re mormon beliefs about bastards in article may athos rutgers edu erh tesla njit edu writes could anyone enlighten me on how the mormon church views children born out of wedlock in particular i m interested to know if any stigma is attached to the children as opposed to the parents i m especially keen to learn if there is or is not any prohibition in the mormon faith on bastards entering heaven or having their names entered in the big genealogical book the mormons keep in salt lake city if this is an issue on which the official position has changed over time i m interested in learning both old and new beliefs e mail or posting is fine all information or pointers are appreciated well since my wife is in your gentle term a bastard i can probably speak with a bit of authority on this any stigma associated with children conceived and or born out of wedlock rests solely upon the parents they ve committed a sexual transgression for which they should repent the child itself has no a priori limitations on him or her indeed the concept of blaming the child for the parents sins is one most mormons would find appalling note that lds theology rejects original sin as the term is usually defined and the subsequent need for infant baptism cf moroni in the book of mormon indeed lds doctrine goes one step further and in some cases holds parents responsible for their children s sins if they have failed to bring them up properly cf d c note that this passage applies it only to members of the lds church also note that there is no big genealogical book in salt lake city the lds church has a massive storage facility in the nearby mountains containing on microfilm vital statistic records birth christening baptism marriage death gathered from all over the entire world i may be misremembering but i believe they have records for some billion people in that vault at the same time the lds church is building up an on line genealogical database in neither case is there some kind of worthiness screening as to whether someone can be entered in the only potential issue is that of establishing who the parents were and that would apply only in the case of the database bruce bruce f webster i love the constitution of this land cto pages software inc but i hate the damned rascals that bwebster pages com administer it import pages disclaimer h attributed to brigham young the following arrived as a separate posting clh a follow up to my own follow up lest anyone misunderstand the term bastard is one which i have never in years of lds church membership heard applied formally or informally to a child born out of wedlock and indeed would rightly be considered a vulgar offensive term i would not have echoed the expression in my reply except in hopes that the poster would recognize the offensive nature of the word in the given context unfortunately after posting my reply i remembered that subtle points are often lost on the net and figured i d better spell it out bruce bruce f webster bwebster pages com
