SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, June 16, 2018 (Gephardt Daily) — The LDS Church’s online genealogical database will begin accepting family records on same-sex couples, the site has announced.
The service database, FamilySearch.org, is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“The goal of FamilySearch.org is to capture, store, and provide records and an accurate genealogy that represents past, present, and future families of the world,” a statement on the website says.
“To support this goal, same-sex relationships, including same-sex parents and same-sex couples, will be provided in FamilySearch Family Tree. Several systems that surround Family Tree, such as tree and record searching, must be significantly redesigned to support same-sex relationships before Family Tree can release this capability.”
FamilySearch expects to have the capacity to accept and integrate such records by next year, the statement said.
“We expect to finish this work by 2019. Following this work, the FamilySearch Family Tree application can then allow same-sex information to be recorded. We appreciate your patience and desire to preserve the world’s genealogy in Family Tree.”
The LDS Church does not recognize same-sex marriage, now legal in America and 25 other countries.
