section_path: LDS Church president/Teachings/Race restrictions on temples, priesthood, and interracial marriage
section_name: Race restrictions on temples, priesthood, and interracial marriage
paragraph_text: Race restrictions on temples, priesthood, and interracial marriage
  
  Young is generally considered to have instituted a church ban against conferring the priesthood on men of black African descent, who had generally been treated equally to white men in this respect under Smith's presidency.: 54–65, 70 After settling in Utah in 1848, Young announced the ban, which also forbade blacks from participating in Mormon temple rites such as the endowment or sealings. On many occasions, Young taught that blacks were denied the priesthood because they were "the seed of Cain". In 1863, Young stated: "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." Young was also a vocal opponent of theories of human polygenesis, being a firm voice for stating that all humans were the product of one creation.
  
  Throughout his time as prophet, Young went to great lengths to deny the assumption that he was the author of the practice of priesthood denial to black men, asserting instead that the Lord was. According to Young, the matter was beyond his personal control and was divinely determined rather than historically or personally as many assumed. Young taught that the day would come when black men would again have the priesthood, saying that after "all the other children of Adam have the privilege of receiving the Priesthood, and of coming into the kingdom of God, and of being redeemed from the four-quarters of the earth, and have received their resurrection from the dead, then it will be time enough to remove the curse from Cain and his posterity."
  
  These racial restrictions remained in place until 1978, when the policy was rescinded by church president Spencer W. Kimball, and the church subsequently "disavow theories advanced in the past" to explain this ban, essentially attributing the origins of the ban solely to Young.
  
  Young is generally considered to have instituted a church ban against conferring the priesthood on men of black African descent, who had generally been treated equally to white men in this respect under Smith's presidency.: 54–65, 70 After settling in Utah in 1848, Young announced the ban, which also forbade blacks from participating in Mormon temple rites such as the endowment or sealings. On many occasions, Young taught that blacks were denied the priesthood because they were "the seed of Cain". In 1863, Young stated: "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." Young was also a vocal opponent of theories of human polygenesis, being a firm voice for stating that all humans were the product of one creation.
  
  Throughout his time as prophet, Young went to great lengths to deny the assumption that he was the author of the practice of priesthood denial to black men, asserting instead that the Lord was. According to Young, the matter was beyond his personal control and was divinely determined rather than historically or personally as many assumed. Young taught that the day would come when black men would again have the priesthood, saying that after "all the other children of Adam have the privilege of receiving the Priesthood, and of coming into the kingdom of God, and of being redeemed from the four-quarters of the earth, and have received their resurrection from the dead, then it will be time enough to remove the curse from Cain and his posterity."
  
  These racial restrictions remained in place until 1978, when the policy was rescinded by church president Spencer W. Kimball, and the church subsequently "disavow theories advanced in the past" to explain this ban, essentially attributing the origins of the ban solely to Young.