Over the past five years or so, I’ve tried every so often to track down a particular conversation here at MSP about one of John Dehlin’s failures to tamp down a crisis he created for himself. Something about it nagged at me, and I wanted to review it. I was…
Category: Ordain Women
The Priesthood Is Magic
In 2010, as part of a panel at Sunstone called “Men and the Priesthood: Taking on the Feminine,” I presented a paper called “The Priesthood Is Magic” that I have been reminded of because of the uproar over Brad Wilcox’s dreadful talk to youth. The panel was the idea of…
Congratulations to X-Mormon of the Year 2014: Kate Kelly!!!
2014 has been quite a year for Ordain Women founder Kate Kelly! After again asking to be admitted to the priesthood session of General Conference, Kate Kelly was excommunicated (in absentia) by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Kate Kelly’s excommunication received widespread attention in the news, in…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Response edition
The big news this week is that Kate Kelly has appealed her excommunication. In her appeal, Kate wrote: I am, and have always been, a faithful Mormon. My only “sin†elucidated by you has been speaking my mind and pushing for gender equality in the Church. Far from being wrong,…
Jesus didn’t ordain women? — Prove it.
From Michael Otterson’s letter to Ordain Women: I suppose we do not know all the reasons why Christ did not ordain women as apostles, either in the New Testament or the Book of Mormon, or when the Church was restored in modern times. We only know that he did not,…
Women’s Ordination and Gay Equality – How They’re Connected
I’ve made this case before, in most detail in my 2011 Dialogue article “Mormon and Queer at the Crossroads,” that women’s roles in the Church and gay equality in the Church are intimately connected. This is not just a conceptual connection…historically, the Church has treated the two issues as though…
No Longer Afraid of the F Word
Last year my 20 year old son recommended I read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. I don’t think I had ever read an explicitly feminist text before that and it was an eye opener. I was surprised by how much the experiences of the women she wrote about resonated…
Saturday in Outer Blogness: Another Boring Conference Edition!
I’d like to do SiOB a little early this week because it looks like this conference is going to generate some interesting news. That news will be rolling in over the next few days, so let’s wrap up this past week’s posts separately before the news begins! (To give you…
Young women, Missions, and Church Culture
According to a Trib article Ashley Farr, a former Miss North Salt Lake Teen Miss USA, now a missionary in South Korea, has every expectation of being a parent and a businesswoman. She has some specific goals including an internship at Goldman Sachs, and being the chief executive of a…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: New words edition!
Maybe I should call this one the “smacked down further” edition. After last week’s smackdown, many others followed the church’s lead and added their own smacks (and critical analysis). This leads to this week’s first new word: instrayability — the Mormon equivalent of infallibility — and it seems to extend…