American Public Media's "Speaking of Faith" has a must-listen panel discussion between evangelicals of three generations (Chuck Colson, Greg Boyd, Shane Claiborne). Go to minute 36:45, where homosexuality comes up, and stay tuned for a striking contrast between Colson and the younger men.
Colson answers a question about homosexuality with a doctrinaire natural-law exegisis of Paul. The younger men warn against Colson's hard-edged judgmentalism. Boyd agrees that homosexuality is wrong but can't understand why evangelicals pick on this one moral failing as a "deal breaker" while downplaying so many sins of their own (divorce, e.g.). He argues that evangelicals' reputation for "homophobia" (his word) is well earned and that Jesus ministered to prostitutes, rather than trying to pass laws against them. (Subtext here: the tension between the churches of Paul and Jesus.) Claiborne asks what sort of place the Church has become if it can't minister lovingly to a young gay man who feels like he is one of "God's mistakes" and wants to kill himself. "If that 'mistake' can't find a home in the church, who have we become?" He goes on to condemn the "meanness" of evangelical political style and speaks intriguingly of "post-Religious Right America."
More evidence here that homosexuality has become a major point of generational cleavage among evangelicals. Call me Pollyanna, but I think there's a new awakening of conscience happening among evangelicals and that homosexuality is at the heart of it.
More: Gay evangelical commenter Casey offers more evidence that change is afoot.
I agree with other commenters that the teachings, not just the tone, ultimately need to change. But I think the tone will tend to lead the teachings. And, as Greg Boyd implies in the panel discussion, no theological change is required for evangelicals to stop blowing homosexuality out of all proportion to its very minor role in the Bible. Proportionality alone would be major progress.