CHURCH STATEMENT: “Changes in the civil law do not, indeed cannot, change the moral law that God has established.” -from the LDS Church’s official “Response to the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage in the United States,” issued 29 June 2015 by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. [source]
QUOTE: “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so.” -Brigham Young, speaking in the Tabernacle, 8 March 1863, Journal of Discourses vol. 10, p. 110. [source]
LETTER FROM FIRST PRESIDENCY: “We are not unmindful of the fact that there is a growing tendency, particularly among some educators, as it manifests itself in this area, toward the breaking down of race barriers in the matter of intermarriage between whites and blacks, but it does not have the sanction of the Church and is contrary to Church doctrine.” -First Presidency (George Albert Smith, J. Reuben Clark, Jr., and David O. McKay) in a letter to Lowry Nelson, 17 July 1947. [source]
CHURCH ESSAY: “Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else. Church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.” -from the church-published essay Race and the Priesthood. [source]
COMMENTARY: I don’t remember hearing about the revelation announcing that God’s moral law regarding mixed race marriages had changed. Sometime after the civil law changed, though, God’s law changed, too. Absent any prophetic explanation, I could offer my own guess as to why God’s law followed public sentiment. But what do I know? I’m just another apostate.
