In the past, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), including Brigham Young, have opposed marriages between members of different ethnicities.

In 1977, one of the church's apostles, Boyd K. Packer, publicly stated: "We've always counseled in the Church for our Mexican members to marry Mexicans, our Japanese members to marry Japanese, our Caucasians to marry Caucasians, our Polynesian members to marry Polynesians... The counsel has been wise." According to historian Lester E. Bush Jr., nearly every decade for over a century—beginning with the church's formation in the 1830s until the 1970s—has seen some denunciations of interracial marriages (miscegenation), with most statements focusing on Black–White marriages.

Church president Brigham Young taught on multiple occasions that Black–White marriage merited death for the couple and their children. Early church leaders made an exception to the interracial marriage ban by allowing White LDS men to marry Native American women, because Native Americans were viewed as being descended from the Israelites. Church leaders did not sanction White LDS women marrying Native American men, however.

In 2013, the LDS Church disavowed the teachings that interracial marriage was a sin. Until at least the 1960s, the LDS Church penalized some White members who married Black individuals by prohibiting both spouses from entering its temples. After the temple and priesthood ban was lifted for Black members in 1978, the church started allowing Black interracial temple marriages, but still officially discouraged marriages across ethnic lines. Until 2013, at least one official church manual in use continued discouraging interracial marriages. Past teachings of church leaders on race and interracial marriage have stemmed from racist beliefs of the time and have seen criticism and controversy.

Utah's legislation on interracial relationships

Past church leaders' views on interracial marriages were reflected by previous laws in Utah, where its members held a notable amount of political influence. In 1852, the Act in Relation to Service which allowed the enslavement of Black people in Utah Territory was passed, and it also banned sexual intercourse between a White person and "any of the African race." That same day the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners (which allowed White Utah residents to enslave Native Americans) also passed, though it did not contain any discussion on Native-White marriage or sex. In 1888, the government of Utah Territory (with an approximately 80% LDS population) passed an anti-miscegenation law. The law prohibited marriages between a "negro" or "mongolian" (i.e. ethnically Asian person) and a "white person". In 1890, Black individuals made up less than 0.3% of Utah's population of 210,000, Chinese individuals made up less than 0.4%, and Native Americans made up 1.6%. In 1939, the two-thirds-Mormon majority Utah State Legislature expanded the law to prohibit a White person from marrying a "Mongolian, a member of the malay race or a mulatto, quadroon, or octoroon." Unlike laws in other states, Utah's law did not prohibit marriages between White people and Native American people. Utah's 1852 ban on most interracial marriages remained until it was repealed over a century later by its legislature in 1963.

Interracial marriages with Native Americans

Mormons considered Native Americans to be a higher race than Black people, based on their belief that Native Americans were descendants of the biblical Israelites, and they also believed that through intermarriage, the skin color of Native Americans could be restored to a "white and delightsome" state. On July 17, 1831, church founder Joseph Smith said he received a revelation in which God wanted several early elders of the church to eventually marry Native American women in a polygamous relationship so their posterity could become "white, delightsome, and just."

Though Smith's main successor Young he believed that Native American peoples were "degraded", and "fallen in every respect, in habits, custom, flesh, spirit, blood, desire", he permitted Mormon men to marry Native American women as part of a process that would make Native people white and delightsome and restore them to their "pristine beauty" within a few generations. However, Native American men were prohibited from marrying White women in Mormon communities.

Young performed the first recorded sealing ceremony between a "Lamanite" and a White member in October 1845 when an Oneida man Lewis Dana and Mary Gont were sealed in the Nauvoo Temple. There is evidence that Young may have married his Bannock servant Sally. Sally later married Ute chief Kanosh. Relevant sections quoted at mormonmatters.org . By 1870 only about 30 White, Mormon men had Native American wives, and few additional interracial marriages with Native Americans occurred. Later church leaders taught Native American skins would be lightened through some other method, and under the presidency of Spencer W. Kimball, the church began officially discouraging any White-Native interracial marriages.

In canonized scripture

The Book of Mormon

In the Book of Mormon, the Lord cursed the Lamanites, and as a sign of the curse their skin was marked with blackness. The black marking was made so that the Nephites would not find the Lamanites "enticing", so "that they [the Nephites] might not mix [with Lamanites] and believe in incorrect traditions", and so they would remain a separate people. If a Nephite intermarried and had children with a Lamanite, the Lord also cursed and marked them, and cursed their descendants.

Hugh Nibley, a prominent Mormon apologist, argued that the curse could be thought of as traditions inconsistent with God's commandments. He also posited the curse did not spread through interracial reproduction, but that by intermarrying Nephites would participate in Lamanite traditions, so God placed the mark to prevent the spread of Lamanite culture among the Nephites. The Book of Mormon Seminary Teacher Manual used to teach seminary students about the Book of Mormon, quotes apostle Joseph Fielding Smith as stating that the skin color was changed to "keep the two peoples from mixing".

The Pearl of Great Price In the Book of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price, the name of Ham's wife is Egyptus, which is given the meaning of forbidden. It teaches that their grandson, Pharaoh, was a descendant of the Canaanites (Abraham 1:22), a race of people who had been cursed with black skin for committing genocide against "the people of Shum". W. W. Phelps, an early church leader, taught that Ham himself was cursed because he had married a Black wife. In The Way to Perfection, apostle Joseph Fielding Smith quoted B. H. Roberts in pointing out that Egyptus means forbidden, and suggests that might be because she was "of a race with which those who held the priesthood were forbidden to intermarry."

The Bible In Genesis Isaac commands Jacob not to marry the Canaanites. The Old Testament Student Manual, which is the manual currently used to study the Bible's Old Testament in church Institutes of Religion, teaches that Ham's sons were denied the priesthood because he had married Egyptus. It also states it is because "a daughter of Canaan would not be worthy to join Jacob in entering into a marriage covenant with the Lord." In Deuteronomy, the Israelites were commanded not to marry the Canaanites. In 1954, apostle Mark E. Petersen used this as an example of why the church did not allow interracial marriages. Another example of intermarriage in the Bible is that from the book of Judges in which Samson marries a Philistine woman. The LDS Old Testament Seminary Teacher Manual teaches that marrying a Philistine was against the will of God.

19th-century teachings on Black–White marriages

Joseph Smith

In 1843 church founder Joseph Smith wrote, "Had I [anything] to do with the Negro I would confine them by strict [l]aw to their own species," in reference to interracial marriage. A year later as mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois, he held a trial and fined two Black men the modern equivalent of thousands of dollars for trying to marry White women. A decade earlier hundreds of non-Mormon citizens of Jackson County, Missouri accused the LDS community of inviting Black people to live among them, thus, creating the risk of interracial marriage. Critics cited this as a reason for demanding the removal of Mormon people from the state. The apostle Parley P. Pratt denied this invitation had taken place, however.

There are other records of Smith's teaching on interracial marriage. For example, in 1897 First Presidency member George Q. Cannon wrote in his journal that Joseph Smith had taught a later president of the church, John Taylor, that a White man married to a woman with Black ancestry could not receive the priesthood, and that they both would be killed along with any of their children if the penalty of the law were executed. Three years later Cannon also stated that Smith had taught Taylor that any male child born with any Black heritage from one or more parents could not receive the priesthood as he was "tainted with Negro blood." In 1908, church president Joseph F. Smith stated the church founder had declared the priesthood ordination of Elijah Abel as void as he had a Black great-grandparent due to a mixed-race marriage. Abel was referred to as an octoroon man at the time for his one-eighth Black heritage. Abel's petitions for temple ordinances were also denied by Smith's next successors Brigham Young and John Taylor because of his Black ancestor.

Brigham Young

On at least three occasions (1847, 1852, and 1865) Smith's successor Brigham Young publicly taught that the punishment for Black–White interracial marriages was death, and the killing of a Black–White interracial couple and their children as part of a blood atonement would be a blessing to them. He further stated that interracial children are sterile "like a mule", a teaching later repeated in a church magazine. Young taught that the moment the church consents to White members having children with Black individuals the church would go to destruction, and that, "Any man having one drop of the seed of Cain in him cannot hold the priesthood." Young also taught that a White person who had children with a Black person would be cursed to the priesthood.

Similar to honor killings as well as a form of human sacrifice, blood atonement is the belief that Jesus' atonement for humanity's sins does not apply to some sins, such as interracial sexual activity and marriage, because they are too serious. To atone for these sins, their perpetrators should be killed in a way that allows their blood to be shed upon the ground as a sacrificial offering. This doctrine was most widely taught during the Mormon Reformation. Examples of how Young applied his teaching of it with regard to interracial relationships are as follows:

1847 — Young heard of a Mormon family composed of a Black man Enoch Lovejoy Lewis (son of ordained priesthood holder Kwaku Walker Lewis), a White woman Mary Matilda Webster, and their interracial child living in Massachusetts and responded that if the family wasn't living so close to non-Mormons "they would all have to be killed" since the law is that Black and White seed should not be "amalgamated". 1852 — As territory governor, Young stated before the territory legislature that if a White man had children with a Black woman, he should request to have his head chopped off. He continued saying that if someone were to kill the man, woman and any children of such a union, that it would be a blessing to them and "it would do a great deal towards atoning for the sin". 1865 — In a speech in the Salt Lake Tabernacle Young repeated the teaching of death as punishment for Black and White individuals producing interracial offspring, stating the penalty would always be in place.