25. The Church shows disrespect toward women by withholding the priesthood from them.
26. The Church should grant women the priesthood and the right to officiate in all the offices pertaining thereto.
27. The Church shows disrespect toward women by teaching that they should not achieve higher levels of educational attainment than their husbands.
28. The Church should not discourage women from obtaining all the education they can, regardless of the level of educational attainment achieved by their husbands.
29. The Church shows disrespect toward women by teaching that a married woman with children should not be employed outside the home.
30. The Church should acknowledge the independence and equality of women and should recognize and celebrate the diversity of choices women in the Church make with respect to their education and careers. The Church should encourage girls to do what they think is best with respect to career and family.
31. The Church shows disrespect for single adults by speaking to them as if they are children and defining them by their marital status.
32. The Church should acknowledge and apologize for the harm it has inflicted on single adults with its undue emphasis on marriage, and should recognize and celebrate the contributions of single adult members of the Church, whether they are widowed, divorced, or never married.
33. The Church shows disrespect for people of black African descent by failing to repudiate the racist doctrines used to justify and defend the policy under which black men were denied the priesthood until 1978.
34. The Church should repudiate the racism of its past leaders that led to the imposition and continuation of the priesthood ban and the Church should repudiate all scriptural interpretations or doctrinal pronouncements by past General Authorities that sought to justify or defend the Church’s racist policies.
35. The Church shows disrespect for Jews by continuing to allow temple work to be performed for Holocaust victims and by allowing the temple work for Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, and other prominent Nazis to be performed and recorded.
36. The Church should put in place controls to ensure that its agreement with Jewish leaders not to perform temple ordinances for Holocaust victims is honored and the Church should reverse any temple work done for known Nazi leaders and adopt procedures to prevent similar things from happening in the future.
I'm really liking these theses, E, keep em up!
Posted by: from the ashes | October 19, 2006 at 01:22 PM
As always, I want to thank you for your excellent blog. I also want to congratulate you on your 1 year anniversary as a NOM.
As I mentioned before, I'm looking forward to a book by you. You can write it in your spare time.
Posted by: GDTeacher | October 20, 2006 at 11:42 AM
Disclaimer: In my own personal opinion, I believe that it is only a matter of time before women are ordained to the priesthood in the Mormon church. I do not believe that there is anything in the canonical works of the church that ultimately prohibits women from being ordained to any office priesthood office in the church or from holding any ecclesiastical position. Even if one believes in gender roles in the home, it does not necessarily follow that there should be gender roles within the church organization as well.
In light of that disclaimer, isn't there kind of Catch-22 with regard to ordaining women to the priesthood? If the church doesn't ordain women, it is viewed as sexist. If it begins to ordain women, it is criticized for not doing it earlier or for political expediency rather than revelation. It seems unfair. I guess it's just part of the price for claiming to be the one true church.
Posted by: DPC | June 14, 2007 at 10:01 AM
Women HAVE the priesthood, DCP. They get it when they receive their endowments.
They just don't have permission to EXERCISE it, courtesy of Brigham Young.
Nowadays, it is rare that a Mormon woman even KNOWS that she has priesthood authority, the same as her husband. Such a revelation would be very hard to manage, so the church just goes along with the false idea that women MAY gain the ordination someday, in the future, if the LORD so wills it. But the truth is that they have suppressed this information on purpose so the women of the church won't be angry and upset upon learning that they are being treated just as the Blacks were 30 years ago.
Posted by: Astarte | June 17, 2007 at 12:53 PM