(The Salt Lake Tribune:) Affirmation, a support group for gay Mormons, was born in 1977, at a time when admission of same-sex attraction among the LDS faithful was a matter of inner turmoil, deep shame and religious rejection,even a cause for suicide.

At the time, the LDS Church viewed their sexuality as perverse and sinful, and their love as unholy. Any acceptance of gays had to be whispered.

Now, 40 years later, hundreds in the church's LGBTQ community, their families and friends, are celebrating Affirmation's anniversary openly and with gusto at a three-day conference at the Utah Valley Convention Center in Provo, many embracing their gayness and their Mormonness.

"The group has seen a "massive sea change," Gustav-Wrathall says, in the relationship between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its gay members.

"Ten years ago, the topic of the LGBTQ experience in Mormonism was simply a taboo," he says. "Now there's a flood of discussion that is happening every day."

Once it was "almost unheard of for an LGBT person to come out over the pulpit," he says. "Now that happens with some frequency." (For the complete article, Click Here.