Marriage, Ordination, and Gender: LDS and Community of Christ
Both churches trace to the same 1830 founding. On same-sex marriage, priesthood ordination regardless of sexual orientation, and gender identity, they have arrived at opposite institutional positions: one through sustained political mobilization and a later, unresolved policy reversal, the other through a decade-long internal conference process explicitly limited to certain nations.
This entry runs the two chronologies side by side, from the LDS Church's 1995 Family Proclamation and decade-long series of state ballot-measure campaigns beginning in Hawaii in 1998 through its 2015 exclusion policy and 2019 reversal, alongside Community of Christ's 2010 constitutional mechanism and 2013 national vote, closing with each church's current, and in one case still-moving, position on transgender members.
Neither church treats this as a settled question. One has reversed a major policy once and continued revising transgender guidance as recently as 2026. The other extended full inclusion in three countries while explicitly withholding it elsewhere for members' safety. Both postures are still in motion.
The Family: A Proclamation to the World
Issued September 23, 1995, jointly by the full First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, fifteen men each regarded as "prophet, seer, and revelator," the Proclamation states that "marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God" and that "gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose." It was never canonized, but was later called "inspired of the Lord" by Gordon B. Hinckley's successor in October 1996 general conference. See Non-Creedal: Two Different Claims for the Proclamation's function as a de facto creed.
The Proclamation's own origin is tied directly to the ballot-measure history below. Church-affiliated historical accounts trace its drafting to the church's engagement with Hawaii's Baehr v. Lewin litigation beginning in 1991, with an excerpt from a related church letter appearing in the Church Handbook of Instructions from 1998 until a 2010 revision. The Proclamation was not a preliminary doctrinal statement followed later by political engagement. It developed alongside, and partly in response to, the same Hawaii litigation that produced the 1998 ballot campaign described below.
The ballot-measure campaigns, 1998–2008
Proposition 8 is often treated as the LDS Church's defining entry into ballot-measure politics on marriage. The documented record shows it was the culmination of a decade-long pattern, not the starting point, beginning in Hawaii in 1998, continuing through California's first marriage-definition measure in 2000, and recurring in at least four more states before 2008.
Hawaii Amendment 2
Following the Hawaii Supreme Court's 1993 ruling in Baehr v. Lewin that the state's marriage restriction was potentially unconstitutional, the LDS Church took an active role, described by contemporary reporting as having "assembled the coalition" that placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot, granting the legislature power to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples. The church reported spending $400,000 of its own money on the campaign. Amendment 2 passed 69.2 to 28.6 percent on November 3, 1998, the first constitutional amendment adopted in the United States specifically targeting same-sex partnerships.
Public backlash over the church's direct, visible spending is described by later accounts as the turning point that led the church to change strategy. Rather than contributing institutional funds directly in subsequent campaigns, it would instead mobilize members to contribute individually, a shift one commentator summarized as the church going "underground" and having others "front" the campaigns that followed.
California Proposition 22 (the Knight Initiative)
Then-LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley directed a letter be read to California congregations in support of Proposition 22, a statutory measure stating "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The measure passed 61 to 39 percent, a wider margin than pre-election polling had predicted. The California Supreme Court later invalidated Proposition 22 in its 2008 In re Marriage Cases ruling, which in turn became the direct trigger for Proposition 8 later that year.
Alaska, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah
The church played a documented role in comparable ballot measures in Alaska (Measure 2, 1998), Nebraska (Initiative 416), and Nevada (Question 2, 2000 and 2002). In Nevada, members collected signatures using church directories and venues, and a Mormon-owned-business coalition raised over $800,000 by October 2000. In 2004, the church officially endorsed both a federal marriage amendment and Utah's own Constitutional Amendment 3.
Proposition 8 (California) and Proposition 102 (Arizona)
Following a June 2008 letter from Archbishop George Niederauer inviting a multi-faith coalition, Niederauer later wrote he had specifically referenced the church's prior support of Proposition 22 in making the request, LDS President Thomas Monson's letter was read at every California congregation urging members to "do all you can" to pass Proposition 8. The church's own filings reported roughly $190,000 in in-kind institutional contributions. Independent estimates, based on internal campaign tallies later disclosed by Yes on 8's own political director, found LDS members supplied 35 to 40 percent of total campaign donations, with campaign officials estimating as much as half of all funds raised came from Mormon donors. One advocacy group's analysis put LDS-connected giving at $17.67 million from roughly 59,000 Mormon families.
The same 2008 election cycle saw a parallel campaign for Arizona's Proposition 102. The same advocacy group's donor analysis found Mormon contributors gave $6.9 million toward its passage, a substantial share of the $3.34 million-plus raised by the measure's official campaign committee alone, before accounting for the broader multi-state total. Proposition 102 passed 56 to 44 percent, amending the Arizona Constitution after an earlier, narrower statutory ban had already been in place since 1996.
The California Fair Political Practices Commission investigated the church for alleged underreporting on Prop 8 and fined it $5,539 in 2010 for reporting thirteen non-monetary contributions, totaling roughly $37,000, after required deadlines. Documents later obtained by same-sex marriage advocates, and detailed in the 2010 documentary "8: The Mormon Proposition," described campaign strategists deliberately seeking "plausible deniability" for the church's role, coaching members to route donations carefully. Proposition 8 passed with 52 percent of the vote; protests afterward targeted LDS meetinghouses and temples directly.
The church has maintained it complied fully with disclosure law in each state, that Latter-day Saints were "only a small part" of broader interfaith coalitions, and that post-2008 protests and threats against members, including a white-powder scare at church offices, represented "an outrage" disproportionate to the church's role. Church-affiliated commentary has also noted that LDS membership in Arizona and California is proportionally small relative to the scale of criticism the church received.
The 2015 exclusion policy and 2019 reversal
Seven years after Proposition 8, the church moved from political opposition to civil marriage toward a specific internal disciplinary policy, then fully reversed it within four years, using identical revelatory language for both the imposition and the reversal.
The exclusion policy
Leaked before official confirmation, the policy classified members in legal same-sex marriages as apostates, subject to formal church discipline, and barred their children, biological or adopted, from baby blessings, baptism, confirmation, or missionary service until age 18, and even then only after disavowing "same-gender cohabitation or marriage" and obtaining First Presidency approval.
"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." — Russell M. Nelson, 2016, describing the 2015 policy's origin
Full reversal
The First Presidency, now led by Nelson, reversed the policy in full: members in same-sex marriages would no longer be classified as apostates, and their children could be baptized with ordinary parental consent, no special approval required. President Dallin H. Oaks was credited with the change, described as intended "to reduce the hate and contention so common today."
"Revelation upon revelation." — Russell M. Nelson, April 2019, describing the reversal
Oaks stated explicitly that the underlying doctrine on homosexuality, that same-sex attraction is not itself sinful but acting on it is, did not change in 2019. Only the disciplinary classification and its effect on children's ordinances reversed. A church-affiliated commentator (FAIR) directly addressed the resulting tension, posing the question of how the 2015 policy could be based on revelation if revelation is now claimed for the 2019 policy, a question the organization felt compelled to answer rather than dismiss.
Respect for Marriage Act
The church publicly supported the federal Respect for Marriage Act, which codified legal protections for same-sex and interracial civil marriages, while continuing to state its own doctrinal opposition to same-sex marriage as an ordinance the church itself performs or recognizes internally.
Transgender policy: 2020 to 2026
Distinct from the marriage question, LDS handbook guidance on transgender members has been revised repeatedly since 2020, moving toward increasing restriction rather than settling.
First dedicated transgender policy
The General Handbook's Chapter 38.6.21 permits worthy transgender members to attend meetings, hold callings, and receive temple ordinances, provided they do not pursue "surgical, medical, or social transition away from their biological sex at birth." Members who do transition face restrictions on priesthood, temple recommends, and certain callings. The same update added the church's first published guidance on intersex individuals, leaving sex-assignment decisions to parents and medical professionals.
Incremental revisions
Later handbook editions replace "transgender individuals" with "individuals who identify as transgender," reorder doctrinal statements ahead of pastoral language, and narrow a prior blanket welcome ("all are welcome to attend... meetings") to a more conditional formulation directing transitioning members to "counsel with their local leaders regarding Church participation."
Further tightening
A General Handbook update further restricts temple recommend eligibility for transgender members, stating that "worthy members who do not pursue surgical, medical, or social transition away from their biological sex at birth may receive a temple recommend and temple ordinances," language read by advocacy groups as a formal narrowing of the 2020 standard rather than a doctrinal reversal. The church describes the update as clarification, not a change in underlying doctrine.
LDS transgender policy has changed multiple times since 2020 and was revised again as recently as March 2026, within the same knowledge window as this entry's writing. Readers should treat this section as describing the most recent confirmed policy rather than a settled position.
D&C 164, National Conferences, and the 2013 vote
Community of Christ's process ran on a different mechanism entirely. Rather than a single top-down declaration or reversal, the church created a constitutional procedure allowing individual nations to adopt inclusive policy at their own pace.
Doctrine and Covenants 164
Introduced for consideration on April 11 and canonized three days later, Section 164 did not itself authorize same-sex marriage or ordination anywhere. It created a new polity mechanism, "National Conferences," allowing individual nations to adopt LGBTQ-inclusive policy locally, while leaving the World Church's global position officially undetermined. One church member's own accountability tracker noted the First Presidency "had the power to change the policy" directly and "chose NOT to do so over an 18 year period of formal discussion" before opting for this more incremental mechanism instead.
Implementation guidelines released
Two years passed between D&C 164's canonization and the release of basic guidelines for how National Conferences would actually function, a gap during which LGBTQ members remained without access to marriage or ordination anywhere in the church.
USA National Conference vote
Meeting in Independence, Missouri with roughly 1,500 delegates, the USA National Conference voted, exceeding the required two-thirds majority, to extend the sacrament of marriage to same-sex couples where legally recognized, to offer covenant commitment ceremonies elsewhere, and to allow priesthood ordination regardless of sexual orientation, including persons in monogamous, committed same-sex relationships. Coverage at the time described the vote as making Community of Christ "the first major Latter-day Saints church to allow same-sex marriage and gay or lesbian clergy."
Extension to Canada and Australia
Comparable National Conferences in Canada and Australia extended the same policies in those countries. As of this entry, full LGBTQ inclusion in marriage and ordination remains formally limited to these three nations. The church has stated this limitation is deliberate, intended to protect members' safety in countries where homosexuality remains criminalized, including nations where it is punishable by death.
A Community of Christ member's own critical accountability tracker noted the newly recognized rights were initially designated only "interim" policies, his own word choice, "temporary," reflecting concern that rights extended through this national-conference mechanism could, in principle, later be narrowed or withdrawn the same way they were granted.
Reading the two chronologies together
| Question | LDS Church | Community of Christ |
|---|---|---|
| Same-sex marriage, doctrine | Opposed since 1995 Proclamation; opposition unchanged as of 2019 reversal | Sacrament of marriage extended, 2013, in three countries |
| Same-sex marriage, civil politics | Organized and funded opposition in at least six state ballot campaigns, 1998–2008 (Hawaii, California twice, Alaska, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah, Arizona); later supported federal civil protections (2022) while maintaining internal doctrinal opposition | No comparable documented civil political campaign identified |
| Ordination regardless of orientation | Priesthood remains available to worthy male members regardless of orientation, provided same-sex relationships are not acted upon | Extended in 2013, explicitly including persons in committed same-sex relationships |
| Disciplinary treatment of same-sex marriage | Classified as apostasy 2015–2019; reversed to ordinary "serious transgression" status in 2019 | Not treated as a disciplinary matter where locally authorized |
| Geographic scope | Single global policy, applied uniformly (with the 2015–2019 exception itself being global) | Deliberately limited to USA, Canada, Australia; explicitly withheld elsewhere for member safety |
| Transgender policy, current status | Actively revised 2020, 2024, and March 2026; trend toward increasing restriction on transition-related participation | No comparable dedicated policy identified in available sourcing for this entry |
The asymmetry in mechanism is as significant as the asymmetry in outcome. The LDS Church's process ran through a single, global, top-down declaration, reversed by an equally global, top-down declaration four years later, both described in identical revelatory language by the same church president. Community of Christ's process ran through a decade-long constitutional procedure, deliberately incremental and deliberately non-uniform, extending different rights to different nations on different timelines, with the explicit rationale that uniform global policy would endanger some members. Read against the non-creedal analysis already built on this site, this tracks precisely: LDS doctrine changes as a single fixed position replacing another single fixed position — Community of Christ doctrine changes as a locally variable position, structurally permitted to differ by nation at the same moment in time.
Sources
- "The Family: A Proclamation to the World," Wikipedia; Cedar Fort Publishing, "The 25th Anniversary of the Family Proclamation."
- Dialogue Journal, "The Theological Trajectory of 'The Family: A Proclamation to the World.'"
- FAIR, "Mormonism and politics/California Proposition 8" and "Questions and myths."
- Religion Dispatches, "When Mormons Mobilize: Anti-Gay Marriage Prop. 8 Effort 'Outed'?" February 2010.
- George Washington Law Review, "Proposition 8 and the Mormon Church: A Case Study in Donor Disclosure," Youn.
- Deseret News, "LDS Church's in-kind donations to Prop. 8 total $190K," February 2009.
- NBC News, "More than $83 million spent on Prop 8."
- mormonr.org, "The Church and Prop 8."
- Church Newsroom, "Same-Sex Marriage and Proposition 8," churchofjesuschrist.org.
- HRC, "Stances of Faiths on LGBTQ+ Issues: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."
- wasmormon.org, "November Policy of LGBT Exclusion, The Reversal, and Mormon Mental Gymnastics" and "Reversing the November Policy."
- FAIR Blog, "A Look at the Church's Change of Policy on Same-Sex Couples and their Children," April 2019.
- "LGBT rights and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," Wikipedia.
- NPR, "LDS Church Adjusts Policy On LGBT Couples," April 2019.
- PressReader/Lodi News-Sentinel, "Mormon Church clarifies its 'confusion' with LGBTQ people," September 2019.
- Religion News Service, "New LDS Handbook softens stance on sexuality, doubles down on transgender rules," February 2020.
- "Gender minorities and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," Wikipedia.
- Salt Lake Tribune, "LDS Church puts new..." February 2020.
- Fox 13 Now, "LDS Church defines what transgender members can and cannot do in new handbook policy," February 2020.
- LDS Daily, "A Timeline of Transgender Issues in the Church Handbook," September 2024.
- AOL/Mormon church news wire, "LDS Church's updated restrictions on transgender members bans them from working with kids" and "Mormon church issues new restrictions on transgender members."
- The Advocate, "Mormon church limits trans members in temple rituals," March 2026.
- "LGBTQ-affirming religious groups," Wikipedia, on Community of Christ's 2013 policy and its national scope.
- Deseret News, "Community of Christ recommends marriage, ordination for same-sex couples," May 2013.
- KCUR, "Community Of Christ OKs Gay Marriage And Clergy," 2013.
- By Common Consent, "Gay Rights Revelation added to the Community of Christ D&C," April 2010.
- Gileriodekel, "Community of Christ's LGBT Policy Accountability Tracker."
- Rational Faiths, "From Amici to 'Ohana: The Hawaiian Roots of the Family Proclamation," May 2015.
- "1998 Hawaii Amendment 2," Wikipedia.
- HuffPost, "Will the Mormon Church Sit Out Hawaii's Gay Marriage Vote?" 2013.
- KUER, "LDS Church Opposes Hawaii Marriage Equality Bill," October 2013.
- Political Research Associates, "Mormon Church Pushing For Second Prop 8 in Hawaii," October 2013.
- "2000 California Proposition 22," Wikipedia; Ballotpedia, "California Proposition 22, Definition of Marriage Initiative (March 2000)."
- No More Strangers: LGBT Mormon Forum, "Prop 8: How we got here from there," on Archbishop Niederauer's 2008 outreach referencing the church's Proposition 22 involvement.
- "LGBTQ rights and the LDS Church," Wikipedia, on Alaska Measure 2, Nebraska Initiative 416, Nevada Question 2, and Utah Amendment 3.
- "2008 Arizona Proposition 102," Wikipedia.
- The Advocate, "Mormons Bankroll Anti–Gay Marriage Amendments in California, Arizona," October 2008, on Californians Against Hate's donor analysis.
- Bilerico Project, "Funding and religion in the Arizona same-sex marriage ban," September 2008.
- Sunstone Magazine, "Panel: Mobilizing the Saints: Behind-the-Scenes Strategies on Same-sex Marriage."
- Fox News, "New Documentary Exposes Mormon Church's Alleged Secret Involvement in Passage of Proposition 8," on the "8: The Mormon Proposition" documentary and the FPPC fine.