This post was written by Winterbuzz and Rune.

We’re not sure how the world’s quirkiest and most beloved scientist got dragged into the Mormon ether, but he did. The sign says “Visitor’s Welcome” outside and we’re going to take it at its word. Bill Nye will be joining us as we discuss and unpack a recent blog post floating around the Bloggernacle, defending the LDS church’s latest policy change which excludes children from saving ordinances because of the “sins of their” parents.

You don’t need to be a scientist to dissect the rationale given in this post, but if you do, we have Professor Nye and our handy block quote text to help us.

The motivation in unpacking the language in this post is this:

When news broke about the policy change, most folks became upset, confused, angry, and hurt. This post originally published on Mormon Women Stand, (and then almost identical rhetoric given by Elder Christofferson at a press release later that night) gave them permission to turn those feelings off and to feel like “all is well” again. We don’t believe all is well, and we haven’t for some time. We have directly witnessed the harms these sorts of policies have on individuals. We have held sobbing Saints in our arms when they have been kicked out from their homes because of their sexual orientation or felt like their church betrayed them. (It’s like the haunting words of Martin Harris, “I never did leave the church, the church left me.”) We know the pain reverberating out of this latest policy is echoing into the wilderness, crashing and smashing the faith, hope, and charity of so many with wounded hearts. The policy is not okay, and you shouldn’t need to make it so.

We have taken the time to break the post down, line for line. The biggest myth emerging from this post presumes that this policy is just the latest in LDS church’s steady course of moving consistent policy forward. This post will seek to better dispel that idea. For your convenience, the original post will be used in block quotes, like below:

Cue “Bill Nye” voice… Did you know that, in the LDS Faith, a child cannot get baptized without their parents’ approval? A spouse cannot be baptized without their husband’s or wife’s consent? And, in addition, if the parents practice polygamy, the child cannot get baptized? The church does a TON to protect children and spouses from being taught one thing at home and another thing at church.

Okay Professor Nye, just like your shows- there’s a lot going on there. It seems reasonable that children should not be baptized into a church where they don’t have explicit permission from their parents, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, our church can’t claim a clean track record in that regard. In the 1950’s and 60’s convert baptisms soared at a rate never before seen in a program known popularly as Baseball Baptisms or Beach Party Baptisms. Throughout the world, pressures to return from their missions with high conversion rates under their belts, missionaries baptized young and at-risk boys en masse, usually on first day of contact and under promises of athletic glory and community. These baptisms usually didn’t require parental permission.

While it is true that spouses cannot be baptized without the consent of their spouse, it also hasn’t always been the case. (Think the tragic murder of Parley P. Pratt). But that’s okay, right? The church changes and updates and learns from past mistakes, I don’t think anyone is arguing that. (Except the folks that are arguing that. “God’s laws never change and the church has never changed it’s stance on things.” That’s not entirely true, either). But let’s talk about the last line: The church does a TON to protect children and spouses from being taught one thing at home and another thing at church.

This one is trickier. If we define a “ton” of things as implementing policies that are exclusionary, then yes, “ton” feels okay. But this logic has some flaws.

There are also policies currently instituted that can sometimes separate families. The Temple Wedding policy that prohibits non-members and non-temple recommend holders is a good example of that.

Sorry, “Bill Nye” voice again…Did you know that the LDS Faith is very careful in how it proselytizes Muslims? Even in countries that protect the religious freedom of both Christians and Muslims, there are cultural differences that make it dangerous for Muslims to convert to Christianity. Each of these boundaries provides protections for the church, the prospective member, and the family. For the church, it allows them to clearly teach God’s plan of Salvation (centered on Jesus Christ and marriage between a man and a woman) without worrying that those they teach will face conflict at home. For the family members of those involved, it allows family autonomy and reduces conflict and secrecy. For the prospective member, it helps them not have to lose vital family relationships (and, if they are under 18, food and shelter).

It is true that converting from Islam is punishable by death in the more fundamentalist sects of the religion, and it is wise that churches take steps like this to prevent harm to prospective members. There’s a very big difference between protecting someone from literal death and harm from family members and a broader culture who don’t approve and are willing to shed blood over it, and “protecting” kids from what amounts to the church saying mean things about their parents that they may or may not have difficulty believing.



And by the post’s own admission, minor children can’t be baptized without the parents’ consent anyway. What we have is a policy that only applies when both the child and the parent(s) already want baptism for the child, and the church saying that they’re not allowed to make their own decision on the matter. The permission of a gay parent doesn’t count. They are not trusted to make decisions for their family that are taken for granted by other parents. And nothing about the policy prevents the child from attending church, listening to missionaries, and hearing such conflicting teachings anyway. Nothing in the new policies even remotely addresses that, so focusing on teaching is a red herring. No, what is happening here is that the church will not consider the child worthy for baptism until they disavow their own parental relationship, and it would cause too many problems for the church to officially demand that of a minor. (More on that below, so stay tuned.) So, instead, they put the whole thing off until they aren’t a minor anymore.And what purpose of protection does denying the child a blessing as an infant provide? In Mormonism, what protection is there in denying the Gift of the Holy Ghost to innocent children?

While Christ does ask us to be prepared to give up family to follow him, (Matthew 10:37), he never teaches that one should attempt to be both a good family member and a good church member if those two are at odds.

Elder Christofferson claimed in his statement last night that this policy was aimed to “protect children in their innocence.” A lot of his reasoning seemed almost borrowed from the blog post written earlier that day. If it protects children from discord, why bother publishing articles, Q&A’s, and other material contrary to that?

Perhaps cultural differences are to blame?

Let me explain one more thing before I address the reason I wrote this post, if you’ll bear with me. It is not a small matter to become a member of the LDS Church. As I explained above, if an adult Muslim wants to become a member of the church, the church may still decline to baptize the candidate simply because of cultural conflicts. Those who were raised in polygamous households also have extra requirements asked of them if they wish to be baptized. This policy is not a sign of a lack of love, but rather, in the context of the plan of salvation, a recognition that the doctrines and ordinances of Christ are for all in His time, not ours. See Isaiah 55:8-9, Proverbs 3:5-6; Alma 40:8; Moroni 8; Doctrine and Covenants 88:73.

This paragraph is loaded and shifts rhetoric from critical, saving ordinances to something you can hang out and get to when the time is right.

Let’s consider a horrific fact: not all children make it to age 18 and a lot of the folk doctrine, rhetoric, and reasoning for age 8 baptisms , flies in the face of the post’s reasoning.

As for extra requirements for polygamous children- this isn’t by accident. Let’s remember the church started Mormon Polygamy, they didn’t start gay marriage. So the analogues being drawn aren’t complete and they simply aren’t accurate. (For more on the history of these policies, start here.

The LDS officially disavowed polygamy in 1890, but had to do so again in 1904 after it’s own apostles were still marrying plural wives or performing plural marriages (Madame Mountford FTW!).One of the consequences of this disavowal, were families that were second and sometimes third generation polygamous families were now left in a rough spot. Their parents had been told the principle was essential for salvation and they had suffered and sacrificed for it, but the new policies reflected a different story. It was messy. Families did the best they could, but it was difficult and folks spoke out and acted out. We imagine the LDS church leaders were in a very, very difficult spot. How do you take something so essential to the shaping of your church and your history and now remove yourself from it as fast as you can because of legal and financial pressure from the federal government? How do you do that without damage? It must have been an awful time for all. Policies and procedures began to develop and in the 1930’s and 40’s we started to see policies harder enforced. A policy was eventually put into place that would not allow children belonging to parents practicing polygamy (presumably unsanctioned) into the church unless they renounced their parents and their beliefs. This was harsh medicine to try and remedy a very complicated history, but it has been in place for some time. If you are LDS, you’ll be familiar with a temple recommend question about associating with “apostate groups,” which was born out of this same struggle. The new policy is harsh and unforgiving. In fact, it doesn’t make sense, especially in relation to the polygamy restriction. The history is too different in these regards to even believe they parallel one another. You can package them the same, but that doesn’t mean they are the same (anymore similar than gay marriage and polygamy, but who’s drawing that distinction?) There were not existing gay families that had been sealed by prophets or apostles that needed to be accounted for. There were not gay bishops secretly trying to seduce their ward members into gay sealings once a ban was put in place. There were not two or three apostles in the quorum sanctioning gay sealings while two or three were excommunicating those being sealed. It just isn’t the same. The church didn’t invent and then prohibit gay marriage.

While individuals may experience and act on same-sex attraction without being apostate, the church considers the step of being a party to a same-gender marriage as a sufficient repudiation of the doctrine of the plan of salvation to constitute apostasy.

Like we mentioned before, this is new. This is a new definition of the policy, presumably as a reaction to new laws that allow gay marriage in certain parts of the world. (Remember, such laws have existed in places where the church also does for a long time before this.) While old explanations built around a foundation of obeying the laws of the land as a precedent for similar exclusions.

The second policy, like the ones I began the post with, has the effect of not putting children at the center of a conflict between their household and the teachings of their church. The policy is that any child who is being raised by a same-sex couple may not receive baptism or be blessed as a baby. Like with the policies I mentioned above, it protects not just the child, but the church and the household who is raising the child. Conflicts are inevitable if a child is taught that those the child’s legal guardians are sinners– and the only way for them to stop being sinners is by ending their relationship.

This statement we almost agree entirely to, except the part about not putting children at the center of the conflict. This seems to assume that any children the policy may affect are coming from the outside of the church, that they are potential converts from families that otherwise have no ties to Mormonism. This ignores some very complicated realities, many of which were created by the church’s own past policies. For example, decades prior to this, the church actively promoted and funded (the now thoroughly-discredited and known to be harmful) conversion therapy, and encouraged gay and lesbian members to marry people of the opposite sex as “treatment” for their condition. Gay and lesbian members who were doing nothing more than trying their best and trusting their leaders entered into these mixed-orientation-marriages and had kids. This did nothing to change their orientation. A large number of these marriages dissolved under the strain of the challenge, but not until there were children involved. There are children of gay parents who were raised in the church, (in this situation and others,) for whom church is their home and community, and who have a beautiful faith in Christ cultivated in the Gospel.

These families are not outsiders that we can “protect” by keeping them out. They are already among us. And these children are absolutely being put at the center of conflict by this policy. Faithful parents, grandparents, friends, and communities are being denied the opportunity to celebrate these important spiritual and cultural milestones for these children, all because one parent, in good faith, followed a church council that did not work out and then moved on when it didn’t. Those children are absolutely at the center of a conflict that they do not deserve. It’s a double-penalty on top of the exclusion itself.

The final policy is that those who are adults and were raised by same-sex couples must meet extra standards before becoming baptized. This, like the policies regarding adults who are/were Muslims and adult children of polygamous parents, serves to protect the candidate. In the context of the plan of salvation, this policy will aim to help people come closer to Christ by helping them be baptized in an environment where they can spiritually grow.

And here we come right down to it: the church has decided that it will not consider the child worthy of baptism until they disavow and leave the household of their gay parent(s). This could absolutely be a huge legal problem in custody arrangements for a minor. That is the legal worry: that the church could be in the middle of a custody struggle or violation by turning, or supporting one parent in turning, the child against the other parent as an explicit condition of their religious worthiness. It does nothing to protect the child from that expectation looming over them, or teachings that their gay parent is worse than a murderer, or that they don’t love them enough to change and just be a good straight person. It just puts off the official demand to testify of their disavowal until they are not a minor anymore and such legal concerns are moot.

I sustain these policies. Some of my friends may well disagree with these policies. However, I plea with them to not lessen their commitment to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nothing that happens in this church– however hard it may seem to be– changes the fact that God spoke to a 14-year-old boy in 1820. As that boy wrote later in his life:Brethren, shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward and not backward. Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory! Let your hearts rejoice, and be exceedingly glad. Even if you disagree wholeheartedly with my church’s stance on a few issues, please read the Book of Mormon and pray until the peace and mercy and grace that you need to “go on in so great a cause” comes.

Go forward and not backward. Let’s stand up against these terribly backward policies, and hold to Christlike love and consideration for our brothers and sisters. Love for our neighbors truly is a great cause. Far more than sustaining a single hurtful policy just because it exists.