While Mormon doctrine continues to view “homosexual behavior” as contrary to “God’s law,” the institutional church has been striving for a more moderate tone. It introduced the website mormonsandgays.org two years ago. “There is no change in the church’s position of what is morally right,” a statement on the site reads. “But what is changing — and what needs to change — is to help church members respond sensitively and thoughtfully when they encounter same-sex attraction in their own families, among other church members, or elsewhere.” (Asked about Dr. Ryan’s project, a church spokesman made a similar point.)

The effect of such words has been mixed. A nationwide poll conducted late last year by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 53 percent of respondents considered the Mormon Church “unfriendly to L.G.B.T. people.” (Among religious denominations, only the Roman Catholic Church, at 58 percent, fared worse.) Yet even the gay magazine The Advocate has hailed a “minor revolution” of “more humane treatment of L.G.B.T.s” in Mormon communities.

Dr. Ryan’s mission to the Mormons began in her Irish Catholic household, where she was reared on stories of the Easter Rebellion and imbued with the belief that God acted on behalf of the oppressed. From her own coming-out in the 1970s, however, she also learned firsthand the anguish of a family’s rejection in the name of religion.

Having studied gay and lesbian health issues as she began her social work career, Dr. Ryan became involved with AIDS patients in the Atlanta area during the first years of the epidemic. Many of them were from deeply conservative, evangelical Christian homes; many had left or been expelled solely because they were gay. And as Dr. Ryan looked on, these young men, on their deathbeds, and their parents struggled to reconcile.

“I saw something very few people saw,” Dr. Ryan recalled. “This deep, profound connection that superseded dogma and doctrine. I saw the language of the heart.”

Right then, she recognized her calling: to enable those reconciliations during life rather than at the portal of death. As Dr. Ryan received her validation the way scholars do — publication in peer-reviewed journals, six-figure grants as a principal investigator on research projects, a faculty position at San Francisco State University — she conducted extensive field work among homeless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teenagers in the Bay Area, as well as with parents of gay children. She and her academic colleagues documented a strong correlation between rejection by families and such dangerous youthful behaviors as drug abuse, unprotected sex and suicide attempts.

Along the way, Dr. Ryan also discovered her way into the Mormon world. For all of the church’s longtime, outspoken opposition to homosexuality, Mormons also put a tremendous theological emphasis on family, so much so that they believe a family can be “sealed” together in the afterlife.