Apples, Oranges, and Green Apples
In Mormon circles, when the topic of "LGBTQ issues" comes up—in particular the conversation of "reconcilation between LGBTQ individuals and the gospel"—there's an urge to reach for analogous situations for guidance. There's a need to find similar situations which we can use to reason about what, if anything, the church could or should change in order to be a more welcoming, safer space for queer people.
The most obvious historical comparison is the priesthood and temple ban for Black men and women, which was instituted by Brigham Young and continued as church practice until 1978. The church historically offered various explanations and justifications for the existence of the ban, all of which are now formally and officially disavowed as racist speculations according to the church's Gospel Topics Essay on the subject. The throughline here isn't hard to spot—if a ban which persisted for over a century could be lifted and its sundry explanations disavowed as so much speculation and error, then it isn't difficult to imagine how the same could one day occur for the church's positions on gay marriage, sex, and transgender identity.
There are a number of standard apologetic counters to this argument, but today I'm going to examine just one. In a conversation a few years ago with my parents, my mother responded to the comparison to the priesthood and temple ban by suggesting that the key distinction is that the priesthood ban (unjustly?) discriminated on the basis of innate identity. By contrast, she said, the church's opposition to gay relationships and marriages isn't one of identity but rather of choice and action. A Black member of the church, prior to 1978, was denied temple blessings for no reason other than the color of her skin, but a gay Mormon could choose not to act on his attractions and remain a member in good standing. It isn't being gay the church opposes, but rather choosing to do gay things. Thus, the two are not comparable.
There are, I think, a host of flaws which fatally undermine this argument, most of which have to do with simple historical shortsightedness. The fact of the matter is that whatever the church's stance on the being gay/doing gay axis is today, it was far more stringent a half century ago. The late Elder Packer would have been shocked and angered by the idea that it is acceptable to identify as gay or that efforts to change a homosexual orientation do more harm than good. He, and several of his contemporaries (not all of them, but several of them), believed that there was nothing innate, immutable, or unchangeable about what we now understand to be sexual orientation. Because of that Packer and those who agreed with him were deeply suspicious of and opposed to any effort which stated or implied that such "inclinations" were in fact unalterable. This is reflected in the teachings and attitudes of leaders of the period. BYU has a rather notorious reputation for less-than-stellar treatment of its gay students, and this treatment was underpinned by the historical full-throated belief in conversion therapy; that scrupulosity and turning oneself wholly over to Jesus could cure poor, afflicted "homosexuals" and grant them a normal life. That my mother could say in the 2020s that the church does not restrict or condemn individuals merely for identifying as or "being" gay is, in an ironic way, a sign of how far the church has positively moved in the last fifty years.
Whatever the case is now, there was a time where the church absolutely cared about whether or not one merely self-identified or labeled oneself "gay," even if they were completely committed to celibacy and activity in the Church; even a cursory review of historical comments from church leaders about the subject makes that abundantly clear. Packer is the most well-known example, but it was less than two decades ago that Elder Bednar gave a talk in which he said that there "are no homosexual members of the church"—it was recent enough that I can recall it firsthand! Even after disciplinary policies were relaxed to require disciplinary action only in cases of behavior rather than identity, the church continued to explicitly and firmly counsel against self-identification.
But doesn't it count for anything that the church has—despite the impression one may get from some apologetic quarters—become more liberal on the issue? Isn't it a good thing that BYU students are no longer subject to surveillance or electroshock therapy or expulsion merely for identifying as gay? Of course! These are, to be sure, positive steps forward, and I think it's important to recognize that the church has moved forward, even if it remains stubbornly conservative in comparison to the surrounding culture. But that isn't the question under investigation here; the question is "can we fairly and reasonably compare the priesthood and temple ban to current teachings forbidding homosexuality or transition?"
I think the answer is clearly yes. The fact that the church no longer seeks to punish or discipline celibate, morally worthy individuals solely because of their self-identification as some flavor of gay or queer is an unalloyed good—but that only makes the comparison to the eventual revelation of Official Declaration 2 in 1978 all the more apt, where morally worthy Black men and women were, pre-1978, denied priesthood and temple blessings because of racist beliefs about their identity and not because of any choices they had made.
It is all well and good to concede now that maybe the church got it wrong on conversion therapy and outreach toward "homosexuals" in the 70s, but to argue that the problem was the methods rather than the means, while the problem with the priesthood/temple ban was both method and means, is to fatally undermine the argument by moving the goalposts. It may be true today that on queer issues, the church distinguishes behavior from identity, and that such a distinction didn't exist for racial policies—but it is trivial to demonstrate that this distinction is a modern invention. As far as the 1960s and 70s are concerned, both the Black member and the homosexual member are opposed and punished in the eyes of the church on the basis of identification, not committing sin. That we no longer punish either member for unchosen attributes is a good thing—but while we've learned to outgrow and shake off the worst of overt, vicious racism, we have yet to outgrow the ancient and just as juvenile prejudice against those who are queer and live authentically as themselves.