1946–2025
Doctrine, therapy, political campaigns, and the November 2015 policy
36 events, 8 of them flagged as hinges. Filter below, or open the master timeline across every topic.
Robert Rees reports that when President George Albert Smith learned the Patriarch to the Church had been involved in a homosexual relationship with a young man, the Patriarch was quietly released. The only restriction placed on his membership was that he not function in a Church capacity, and that restriction was later lifted. About the same time a music teacher was released from a Church faculty.
Spencer W. Kimball, then an apostle, addressed Church leaders in 'A Counselling Problem in the Church' (1964) and BYU students in 'Love versus Lust' (1965). He wrote that a person should 'repent of his perversion, force himself to return to normal pursuits and interests and actions and friendships with the opposite sex,' and that 'this normal pattern can become natural again.' He compared the condition to alcoholism, requiring continued vigilance. The medical consensus he was working inside classified homosexuality as a 'sociopathic personality disturbance' in DSM-I (1952) and a 'sexual deviation' in DSM-II (1968); the American Psychiatric Association removed it from its list of disorders in December 1973.
Kimball's book devoted a chapter titled 'Crime Against Nature' to homosexuality. Dialogue's survey of the period lists the vocabulary as 'ugly,' 'repugnant,' 'ever-deepening degeneracy,' 'evil,' 'pervert,' 'deviant' and 'weaklings,' and describes the chapter as teaching that homosexuality was a spiritual disease that could be cured. One Latter-day Saint historian called it the earliest and most comprehensive treatment of homosexuality by an apostle and the foundation of Church thought, policy and political action for the next forty-five years.
According to accounts collected by the Seventh East Press, BYU security officers removed male drama and ballet students from classes to interrogate them and obtain the names of other gay students. Students working undercover for security acted as decoys in campus restrooms, imitating the signals gay men used to identify one another. Students in the drama department printed T-shirts reading 'I'm on the list — are you?'
Max Ford McBride completed his dissertation 'Effect of Visual Stimuli in Electric Aversion Therapy' under D. Eugene Thorne, chair of BYU's psychology department. Seventeen men enrolled and fourteen completed treatment: a plethysmograph measured arousal while male and female images were shown, and electric shocks were administered in conjunction with certain images. Subjects set their own pain levels; the dissertation ranks the jolts on a scale from discrete to intolerable. Patients averaged about three months and up to twenty-two fifty-minute sessions. Participants signed releases acknowledging that damage to tissue or organs might occur. The independent Provo student paper the Seventh East Press later collected first-hand accounts: one former student described 'an electrical shock while viewing a pornographic picture of a male,' followed by a female image without shock, while a former BYU counselor called it 'aversive therapy - not shock treatment' using 'mild electric stimulus' and slides of men and women in various stages of dress.
In the general priesthood session, broadcast to Latter-day Saint males twelve and older across the United States and Canada, Boyd K. Packer told of a missionary who confessed to hitting his companion after a homosexual advance. Packer's reply was 'Well, thanks. Somebody had to do it, and it wouldn't be well for a General Authority to solve the problem that way.' He added: 'I am not recommending that course to you, but I am not omitting it. You must protect yourself.' The talk was not printed in the November 1976 Ensign but was issued as a pamphlet and distributed by Church headquarters for decades.
A group of gay men and women with Latter-day Saint backgrounds founded Affirmation in Los Angeles as a support group, initially for excommunicated members; satellite groups formed in Salt Lake City, Denver and Dallas, and a newsletter, Affinity, began the following year. An original stated purpose was to 'work toward influencing Church leadership to change its perception and treatment of the homosexual in the church,' on the premise that 'homosexuality is not learned or acquired; it is not something chosen.'
At President Kimball's request, Packer spoke at BYU on homosexual temptation. FAIR notes that in this address he treated such temptations as deep and relatively fixed, indicating that those affected might spend the rest of their lives resisting them — a position he restated in 2010: 'That may be a struggle from which you will not be free in this life. If you do not act on temptations, you need feel no guilt.'
John Gustav-Wrathall, later executive director of Affirmation, was excommunicated in 1986. He writes that in the 1970s and 1980s the handbook was written so that a member could be excommunicated simply for being known to have a sexual orientation other than heterosexual, and that even after the Church clarified that being gay was not itself grounds for discipline, disproportionate numbers of gay men and lesbians were still cut off.
Gordon B. Hinckley taught that 'marriage should not be viewed as a therapeutic step to solve problems such as homosexual inclinations or practices, which first should clearly be overcome with a firm and fixed determination never to slip to such practices again.' The Church's pamphlet Understanding and Helping Those Who Have Homosexual Problems later stated flatly that 'marriage should not be viewed as a way to resolve homosexual problems' and that encouraging members to cultivate heterosexual feelings 'generally leads them to frustration and discouragement.'
Evergreen described itself as a nonprofit 'not affiliated with' the Church that nevertheless sustained its doctrines 'without reservation or exception,' offering help to people who wanted 'to diminish their attractions and overcome homosexual behavior.' Its board of trustees 'usually includes one or more emeritus General Authorities,' and it trained hundreds of stake and ward leaders a year. Elder Bruce C. Hafen addressed its annual conference in September 2009. Days after Utah county offices began issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples in January 2014, Evergreen shut down and transferred its resources and mailing lists - reported at up to 30,000 participants - to North Star, founded in 2006, which takes no institutional position on whether orientation can change. North Star's board chairman said: 'We don't think it's either necessary or needed to change your sexual orientation in order to be a faithful Latter Day Saint in good standing with the Church.'
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 First Presidency released a statement encouraging members 'to appeal to legislators, judges, and other government officials to preserve the purposes and sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, and to reject all efforts to give legal authorization or other official approval or support to marriages between persons of the same gender.'
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.
President Gordon B. Hinckley read the proclamation publicly for the first time at the general Relief Society meeting in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Sheri Dew's biography of Nelson records that the general reaction among members was 'almost ho-hum' — in 1995 nothing in it seemed contested. It was later included in a 1997 amicus brief to the Hawaii Supreme Court.
A May 1999 area presidency letter asked California members to 'do all you can by donating your means and time.' Sunstone reported members being invited in ward meetings and private interviews with bishops to donate specific suggested amounts, wards asked to supply fifty volunteers each, youth firesides enlisting teenagers, and a credit-bearing canvassing internship advertised in BYU's Daily Universe. Proposition 22 passed on 7 March 2000, 61.4 percent to 38.6 percent.
Matis, thirty-two, a returned missionary and former elders quorum president who had worked in the temple and had never been sexually intimate, died by suicide during the Proposition 22 campaign. His mother had called twenty temples every two weeks to put his name on the prayer rolls. In a final letter he hoped his parents' action 'to help others understand the true nature of homosexuality might help to save many young people's lives.'
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.
The First Presidency sent a letter to Church leaders in California to be read to all congregations on 29 June 2008. It stated that 'the Church's teachings and position on this moral issue are unequivocal' and asked: 'We ask that you do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman.' The Church had been approached in June 2008 by San Francisco Catholic Archbishop George Niederauer, which initiated the interfaith coalition.
The amendment passed 52 percent to 48 percent, 7,001,084 to 6,401,482. Sunstone reported Latter-day Saints contributed upwards of $20 million to the Yes campaign and $3 million to a parallel Arizona campaign. Within days, thousands picketed outside temples in Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego, Salt Lake City, Manhattan, Mesa, Seattle, Spokane, Newport Beach and Kensington — the largest show of opposition to the Church in recent decades. White powder was mailed to the Los Angeles and Salt Lake temples; meetinghouse doors in Davis and Weber counties were shot out with a BB gun.
Amid an investigation by California's campaign watchdog into whether the Church had failed to disclose its involvement, the Church filed a report showing it had spent nearly $190,000 on the campaign — airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals — after previously reporting little direct activity. Individual donors were identified from public filings; several, including a Sacramento theatre director and a Los Angeles film festival director, resigned their positions under public pressure.
Packer told the general conference that some 'suppose that they were preset and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn temptations toward the impure and unnatural. Not so!' After criticism, the printed text was revised. The Human Rights Campaign called the sermon 'inaccurate and dangerous'; Church spokesman Michael Otterson read an unusual statement using the word 'gay' and joining 'in unreserved condemnation of acts of cruelty' toward any group. Thousands encircled Temple Square in a silent protest.
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.
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.'
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.'
Changes to Handbook 1 were noticed and discussed online and in the press before hard copies were distributed. They mandated a disciplinary council for any member in a legal same-sex marriage, treating such a marriage as apostasy; directed leaders to seriously consider discipline for members cohabiting in same-sex relationships; and refused baptism to minor children living with same-sex parents until eighteen, and then only if the child specifically disavowed 'the practice of same-gendered cohabitation and marriage' and did not live with such a parent. On 6 November Elder Christofferson gave a Newsroom interview saying the policy protected children from 'difficulties, challenges, conflicts that can injure development in very tender years.'
An organized mass resignation event drew about fifteen hundred participants in downtown Salt Lake City, some waiting in line more than an hour and a half to formally remove their names from Church records. CNN reported the figure at 1,500. Affirmation's own membership survey a year later found the share of its worldwide members active in the Church had fallen from over half before the policy to roughly twenty to twenty-five percent after it.
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.'
Barker, Parkinson and Knoll assembled the direct, indirect and anecdotal evidence on LGBTQ Latter-day Saint suicide. They reported that Utah's fifteen-to-nineteen suicide rate had roughly doubled since 2011 while comparable Rocky Mountain states had not seen the same increase, and that Knoll's state-level regression found percentage Mormon to be the only variable reliably predicting the increase over 2009–2014. They also wrote plainly: 'there is no direct empirical evidence that indicates that the handbook policy change actually increased Mormon LGBTQ youth suicides.'
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.
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.'
Responding to coverage of its objections to a proposed Utah rule, the Church's director of government relations clarified: 'The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opposes "conversion therapy" and our therapists do not practice it.' The accompanying Family Services note stated that the agency has a longstanding policy against therapies seeking to repair, convert or change sexual orientation, and that 'research demonstrates that electric shock, aversion and other analogous therapies are [ineffective] and harmful to youth who experience same-sex attraction.'
In February 2020 BYU removed the honor-code section barring 'homosexual behavior,' and same-sex couples celebrated publicly on campus; the change was reversed within weeks. The same month the Church published a new General Handbook with the fullest treatment of transgender members to date. It calls for 'sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and an abundance of Christlike love,' says all are welcome at meetings, and states that 'the intended meaning of gender in the family proclamation is biological sex at birth,' with priesthood ordination and temple ordinances following biological sex at birth and elective surgical transition grounds for membership restrictions.
Speaking to BYU faculty and staff, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland called for more 'musket fire' in defending the faith, naming 'the doctrine of the family and defending marriage as the union of a man and a woman.' He warned that 'we have to be careful that love and empathy do not get interpreted as condoning and advocacy,' and criticized a student who had come out as gay at commencement. Matt Easton, the valedictorian in question, replied publicly that within an hour of the remarks three current BYU students had told him how unsafe they felt. Beginning winter semester 2024, the address became a core reading in UNIV 101, a course required of every incoming BYU student other than transfers; a BYU spokesperson said the class had been 'well received.'
The Church issued a statement thanking 'all who played a part in the passage of the amended Respect for Marriage Act,' calling the religious-freedom protections 'historic and commendable,' while restating that 'the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints related to marriage between a man and a woman is well known and will remain unchanged.'
Ten years on, the November 2015 policy still turns up in Dialogue as a hinge in individual lives: a 2025 essay describes a writer who fled the Church a month into university when 'questions about my own queerness got entangled with the 2015 policy about baptizing LGBTQ couples' children,' left for half a decade, and has since wandered back into the back pews. Recent Dialogue volumes carry a growing body of queer Latter-day Saint essay collections, transgender interview studies, and theology by Petrey, Blaire Ostler and others.
