To address the circumstances of participants who are not in traditional family situations, read one or both of the following statements:
President Ezra Taft Benson, the 13th President of the Church, told the single sisters of the Church: “We see you as a vital part of the mainstream body of the Church. We pray that the emphasis we naturally place on families will not make you feel less needed or less valuable to the Lord or to His Church. The sacred bonds of Church membership go far beyond marital status, age, or present circumstance. Your individual worth as a daughter of God transcends all” (“To the Single Adult Sisters of the Church,” Ensign, Nov. 1988, 96).
President Joseph Fielding Smith, the 10th President of the Church, taught: “If a man or a woman who has been sealed in the temple for time and eternity should sin and lose the right to receive the exaltation in the celestial kingdom, he or she could not retard the progress of the injured companion who had been faithful. Everyone will be judged according to his [own] works, and there would be no justice in condemning the innocent for the sins of the guilty” (Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols. [1954–56], 2:177).
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