our members who face significant challenges around race, immigration, family structure and other life experiences? President Monson was the last apostle who was present for the “priesthood restoration” announcement 40 years ago this June. President Nelson inherits a church that denounced racism and white supremacy in August 2017, yet, according to Gallup, aligns as one of the largest groups supporting a U.S. president who actively advocates exclusion in words and in deeds.

My prayers are that the gift of discernment rests with President Nelson and his advisers and each of us.

Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune Ruth Todd, LDS Church spokeswoman, talks to Ordain Women supporters on Temple Square as they attempted to stand in the standby line to try to gain admittance to the priesthood session ofsame-sex marriage. In 2008, Proposition 8 came in California — [with the church] openly mobilizing local LDS leaders and the membership to defeat same-sex marriage for a time until it was overturned in the courts. Then there was the policy change in 2015 [which declared same-sex Mormon couples as “apostates” and barred their children from church rituals until they were 18] that could be interpreted as the logical LDS doctrine-based response to the church’s failure to keep gay marriage illegal.

Yet between these two events, which were deeply dissonant for gay and trans Mormons, there were amazing examples of progress. It started with the 2009 Salt Lake City nondiscrimination ordinance that the church supported. … This led to the statewide statute in 2015 [protecting gay and transgender individuals from