The 2020 handbook for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints introduces “restrictions” regarding transgender people while stressing that they are to be treated with “an abundance of Christlike love.”
The handbook, released online Wednesday and available in print over the next few weeks, places restrictions on transgender people who pursue sex reassignment surgery. It also discourages “social transitioning,” which it defines as “changing dress or grooming, or changing a name or pronouns, to present oneself as other than his or her birth sex.”
Restrictions include participation in some temple activities, the exercise of the Mormon priesthood, and “receiving some Church callings.”
The church does, however, make some concessions to transgender members. It welcomes them to Sunday sacrament meetings, other Sunday meetings, and any church social events. Transgender people can also be baptized, confirmed, take the sacrament, and “receive priesthood blessings,” as long as they do so according to their sex assigned at birth.
The handbook notes that if transgender Mormons choose to change their name or their pronouns, the church will note it in membership records. The church will also allow transgender people to refer to themselves by their preferred names and pronouns.
Yet changes to Mormon teaching in this area can only go so far before they begin altering the fundamental nature of the religion, said Ryan Cragun, a sociologist at the University of Tampa. Mormon teaching prescribes that gender is inextricably tied to biological sex and outlines specific roles for men and women in eternity. Allowing transgender people full participation in the church, he said, would essentially overturn Mormon teaching on the afterlife.
“The church would have to change its concept of salvation,” he told the Washington Examiner. “It would be like the Catholic Church saying that Mary is not a virgin.”
In addition to the section on transgender people, the 2020 handbook updates the church’s stance on same-sex attraction. While the church still condemns gay marriage, it encourages the Mormon community to support members who are attempting “to live the law of chastity.”
The church’s updated positions on sexuality prompted Brigham Young University, Utah’s flagship Mormon school, to update its policy on same-sex attraction. The college, whose honor code had previously prohibited homosexual relations and “all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings,” removed the section of the code from its website Wednesday evening.
Students celebrated with public same-sex kissing and hand-holding. BYU later clarified that the removal of the portion of the code was only intended to bring the school up-to-date with the Mormon handbook and that it would handle future violations on a “case by case” basis.
The updates in the 2020 handbook mark a broader evolution in Mormon teaching about sexuality. The last handbook, released in 2010, does not contain any instruction on transgender issues, leaving the matter to the discretion of individual communities. The 2010 handbook also condemns “homosexual behavior” in harsher language, stating that it will be “subject to Church discipline” — something that is not mandated in the latest handbook.
Last year, the church rolled back a 2015 ban on baptisms and missionary activities for children of gay marriages. At the time, LDS Church President Russell Nelson characterized the shift in tone as a response to divine “revelation.”
