The LDS Church just reversed its 2015 ban on LGBT baptisms

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will allow the children of LGBT parents to baptized into the church, it announced in a press release Thursday.

"Effective immediately, children of parents who identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender may be baptized" without special prior approval, the church said in what The Salt Lake Tribune called a "stunning announcement." The LDS Church will also stop labeling same-sex couples "apostates," but will consider their marriages a "serious transgression" against the church doctrine instead, the release said.

The move largely reverses a 2015 policy that said children who lived with same-sex couples could not participate in baby-naming ceremonies or be baptized into the church until they left home. It also said people in same-sex marriages could be excommunicated from the church. The move prompted hundreds of Latter-day Saints to leave the church in protest.

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Thursday's announcement came amid the church's general conference, and was made in an effort to "increase respect and understand" and "reduce the hate and contention so common today," the release said. This does not mean same-sex marriages are accepted by the church, but rather that "immoral conduct in heterosexual or homosexual relationships will be treated in the same way," per the release.

LDS Church followers have long been known as Mormons, but the church asked people to stop using the term last summer.