Deseret Morning News OREM - Jeffrey Nielsen believes gay people should be allowed to marry and have children more now than he did in June when the stance cost him his job at Brigham Young University.

Kim Raff, Deseret Morning NewsFormer BYU philosophy professor Jeffrey Nielsen is now teaching five classes between two colleges, Westminster and UVSC. Nielsen said he didn't know any gay men or women when he wrote an opinion piece that appeared June 4 in a Salt Lake newspaper that opposed the anti-gay-marriage position of LDS Church leadership.

But e-mails of support started rolling in nine days later when BYU administrators told him they would not offer him contracts for subsequent semesters for teaching philosophy as an adjunct professor.

"Since that time, I've met hundreds," he said Wednesday after a lecture he gave at Utah Valley State College about his theories on leadership. "I've been completely blown away by their decency."

Nielsen, who describes himself as an optimist, has been hired as an adjunct professor at Westminster College and UVSC. He is teaching five classes between the two colleges.

He said the courses keep him busy, but the material isn't new to him because he has taught them in his past 12 years as a teacher. He has taught at UVSC, BYU and Boston College.

Professionally, it seems, he wasn't hurt by the controversy that swirled after the opinion piece appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune. Personally, Nielsen said his children initially worried he would be excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

That didn't happen. Still, Nielsen, who attended church most Sundays, said he was released from a class in which he taught gospel doctrine to adults.

DHP is similar to a multilevel marketing program, "minus the get-rich-quick aspect," he said, because people host small meetings at their house and invite 5-10 people or couples for training in democracy and grassroots policy solutions.

The 30-60 people or couples who were invited to attend the first meetings hold meetings at their houses. And the meetings continue to exponentially grow, with the goal of educating thousands throughout the United States.

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