Principal drafter of the 1995 proclamation; Church President
Russell M. Nelson
1924–2025
Birth year: b. 9 Sept 1924; d. 27 Sept 2025, aged 101. CORRECTION: the record previously read 'b. 1924' (living). Dallin H. Oaks was named 18th president 14 Oct 2025. Church Newsroom memorial; Salt Lake Tribune 28 Sept 2025; NPR 29 Sept 2025
1 topic · 3 dated events · 1 source
Their part in each topic
LGBTQ Latter-day Saints
Principal drafter of the 1995 proclamation; Church President
Nelson was the principal draftsman of 'The Family: A Proclamation to the World' over the 1994 Christmas holidays. On 10 January 2016 he told a worldwide young-adult audience that the November 2015 handbook change came when 'the Lord inspired His prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, to declare the mind of the Lord and the will of the Lord,' and that each apostle 'felt a spiritual confirmation.' Three years later, as Church President, he presided over the reversal of that same policy.
In the timeline
3 events across 1 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.
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.
Nelson calls the policy revelationhinge
In a worldwide young-adult devotional, Russell M. Nelson, then president of the Quorum of the Twelve, said the same prophetic process used for the 2012 missionary-age change had been followed 'again with the recent additions to the Church's handbook.' He described the Twelve meeting 'repeatedly in the temple in fasting and prayer,' and then: 'when the Lord inspired His prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, to declare the mind of the Lord and the will of the Lord, each of us during that sacred moment felt a spiritual confirmation. It was our privilege as Apostles to sustain what had been revealed to President Monson.'
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.
Sources in their own name
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"Becoming True Millennials" (worldwide devotional for young adults, 10 January 2016)
Russell M. Nelson
That a president of the Quorum of the Twelve publicly characterized the November 2015 policy as revelation received by President Monson and sustained by the apostles.
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