"[1] One sociological reason for the practice was because "[a]t this early stage in the church's history the membership was dominated by adult converts, whose new religious beliefs and westward migration with the Saints often estranged them from their birth families.
However, adoptions appeared on the records of the Nauvoo Temple in 1846, and scholars generally assume that the practice was instituted by Brigham Young.
[2] In a church general conference address on April 8, 1894, Wilford Woodruff stated that "I have not felt satisfied, nor has any man since the Prophet Joseph Smith who has attended to the ordinance of adoption in the temples of our God.
[14] However, beginning in the 1970s, some members of Affirmation: Gay and Lesbian Mormons began to suggest that the leadership of the LDS Church should restore the law of adoption in order to allow same-sex couples to be sealed to each other in the temple in a kind of quasi-celestial marriage.
[citation needed] The LDS Church did not respond directly to these suggestions, but continues to oppose homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage.