Skwim
Veteran Member
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"(RNS) —Last week, two seemingly unrelated stories appeared in my Facebook feed in rapid succession. The first was the unwelcome update that Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1993, has been denied re-baptism. Anderson’s excommunication was caused by her shining a light on what she called “ecclesiastical abuse” in the church. It was documented in a long, well-researched Dialogue article that chronicled how intellectuals and feminists were being disciplined by Mormon leaders for various things they wrote and said.
And then, Anderson herself was targeted for the things she wrote and said, her excommunication occurring as part of the famous purge of the group of church critics known as the “September Six.”
Since the 1990s, the church has made great strides in accepting as fact some of the exact claims that intellectuals, especially historians, were disciplined for writing about back in the day. Anderson was not excommunicated because the incidents she documented were false; she was excommunicated for bringing them to light. In church lingo, this was “conduct unbecoming a member.” Her sin was naming the incidents, and calling them abuse.
It seems logical that the shifting tides of how much better the church now treats intellectuals, coupled with Anderson’s stalwart church attendance and devotion in the intervening years, would have made her re-baptism a shoo-in. Nope. The First Presidency denied her request, apparently without explanation. It seems that the “shoot the messenger” approach is still with us.
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I’m sorry to be so blunt about it, but there is no way around the reality: Women do not lead men in this church. Ever. Women do not even lead teenage boys in this church. Starting from at least the age of 12, if not earlier, men are conditioned at church to see women as ancillary to decision-making.
It’s not surprising, given this reality, that male church leaders are more likely to believe male perpetrators than they are female victims.
It’s a trust issue. It is human nature that when we are presented with cold, hard facts about a person we have counseled with, served with and sat with for many hours in meetings, our knee-jerk reaction is to discredit anything bad about them. We want to continue believing that this person is exactly what we thought they were: the affable and loving bishop, the kindhearted and funny member of stake high council. When the accused are people we know personally, seeing their names in connection with degrading stories of sexual abuse and predatory misconduct does not compute.
This is why the system is entirely stacked against women. It’s not just that women in the LDS church are not permitted to make decisions that affect anyone but other women and perhaps children (and even then, such decisions must always be approved by male priesthood leaders). It’s also that women simply do not have the access to decision-makers that men do."
source
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"(RNS) —Last week, two seemingly unrelated stories appeared in my Facebook feed in rapid succession. The first was the unwelcome update that Lavina Fielding Anderson, who was excommunicated from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1993, has been denied re-baptism. Anderson’s excommunication was caused by her shining a light on what she called “ecclesiastical abuse” in the church. It was documented in a long, well-researched Dialogue article that chronicled how intellectuals and feminists were being disciplined by Mormon leaders for various things they wrote and said.
And then, Anderson herself was targeted for the things she wrote and said, her excommunication occurring as part of the famous purge of the group of church critics known as the “September Six.”
Since the 1990s, the church has made great strides in accepting as fact some of the exact claims that intellectuals, especially historians, were disciplined for writing about back in the day. Anderson was not excommunicated because the incidents she documented were false; she was excommunicated for bringing them to light. In church lingo, this was “conduct unbecoming a member.” Her sin was naming the incidents, and calling them abuse.
It seems logical that the shifting tides of how much better the church now treats intellectuals, coupled with Anderson’s stalwart church attendance and devotion in the intervening years, would have made her re-baptism a shoo-in. Nope. The First Presidency denied her request, apparently without explanation. It seems that the “shoot the messenger” approach is still with us.
.
.
.
I’m sorry to be so blunt about it, but there is no way around the reality: Women do not lead men in this church. Ever. Women do not even lead teenage boys in this church. Starting from at least the age of 12, if not earlier, men are conditioned at church to see women as ancillary to decision-making.
It’s not surprising, given this reality, that male church leaders are more likely to believe male perpetrators than they are female victims.
It’s a trust issue. It is human nature that when we are presented with cold, hard facts about a person we have counseled with, served with and sat with for many hours in meetings, our knee-jerk reaction is to discredit anything bad about them. We want to continue believing that this person is exactly what we thought they were: the affable and loving bishop, the kindhearted and funny member of stake high council. When the accused are people we know personally, seeing their names in connection with degrading stories of sexual abuse and predatory misconduct does not compute.
This is why the system is entirely stacked against women. It’s not just that women in the LDS church are not permitted to make decisions that affect anyone but other women and perhaps children (and even then, such decisions must always be approved by male priesthood leaders). It’s also that women simply do not have the access to decision-makers that men do."
source
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If I was raised in the Mormon faith I would be looking for an escape clause as soon as they let me read. 
In any case, here's a helpful clue. You know all those blue words that appear among all the black ones?
