What has become clear to me is that it is not the inherent nature of being gay that causes such a reduced life; it is, rather, the social circumstances around being gay: the perceptions of it and the cultural norms that it is said to violate. As some of those norms have changed, I have been able to be gay, to have a marriage, to have a family, and to have - if there is wood to knock on - a fortunate and happy life.

If you don't want to have gay weddings in Mormon churches, that's fine. That's absolutely up to the members of the faith or the leadership of the faith. I would never suggest that the Mormon Church has to consecrate gay unions. But homosexuality runs at a fairly constant rate through all populations. There are many gay Mormons.

Some people are trapped by the belief that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones.

I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.

It's deeply humbling to realize that there is no such thing as a society with a purchase on truth.

We see people of kindness, compassion, and possibly even faith being told, "Because of a characteristic with which you were born, you are evil and bad." Anything that even implies such a stance is profoundly toxic.

That, in essence, is the catastrophe of suicide for those who survive: not only the loss of someone, but the loss of the chance to persuade that person to act differently, the loss of the chance to connect.