BYU president, apostle, First Presidency
Dallin H. Oaks
b. 1932
2 topics · 9 dated events · 3 sources
Their part in each topic
The September Six
Apostle; 'Alternate Voices'
Oaks's April 1989 general conference address 'Alternate Voices' named a category into which independent Mormon publishing and symposia were understood to fall, and it is the text both camps returned to for the next decade. He spoke for the Church on National Public Radio during the 1993 controversy, denying that the councils were a purge. Quinn's memoir reports Oaks telling Steve Benson that the Twelve could not restrain Packer: 'You can't stage manage a grizzly bear.'
LGBTQ Latter-day Saints
BYU president, apostle, First Presidency
Oaks presided over BYU from 1971 to 1980, the years of the aversion-therapy research and the campus 'purges.' He was a secondary drafter of the 1995 proclamation, gave the 2006 'Same-Gender Attraction' interview with Lance Wickman that first publicly criticized aversive therapies, fronted the 2012 mormonsandgays.org site, spoke at the 2015 Utah nondiscrimination press conference, announced the April 2019 reversal, and preached 'Two Great Commandments' six months later.
In the timeline
9 events across 2 topics, chronological. Only events this person was actually part of — present at, responsible for, or the subject of — not every event where the name comes up.
Oaks preaches 'Alternate Voices'
In general conference Oaks distinguished between alternate voices that are 'well-motivated men and women who are merely trying to serve their brothers and sisters and further the cause of Zion' and those with less laudable motives, and cautioned members and leaders accordingly. Sunstone later judged that the address expanded the argument beyond historiography to all independent Mormon discourse and to the forums that carried it.
Hawaii's Baehr case begins
The Hawaii Supreme Court began hearing the same-sex marriage case known as Baehr v. Lewin, later Baehr v. Miike. Church leaders and Latter-day Saint legal scholars, Elder Oaks among them, recommended that the Church oppose the Hawaii effort. BYU law professor Lynn Wardle consulted on the Church filing.
The family proclamation is drafted
At the urging of Boyd K. Packer, then acting president of the Quorum of the Twelve, a committee of Elders Faust, Nelson and Oaks prepared a draft over the Christmas holidays, Nelson serving as principal draftsman. The draft went to the First Presidency on 9 January 1995. During the same months Church leaders grew concerned about the Hawaii litigation, and on 24 February 1995 the Associated Press reported that the Church had announced a petition to intervene in the case.
The Oaks–Wickman interview
Church Public Affairs posted an 8,500-word interview with Elder Dallin H. Oaks and Elder Lance Wickman. It reaffirmed the Church's preferred language, rejecting 'gay' and 'lesbian' in favor of 'somebody with same-sex attraction,' and included what Sunstone called perhaps the first veiled criticism of the therapies used at BYU: 'The aversive therapies that have been used in connection with same-sex attraction contain some serious abuses that have been recognized over time within the professions.' It became the basis of the pamphlet God Loveth His Children.
mormonsandgays.org launches
Michael Otterson later explained that Public Affairs prepared the site during the 2012 presidential campaign for more than one purpose: to head off a repeat of the Proposition 8 coverage, and to recognize what he called the plight of young Latter-day Saints who had been ordered out of their homes after coming out. The site stated that same-sex attraction itself was not a sin while maintaining the Church's position on same-sex marriage and behavior. Elders Oaks and Christofferson appeared on it.
Three apostles hold a press conference on "fairness for all"
Elder Oaks called for governments to seek balance: 'Today, state legislatures across the nation are being asked to strengthen laws related to LGBT issues in the interest of ensuring fair access to housing and employment. The leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is on record as favoring such measures.' Asked whether the Church would apologize for its past rhetoric, Elder Christofferson said: 'The doctrines, values and beliefs all related to this haven't changed and won't, but I think we can express things better.'
The "Utah compromise" passes
With the backing of Church leaders, the Utah legislature passed a bill banning discrimination against LGBT people in housing and employment while protecting religious institutions that object to homosexuality. Legislators and gay-rights advocates said the apostles' endorsement turned the tide. Elder Oaks later wrote that the negotiation grew out of a Salt Lake City ordinance first proposed in 2009 and took six years, and that the law 'offered protections to both sides.'
The policy is reversedhinge
At the direction of the First Presidency, President Oaks announced that children of parents who identify as LGBT may be baptized without First Presidency approval where custodial parents consent, and that infants of nonmember LGBT parents may be blessed. On the apostasy designation the statement read: 'Previously, our Handbook characterized same-gender marriage by a member as apostasy. While we still consider such a marriage to be a serious transgression, it will not be treated as apostasy for purposes of Church discipline. Instead, the immoral conduct in heterosexual or homosexual relationships will be treated in the same way.' The policy had stood for forty-one months.
Oaks preaches "Two Great Commandments"
Speaking to the women of the Church, Oaks said the teaching that families are 'formed, sealed, and exalted eternally' has 'important implications for persons who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.' He affirmed that such persons 'should be treated with the love our Savior commands us to show toward all our neighbors,' acknowledged that 'some persons facing these issues continue to feel marginalized and rejected by some members and leaders in our families, wards, and stakes,' and concluded that the Church 'must try to keep both of the great commandments' and 'walk a fine line between law and love.'
Sources in their own name
Source records in the database whose author line names this person. Each links to the topic that uses it.
Dallin H. Oaks
The most sustained apostolic statement on institutional duty toward children, framed as applying to 'citizens, public officials, and workers in private organizations.'
"Two Great Commandments" (general conference, October 2019)
Dallin H. Oaks
The Church's own post-reversal framing: love of neighbor and obedience held together, 'a fine line between law and love.'
Justin Dyer and others; Michael A. Goodman and Daniel Frost; Dallin H. Oaks
The countervailing suicidality findings from an 86,346-youth Utah sample, the institutional reading of Petrey, and an apostle's own account of how the Utah compromise was negotiated.
Appears alongside
People who share the most dated events with Dallin H. Oaks.
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