LDS Discussions — A Faithful Response

About the Church’s LGBT Policy Reversal

A scholarly response to the ldsdiscussions.com blog post “The Larger Implications of the LGBT Reversal” (April 4, 2019)

Overview of the Claim

The ldsdiscussions.com article argues that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ reversal of its November 2015 policy regarding LGBT families constitutes definitive proof that the Church is not led by God. The central syllogism runs as follows: (1) President Russell M. Nelson and other apostles publicly identified the 2015 policy as divine revelation; (2) the policy was reversed in April 2019 under social pressure; therefore (3) either God changes His mind capriciously or the leaders were never receiving revelation at all. The article concludes that “the most obvious and likely conclusion here is that these policies are not from God, but from the men claiming to speak for Him.”

This argument is rhetorically forceful but logically deficient. It depends on a set of unstated premises about the nature of revelation, the distinction between policy and doctrine, the scope of prophetic infallibility, and the conditions under which God directs His Church — all of which are contradicted by LDS scripture, established Christian theological tradition, and the very historical record the author cites. Each major claim is addressed in turn below.

Claim 1: “Nelson Said the Policy Was Revelation, Full Stop”

“Russell M. Nelson makes perfectly clear that the 2015 policy regarding LGBT members was revelation. There is no way to get around that.” — ldsdiscussions.com

The claim here depends on a category error: treating the word “revelation” as though it carries a single, fixed meaning equivalent to “verbatim eternal decree from God.” In LDS theology — and indeed in all serious Christian theology — revelation is a spectrum. Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve has taught explicitly: “Not every statement made by a Church leader, past or present, necessarily constitutes doctrine. It is commonly understood in the Church that a statement made by one leader on a single occasion often represents a personal, though well-considered, opinion, not Church doctrine.” (D. Todd Christofferson, “The Doctrine of Christ,” General Conference, April 2012.)

Joseph Smith himself established this distinction in foundational terms: “A prophet [is] a prophet only when he [is] acting as such.” (History of the Church, 5:265.) This was not a novel or defensive claim invented after the fact — it was the doctrinal framework within which all prophetic communication has always operated in the Restoration. When Nelson described the 2015 policy as emerging from the Spirit’s influence upon the First Presidency, he was using a vocabulary of spiritual discernment appropriate to administrative guidance, not the vocabulary of canonized doctrinal revelation.

The distinction matters enormously. LDS canon itself specifies criteria for binding, irrevocable doctrinal revelation: it must be presented to the general membership for sustaining vote (D&C 26:2; D&C 28:13), recorded and canonized, and taught consistently across all fifteen members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. The 2015 policy met none of these criteria. It was a handbook entry — an administrative instrument — not a canonized scripture or an Official Declaration. The author’s conflation of “spirit-guided administrative guidance” with “binding doctrinal revelation” is the foundational error on which the entire argument rests.

Claim 2: Policy Change Equals Doctrinal Contradiction

“These statements contain some massive implications for what revelation is… the distinction they are making here completely contradicts the entire concept of revelation.” — ldsdiscussions.com

This claim would, if true, indict every major Christian denomination, every government, every institution ever led by human beings who sought divine guidance. The author’s implicit model of revelation is that genuine divine communication must be permanent and invariable. But this model has no support in scripture, in LDS theology, or in the broader Christian tradition.

The most direct scriptural rebuttal is Acts 15 — the Jerusalem Council. The early Christian Church had been operating under the Mosaic Law, including circumcision. The question of whether Gentile converts must be circumcised was urgent and divisive. The apostles — led by the Spirit, through deliberation and prayer — reversed a requirement rooted in God’s own covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17:10–14). They did not say God was wrong to give the Law. They recognized that a Spirit-guided institutional decision appropriate to one dispensation could be revised by Spirit-guided institutional decision in a new context. James summarized the council’s conclusion: “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.” (Acts 15:28.) By ldsdiscussions.com’s logic, the Jerusalem Council proves the early apostolic church was not from God.

President Boyd K. Packer articulated the LDS framework precisely: “Procedures, programs, the administrative policies, even some patterns of organization are subject to change. We are directed by principle, and those principles — the doctrines — never change.” (General Conference, April 1990.) The doctrine that same-sex marriage is not sanctioned by God did not change in 2019. What changed was a pastoral protective mechanism and its administrative implementation. The author treats these as equivalent. They are not.

Claim 3: Social Pressure, Not Revelation, Drove the Change

“It becomes impossible to avoid the elephant in the room: [these revelations] are not from God. They are reactions to social pressures.” — ldsdiscussions.com

The argument that social pressure disqualifies divine guidance commits a logical fallacy known as the genetic fallacy: judging the validity of a conclusion solely by its origin or the conditions surrounding it. The proper question is not why the leaders revisited the policy, but whether the revised policy is consistent with revealed doctrine. Social concern, pastoral grief, and human feedback are precisely the instruments through which prophets have historically received guidance. D&C 9:8 instructs that revelation comes as one “study[s] it out in [their] mind” — not through passive reception of disembodied divine dictation.

FAIR Mormon scholar Gregory Smith noted in his April 2019 analysis that the 2015 policy was explicitly designed to address pastoral concerns about children being caught between two irreconcilable value systems — their same-sex parents’ household and their congregation’s covenant commitments. The pastoral concern was real. So was the unintended harm. President Nelson acknowledged in September 2019 that the policy “created concern and confusion for some and heartache for others,” and that “that grieved us.” That grief is itself a form of moral and spiritual discernment. When bishops reported that exceptions were being requested — and granted — in nearly every case, that was institutional data informing ongoing revelation.

Furthermore, the author’s standard, applied consistently, would invalidate the very reforms the author seems to approve of. If social pressure invalidates religious change, then the civil rights movement should not have prompted mainline Protestant churches to reconsider their policies. If member grief invalidates institutional revision, then the Catholic Church was wrong to reform its liturgy after Vatican II. The argument proves too much, or nothing at all.

Claim 4: The 2019 Reversal Proves Spiritual Confirmations Are Unreliable

“This policy reversal illustrates why spiritual confirmations are not a reliable indicator of truth.” — ldsdiscussions.com

This claim rests on the assumption that the 2019 reversal contradicts the 2015 confirmation. But on the policy-versus-doctrine framework established above, there is no contradiction. The spiritual confirmation that the 2015 handbook policy was the right pastoral approach for that moment is entirely compatible with a later spiritual confirmation that a revised approach is better suited to new circumstances. Confirming a good-faith administrative decision at a given time is not the same as certifying that decision as eternally immutable.

The author’s analogy to other religions bearing spiritual witness of their own truth does not advance the argument. The existence of competing spiritual claims does not demonstrate that all spiritual experience is epistemic noise; it demonstrates that spiritual discernment requires theological rigor and ongoing evaluation — precisely the process LDS governance employs through its council system of fifteen apostles deliberating together before any institutional change is announced. As Dallin H. Oaks has observed, that council system constitutes a structural safeguard against the unchecked personal inspiration of any single leader.

D&C 1:24–25 establishes the foundational theological framework for understanding prophetic fallibility without abandoning prophetic authority: “Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding. And inasmuch as they erred it might be made known.” God did not promise infallibility. He promised ongoing correction. The 2019 revision is precisely that correction operating as designed.

Claim 5: The Pattern of “Social-Pressure Revelations” Is Damning

“[R]evelation is more impacted by social pressures than it is about consistency from God… the answer really becomes clear the more you research the church’s revelations.” — ldsdiscussions.com

The author assembles a list of recent Church adjustments (reduced Sunday meeting hours, temple ceremony updates, missionary calling home, the 2019 policy reversal) and argues the common thread is capitulation to social pressure rather than divine direction. This pattern-recognition argument suffers from confirmation bias: only changes are catalogued, not the many occasions on which the Church has maintained unpopular positions — the law of chastity for all members regardless of orientation, the exclusivity of priesthood ordination to men, the Word of Wisdom, the exclusivity of temple marriage. None of these positions are popular in the broader culture. The Church maintains them regardless.

Moreover, the logic of the argument is self-defeating. If the Church never updates administrative policy, it is rigid and inhumane. If it does update policy, it is capitulating to social pressure. This is an unfalsifiable standard that renders the Church guilty regardless of what it does. Unfalsifiable arguments have no evidential value.

D&C 98:12 articulates the line-upon-line principle directly: “For he will give unto the faithful line upon line, precept upon precept.” Incremental refinement of administrative guidance is not a bug in the Church’s revelatory system — it is a constitutive feature. The author expects a form of revelation that LDS scripture explicitly does not promise.

Claim 6: The John Taylor 1886 “Revelation” Proves Prophets Invent Revelation to Justify Preferences

“John Taylor claimed a revelation from God in 1886 that polygamy would last forever… [P]olygamy would be revoked just six years later for Declaration 1.” — ldsdiscussions.com

The author acknowledges in the same breath that the Taylor 1886 account was “never canonized.” This concession is decisive. The LDS standard for binding doctrinal revelation requires canonization and sustaining vote by the general membership. An uncanonized, privately circulated account attributed to John Taylor — whose authenticity even the author admits is disputed — does not meet that standard. Its non-canonization is itself evidence that the institutional process worked: this claim was not elevated to binding doctrine.

Further, the author’s own logic refutes his conclusion. If the official end of polygamy came through Official Declaration 1 — which was canonized, presented to the full membership, and sustained — then the institutional machinery functioned correctly: a non-canonical private claim did not permanently override the Church’s divinely-structured process for binding revelation. This is exactly how the system is designed to work.

The Deeper Theological Framework: Progressive Revelation Through Imperfect Instruments

The argument in the ldsdiscussions.com post depends on a model of divine revelation that is neither scripturally defensible nor theologically sophisticated. The implicit model is: genuine revelation must be (a) permanently binding, (b) never revised, (c) uniformly consistent across all decisions made by all leaders at all times, and (d) immune to any influence from human social context. No serious theologian — Catholic, Protestant, or Latter-day Saint — holds this model, because it is refuted by the entire biblical record.

Consider the canonical biblical examples: God instructed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22), then reversed the command before it was executed. The entire Mosaic Law was given by God (Deuteronomy 4:2) and then superseded by Christ (Matthew 5:17; Hebrews 8:13). The Jerusalem Council reversed a Mosaic covenant requirement under apostolic authority. Paul publicly rebuked Peter (Galatians 2:11) for acting inconsistently with the gospel, demonstrating that even senior apostles err without forfeiting their calling. If the criteria applied to Latter-day Saint prophetic guidance were applied to biblical figures, the entirety of biblical history would be disqualified as evidence of God’s involvement.

The LDS scriptural framework accounts for this explicitly. D&C 1:24–28 presents God as working with His servants “in their weakness, after the manner of their language,” and promises that “inasmuch as they erred it might be made known.” This is not a concession that the Church is fraudulent; it is the theological architecture of a living church. A living church corrects. A dead one calcifies.

Elder Neil L. Andersen has articulated the doctrinal boundary precisely: “The doctrine of Christ is taught by all fifteen members of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. It is not hidden in an obscure paragraph of one talk.” The 2015 policy was never in that category. Its revision in 2019 was never in that category. Both were administrative instruments — pastoral responses to a complex human situation — processed through the same Spirit-guided deliberative council that the scriptures describe as the Church’s governing mechanism.

What the Reversal Actually Demonstrates

The 2019 policy revision does not demonstrate that the Church is not led by God. It demonstrates the opposite: that the Church has the institutional humility and spiritual architecture to recognize when a pastoral instrument is not achieving its intended purpose and to revise it. The alternative — a church that never revises administrative policy regardless of its demonstrated human cost — would be a church incapable of pastoral care, not a church faithfully led by a God who declared “this is my work and my glory — to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39.)

The underlying doctrine that the Church teaches has not changed. Same-sex marriage is not sanctioned by God under current revelation. Children of God who experience same-sex attraction are loved unconditionally by their Father and by the Church. The path of discipleship — including its costs — remains what it has always been. None of this changed in 2019. What changed was how bishops and families navigate the administrative question of when and how a child can enter the covenant path when their family situation creates genuine conflict. That is a pastoral adjustment. It is exactly the kind of adjustment a divinely-led institution should make.

The Jerusalem Council made such an adjustment. The Council of Nicaea made such adjustments. Vatican II made such adjustments. No serious scholar considers these evidence that the institutions making them are fraudulent. The standard applied to the LDS Church in this argument is one applied to no other institution in the history of religion, and the selective application of that standard is its own form of bias.

Conclusion

The ldsdiscussions.com argument on the LGBT policy reversal is built on four foundational errors: (1) conflating administrative policy with canonical doctrine; (2) assuming that genuine revelation must be permanently immutable; (3) applying an unfalsifiable standard that treats any change as evidence of fraud; and (4) ignoring the explicit LDS scriptural framework for progressive, correctable, council-based revelation.

When those errors are corrected, a coherent and defensible picture emerges: a Church operating under a well-defined theology of progressive revelation, led by fallible but well-intentioned men who prayerfully made a pastoral decision in 2015, gathered four years of pastoral experience, and revised their administrative approach in 2019 without altering one syllable of revealed doctrine. That is not evidence of institutional fraud. It is evidence of a living Church doing what living churches do.

Those who find that account inadequate are entitled to their conclusion. But they should engage with the actual theological framework rather than a caricature of it, and they should apply the same standard to every other institution — religious and secular — that has ever revised an administrative policy under conditions of human uncertainty. If they do, they will find that the LDS Church’s record of doctrinal stability combined with administrative adaptability is not anomalous. It is, in fact, exactly what one would expect from an institution that takes both eternal truth and human pastoral care seriously.

Primary Sources and Further Reading

Doctrinal Foundations

  • D&C 1:24–28 — God speaks through servants in their weakness; errors may be made known
  • D&C 9:8 — Revelation comes through study and discernment, not passive dictation
  • D&C 26:2; 28:13 — Binding revelation must be sustained by common consent
  • D&C 58:26–28 — God does not command in all things; servants act by principle and wisdom
  • D&C 98:12 — Line upon line, precept upon precept; progressive revelation is the promised mode
  • Moses 1:39 — The purpose of God’s work: eternal life and immortality of man
  • Acts 15:28 — Jerusalem Council precedent: “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us”

Church Leader Statements

Scholarly and Apologetic Responses