the world.