Homosexuality: From promised cure to no expected change

What leaders were instructed to do

The promise extended beyond abstinence

The pamphlet’s opening addresses priesthood leaders and makes helping affected members recover part of their responsibility. Pages 5–6 encourage dating the opposite sex and redirecting romantic interests toward heterosexual marriage. Page 6 says members can “move their romantic interests where they belong.” That makes the document more specific than a general instruction to refrain from sexual activity.

The scan linked by the B. H. Roberts Foundation identifies the Church as publisher and dates the pamphlet to 1970. Its opening addresses leaders directly. The University of Virginia’s Prince research excerpts independently reproduce the passages on romantic interests and cure.

An intermediate instruction

1987: Marriage was not to be used as therapy

In his April 1987 general conference address, First Presidency counselor Gordon B. Hinckley instructed members not to treat marriage as a therapeutic step for homosexual inclinations or practices. He still spoke of overcoming those inclinations or practices before marriage.

This is an intermediate position: it rejects marriage as treatment while retaining an expectation of overcoming the underlying problem as he described it. It does not yet give the later instruction to stop expecting changed attraction.

The present framing

Faithfulness no longer predicts disappearance of attraction

The Church’s 2020 guidance says people can remain attracted to the same sex after years of prayer and obedience. It allows that the intensity can diminish for some, but directs parents and leaders not to require that outcome. It distinguishes control over responses from control over attraction.

This page gives present counseling instructions rather than an explanation of why the earlier cure teaching changed. The comparison concerns the promised result and the demands placed on members.

Finding

What the record establishes

The historical cure teaching is documented. A reader can accurately say that Church guidance once encouraged changing romantic interests, and that current guidance tells leaders not to expect or demand changed attraction. Treating the earlier instruction as merely a private misunderstanding would misidentify its institutional source.