Still, it is true that Joseph Smith's 1843 funeral sermon for Barnes never once mentioned husband-wife relationships. That was remarkable in a sermon on loving relationships in this life and in the resurrection during which the prophet repeatedly spoke of "brothers and friends," fathers and sons, mothers, daughters, and sisters. Smith's silence concerning husbands and wives was deafening in this sermon about attachments of love. Feliz appropriately asked why. I do not agree that the answer involved same-sex ceremonies, but I do see this as the first Mormon expression of male bonding. George Q. Cannon forty years later called it "greater than the love of woman."

I know of no historical evidence that Mormonism's founding prophet ever said an officiator could perform a marriage-like ordinance for a same-sex couple. Nevertheless, I realise that some believing Mormons regard it as emotionally appealing or spiritually inspiring for there to be a priesthood ordinance to seal same-sex couples similar to Mormonism's opposite-sex ordinance of marriage "for time and all eternity."