Transcript of the podcast Mormon Expression Episode 282: Why the Church Cannot Reform on the Gay Marriage Issues. Narrated by John Larsen.
John: All right, welcome back to another edition of Mormon Expression; I'm your host, John Larsen. We're here in beautiful Salt Lake City with another fabulous studio audience: good evening! [Applause] Thanks everybody for coming. We're down to the final four; it is December 2014 and yeah, we're almost done.
I realized a long time ago, that to be a successful podcaster, or broadcaster, you're not talking to whoever's sitting in front of you--and when you start, it's just your living room sitting in front of you anyway--but you have to talk to everybody out there listening. Then I realized, a couple of years ago, that I'm talking mostly to people way in the future. Because the podcast gets downloaded for years and years and years, so... good evening, future people! I don't know what I'm doing now, but I'm sure it's fantastic.
John: Well, let's start, first of all, with our campaign. The campaign is going well, we're not quite there yet. I announced in the podcast, a couple of weeks ago, that we started a campaign to fund this studio. The studio that we're in is owned and operated by White Fields Educational, which, among other things like hosting podcasts, does community events. We just recently had an introduction to the Salt Lake City arts scene; it went off fantastically. We had artists, who are local artists... as a matter of fact, the chief artist--just because this is a Mormon Expression podcast--was actually a Mormon. No one knew that in there, but he's a faithful Mormon. He came out to the community center, showed us his art, we went to his studio, and we just were able to plug into the arts scene. These are the kinds of things that we're trying to get a foothold in, in Salt Lake City, to be able to provide culture and other connections that are outside the auspice and control of religion.
So among the things like supporting the podcast, and other things like that, we're asking to help fund this studio, this community space. In return, we are going to open this space up in 2015, free of charge, to anyone who is doing a community-related event. I've had people contact me already; I'm excited about some of the things that we have in the works. But for those who want to do a community event, we want to provide this space free of charge, so that they don't have to overcome that obstacle of paying rent in order to make that happen.
And to continue to support our podcasts, like this and Mormon Expression Voices, what we're hoping is to reduce that cost, by having this campaign to fund the studio for the first six months of 2015. If you go to mormonexpression.com or whitefieldseducational.org, there's a little widget up in the corner that'll allow you to donate to that campaign. We're trying to raise $5,000 to cover the operational cost of this. If you appreciate the podcast and what it's done for you, please go out there and throw us a couple bucks. It goes 100% to the operational cost of the studio; nobody whets their beak off of that money... except the guys who are doing the fundraising credit card processing.
All right... oh, the other big announcement! I know there's been some question... in the podcast I've said, "Oh, we're down to the end," and then the boards light up and say, "Wait, I thought you weren't ending it!" I am pleased to announce that I have hired the replacement host. The replacement host has been chosen, and will begin broadcasting in January. I'm not yet ready to tell you who that is, but I am excited. It was a long process, one in which we gave a lot of thought and consideration to.
I will be continuing on as executive producer of the podcast, and I think I might be coming on about once a month or so as a supporting panelist. So, I'm not dead yet, but the podcast will be changing personality, and will have a new host. I'm really excited for this, for me personally, as I can focus on other things, particularly some of the objectives we're trying to do in White Fields, and just sort of move on, and that's some of the things we'll be talking about in the next couple of weeks. So I'm excited about that.
Um... the news! We didn't do a podcast last week, but there's been one big story over the last two weeks. BYU is a weird place, and has been for a long time. I have a love-hate relationship with BYU. I graduated from the university. And I realized a few years ago, that no matter what success I ever accomplished in my life, even though I'm alma mater, BYU would never acknowledge it.
And it's not just me--because I'm kind of an Antichrist or whatever--but anybody who abandons the faith, even as a matter of conscience--y'know, changes from one faith to the other, as a matter of faith--BYU will not only ignore them, but they won't even acknowledge them as alma mater. You can watch notable alma mater, and if the individual, for whatever reason, has renounced or moved on from the faith, they will be--in 1984 fashion--blotted out.
Now what's fascinating is that BYU still asks me for money. [Laughter] But my problem with BYU, and why I will not support it, even though it's my school, is because of that simple fact. So... I'm just laying my bias out there. Although I believe I got a fantastic education at BYU, and my experience as an undergraduate was great, I am very disappointed in the cult-like behavior of refusing to acknowledge their own alma mater, no matter what success they go on to. And I think that speaks basically everything you need to know about BYU. If you want a supplement, we have this story from last week.
BYU, for a long time, has had "beard cards." We've talked about this more than once, but in the Red Scare podcast a little bit ago we talked about how Ernie Wilkinson, during the blowback years, instituted the idea that you could not have a beard. Now what's funny is that you can have a porn moustache... so I don't know what's creepier these days. See, look, I have a beard... Nathan has a moustache. Which of the two of us looks creepier? [Laughter] I think, definitely, it's Nathan... you've got the little Satanic... what do you call the thing on your chin? It's like a landing strip, but on your chin?
So, BYU has upped the game. And this is going to come into the podcast tonight. For a long time they've required "beard cards." Now what everybody knows at BYU is most people at BYU do not give a fuck about beards. 99.9% of the faculty and 98% of the student body--the students are still trying to figure out themselves a little bit--do not care about men's facial hair. But the university has required enforcement at the place they can, which is the Testing Center. Everybody has to go to the Testing Center, so that's where they enforce this. There's a couple other places, like to get your gym clothes... do they still make... who's been to BYU recently? Anybody? You guys look like a bunch of heathens, so I dunno...
When I was at BYU they had these little tiny shorts... like, BYU would go on and on about modesty, and then you'd go down to the gym, and you'd have to wear these little, like... they were tiny shorts! They were embarrassingly short shorts! And you couldn't wear anything else, you had to check them out. And that was another place when I was there, they enforced the beard rule.
Well, you could get a "beard card," for religious reasons, and for medical conditions, like if you had a skin rash or something. [Audience says something] ...Oh, and theatrical! Yes, please, that's an important one! Yes, if you were playing one of the 12 Disciples or whatever... [Laughter]
Speaking of which--we'll just go off on tangents today--This American Life, the best radio show ever made, for a while had a cable show, where they did, like, This American Life with film. Go find it if you can. There's an amazing bit, they do it in Utah... there's a painter who paints--I can't even remember the guy's name--but he paints pictures of, like, biblical times. But the whole gist of it is, him trying to find models... because the mindset of Mormons is that the holy fathers--the 12 disciples, and the prophets--look a certain way. But... that's not the way people in the Church look! So he has to go find, like, homeless people and others to be models. It's this fascinating meditation on religion in the past versus the way we see "holiness" now. It's brilliant. In This American Life fashion, they don't make any strong conclusions, but it's interesting to watch this artist--he's an LDS guy--struggle with this paradigm while not criticizing the Church.
Anyway, so, they upped the game. You don't just have a beard card, you have to actually wear the Star of David--the beard card--around your fucking neck, all the time. And it doesn't hang low--'cause you're thinking about, "Oh, I went to, like, Comic Con, and I had this thing that hung down, like, below my saggy boobs"--not there! It's riding high, up here, where it's in line of sight. So it's a Scarlet Letter, having to wear this thing around.
There was a great story, I think it was in the Tribune, I can't remember, where they interviewed this guy, and he had a theatrical exception. And he talked about how he didn't want to offend... he was offending people, because he had a beard, because he was going to appear in a BYU production with a beard on! So he shaved it off, because he had to wear this shame card around.
But along with the card, BYU upped the game. I read there was a Shiek--it's traditional to wear beards, but it's not an actual religious prohibition--and BYU revoked his religious exception. So BYU is now going and enforcing other religions' standards on facial hair. It's crazy. And we're going to come back to this point tonight, but BYU is going more crazy on this.
Now people think, "Why doesn't BYU... this is just a nonsense thing!" That's why BYU will not capitulate. This is a pissing match, and BYU has to show that they are not going to be influenced by "the world." And they're going to give all the hipsters at BYU--poor guys, all you have is skinny jeans. You don't have a ratty beard, just skinny jeans, suck it up--so all the hipsters at BYU can't grow beards.
Anyway, that's the news.
Charles: Skinny jeans are out... I guess they're out for the girls.
John: They work for you, Charles! Don't change what you're doing. The skinny jeans, they're working. What was your question?
Charles: I'm not gonna give them up. But last year the problem was skinny jeans for the girls!
John: There's always something, right? You have to--I'm going to sound Chomskyan--you always have to have a diversionary battle. You have to have a battle to focus people's energy on something that's nonsensical but wastes billions of dollars.
Audience Member: The NFL.
John: You have to take the population and get them focused on bullshit that doesn't matter, and they spend billions and billions and billions of dollars. This is how you control a society. Right?
So, when you look at the Church, or in the government, or wherever, what people are arguing about and fussing about... it's all bullshit. And it's that way on purpose. That's how your fearful masters control you.
Wow, we're going in deep early, aren't we? [Laughter]
John: So, tonight we're talking about a topic that I've been arguing with Mormon and ex-Mormon intellectuals about for some time. I apparently have a kind of unique position in that I say the Church cannot and will not change its position on homosexuality. And tonight we're going to go through the case of why I think that's the way it is.
But first I want to argue with liberals a little bit. There's an article that was published on November 30th in the Salt Lake Tribune. It's a very important article that says in the last four years, Utah's population has had a change in the LDS demographics. I'm sure most of you out there listening, you ex-Mormons and people on the edge know this, right? Well, which way is the demographic changing?
Utah is becoming more Mormon. Over the past four years, the population—by outside, not Church sources, outside census sources—shows a higher percentage of the population of the State of Utah is becoming LDS. And not only that, the population of Salt Lake County, which is oftentimes the donut theory of Utah, which I think is for the most part, true, it tends to be a lot more secular. I'm told it's a lot more gay friendly... but I don't know what gay friendly means! I mean, I say hi to gays, but is that friendly enough? Do I have to give a back rub or...? [Laughter] To be "gay friendly," what do I actually have to do? But the Salt Lake County population is now 51 percent Mormon; it crossed the line.
I've been rereading a lot of the books that were really important when I first was deconstructing my faith. Books like Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer. I just read The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt again. I read 1984. Anyway, I might come to it later, but these books that talk about our cognitive biases and how we arrive at those and those sorts of things, when I read them first nine, ten years ago, I applied them all to the Mormons. When I just read them recently, all I could think about was ex-Mormons the whole time. I could see all of those same cognitive biases coming out in the community that I've been participating in, and in myself. I can see them playing out in my own points of view as they've evolved over the last 10 or 20 years, first on one plane and then on another plane.
We live in a society that is very polarized these days, bifurcated really. Liberals versus conservatives, Democrats versus Republicans, atheists versus theists. And we're dividing everything into these camps. And we also live in an era where we are literally in feedback loops, where Google and Facebook will start telling you and showing you what it thinks you want to see. If you go out on different boards, you'll see this post about every month: somebody will come in and say, "You know what guys? We're winning the war against the Church! I just typed 'Mormon' into Google and you know what was the first thing that came up? MormonThink! The first thing that comes up are these anti-Mormon sites!" I got news for you. All you're doing is you're surrounding yourself with people who are just like you. You've left one echo chamber and entered into another one.
The problem with the liberal bias—and I’m not using “liberal” the way Rush Limbaugh uses it, I'm using “liberal” in terms of those who want to reform, those who want to change something... progressives. So now I'm going to hone down my attack on people who are wanting to reform the Church, who I've gotten into fights with before and they still haven't forgiven me... we're not really talking about ex-Mormons that much, but ex-Mormons participate in this quite a bit. We're talking about Church reformers, Church liberals.
Church liberals tend to surround themselves with other liberals. And what I find fascinating is there has seemed to be, over the last six months or a year, a belief that they're driving the entire LDS theological dialogue. There has entered into this LDS liberal sort of thinking, the idea that everybody is hanging on their every word. Everybody is paying attention to exactly what they're doing. And there is some reason for this... you take individuals like Kate Kelly who received national attention.
There's a problem that we critics point out in the Church: whenever the Church does an open house with a temple, they shine the big fucking floodlights on that thing and they think everybody's gonna see how beautiful this temple is, everybody's going to see how important and how great we are, and they're all going to want to convert to the Church, right? It's a patently ridiculous way of thinking.
Matter of fact, I'll give you a thought exercise. Suppose I have here on this desk, research. I took the top researchers of all the best universities of the world and we went through and we analyzed the 200 major religions of the world. Every religion that has more than, say, 50,000 people. And we did it on healthy living, longevity, happiness, child rearing. We took every possible psychological and matter of life that you would say is quality of living. And we determined which religion is the best.
Okay, so thought exercise. Pretend I have this here, sitting on the edge of this desk. You know it's one of the 200 major world religions. Could be Scientology, could be Hinduism. You don't know, but you do know that they came out on top and the scientists have looked at this through and through and the scientists say there is statistically significant evidence that this religion is better at life than every other religion.
Okay, thought exercise. Clear your mind. Put yourself there. Now, I'm going to ask you, without me having revealed the name of the religion, would you commit to seriously considering or joining the religion without knowing which one it is?
Nobody would.
And as a matter of fact, the minute I expose that to you, if you're not already a member of that religion or that thought cycle, you would immediately start constructing these long winded things to justify and dismiss all that. Oh well, they say they're happier, but they're not really happy. They say they're living long, but who wants to live past 80 anyway? They say they raise good kids, but I hate kids. You would immediately start line by line deconstructing all that kind of stuff.
So the problem I've seen is that is there is this bias that believes that the liberalization of Mormonism is driving the dialogue, and I think it comes from a place of hubris. The reason I gave that population statistic is: how much of LDS culture outside of these ex-Mormon and liberal Mormon circles is really liberalizing?
If you go into Deseret Book right now, you will find a book that is the story of Cliven Bundy. He's the one who got into a standoff with federal agents. He was illegally grazing his cattle on federal land, he was clearly in violation of the law! And the division of natural resources or whoever it is, the forestry service, tried to get his illegal cows off there, and he drew down on them. And then he arms and gets all of his other buddies there too, to try to get a standoff with the feds! He actually tries to engage in some kind of shooting match. He's illegal, immoral and completely unjustified.
But in the Church, he represents a conservative position of anti-federalism, which is a hyper-conservative position. Utah is moving more conservative. It's becoming more polemic just like the rest of the country is. So what I find fascinating is there's this drumbeat that somehow the Church is about to liberalize, while all the core Church members are themselves moving more conservative. This is a product of confirmation bias, of the liberals thinking their position is so fucking compelling that all the Mormons in the pews are just about to buy it. And it's really naïve, because we see so many, so many things where the Church is moving in the other direction.
A couple more interesting things I want to say here (at least interesting to me, I don't care about the rest of you). Mormonism has always thrived on being persecuted and being the minority. This idea that there's so much social pressure coming on the Church that they're going to have to change, and so therefore they're going to reverse their theology, is ridiculous, based on 170 years of Mormon theology. This gives Mormons hard-ons! They love when everybody's against them because it gives them a sense of identity, it gives them a sense of purpose. When they achieve power, like in this state, they get lost in the woods. When they can play the minority persecution card, they love it. The idea that the United States and the federal law moving towards more tolerance for gays will somehow drive a theological change, I think is ridiculous.
The other main point I want to make here before we go onto theologically why they can't change: the Church really has a zero sum game here. A worse than zero sum game. What if they did it? What if tomorrow they said, all right, we're reversing the position. We recognize gay marriage. What would happen?
There's all these liberals who've been pushing for this. Now, do you think they're going to go to their bishops tomorrow and say, "I was wrong! Here, I was paying 8% tithing, now here's fucking 10%, and sign me up for one of the hard callings, and by the way, I'm throwing out all my blue and pink shirts! I am on board, man! You hit my point, I'm no longer going to be a thorn in your side, I am going to be Mr. Obedient."
Bullshit. None of them are going to change their disposition whatsoever. So the people who are pushing for it, the Church gains nothing from them. And meanwhile, 70% of the Church walks out and forms a neoconservative hardline version of Mormonism.
The Church has long been in a battle against conservatism and liberalism, but I contend that the Church has always been, rightfully so, more concerned about the fundamentalists and the conservatives because they are more dangerous than the liberals. Liberals are always in some circlejerk somewhere, arguing amongst themselves about diversity and tolerance. People who are really into tolerance don't make good revolutionaries. So it's the conservatives that the Church is concerned about.
Alright, so that sort of outlines the case. Let's go through and talk about specifically. All right, so, the podcast tonight is about why the Church cannot change. I just explained why they won’t, but why can’t they do it?
When I've had these arguments with very bright people I've always ended in the same place. I'm going to end this with a challenge to everybody listening: when we're done here, if you think I'm wrong, formulate a theology that addresses all the 20 points I'm about to give you and bring it back to me. Because I don't believe there's any path to reform. And I'm going to outline that.
So, first of all, we acknowledged the Church is under a lot of pressure and they have been under pressure before. But let's really acknowledge the Church's position. Let's make sure we're clear. Any and all sexual activity outside of a heterosexual marriage is currently defined by the Church as sinful and is grounds for excommunication. And that is practiced by—like, birth control is considered sinful in the Catholic church, but no one's going to deny you Mass for practicing birth control. But if you engage in sexual activity outside of a heterosexual marriage, in most cases, you will be excommunicated, especially if you continue on with that.
Homosexuality is considered a perversion and sinful in and of itself. Now, half of the theological leaders in the Church have come to this position of, if you are a non-practicing homosexual, you are in a state of "sin but grace" because you're not acting on it, but the act itself is still considered sinful by nature. Homosexuality is a sinful and wrong thing in and of itself. Not just because it's practiced outside of marriage, because there's been a few coy apologists who have tried to do this sleight of hand trick where they say, "well, the Church prohibits sexual activity outside of a marriage, and you can't get married, ergo, you can't have homosexual sex." But the Church has shown that in places where homosexuality has been legalized, that this sinful stigma against homosexuality has not been removed.
Alright. Celibate homosexuals may remain in full fellowship. However, to achieve top callings in the Church, one must be married. And in a lot of places—and it has been institutionalized from time to time—that even includes being a bishop. So if you are a celibate homosexual, you will be relegated to second class citizen because you can't get married, you can't have children, you'll never achieve any sort of high calling or any kind of status within the Church. You'll be a secondary.
So, if you kind of boil that down, the current Church's stand on homosexuality is "pretend it doesn't exist." If you are homosexual, we're not necessary going to say you can change that. We tried that, it didn't work. Um, and we found out that Evergreen was just a place for gay guys to hook up, and that was kinda bad. ...Is it still out there? I think it is. I think you can still go find.. [audience speaking] ...It's North Star now. So the Church, the Church set up one of its quasi-independent organizations called North Star.
Audience Member: I'm not completely familiar with it, but from what I know, Evergreen is not associated with the Church like FARMS and FAIR. But I know that Evergreen shut down and it's now North Star. And one thing I find is the members that are part of these groups are the most anti-gay people you will find. They are gayer than Christmas itself. And yet they are most anti-gay individuals. And if you're part of that group and you say, "Hey, I, uh, I think I'm gonna not do this whole Mormon thing or the whole celibate thing anymore..." you are Satan and they will attack you and do whatever they can to demonize you.
John: So it's another mechanism of control.
Audience Member: Oh, yeah, and it's really bad. And it's one of the reasons a lot of people do bad things to themselves because of it.
John: Absolutely. So, so the current state of affairs is to sort of pretend it doesn't exist, and try to control and make it hidden. This is not working. We all recognize that. So the Church has two real options. One is to recognize homosexuals in a second class citizenship route, and the other is the route of full equality. We'll address the second class citizen route first, and then we'll talk about full equality.
So, status quo is, "homosexuals are not allowed participation, or they're allowed participation as long as they are basically not homosexual." So it's no recognition of homosexuality, it's, not dealing with it, it's sinful, homosexuals are the Other. So they can stick with the status quo, which I believe they will to some degree or the other.
Second class citizenship would grant partial rights and privileges but not full rights and privileges. And there could be lots of different varieties of that, just as long as they don't have full rights. This was attempted in the Church, previously, with those of supposed, so-called "African" descent.
There's a word out there that had been taken over by capitalists. The word is "save." Do you know what "save" means? It means to not give something away. That's what it used to mean. If I said I'm saving money, that meant I wasn't spending it. Nowadays the word "save" means to spend. So you say, "come on down to Walmart for big savings," right?
So people out there are trying to distort and warp language. And the Church has pulled off an amazing coup on using the words "Blacks and the Priesthood." Because what you had prior to 1978 is institutionalized systemic discrimination against black people. It had nothing to do with the fucking Priesthood. Black women were not allowed to pray in Church. They weren't allowed to go do baptisms for the dead in the temple.
And we can go on and on and on about different things that were denied that have nothing to do with the Priesthood, but they've done that same sort of Madison Avenue manipulation of language to make it look like it was all about the Priesthood, and Priesthood is a right, it's something that's given if you've earned it, it's not something that just a privilege granted to all... that's bullshit and they know it and we know it and the racism is still in their scripture, still in the Book of Mormon, still in the Pearl of Great Price.
So that did not work. And one of the problems is it would obviously not work. Let's say for example, in the second class citizenship model, the Church follows the same paradigm. We're facing down the fact that within a few short years, homosexual marriage will be recognized and legal everywhere in the United States. It's really close. And so the Church could apply its same standard of chastity—no sexual relationship before marriage—to homosexual couples and then allow them partial privilege in the Church. We're not going to excommunicate them. They can hold some callings, but not other callings. We're not going to let them in the temple, or we're going to let them in the temple but we're not going to let them have sealings, or whatnot.
But what would happen is that members of the Church would immediately, within 10 or 15 years, especially younger people, recognize the hypocrisy of this. They would say, "Brother Smith is the most spiritual guy we know, and brother Jones is kind of a douche, but Brother Jones became the bishop. Why?" Well... we can't put Brother Smith in as the bishop because he's a fag. We have to go with the guy who's less righteous because he doesn't have the stigma of homosexuality.
That would absolutely play out in the second class citizenship status, just as it did in mixed race communities before 1978. If you talk to people about things like Brazil, where we had a large mixing of the races, it just didn't make any sense at all and so it would just confuse people and would in fact point to the fallacy of the religion. How can you have a religion where you have two individuals, where one is living the religion and has the gift of the Holy Ghost, and spiritual intuition, and is a great leader, and everything we cultivate in Mormonism... but he is out of recognition, because even though he's in a legal and loving marriage, we don't recognize that marriage as being as good as this one over here? We would put people who are in abusive or borderline abusive heterosexual relationships above people who have beautiful relationships and have spiritual and emotional integrity and standards, simply because of the nature of their marriage, which we would be acknowledging as being okay!
That duplicity would tear the Church apart. Just like it tore the United States apart in the 20th century. Separate but equal does not work, especially when the separate but equal has a stigma on it. If we had separate but equal in North Carolina and to become a school teacher or a principal, you had to come from the white schools, it's doubly bad. That's what this would be. We would have separate but equal—these two different marriages, but this one route to righteousness.
And don't give me the bullshit that all callings are equal. As long as the Deseret News puts out the history of callings for Mission Presidents, we know that's not true, and as long as they're sitting on those big fucking red chairs, we know it's not true.
So that would in and of itself actually exacerbate the problem we have now. To give partial recognition of homosexual marriage would show a glaring spotlight on the prejudice and inequality that we have against the homosexuals.
So that leaves only one option. Full equal rights. Homosexual relationships and marriages are recognized and treated exactly the same as heterosexual marriages.
The first problem with that, if we just did that right now, is it really impacts the female membership of the Church. Because for so long in Mormon theology, men have had the divine and eternal role of being the priesthood and leader. And women have this eternal divine role of being the nurturer and the caregiver for children. If you go to a point where two men can get married in the temple and adopt children, women in the Church on that day have absolutely zero value in the eternities. None whatsoever. They serve no purpose whatsoever.
Audience Member: I was just going to point out, you seem to think that only men are homosexual, you've not addressed homosexual women in the Church at all, yet.
John: Well, there's a reason, because the Church itself functions on on this male Priesthood. What we're talking about is recognition of homosexual marriage. So two men married together have the full rights of the Priesthood. They now have sealing. They can seal their children to them, they have everything they need for eternal progression.
Two women, on the other hand, sealed together, have nothing. There's no Priesthood in the home, right? They can adopt children, but the progression of the Plan of Salvation is this role and responsibility of progressing towards eternal Godhood, which are rights and passages of the Priesthood.
Well, the answer is simple. You have to ordain all the women, which would be absolutely paramount. You cannot have a recognition of homosexual marriage unless you ordain women also. Those two things have to go hand in hand. Okay? Anybody want to argue with me on that point?
So the only way out of this dilemma is to ordain women because otherwise it would just be such a blow to two women and the idea of female and feminine. Once women have the full priesthood, we run into a set of problems culturally now. Now that we have to support this equal thing, we have a whole bunch of superfluous stuff in the Church, right?
The Relief Society itself ceases to have any meaning because while the Relief Society is meeting the Priesthood Quorums are meeting. Okay, so you can do one of two things. You can extend the block so all the women can go to the Priesthood meetings, where not only are there lessons just like there are in Relief Society, but the business of the Church happens. Things like passing the Sacrament, assignments for that, doing fast offerings. These are done during these quorum meetings. The women, you have to put them in these quorums. You can't have them "separate but equal." The women are teachers and priests and deacons and elders, but they don't go to the meetings?
So you have this meeting with women who have the full rights of the priesthood with the men... but then the women have to go to another meeting called Relief Society? That's ridiculous. But destroying Relief Society destroys an entire heritage of work. Now, the Church really made the decision to destroy the Relief Society in 1961. Actually, Joseph made the decision in '42 when they were sniffing at his business, but then we brought them back 20 years later and then with correlation and all that kind of stuff, we've been slowly dismantling the Relief Society from the robust wonderful organization it used to be.
But you can't have these two parallel things. So you have to get rid of that completely. And of course you have to get rid of the Young Men, the Young Women's program for the same cause. You can say, oh, it's a wonderful program--it may or may not be--but you either have to have all the boys go in and do the Young Women's program simultaneously, or you have to have an instance where the girls go to Priesthood, then go to the separate meeting and no one wants to do that. That's not going to happen.
[audience member asks a question]
John: The question was can girls become Boy Scouts by the Boy Scouts of America? They can become boy scouts after the age of 14, which are the explorers...? Or the varsity scouts or whatever. But the LDS church, which is the biggest donor to the Boy Scouts, does not allow girls in any of those things. So if an LDS ward has a sponsored explorer troop, the LDS church discriminates against women and doesn't allow them in. But between the ages of 8 and 12. both the BSA and the Mormon church discriminate against women.
So, once we have that, we lose the distinctiveness of gender in the Church. Dominoes start falling, and they're big ones. So let's go into the temple. You have this division where you have women sitting on one side, men sitting on the other side, and women veiling their faces. That doesn't make any sense anymore. It's just nonsense. Because there is no distinction between them, and especially no reason for the women to veil their faces in an act of submission.
Even the whole narrative of the woman partaking of the fruit and then being punished in childbearing and being redeemed by the man who steps down out of grace... we've talked about temple before, and a lot of this is based on Biblical bullshit. So the woman goes and sins and then according to Mormonism, Adam didn't follow her. He didn't succumb to the sin. If you go to the temple, you find that he chose to remain with the woman. It wasn't an act of defiance against God. Man—meaning people with twigs and berries—they did not defy God. They just chose to not abandon womankind.
And so in Mormon theology, from the foundation, men are superior to women because men did not succumb to the devil trickery that females did, and men descended out of their state of grace to save the woman. This is why in the temple, women pledge to obey their husbands and not to obey God.
Now in 1990 they made a change—I'm not making this shit up, man! This is all real!—Prior to 1990, women would just pledge to obey their husband, but then they added a kicker phrase, "as he obeys God." But there's a paradox in that there's no route for the woman to know if the man is obeying God or not, because God is not talking to her directly. The only thing she has to do is go off his word and if she doubts him, well... read Joseph Smith's revelation to Emma. She's going to be destroyed. She's in a paradox where she has to obey him only inasmuch as he's obeying God, but she has no way to know if he's obeying God or not.
This all gets destroyed once we ordain women and give full fellowship. The temple ceases to have any meaning. So this is probably the central paradox and the most important argument here. The thing that's being asked for is that homosexuals, be they men or women, can marry in the temple. But once you allow them to marry in the temple, you destroy the entire meaning of the temple. It no longer has any significance whatsoever when you remove gender and gender bias from the fundamentals of LDS theology.
...Alright, so let's go on further of how it destroys the Church! So the whole myth of Adam and Eve, which is sort of the foundational doctrinal element of the Church, is gone. Poof. Let's look at just operational things, day in and day out. The missionary program of companions as a means of control: well, once you have the fact that you may or may not be assigning somebody to somebody they can get busy with, the intimate pairing of M/M, F/F doesn't really have paradigm meaning anymore. And even the controlling structure of zone leaders and women and men and all that kind of stuff... the whole missionary program gets turned on its ear rather quickly.
Let's talk about some other theological breakdowns. Let's talk about resurrection. Resurrected bodies don't need to eat or poop and we've already established theologically that you don't need a body to think. So the best I can tell in the LDS paradigm, the body itself has only four functions. To think, which is the soul completely. To eat: Jesus ate the fish. Presumably he excreted it at some point: to poop. And the other one is to procreate. There's no other point in having a body, right?
As a matter of fact, even in LDS theology, some people say the reason we have a Holy Ghost—this has been a question perplexing Christian theologians for a long time—in the LDS paradigm they say, well it's because God and Jesus are sort of trapped in bodies, so they can't go everywhere, but the Holy Ghost can. Well, that's not a positive! That's a negative, right? So why in the world, if procreation is an eternal principle—which, let's be clear, is absolutely a key element of Church doctrine—if gender is no longer necessary for marriage, then two women can form an eternal bond and have no route to eternal procreation. That makes no sense. The whole doctrine of resurrection is meaningless!
Now, some people might think I'm going way off the path, but let's go. Let's take a step back. The Church today goes and says, we recognize homosexual marriage. Three years from now, they're opening the book and talking about resurrection. These thoughts are going to come across everyday: "Why are we taught this? This doesn't make any sense whatsoever!" It only makes sense in the paradigm of these eternal necessities for a body.
Even most Christian theology does not take resurrection as literally as Mormons do. They don't necessarily believe that you're literally physically going to be resurrected into a body of flesh and blood. It's more about you're just going to come back to life after you're dead, that you'll still be able to enjoy that.
Audience Member: Doesn't polygamy solve the procreation in the eternities? You have a homosexual couple that's married, sealed for all time and eternity, and they just add a gentleman to it.
John: Well, I think that's a possible way out, but it's... first of all, it's insulting. It goes back to the element of "you're not recognizing homosexuality anymore." You're saying, "We'll recognize it now, but you're really gonna be a heterosexual. In the long run, you're really going to be one." So you're going down into that separate but equal, that second-class citizenship thing again. Which, if you're going to do that, why would you allow for sealing to say these relationships are eternal? To follow that line of reasoning, you would say, "Well, this is your lot in life. It's okay during this life to be married until death do you part, but in the eternities you're going to get fixed." And it's that concept that I think theologically has a problem. Okay? Okay.
God is a man and, and this is key and imperative and figures into the theology over and over again. If we allow for this change to happen doctrinally, maleness ceases to have any theological meaning whatsoever. And I think a lot of people, especially all my liberal friends who I've been insulting for the past hour, would say "good." I mean, why? Why do we need that?
The reason we need it is because of what it does historically to all of this text and all this information. It really turns virtually everything on its head. And I think that's the subtle takeaway when you get to the bottom of the list, is once you make this change, nothing makes sense at all anymore. The entire theology just goes poof, and it has to be completely reconstructed. And once you have to completely reconstruct the theology, what's the point? Why call yourself a Mormon at all?
I've asked liberal friends straight out; I say to them, "What you're describing is Unitarian Universalists. Is that what you want the theology to look like?" And a lot of them say yes! So why an overly complicated Unitarian church that has all this weird Mormon theology nobody wants to deal with? Why haul that shit around, when you could just go become a Unitarian? If you're going to destroy the ties to your Mormon roots in Mormon theology, why do it? It doesn't have any meaning.
Audience Member: I do kind of think that Mormonism has a Universalistic approach. No one really goes to hell, technically, except for Outer Darkness, but that's for reserved for bastards like us. But I think when you look at some of Joseph Smith and what he did, he was easily inspired by Freemasonry and a lot of Freemason writings at the time had Masonic influence and a universalistic approach. And I know, I don't remember who it was, but it was a Universalist who was a Freemason, who basically stated that he believed that the rituals they performed represented Adam and Eve in the garden. When you look at Mormonism and you look at the older 19th century Universalistic approach, it does seem like they have something to do with each other.
John: Well, no, I think it's an excellent point. I guess my answer would be the Universalism came into Mormon theology early, and the Kirtland, New York Mormon theology was very Universalist. And although there's a strong Universalist tie in in Freemasonry—I think you're correct on that point—the doctrinal innovations by Smith that were later picked up by Young from the Missouri to the Nauvoo period, moved away from that Universalism. The reason the Bible, the New Testament, is so wonderful is because you can prooftext anything out of it, right? You can justify the abolitionist theology and justify the Crusades out of the same fucking book, right? So the fact that there's these a Universalist sort of theology in Mormonism, and then a later one that's clearly not, plays into people's hands.
You're right, that might be way they would do it. They'd have to go prooftext down and shave off all the teachings. I think if we were to make a pile of the chapters of the Book of Mormon, or the revelations from Doctrine & Covenants, that support something like this, we would find a few. And then the ones that would definitely have to be thrown out or burned or denied that they ever existed would be a much, much higher pile.
Okay, so we talked about the role of masculinity. I want to come back to the Mormon God a little bit. The problem that the Mormon theology of the Mother in Heaven has always had is she is completely missing. So the really depressing thing, if you accept Mormon theology as a woman, is your role in the eternities is to be absent. Your role is to disappear.
Now, let's suggest that we get a revelation that says that all women and homosexuals and lesbians and whatever else now get the Priesthood. Well, what the fuck's been going on with God for the last 6,000 years? Why does he hate his partner so much? Because if this is a revelation of the way things are in the universe, that means God, whoever God is married to, be it a man or a woman, also had the Priesthood, right? He or she also was coequal to God, but this fucking bastard has hid that person in a closet for 6,000 years! If we make this change in the theology, the Mormon God goes from being a dick to the most colossal dick that ever existed in all dickishness of dick history! Not only that, he is abusive, right? Because why would he hide this other person away? Tell me where I'm wrong.
Audience Member: Dude, you're so not wrong. But I will tell you this. I've been in the uh... what do we got, three versions of the creation story?
John: Four. Yeah.
Audience Member: Four!? We've got Old Testament, got Pearl of Great Price....
John: There's two in the Pearl of Great Price and one in the temple.
Audience Member: Are any women involved in any of those creation stories? Because every time I read them, every time I go to the temple, it's a bunch of dudes that come around and they create a child. I don't see any Mother in Heaven. I don't see any hot chicks in the garden until post-creation. It's a bunch of dudes that come around and they make children. I don't know if they adopt them because it's legal to adopt children if it's a bunch of dudes, but I've never seen any Mormon version where a Mother in Heaven, or a woman, is in any way involved in the creation of a spirit child.
John: Hey, you have a good point. But I think it more speaks to the disrespect and misogyny that's institutionalized in the Church, because they can justify it. Because men have Priesthood, right? So men, by being imbued with God by maleness and Priesthood, there is a justification for this inherent bias. But once that justification, that bias goes away, then the teachings of the Church become flat-out naked misogyny, right? Because if we accept this as a revelation, that women can have the Priesthood, then your question becomes very poignant. Why were there no women in that original narrative?
Audience Member: If the women can't have the Priesthood, how is it that the men can create children without women? I mean, the women don't have to have the Priesthood, but doesn't a man need a woman to create a child and aren't we all spirit children where it's all been done before in the spiritual and then into the physical...? It seems to me that somewhere a woman ought to be involved in the creation of a child. Except in Mormonism!
John: I think in Mormon theology, they would respond that there was a procreative process, and Brigham Young said it was the same one we use here, so God fucked one of his eternal wives and there was a spirit baby born. Now, why, once you become exalted and perfect, you can no longer create baby babies, you can only create spiritual babies, is a really important theological question, but I think their response would be that there was a female goddess involved in creating of the spirit but not of the physical tabernacle. Now Brigham and the pre-1877 Mormonism would would respond to you and say, ah, that was just a pollution by the great whore and abomination, the Catholic Church. What really happened is Adam had already achieved exalted status, brought one of his wives down and that's where the first baby was born.
Audience Member: At least in the Catholic church, there's a bunch of women married to a deity. All the nuns are married to somebody. There's a woman involved.
John: Excellent, excellent point. ...Go ahead.
Audience Member: Going back to what I said about the polygamy solving that, you said that it exposes this as naked misogyny... as if the Church would find that offensive...? I mean, I think they've sort of doubled down on that! I think that when you say it implies that homosexuals are broken and need to be fixed... absolutely! That seems to be exactly what the Church thinks. So, I don't think they'd have a problem with the naked misogyny or the attempt to "fix" homosexuality.
John: I think you're absolutely right and I think your underlying point—the point I started the beginning of the podcast with when I was talking about liberals thinking that their liberal point of views are much more influential on Mormonism than they are—that the naked misogyny that's there is not bothersome to most of the members of the Church! They think that's the order of things, that's the way things should be. And they're really not bothered by this. They don't like, well, they kind of like being persecuted theologically, but they don't like being at work and being considered a bigot or something. So they're trying to find this fine balance where they're recognized as not being prejudicial but still are able to be prejudicial in their religion.
Audience Member: One last thing, just want to say I don't like the naked misogyny. I'm firmly in the feminist camp, so just want to make that clear. I only like half of it.
John: All right. I think that one of the main control mechanisms the Church uses is, well, it all relates to sexuality and money, but if you look, the two most common control mechanisms are to control people's sexuality, and the other one is to control access to life events, particularly marriage.
If you've lived among Mormons for a long time, you will inevitably have met somebody who doesn't believe the Church, has been inactive for a long time, realizes that their niece, nephew, son, daughter, is about to get married, they haul their sorry ass back into church for three months, and pay enough tithing that they can get a Temple Recommend, because they will NOT be forced to miss that marriage. Because the social cost of missing a marriage is enormous. Even in Mormonism, we do not give free passes to people and say, well, this person is repenting of some misdeed and we respect and honor the repentance process, it was instituted by Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, so we do not hold it against the person for not being there... bull-fucking-shit. We will hold it against them and will hold against them for the rest of their lives. So the cost of not going to a temple marriage is huge.
Well, once these sorts of changes get made, when you start tampering with the Church's control and view of sexuality and what's okay and what's not okay with sexuality, the Church stands to lose its sexual control of its membership. And now I'm including these rights and institutions like marriage. So the Church would likely lose its chief mechanism of controlling its members. And I think in the past 281 episodes, we have established that the Church is really concerned about controlling the lives and beliefs of its members.
This even impacts the mundane things. One of the chief accepted, pre-approved hobbies of Mormons is genealogy. Genealogy has to do with tracing the birth, the zygote pairings of your ancestors back, as if that has some sort of meaning. There will come a day—you know, we used to tolerate racism and we thought it was okay and we would condemn interracial relationships. But then we moved away from that.
Audience Member: We didn't tolerate it. We institutionalized it.
John: We institutionalized it. Yeah, you're right. It's beyond tolerance. It was actually forced on. And we are now in this fight on gender and sexual orientation and these sorts of issues. And eventually in our society, hopefully, if we continue to progress, we will not be prejudiced on those.
There will come a day, I predict, that genealogy itself will be seen as sort of a racist, narcissistic thing to do. Because we come from this wide gene pool and the idea that somehow there's special privilege from this... well, once you take the sealing act, and you say "the most important thing in the Church is a sealing" and women can be sealed to women and men can be sealed to men... then going the next Sunday and looking at these genealogy charts where we're just looking down these heterosexual couplings going back in time, that loses its impact.
That's the argument I keep making, is that once you make this change, the ripple effect through all these things that are distinctively LDS become very key and starts to warp—I think in a good way—but warp the way that the Church views the world and interacts with the world.
The Church has been encouraging people to be in the closet for a long time. There are not an insignificant number of Mormons who are homosexuals who are now in heterosexual marriages. For the Church to make this change, they can no longer really punish those people. The Church would have to reverse its theological position on divorce. It can't imprison people into that because they got married under a false premise that the Church no longer acknowledges as being valid. So the Church would have to step back from its thing of divorce.
And this goes to the point I was making about marriage a few minutes ago. This is one of its chief control mechanisms. And so what you're seeing is not only the Church theologically bumbling around with just about everything, but also they're losing all their mechanisms of obedience and control. And I've made the argument that the theology is not nearly as important as the control, and this then becomes impactful.
So, just to kind of sum up, every single manual ever written by the Church has to be thrown out. Mormon practices, Boy Scouts, Young Women's, Relief Society, anything that distinctively gives females any recognition... that's sort of the irony of this; oftentimes things like tolerance for homosexuality is, rightfully so, being driven by the feminist movement. But if they succeed in the Mormon Church, what it does is it wipes the whole feminine identity out of the religion completely. The only way to achieve this basically is, theologically, doctrinally and in practice, everybody becomes men. And I don't think any of us want that.
So, that's my argument. And we can go on and on. I would be happy to sit down and try to prooftext out every doctrine and try to find one that's not significantly impacted. I think the blow to the areas that I've described would be so severe as to leave the Church so crippled it would have no meaning to its members or no meaning in the world. It couldn't even articulate what it was about. The discussions would just be a rambling mess of nonsense that wouldn't resonate with anybody. Because think about everything that's distinctively LDS. The family? The family gets impacted by this, what the definition of a family is, the eternal marriage, eternal gender, the war in heaven. All these things start to become nonsense.
I am in full 100 percent support of laws and actions that prohibit gender and sexual identity discrimination. But I don't think there's any use in trying to get a religion, especially like Mormonism, to change on this point because I don't think that there is anything that's recognizable here.
The problem with revolutionaries, as John Lennon pointed out to us, is that revolutionaries usually make terrible governments. The problem with the liberal Church reformers is they have no fucking guidance on what the Church should look like! They just want it to change, to match whatever feel-good thing they want for the time. Be it a value—in this case, it is. But the idea to reform the Church on this doesn't leave anything recognizable that is even useful. And I think that's the problem and that's why, although I will go out of my way and do whatever I can to support gender equality rights, I am not supporting any sort of reform of the Church on this point because I think it's patently ridiculous. I just don't think it makes sense. I could be wrong
Audience Member: if you don't mind, can I go ahead. I believe you're wrong. The Church has been wrong on every social issue in the last hundred and eighty years and they have changed their position on every social issue that they have been wrong on. In the last 180 years. And there are two social issues that they have not yet changed yet, but the pattern of the Church is consistent. They will change on women because there's no reason why women can't hold the Priesthood or govern.
John: This is the most common argument used against me and what I will say is the Church has changed everything doctrinally. They've modified every doctrine. I put the challenge out for years for somebody to find me a doctrine in the Church that hasn't been fucked with and no one's come up with one yet. But I would push back and say the Church has changed its social practices, but I would say the Church has never changed the social doctrine. It's still in the fucking scriptures. The racism is still there, the misogyny is still there.
You're right, they've changed, but oftentimes it's with a wink and a nod. Knowing that if we could really get down to it, that the doctrines and the philosophical underteachings of racism, that white people are more privileged, that they were better in heaven, and people born into LDS families were more recognized by God, and the people born in Calcutta, in the slums, obviously had done something wrong in the preexistence... these thought patterns are still widely prevalent and the idea that men are somehow superior to women is still widely prevalent.
And things like polygamy! People always throw back two arguments at me: polygamy and our African American racism. Polygamy is still there! It's still in D&C 132. We still believe in polygamy! If a Mormon asks you that, you can say, is Joseph Smith still sealed to all those women? Is Brigham Young still sealed to all those women? Has the Church gone and nullified those sealings? The answer is no. They have not. We still believe in polygamy, and I reference Elder Oaks, 2002 BYU Address where he boldly proclaims that he is sealed to two women, because his first wife passed away and he married a second woman. Dallin Oaks, out there right now. And I wish some reporter out there—Peggy, I'm looking at you—would ask him flat out, would pin him down and ask him. Because he will acknowledge that he is a fucking polygamist and he believes in the doctrine, today. So they haven't changed anything there.
And the racism is still in the Book of Mormon. The holy scripture, the most important book, the most righteous, or whatever it is, book that's ever been written says in it that people are black so that white people won't want to marry them. And until that passage gets out of there, I don't care what the fuck they say, they're a bunch of racists. Alright, anything else?
So I may be wrong on this point. The Church may be able to somehow change this. But my challenge out there to the world is, show me how. Show me a Mormonism that would work for the Mormons. Not the liberals who sit around at Sunstone and talk about this side and the other. The people who go and make the Church run. The people who pay 10% of their tithing, the people who teach the nine year olds and run the Boy Scouts. Show me a theology that those people can glom onto once this gets changed, and I will reverse my opinion.
Audience Member: I do think there's one way that it could change. I mean, all the past social issues that have been changed have been because of heavy, heavy social pressures. So, I think if there was some kind of IRS investigation or other kind of investigation in the Church's finances as a result of their anti-gay-marriage crusade, I could possibly see there being some type of policy change of some sort. Obviously maybe not saying, "All right, come do a gay wedding in our temple if you want!" But I could see them allowing gay people to be married and also be members of the Church. If it was, "We're looking into your finances now, you can't just have a closed book anymore."
And another issue, I think it needs to be changed, because with this you have suicides happening because of the actions of the Church towards the gay community. It's just, it's been really bad. I mean, just personally, I know how much it killed me as a believing member before to have that whole, "oh, I feel this way, but they say it's a choice..."
You end up, as a Mormon, reading books like In Quiet Desperation, where the first half of the book is talking about a young man who suffered with same gender attraction and then blows his brains out on the church property. But the second half of the book is by Ty Mansfield who was quite involved with groups such as North Star, where he pretty much gives you all this inspirational scripture and talks by General Authorities telling you how you can be a straight person. But the first half of the book is like... this guy killed himself because of it. So here's another part. Don't kill yourself even though you know a lot of you are killing yourselves because here's the best way not to do it and here's a bunch of brainwashing techniques to not do it.
I think there needs to be some sort of change. Because they do have blood on their hands.
John: Absolutely. Let me be clear. The Church is wrong. They're not just a little bit wrong, they're fucking wrong, and they're causing a lot of problems. This is an immoral Church, on this front. They are doing a terrible thing to humanity. Should they reform? Absolutely. I'm just making the argument that from their own position, they can’t do it. They have been backed into a corner.
Which is why you would say, in light of evidence of the suicides and the cost and toll to families, why are they not doing anything? My somewhat angry tirade tonight is to explain why they're not doing anything... because they can't. They backed themselves into a corner and if they could... great, wonderful, the world would be a much better place. But unfortunately, I think our services would be better helped in assisting people to find healthy resources to help the LGBT community outside the auspice of the Church. And that's just my opinion.
Sorry, it's kind of a downer tonight, but I think it's a very important issue of our time. All right, thanks everybody. Good night.