Another reason it’s a good idea for caucasian parents who hope to adopt transracially to have a handhold on race and church history is because social workers who are aware of the church’s past policy want to know how this will be handled with the child. “What priesthood ban?” is not a good response. If you are going to be a parent of a black child, you owe it to the child to educate yourself. Consider the experiences of one adoptive family:

I will never forget sitting across the desk from the guardian ad litem for my first son in her Milwaukee office. She was a polished, accomplished woman. She was black. She knew about the Church’s history and asked us how we felt about it, how we could reconcile that history with bringing an African American child into our family and our culture.

Fortunately, we were prepared. We had read, listened, thought and prayed. We didn’t so much answer as we did testify that in truth every human being is a child of God, equal in His eyes.

Thank heaven for our kind LDS Family Services social worker making sure we had prayed about our decision to accept a child of any race, even though for us it seemed like a given – his insistence meant that when the moment arrived, we had no reason to waver.

Another reason it’s important that LDS adoptive parents understand this aspect of church history is because 99% of church members don’t. OK, I’m pulling that 99% figure out of my hat, but I bet you dollars to donuts that 99% is pretty accurate. And it’s not just LDS church members. Take the “curse of Cain,” for example. What exactly is the curse of Cain? Do you know? If you said that Cain was cursed with black/brown skin, guess what? You’re wrong! But before you berate yourself, know that many, many Christians believe the same thing because that’s what they’ve been taught for generations. It takes active seeking of correct information to unlearn folklore so many of us have accepted as doctrine.

A careful reading of the account of Abel’s murder and subsequent response to Cain from God tells ONLY that Cain was “marked” (how exactly, we don’t know) for his own protection. It was something to set him apart from others and to keep them from killing him. The curse was NOT the same as the mark. Temporally, the curse was that he would no longer be able to work in the fields as a farmer, but would be forced to become a nomad, wandering the earth. Spiritually, his own actions had cursed him as to the blessings of the gospel, including having his priesthood authority revoked.

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