I don't think the churches will change their minds-- they will just split according to these lines.
For a while, yes. But even Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones U. eventually apologized and at the least paid lip service to the notion that they had supported the wrong side of the issue.
For the terrible damage done to homosexuals, I actually think it is less the religion as the disgust people feel when talking about homosexuals-- "homophobia". For many American Christians, there is that same disgust when talking about the homeless, and their own Scriptures tell them to help the homeless (in my church we call that "hobo-phobia")
I both agree and disagree. I agree that there is a good bit of relying on the bible to support and justify homophobia. It's very evident when someone like Oral Roberts goes on and on about it and you realize that he thinks homosexuality consists solely and completely of men having anal sex with each other. It's crazy how much they will dwell on that aspect and that alone. These are obviously people who have no idea what actual gay people and gay relationships are like, and unless they are railing about feminism, lesbians are usually left out of the equation entirely.
Where I disagree is in the assessment of the damage done to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people who grow up in these churches and go from believing in a sunny Sunday school God who loves them and loves everyone to recognizing that the sexuality they are growing into as adolescents puts them utterly on the other side of that love and peace and assurance and belonging. It's not simple homophobia--it's the damage of literally ripping people's lifelong spiritual underpinnings out from under them. You could grow up in a fundamentalist church and go on to kill someone and they will have a better understanding of how Christ would want you to be treated. A murderer isn't left to feel as utterly excluded from God's love. And that's leaving aside the insidious damage of constantly hearing that it's a matter of choice, of not wanting to be "healed" enough, of not trying hard enough, of having well meaning parents to put their fragile teenage kids into horrific programs to try to "fix' them. And those kids constantly receiving this horribly degraded image of what gay relationships will be--doomed to promiscuity, disgusting sexual practices that no "normal" person would want to do, doomed to an empty life of hedonism disease and early death, followed by eternal hellfire. When the choice is between constantly trying to pretend they are "cured" and heterosexual, or being closeted and terrifed of being found out, or going off to the city to be gay, do drugs, get AIDS and die, it's not surprising how many gay teenagers try to kill themselves, and way too many manage it.
Then a lot of the ones who actually survive this and don't become self destructive self fulfilling prophecies and manage to build a happy life with healthy relationships generally have the scars and end up rejecting all religion all together.
I can't tell you how much that infuriates me. It's murder and aggravated assault on the soul. Deliberate and premeditated. And again, my view is very much skewed by living in the south, in the city that becomes the same refuge to the small town Southern GLBT kids that San Francisco does nationally. So just about everyone I know went through some form of this.