Do We Proclaim the Proclamation?
I’ve always been an odd duck. Most kids played soccer during recess; I preferred reading and discussing theology. As a young adult, I discovered FAIR (a leading organization for Latter-day Saint scholarship and apologetics). Now, my annual pilgrimage to Utah for their conference is a highlight of my year. But Latter-day Saint apologetics is a niche hobby– one my friends have always found uninteresting… until now.
Over the past two weeks, many have reached out, saying they watched the FAIR presentations and want to attend next year’s conference. What sparked this newfound curiosity? The old adage: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
“Do you support the Family Proclamation?” A FAIR (and crucial) question
The conference experienced significant controversy this year. The keynote speaker this year was very high-profile: the head of the Church's communications department. His hiring in 2024 faced significant backlash when members found his numerous social media posts showing him participating in pride rallies, congratulating celebrities on their gender transitions, celebrating the redefinition of marriage by the Supreme Court, and parroting LGBTQ slogans. So, it's not surprising that during the Q&A following his keynote address, multiple audience questions referred to his views on the Family Proclamation. To many in the live and online audience, his responses seemed evasive. Within a few hours of FAIR publishing his interview, the Latter-day Saint online sphere had ignited in fierce debate over two topics: his fitness for his role, and whether his perceived ambiguity signals a change in the views of the Church itself.
His hiring isn't the focus of this article, but I want to say this: from what I've heard from people who've talked to him, he is very much supportive of the Family Proclamation. Bur more importantly, it doesn't matter. I belong to the Church– the Church doesn't belong to me. If he is good enough for Apostles and Prophets, he has my full support. Activists against the Church who are calling for his firing or impugning the Brethren who hired him are off-base and should repent. Aaron Sherinian is not the qusetion here.
But I do want to address the second, more important question. Because this controversy is just the latest in a long pattern of mixed messaging that has some faithful Saints wondering: "Is the Church distancing itself from the Family Proclamation?"
This concern only continues to grow in importance as social views evolve. In 2007, only a quarter of U.S. Latter-day Saints considered homosexual behavior “acceptable.” Over the next seven years, it grew to over one third. As of one year ago, support for same-sex behavior in our faith reached 46% (with 41% endorsing same-sex marriage itself). And the “T” of LGBT is hot on its heels: barely half of Latter-day Saints in the U.S. today view the rapid rise in transgenderism as an overall negative for society.
The shift in social views shifts religious views, too. Many online– especially young adults—believe Church teachings are simply wrong, reasoning that “the Prophets are good men, but limited by their biases.” Many of my millennial peers eagerly anticipate the day when a new generation of younger, more open-minded leaders takes the reins and finally receives the revelations permitting same-sex sealings and gender fluidity in the Church. “Look around,” they tell me, “the shift has already started!”
Mixed Messages from institutions
Is it true? Is the Church drifting from the principles of the Family Proclamation? Even faithful members may wonder because the FAIR Q&A is just the latest in a pattern of mixed signals from Church-sponsored institutions and local leaders on this topic. Here are just a few from the past five years:
During the 2021 BYU Women’s Conference, the Church Relief Society General Presidency invited a prominent queer activist who publicly rejects the Family Proclamation onto the stage to speak to all the women of the Church. While on stage, she urged members of the Church use transgender pronouns. The Relief Society Presidency thanked her and commended her message.
When an Arizonan man who identifies as a woman asked to be taught the missionary lessons, his mission knowingly sent sister missionaries to teach him. Throughout his conversion, he was delighted to find that the missionaries, members, and local leaders affirmed his gender identity and used his pronouns. When he received First Presidency approval for baptism in 2022, the mission created a female membership record for him, making him an official member of his ward’s Relief Society.
Later that year, Congress proposed legislation codifying same-sex marriage, and the Church released an official statement seeming to endorse the bill. Members who had earlier sacrificed to support Proposition 8 at the Church’s behest now wondered: “What happened to ‘calling upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote’ the principles of the Family Proclamation?”
During a stake devotional three months after that law’s passage, President Dallin H. Oaks clarified the Church’s statement. The original wording was ambiguous; the Church had only endorsed adding religious freedom amendments to the bill– not the whole bill itself. But this clarification went largely unnoticed. Most members had only read the headlines accompanying the original statement; they now believe the Church supports same-sex marriage as a full civil right.
Mixed messaging bleeds into Church-owned institutions, too. Deseret Book, for example, currently produces allyship podcasts and sells a book that encourages parents to transition young children. But perhaps nowhere has the mixed messaging been so prevalent as at “the Lord’s university.” Faculty and department leaders at BYU have distributed pride materials to students. A professor angrily shredded the Family Proclamation on camera. Some teachers have hung pride flags in classrooms, while other officials have lead LGBTQ+ activism groups. Contributors at BYU’s Maxwell Institute endorse “Queer Mormon Theology,” while slamming Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s call for faithfulness.
Mixed messages at the local level
Adding to our institutional confusion is what members see and hear within our own wards and stakes. We’ve seen pride displays in chapel foyers, bishops instructing members to use transgender pronouns, and Sunday School teachers quietly striking lessons on the Family Proclamation from their class schedules.
I’ve seen this shift even in my heavily Conservative area of the US. A Bishopric assigned a brother to speak on a recent talk from a member of the First Presidency, then changed the assignment at the last minute, apologetically explaining, “We hadn’t read that talk before we assigned it. Some members in our ward struggle with the talk’s views on LGBT+ topics, and we don’t want controversy in our meetings.”
During a testimony meeting I attended this June, a freshly returned missionary began her testimony with a rousing “Happy Pride Month!” She then bore witness that God doesn’t care whether we keep the commandments because He loves us so much. The Bishop didn’t correct the record, and none of the following speakers offered a clarifying voice.
It seems that if you teach “affirmation” lessons based on quotes from Instagram influencers, everyone will either agree or at least politely smile along. But if you read the Family Proclamation to your class, you might be called into your Bishop’s office and counseled to avoid “divisive” topics.
In many wards the standard seems to be "Niceness over truth."
Yes, the Brethren know
Church leaders are well aware of this problem. In 2021, Pres. Jeffrey R. Holland read one of the numerous letters he had received from parents who feel “abandoned and betrayed by BYU” because of the “radicalizing of [students’] attitudes and the destruction of [students’] faith” by “flag-waving and parade-holding” activist staff members.
During a worldwide devotional two years later, Pres. Oaks shared one of many letters he had received from frustrated youth about “inconsistent and confusing messages from the Church:”
In my day-to-day life, I see members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on social media act as if they aren’t part of this gospel. … I feel like I am the only young woman in my ward who sees the things I see wrong with the world. … I truly don’t understand why so many youth in our Church don’t see any problem with people changing their gender every other day, dating people who are the same sex or identify as no gender…
At ward or stake youth activities, I am asked my pronouns, or at school I am asked to dance with a girl who thinks she is a boy.. I wish we heard more talk from Church leaders about this problem.
Pres. Oaks noted that such frustration is sadly "common in young people all across the Church."
It’s hard to be bombarded by voices of friends, scholars, and influencers saying, “change in Church teachings is just around the corner.” But when even seemingly "official" sources start to echo that message of change, members start to take it seriously. And a logical question follows: "Why defend the Family Proclamation today if our leaders will just surrender it tomorrow?"
The doctrine stands. Will we?
Is that doubt justified? How can we know if the ground is about to shift beneath our feet? By keeping our eyes on authoritative sources. Remember Peter’s mistake walking on the water: he took his eyes off the Master and began to focus on the turbulence around him. When our own cultural crosscurrents grow “boisterous,” the Lord’s counsel remains unchanged: “Look unto me in every thought.” We don’t look to influencers, scholars, podcasters, or even Church personnel and local leaders– we look unto Him.
His saving doctrine is not crowdsourced. While subordinates may send mixed signals and some local leaders might waver on this issue, the Prophets and Apostles speak with crystal clarity. The Lord’s mouthpieces have taught the doctrine of the family in every dispensation of the Gospel from Adam to the present time, and they reaffirm it constantly in their official capacity today. The Family: A Proclamation to the World, in particular, has been cited in General Conference every single year since it was written.
Contrary to what dismissive critics may say, Church leaders are not yielding to pressure, ignoring the issue, or passively waiting for God to change their course. As Pres. Holland said, “We have spent more time and shed more tears on this subject than we could ever adequately convey to you… We have spent hours discussing what the doctrine of the Church can and cannot provide” to those who struggle with this issue.
So if Prophets, Seers, and Revelators are that sympathetic to the desire for change, why don't they change it? Because they understand that the Proclamation isn’t “a changeable statement of policy– [it’s] irrevocable doctrine.” None of the protests, the social pressure, or the mixed messaging matter because “the doctrine of the Lord regarding marriage and morality cannot be changed.” This fundamental law is as necessary to our spiritual existence as gravity or thermodynamics are to our mortal existence.
The question isn’t whether the doctrine of the family will change; it’s whether we will stand with it.
It shouldn't surprise us when we hear confusion all around us. Remember, in Lehi’s vision, worldly distractions begin at the great and spacious building, but they don’t stay there. Babylon’s influence reaches all the way to the tree of life itself, causing many to feel ashamed and “rehearse their doubts” to everyone else.
We all lean on the strength of our fellow ward members, but new and struggling members are especially reliant on the faith of those around them. So, when a comment in Sunday School injects worldly ideology into the lesson and everyone in the class smiles along, a struggling student might conclude that that viewpoint represents the consensus of the class, and maybe of the Church itself. That perceived unanimity can be disastrous for someone still struggling to build their own firm foundation.
Fortunately, all it takes is one voice to break that illusion of unanimity. Be that one voice– both in person or online– and you'll quickly find that there is a hunger for truth. People too afraid to speak will be motivated by your testimony to raise their voices, too. Others will privately thank you for speaking the truth they needed to hear.
Stand confident in the solidity of the doctrine. Prophets, Seers, and Revelators continue to proclaim truths of The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Surely we can, too.
