Who am I to write about LDS doctrine? I’m not a leader in the church. I’m not even a member of the church. But I’m interested in understanding the doctrine, and I’ve spent a large part of my life attempting to understand it. And I have a question: why is it an overwhelmingly common belief that LDS doctrine forbids homosexuality?
To be clear, I’m not a conspiracy theorist who denies that leaders in the LDS Church have declared that having “homosexual relations” is a sin. For example, Gordon B. Hinckley said exactly that in his statement Reverence and Morality:
Prophets of God have repeatedly taught through the ages that the practices of homosexual relations, fornication, and adultery are grievous sins.
But, as it is said very often in the church, there is a crucial distinction between doctrine and policy, and between doctrine and the words of well-intentioned and righteous men/women. Doctrine is fixed and unchanging. It is defined in canonized works of LDS doctrine, especially the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price. It’s my understanding that unless a principle is made permanent and unambiguous in these works of doctrine, it is subject to change. I’ll cite the old and tired examples, and some fresh ones: polygamy, black people receiving the priesthood, the length of church on Sundays, the age missionaries leave. All of these things were declared as revelation by Church leaders, but are not immortalized in doctrine. They are not absolute; they may be wrong, and they certainly may change.
Imagine that you lived in the early days of the Church, before 1978. Would you have objected to the racist policy of excluding black men from the priesthood? Almost every modern Mormon would say yes to this question. Maybe they would have issued an impassioned criticism of the practice. Maybe they would have protested against it. Maybe they would have practiced civil disobedience, ordaining black men despite the words of their church leaders.
But in reality, only a miniscule, extremely select group of people in the church did anything like this. An overwhelming majority followed the policy for the century of its practice. While we understandably want to believe that we would be part of the minority, that is just statistically unlikely. Most people accepted and followed the incorrect revelation. You would have to be a very rare person to disobey it, using a different thought or revelatory process than everyone else in the church. This leads me to ask a critical question: If you, as a member of the church today, want to minimize your chance of practicing incorrect church policy, what would be the best approach?
To me, the answer seems clear: rest your beliefs and actions on personal revelation and on a deep and thorough understanding of the doctrine. If you followed this process, you are far less likely to follow incorrect policy. You would have been a conscientious objector to the racist practices of pre-1978 Mormonism. Nothing in the doctrine says anything about denying black people the priesthood. And it seems unlikely to me that a benevolent God would reveal to you that this practice is okay or good.
My argument is simple: there is nothing in LDS Doctrine that condemns homesexuality or declares that homosexual relations are a sin. Therefore, members should determine for themselves, through a personal revelation process, whether they should follow the policy of the church.
The Book of Mormon does not mention homosexuality anywhere. Neither does the Pearl of Great Price. This is a negative claim, and so can be disproved by a single instance — if you find an example of homosexuality being mentioned in these works, feel free to let me know and I’ll change my belief. But the Topical Guide, the official index of topics in the scriptures, has a section on Homosexual Behavior, and it exclusively cites verses in the Bible. Many of these verses are vague and only very tenuously connected to homosexuality.
After all, the Bible is not clear on homosexuality. All of the most commonly-cited proofs that the Bible condemns it are not actually about homesexual relations. For example, there’s the case of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19, where the men of Sodom seek to rape two male visitors (who are in reality angels sent by God to see if the city contains any righteousness). God subsequently obliterates the city of Sodom. So God must hate the gays, right? Uh, no. It seems clear to me that the problem here is that it’s rape. Why would you make the conclusion that God condemns homesexuality? The more sensible and humane conclusion, based on the text, would be that God condemns sexual violence and rape.
Another case in the Bible is Leviticus 18:22. They say that a man lying with another man instead of his wife is an ‘abomination.’ But this is a man committing adultery with another male. We already know that adultery is a sin and abomination according to the Bible. Why would we assume that this case is about homesexuality either? It seems more clear that it’s another condemnation of adultery. Also, I’d be cautious attaching too much meaning to the word ‘abomination.’ The Bible uses it very loosely. Things that the Bible says are abominations: Egyptians eating with Hebrews, sacrificing your child to Molech, eating pork, wearing mixed-fabric clothing, interbreeding animals of different species, and trimming your beard. You’ve gotta believe and do some weird things if you believe anything declared an abomination in the Bible is wrong.
Not to mention that if you’re a Mormon, the Old Testament is almost definitely not the highest-ranking thing on your “list of books that matter.” As far as I’ve seen, members think of The Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price, New Testament, and the words of modern prophets, in roughly that order, as more accurate (closer to the word of God) than the Old Testament with all its quirks.
The most important text on this topic is probably the The Family: A Proclamation to the World. While I’m not sure if it is Doctrine, the Proclamation is a key document, signed by all the members of the presidency, cited constantly as doctrinal support for church policies on homosexuality and gender. And yet even this document is not clear about homosexual relations being a sin. Here are the relevant lines:
solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God
This is not an exclusive statement. It merely says that marriage between men & women is ordained; not that marriage between men & men or women & women is not ordained. If you interpret this statement as exclusive of all other types of marriage, polygamy is also wrong — after all, it’s marriage between a man and multiple women, not a marriage between “a man and woman,” as it seems the Proclamation requires. Does that mean it’s not ordained of God? But it clearly was ordained of God in the past. Therefore, the question is still open.
We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.
You might think this one is abundantly clear. After all, it contains the key word: “only.” But it’s actually a tautology: the “sacred powers of procreation” CAN only be employed between men & women. Gay sex is not reproductive or procreative. This is a fact of biology; human reproduction through meiosis requires sperm and an egg, which can be naturally produced only in male and female reproductive organs respectively. So this statement doesn’t prohibit homosexual relations either or declare them a sin.
Maybe you could conceive this statement as prohibiting two Mormons in a gay marriage from having kids through surrogacy or in-vitro fertilization, as then they would be using the “sacred powers of procreation” with someone outside of their marriage (the surrogate or sperm donor). But then this would also prohibit an infertile Mormon man or woman in a straight marriage from using IVF or surrogacy either.
Also, slight loophole: gay people can adopt. They don’t have to use the “sacred powers of procreation” to have kids.
Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan.
Same case as above; this is not exclusive. Marriage between a man and a women is essential; that doesn’t mean other types of marriage aren’t also allowed or essential.
Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.
Gay people can do all of this. They can be fathers & mothers; they can honor marital vows with complete fidelity; they can have children within the bonds of matrimony (through adoption, IVF, surrogacy, etc).
My argument is not that LDS Church leaders are definitely wrong about their own doctrine. My argument is that is a possibility. It has precedent. Members should not by default accept the statements of leaders. And I think it’s clear that nothing in the established, canonized LDS doctrine prohibits homosexuality. It is silent, or where it speaks, it is vague and open to multiple interpretations. This cannot be an accident — after all, for members of the church, the doctrine is revelation from God through His prophets. Is it likely that God would just forget about homosexuality, and fail to make a clear and unambiguous stand on this critical issue? Or is it more likely that it is not mentioned for a reason? What might that reason be?
I cannot answer these questions, only ask them. I cannot decide for members what their religion believes. I can only argue for caution and carefulness in following church policy without a thorough reading of the doctrine and an analysis of its interpretations. I hope that all church members undertake this reading. I would also hope that all church members use personal revelation in their decision-making process, including attempting to understand LGBT people through direct conversation, reading, and research.
If it turns out that after going through this entire process, LDS people find a doctrinal or personal-revelatory basis for treating homosexual relations as a sin, so be it. I’ll be surprised but interested. Please let me know what this basis is.
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