Two broad protest movements have been swirling around the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for the last several years. One is Ordain Women, an organization whose goal is the ordination of women to the Priesthood. The other is related to gay marriage, demanding that homosexual relationships are treated by the Church the same as heterosexual ones. This is not news to anyone close to the Church, and there is a lot of attack and defense of the Church related to these subjects. I don't feel a need to delve into most of it, as it's been done, and as I've done a good deal of thinking about it in other settings. But there is one particular comparison made by protesters and critics which I think is enlightening to approach. You see, leaders in both of these movements draw comparisons to the ordination of men of African descent to the priesthood. And so I would like to look at these three different movements, primarily from an LDS theological point of view, to point out some of the issues with this comparison.
The key theological understanding from which you need to approach these movements is what we refer to as "The Plan of Salvation." At its simplest, it's the idea that God has a broad plan involving Jesus Christ by which we can be saved. It's not an accident, God knows what He's doing. There are a lot of specifics that one could delve into, and most of them aren't necessary for our present discussion, but there is one thing which is both peculiar to Mormons and totally relevant: The end goal of that plan.
For Mormons, the greatest end of God's plan isn't for us to sit around all day playing harps. Rather, God's goal is that, as He is our Father and we are His children, He wants us to grow up to be like Him. He has the power to make more of us than we can imagine, and He wants us to have that joy, and in basically every way it requires us to "grow up" and be more like our Heavenly Parents. That last phrase is also peculiar to Mormons: we believe that in addition to a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. So, in the end, both men and women are supposed to grow to be like Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. That is the end of God's plan: More than a place, it is about a state of being.
Now there are actually a lot of things that are kind of fuzzy about that final state of being. But a couple of things are at least sort of clear about it. One thing that is pretty clear is that the very nature of that state of being requires man and woman working together. Just as Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother are working together eternally for the joy and salvation of Their children, so it must be with us. A fact of LDS doctrine is that marriage was originally instituted by God. While many purposes for marriage can be talked about, perhaps the most important reason for it is to prepare the couple to work together in eternity and to be able to receive, together, the greatest joy which God intends to give them. To Mormons, the scripture is literally true, "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:11), in that the joy God intends for them both cannot be achieved without their being bound together eternally in marriage. They have to be together, bound by the priesthood power of God.
At the same time, this is a joy which God intends for everyone. "Behold, hath the Lord commanded any that they should not partake of his goodness? Behold I say unto you, Nay; but all men are privileged the one like unto the other, and none are forbidden.... And he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile" (2 Nephi 26:28, 33).
These two principles will suffice. Let's start by looking at the issue of blacks and the priesthood.
Where I just quoted in 2 Nephi, I explicitly chose the part where it says, "black and white," and also the part about "Jew and Gentile." This one verse makes any restriction based on race or ethnicity (or, really, anything) for any blessing from the Lord completely out of line. At the same time, there are certainly examples of this. Biblically, we have the fact that only people of a very particular tribe (Levi) of the Jews had any access to the priesthood from the time of Moses until Christ. Much more recently, we have restrictions for anyone of African descent. The simplest way of understanding this issue is to note that God has an eternity to "work things out," He's not just limited to this life, so He can make it right. But still, that's difficult to swallow and kind of awkward. In fact, even many of the top leaders of the Church thought so while the priesthood ban was in effect. Spencer W. Kimball, who was the prophet when the ban was lifted, spent a long time praying in the Salt Lake Temple because he could not understand it, and because we can understand from verses like the ones I quote in 2 Nephi 26 that this cannot be the Lord's real, permanent plan. The priesthood ban always was theologically problematic, though some members of the Church tried their best to come up with explanations to understand it. In the end, even the Prophet, President Kimball, felt that the ban could not be removed without direct revelation from the Lord, and so he plead with the Lord on the behalf of these faithful brethren and sisters who could not receive all the blessings which the Lord seemed clearly to intend for them (based on scripture), at least they could not receive those blessings in this life. Eventually, as many in both the membership and the leadership of the Church expected, the revelation came, though it came in the Lord's time. The most interesting things about the Lord's timing, in my view, are that the Church (both many of the private members and many of the leaders of the Church) had been pleading for this revelation for some time, and that it came at a time when protests against the Church had been pretty limited in recent months (this is particularly noteworthy to me as some modern protesters look at this revelation from 1978 and speak as though it indicates that protest against the Church is a perfectly good way to get the Lord to change His mind, when in fact the history would seem to indicate, if anything, the opposite).
As to the original reason for the priesthood ban, that is purely a matter of speculation. I started writing some of the ones that seem most likely to me, but frankly, I would rather not that my speculation be taken as doctrine. What is essential is that the ban was in place, it was theologically problematic, but it required a revelation for it to be removed. That revelation came, eventually, after people humbly asked the Lord. This is a change which was pretty much demanded by the fundamental theology of the LDS Church.
The second movement that I'd like to mention is Ordain Women. In my view, the goal of this movement is certainly not required theologically, but not outright against the most fundamental aspects of the theology. The thing to remember is that, in LDS theology, men and women must fundamentally be taken together. The idea of comlimentarity of the sexes is really enshrined in the very nature of the end goal of the Plan of Salvation. You can't understand LDS theology by wholly separating men and women, as doctrinally they are so completely interdependent. At the same time, the idea of women being ordained to the priesthood is not obviously contrary to the fundamental theology. I frankly don't expect it, I frankly believe that the existence of the distinction between men's and women's roles in the priesthood is a matter of divine design and a part of the eternal Plan of Salvation (in ways which I do not yet fully understand), but I think it possible that the Lord will one day reveal that it is time for women to be ordained to the priesthood. I cannot tell you how it is that this cannot be, that it is contrary to the Lord's plan that women ever be ordained to the priesthood, but I also cannot see how it would be required that women are ordained to the priesthood.
The third movement is about homosexuality in the Church. Here, there is a fundamental difference and issue created by the very nature of the Plan of Salvation. Given that the ultimate goal of God's plan fundamentally requires man and woman bound together in marriage for the very existence of the final desired state, I cannot see the Church budging on the larger questions related to homosexuality. Perhaps the Church will, as it has in recent decades, come to understand better the difficulties those who are alternately called "same-sex attracted" (a term which the Church uses because it is very clear in differentiating the desires and attractions of people from their choices and actions, which is a key component of the Gospel understanding of moral agency) or LGBT (a term which has the advantage of being better recognized and accepted by the community it describes, but which the Church only uses occasionally because the way the terms "lesbian," "gay," etc., are used often make the distinction of desire and choice more difficult to see) face and so better seek to address the needs of this community, but I do not think that certain fundamentals can change, because changing them would be to act directly at odds with the eternal joy which God desires His children to eventually receive. As this is so, it seems that what the Lord considers a chaste life, and what the Church will continue to consider a chaste life, will require our "gay brothers and sisters" (as one friend so wonderfully puts it) to remain celibate.
This fact requires a bit more commentary from me. If a faithful, orthodox member of the Church reads this blog, I want you to consider carefully that fact, and how much it stinks and how hard it must be for our gay brothers and sisters. I only got married about a year ago, and chastity required celibacy of me until that point. Well, sometimes that's hard. But think harder, it's worse than that for our gay brothers and sisters. You don't just have to remember the difficulty and pain of not being able to fully connect or express yourself romantically. You have to add to that a missing hope. I always had hope that I could get married and receive all the associated joy in this life. At best, our gay brothers and sisters who are seeking to be faithful to the teachings of the Gospel can hope that such blessings will be available to them in the next life. And, worse, given that "neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man," this is a Church that is built around families. So for the whole of their lives, our faithful, gay brothers and sisters cannot so much as hope to receive all that you might hope for, stuck in a place where they can see that they're missing out, left behind in a Churh that seems to be built for everyone else. Yes, they can build their lives in other faithful, positive ways, but my point here is that as faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, even while we acknowledge the almost certain permanence of the Church's position, it is our absolute duty to understand to the best of our ability the struggles of others, to build empathy for their plight, to "mourn with those that mourn; yeah, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort" (Mosiah 18:9), to love, to support, to uphold, to help, and to serve. This is always true: even when you feel it is your duty to defend the Church (as it sometimes is), you cannot shirk your responsibility to be kind in the least.
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