Further Light and Knowledge

http://maladjustedmormon.wordpress.com/ ... qual-when/

A great - and so depressingly long - list of ways that a woman is made to feel unequal in the LDS church.

They didn't include the fact that a bishop has to get a woman's husband's permission to give her a calling.

But I didn't know this one and it made me "I feel unequal when female employees of the Church Educational System and temple ordinance workers are no longer allowed to keep their positions after they have children."

The male commenters - and a few of the female ones - are predictable.

What I really loved about this was that it was shared publicly by an active Mormon cousin. The church is losing control when an active woman can share this publicly - and there are a lot of active women on her feed who are going to read that and might start nodding along.

Recommend takers at the temple have to be men?!?

EDIT: I don't mean this to indicate that this is what I am most appalled by. This is just something that I wasn't aware of. After all these years in and out of the church, I still learn things about the church that surprise me. (And that surprises me!)

Wow - kudos to this woman for writing this!

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A Post-Mormon Life: http://postmormongirl.blogspot.com

I went through the temple for the first time in the mid-80s, before going on my mission. At that time they had a man and a woman at the recommend desk and either one of them would look at your recommend and if it was all up to date, let you inside.

After my mission, and graduating from school, I moved to DC. I took quite a long break from the temple, but after the 1990 changes, I decided to go back and check it out, and I started going again fairly regularly. For a while at that point, they still had the same man/woman pair at the recommend desk, checking recommends.

Then one weekend a friend of mine and I went to do a session. There was a bit of a scrum at the recommend desk when we went in and the male temple worker was occupied, but the female worker was just standing there. So we walked up to the desk to where the woman was standing and pulled out our recommends to show her.

She was your typical temple worker, white-haired lady probably in her late 70s or so, hair up in a big bun on top of her head and little rimless bifocals perched on the end of her nose. She just looked like one of those hyper sweet little old mormon ladies. She gave us a smile when we walked up to her until she saw us holding out our recommends for her to check.

I can't even describe the look she got on her face when she saw our recommends. She pinched her lips shut and her mouth started working like she was either going to start crying or screaming, and couldn't quite decide which. She finally gestured brusquely at the male worker and more or less barked out "You have to show those to him. I can't do that anymore."

My friend and I were both stunned. I said, "What? Why not?" The woman was obviously struggling to be coherent. "I don't know. I guess we aren't competent to check recommends anymore." I sort of dropped my voice and said, "well, when did that happen? What did they say when they changed it?" She moved in closer and just started in. That woman was EN. RAGED.

Basically, she said it was now considered "a priesthood function." She said she'd been working at the temple for years and had always done recommend checks at the desk - they all did it. "But all of a sudden I'm too stupid or something to be able to check and see if a recommend's current." She kept going on in that vein and I was interjecting little questions- I was truly flummoxed (not quite pissed off yet) at what the possible rationale would be.

The guy who was there with her - somewhat ironically, it was a black guy - was listening now and grinning nervously and going "Now, now, Sister," and trying to avoid eye contact. He seemed to be embarrassed by it, but was trying to just be jocular and smooth it all over. He checked our recommends and tried to get us to move along, "Well, welcome to the temple today, Sisters! Have a wonderful day!" (All but saying, move along, women!)

At this point, I was starting to get pissed too. "How is that a priesthood function?" "That's a good question!" "What, is there ANYTHING we're considered competent to do?" "Apparently there isn't!"

We were kind of starting to wind each other up and my friend grabbed me and pulled me inside. She's an ex-mo these days (in fact, she left long before I did) but at the time she basically did her best to shut me down and shut me up, and "why do you always get so ANGRY about this kind of stuff? It's not that big a deal."

I don't know what their rationale was or is or if they even bothered to come up with one, knowing that everyone would just roll over for whatever they said. But they didn't used to have that distinction on the recommend desk. I clearly remember it otherwise and I clearly remember when they changed it. It wasn't too long after that when they even dispensed with the facade of having a woman at the desk to "help answer questions" or whatever the hell they had kept women up there for, and then it was just all men-all the time.

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The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

I didn't know this. I suppose this is only if the husband is a member and active?

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He never said it would be worth it; He only said it would be easy.

This one kind of goes both ways. Around here anyway. A few years ago, before formally giving it to him, I was asked if I could support my husband in the calling they were going to offer. Not my permission... just if I would support him. It's been so long since I have had a calling, that I don't know if they do that now. I DO know they used to, because sometimes I would tell my husband that I had been asked to do a calling and he would say "I know, they already asked me if that was okay." EN.RAGED. Felt like a child who had been granted permission.

I'm sure most of you know my story about how about 8 years ago, a local member (a man, if that matters) found some of my online rantings on a previous board and instead of talking to me, brought it to the bishop, who then brought it to the SP, who then (without my knowledge of course) invited my husband to lunch, where they all bombed him with this scandalous information about his WAYWARD WIFE. As soon as they were done consulting with my dad, er, I mean my husband, the bishop then called me to drop the bomb and tell me what had gone down that afternoon. And to please not try to go to those boards anymore and to definitely not persuade anyone with my ideas. I was seething, but I basically told him he was a creep for stalking me online and most of all for meeting about me without just confronting me like I was an intelligent human being. Ugh!!!

I was beyond pissed. Still am, actually. The sheer patriarchy and lack of respect was the final straw for me.

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What other people think about me is none of my business.

I am much more irked by this today. The idea that the powers that be would take a stand on such a trivial issue makes it feel personal and punitive.

I have a friend whose husband was not a member and they asked him before they called her to the RS Presidency.

I'm sure I screwed up the quotes.

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One day I realized that sadness is just another word for not enough coffee - Dilbert

I realize that this a more of a male vs female inequality thread ...

But I have to add my $0.02

I feel inequal when a member of the city council for the city in which I live goes on record to say that if the LDS church had been opposed to a measure, he would have voted against it.

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/c ... d7624.html

I sent an email to the mayor and entire city council expressing my displeasure at knowing that at least one member of my local government placed the opinion of a religion above my opinion.

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"To those seaching for truth - not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction - faith in fiction is a damnable false hope." - Thomas Edison

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is policy. My mom was Primary president several times and each time had at least one counselor whose husband was not mormon. She always had to wait for the call to be OK'd until the husband was asked his permission. For a woman married to a non-mormon to go through the temple, they also must have his permission. And it's framed in those terms. If he says no, no matter how worthy the woman in question, she doesn't go through.

It's very Islamic, actually. They do something similar for Hajj (the trip to Mecca that all Muslims must make during their lifetimes to get to heaven). Women outside of Saudi Arabia who are unmarried or married to non-Muslim's and want to go on hajj must have a letter of permission from their husband, or if they're not married from their closest male relative (even if that is your son or grandson) granting them permission to go. If they can't present that letter, the Saudis don't let them into the country.

So your "saving ordinances," in both cases, depend not on your own life and piety, but on the whims of the men in your life.

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The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

Bel, what you just wrote reminded me of something I heard about from a friend a few years ago.

He was a retired police officer, and we were talking once about why he disliked Mormons so much (I was still active at the time). He told me he knew of Mormon women who had committed suicide when their husbands would threaten not to call their names on the morning of the First Resurrection, leaving them single (and unrisen, I suppose). The husbands would say this to punish them for something they didn't like, or to force compliance in some matter important to the male. He told me what he thought about a church who would not only condone men acting in that way towards their wives, but teach them that it was somehow holy or righteous to treat the woman as a mindless simpleton, subject to, as you say, the man's every whim. There was really no defense I could offer to him. He was absolutely right in what he said.

Grrr. My shrink told me about a woman who he was treating who was going through a very nasty, contentious legal (at that point not a temple) divorce. Her soon-to-be ex started calling her by her temple name and commanding her to knuckle under to his demands in the divorce.

Strangely, he was telling me this in the course of a discussion about why it was OK for women to tell men their temple names but not the other way round. (I was still a believer at the time - in fact years away from unbelief. But I told him that when I got married I would not be telling anybody my temple name unless I was paid back in like currency, and that if "The One" wasn't willing to do that, it was a deal breaker because he was clearly not "The One." No wonder no nice mormon boy was ever interested in me - I imagine that vibe must have been coming off me in waves. LOL.)

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The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less. ~ Arthur Miller

I thought that was creepy from day one. It's a transparently paternalistic, sexist, patriarchal power play. (Of course, there's only power involved when both parties are believers; but when they are, that's a massive amount of power that the man has over the woman. So fucking creepy.)

This was a huge issue for me. When I asked (many) people about this sexist policy I was basically told to not worry my pretty little head about it. It is so transparently patriarchal- there is no way to spin that one any other way.

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What other people think about me is none of my business.