Timothy Johnson is Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis-St. Paul. His books include, as co-author, Religious Institutions and Minor Parties in the United States. He wrote the entry on Roe v. Wade for the Encyclopedia of American Religion and Politics.

Kenneth Roth is executive director of Human Rights Watch. Read the organization’s 2001 report “Hatred in the Hallways: Violence and Discrimination Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Students in U.S. Schools.”

Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew was murdered in an anti-gay crime, established the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which has offices in Casper, Wyo., and Denver. She supports anti-discrimination programs in schools and legislation against hate crimes.

Read a September 2010 Religion News Service story posted by The Huffington Post about the increasing prominence of Mormonism in the national arena.

Read a March 26, 2011, New York Times column by Maureen Down on “the Mormon moment.”

Jody M. Huckaby is executive director of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians & Gays, which has a program for safe and inclusive schools.

Read a Feb. 8, 2011, column in Religion Dispatches by Joanna Brooks, a religion scholar and writer who grew up in a conservative Mormon home. The LDS church has taken a low-key, media-savvy approach to the often-scathing satirical musical The Book of Mormon, Brooks writes.

The Broadway musical The Book of Mormon won Tony Awards nine at the June 12, 2011, awards ceremony.

James Esseks is litigation director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project, which has a schools section. The ACLU has been defending the right of Gay-Straight Alliance chapters to meet in schools.