Before You Were Born
Premortal Identity, Divine Purpose, and the Rejection of Defect Theology
Guiding Text
Teaching Section
Premortal Identity and the Pseudoscience of 'Same-Sex Attraction'
Lesson Plan
Introduce the session's central tension: Latter-day Saint theology teaches that each person has a premortal identity—a self that existed before birth, was known by God, and was sent to earth with purpose. And yet the institutional treatment of homosexuality suggests that sexual orientation is a defect of mortality, a consequence of the Fall, an aberration to be overcome. These two teachings cannot both be true. This session examines which one the scriptures actually support.
Present the history and debunking of 'Same-Sex Attraction' (SSA) as a diagnostic framework. SSA does not appear in the DSM-5, the ICD-11, or any peer-reviewed diagnostic manual. It was coined within religious therapeutic communities, particularly by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and Evergreen International, to medicalize homosexuality without using medically recognized terms. The American Psychological Association's 2009 Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation concluded that sexual orientation change efforts are ineffective and potentially harmful. The APA's 2021 Resolution on Sexual Orientation Change Efforts went further, stating that SOCE 'lack sufficient bases in scientific principles.' Walk participants through the trajectory: the APA removed homosexuality from the DSM in 1973. NARTH was founded in 1992 to resist this scientific consensus. Evergreen International, the LDS-affiliated conversion therapy organization, closed in 2014. The Church's own Family Services stopped offering sexual orientation change efforts. The science is settled. SSA is not a diagnosis. It is a rhetorical strategy.
Read Abraham 3:22–23 aloud: 'Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; And God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers.' Teach that Latter-day Saint theology is distinctive among Christian traditions in its assertion that personal identity is eternal—not created at birth but organized before the foundation of the world. Read Jeremiah 1:5: 'Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.' If God knew you before you were born—knew you, not a hypothetical heterosexual version of you—then your sexual orientation is not an accident of mortality. It is part of the self that God knew and sanctified.
Present the institutional narrative that homosexuality is a 'condition' of mortality to be endured, not an identity to be affirmed. Trace the consequences of this theology in participants' lives: the belief that 'God made me this way as a test,' the hope that 'it will be fixed in the resurrection,' the despair of praying for decades for a change that never came. Present Dehlin et al. (2015) data showing that among the 1,612 Latter-day Saints who attempted sexual orientation change, the vast majority (73% of men, 43% of women) attempted change through multiple methods over many years, with negligible success and significant psychological harm.
Pose the integrating question: 'If your identity is eternal, and God knew you before you were born, what does that mean for the parts of yourself you have been taught to reject?'
Detailed Lesson Content
There is a term you may have heard in church settings, in bishops' offices, in Evergreen meetings, perhaps even in your own prayers: 'Same-Sex Attraction.' SSA. It sounds clinical. It sounds like a diagnosis. It is designed to sound that way. But it is not a diagnosis. It does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the standard reference used by psychiatrists and psychologists worldwide. It does not appear in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), used by the World Health Organization. It does not appear in any peer-reviewed diagnostic manual anywhere in the world. The term was coined within religious therapeutic communities—primarily by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) and its LDS-adjacent affiliate, Evergreen International—as a way to pathologize homosexuality without using the language of established medicine, which had already concluded, decades earlier, that homosexuality is not a pathology.
Let me be precise about the timeline. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM, concluding that it is a normal variation of human sexuality. In 1975, the American Psychological Association followed suit. In 1992, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from the ICD. By the time NARTH was founded in 1992 by Joseph Nicolosi, Charles Socarides, and Benjamin Kaufman, the scientific consensus was already established. NARTH was not advancing science. It was resisting it. Evergreen International, the Church-affiliated support organization for Latter-day Saints experiencing same-sex attraction, promoted reparative therapy approaches for decades before quietly closing in 2014. The Church's own Family Services stopped offering sexual orientation change efforts. Even the term 'same-sex attraction,' while still used in Church publications, increasingly exists in a scientific vacuum—a term without a diagnosis, a label without a disease.
In 2009, the APA convened a Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation and published a comprehensive report. The Task Force reviewed decades of research and concluded that 'efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm.' In 2021, the APA adopted a formal resolution stating that sexual orientation change efforts 'lack sufficient bases in scientific principles' and that they 'are associated with a range of serious harms.' The Church now publicly opposes conversion therapy. The science is settled.
Now let us turn to what your theology actually teaches about who you are. Latter-day Saint theology is distinctive among Christian traditions in one remarkable claim: that personal identity is eternal. You did not begin at birth. You existed before this life as an organized intelligence, a spirit child of heavenly parents, a being with personality, gifts, and a relationship with God that predates mortality. Abraham 3:22–23 describes God standing among the intelligences organized before the world and declaring that 'these souls were good.' Jeremiah 1:5 records God saying, 'Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.'
Think about what that means. God knew you. Not a theoretical version of you. Not a heterosexual placeholder that would later be corrupted by the Fall. You. The being who would grow into the person sitting in this room. If the premortal existence is real—and this program assumes that participants believe it is—then the question is not 'Why did God make me this way?' The question is 'Why would an institution tell me that something God knew about me from before the foundation of the world is a defect?'
The institutional answer has traditionally been that homosexuality is a consequence of the Fall—a mortal condition, like physical disability or mental illness, that will be resolved in the resurrection. But this framing creates a theological problem that the institution has never satisfactorily resolved. If sexual orientation is a defect of the Fall, then it is not part of your eternal identity. But if it is not part of your eternal identity, then the person God knew before you were born—the person God called 'good'—is someone other than who you actually are. And if God's premortal relationship was with a different version of you, then Jeremiah 1:5 is not a promise. It is a mistake.
The alternative is simpler and more theologically coherent: your sexual orientation is part of who you have always been. God knew it. God organized it. God sent you here with it. And the institutional discomfort with that reality is a problem of institutional understanding, not a problem of divine creation.
Recommended Videos
'Same-Sex Attracted' (2020, documentary, 35 minutes)
A documentary by LGBTQ+ BYU students about the experience of being queer at Brigham Young University. Provides powerful first-person testimony of the collision between premortal identity theology and institutional policy.
Watch on YouTube →Viktor Frankl, 'Youth in Search of Meaning' (TED Archive, 5 minutes)
Frankl's talk on the danger of treating people as less than they are, using the metaphor of 'aiming higher' to account for drift. Directly applicable to the institutional tendency to define LGBTQ+ people by their 'condition' rather than their divine potential
Watch on YouTubeRichard Ostler, 'Listen, Learn, and Love' podcast, Episode 1 (2018)
A Latter-day Saint bishop discusses his journey toward understanding and affirming LGBTQ+ members.
Listen on Apple Podcasts →Additional Reading
- APA Task Force. (2009). Report of the Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation. American Psychological Association. Available at: https://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.pdf [Essential reading on the failure of conversion therapy.]
- Dehlin, J. P., Galliher, R. V., Bradshaw, W. S., Hyde, D. C., & Crowell, K. A. (2015). Sexual orientation change efforts among current or former LDS church members. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 62(1), 15–28. [The largest study of sexual orientation change efforts among Latter-day Saints.]
- Petrey, T. G. (2020). Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism. University of North Carolina Press. [Academic analysis of the Church's evolving teachings on sexuality.]
- Abraham 3:22–23; Jeremiah 1:5; D&C 93:29–33. [Scriptural foundation for the eternal nature of personal identity.]
Academic Framework
Examination of the pseudoscientific origins of 'Same-Sex Attraction' (SSA) as a clinical category. The term does not appear in the DSM-5-TR, the ICD-11, or any credible scientific literature. The American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and every major health organization recognize sexual orientation as a natural, enduring aspect of human identity—not a disorder, not a symptom of fallenness, not a condition to be managed. Discussion of how religiously manufactured terminology ('SSA,' 'struggling with,' 'afflicted by') pathologizes identity and amplifies internalized homophobia (Barnes & Meyer, 2012).
Theological Reflection
Latter-day Saint theology teaches that personal identity is eternal—that we existed as individual spirits before birth and will continue as individuals after death. If sexual orientation is an enduring aspect of identity (as the scientific evidence overwhelmingly confirms), then it is not a product of the Fall but a feature of the self that preceded mortality. Abraham 3:22–23 describes God knowing His children before they were born and preparing missions for them. The question is not whether God knew you would be gay. The question is whether you trust that He sent you here this way on purpose.
Jeremiah 1:5: 'Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee.' Sanctified. Not despite who you are. As who you are.
Discussion Prompts
- How has the language of 'same-sex attraction' or 'struggling with' affected the way you think about your own identity? What would it feel like to replace that language with something more accurate?
- If you accept that God knew you before you were born, what does that mean for how you understand your orientation? Is it possible that it is part of your mission, not an obstacle to it?
Integration Exercise
Rewriting the narrative: Participants write a short 'premortal autobiography'—a creative, imaginative account of who they were before this life and what they chose to bring with them into mortality. The exercise encourages participants to reclaim authorship of their own story from the institution.
Therapeutic Methodology
Primary Modality: Narrative Therapy. This session is built for narrative externalization—the practice of separating the person from the problem. The 'problem' is not the participant's sexuality; it is the deficit narrative imposed upon it. Clinicians should help participants identify the dominant story ('My orientation is a defect of the Fall') and begin authoring a preferred story ('My orientation is part of who I have always been'). The premortal autobiography exercise is a narrative therapy technique adapted for a theological context—it gives participants imaginative permission to rewrite origin stories that the institution authored for them.
Secondary Modality: Psychoeducation on Sexual Orientation Science. Clinicians should provide a brief, clinically grounded overview of the current scientific consensus: the APA's declassification of homosexuality (1973), the failure of conversion/reparative therapies (APA Task Force, 2009), and the neurobiological and developmental research supporting sexual orientation as a natural, enduring trait. This psychoeducation is not argumentative—it is corrective. Many participants have spent years absorbing pseudoscientific frameworks (SSA, reparative therapy literature) and need accurate information to complete the cognitive restructuring this session initiates.
Contraindication Note: Participants who are currently in mixed-orientation marriages should be monitored carefully during this session. The deconstruction of defect theology can trigger acute distress if it precipitates a reappraisal of the marriage while the participant is still in it. Individual follow-up is recommended.