Although the historical record is often scarce, evidence points to LGBT individuals having existed in the Mormon community since its beginnings, and estimates of the number of LGBT former and current Mormons range from 4 to 10% of the total membership of the LDS Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). However, it wasn't until the late 1950s that top LDS leaders began regularly discussing LGBT people in public addresses. Since the 1970s a greater number of LGBT individuals with Mormon connections have received media coverage.
LGBT Mormon population estimates
Although there are no official numbers for how many members of the LDS Church identify as gay or lesbian there have been several estimates. In 2003 BYU's newspaper cited two LDS therapists who stated that the supermajority-Mormon BYU student body is "somewhere around 4 to 5 percent" homosexual. Family Services estimated that there are, on average, four or five members per church ward attracted to the same sex. An external study, conducted in 1972, found that between 10 and 13 percent of college-aged Mormon men reported past same-sex sexual behavior, which was similar to the percentage of non-Mormon men who similarly reported. The study did not tabulate the number of homosexual individuals who had never had a same-sex sexual experience. In 1979 BYU's newspaper published a series of articles on homosexuality in which Maxine Murdock of the BYU Counseling Center and Ford McBride, a former psychology student who conducted BYU electroshock aversion experiments on gay BYU students, estimated that 4% of BYU students (or around 1,200 students at the time) were attracted to the same sex.
Gary Watts, former president of Family Fellowship, estimates that only 10 percent of homosexual Mormons remain in the church. Others dispute that estimate, saying numbers in support groups for active Latter-day Saints and for self-identified gay Mormons are comparable. Many of these individuals have come forward through different support groups or websites stating their homosexual attractions and concurrent church membership. A number of personal accounts were published in A Place in the Kingdom: Spiritual Insights from Latter-day Saints about Same-Sex Attraction. Other personal experiences are documented on the LDS SSA Resources and People Can Change websites. Others have shared their stories through the Ensign, through the Evergreen International website and blogs.