A Woman Prayed Today

At the April 2013 General Conference for the LDS Church, a woman was “allowed” to pray for the first time. Feminist Mormon women had mixed reactions to the event. On the one hand, it certainly was progress. On the other, it was something that should have occurred at least a hundred years earlier. It was such a small step toward equality that it was in the end almost laughable.
Mormons teach that the family is the most important unit. While men and women are “equal,” they have “different roles.” The man’s role is to be the head of the family. The wife’s role is to be the co-equal submissive partner.
The idea of family is central to Mormon theology, because it is only as families that we can reach exaltation, the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom, where we become gods ourselves over our own planets. A temple marriage is essential because gods aren’t single—they are married. Our Heavenly Father has a Heavenly Wife, our Heavenly Mother. She’s a god, too.
But her eternal “role” is still to be submissive, throughout eternity. She’s worked hard, been an outstanding human before she became a god, has become perfect, in fact. But she’s still no one worth talking about. There are no sermons or books about Heavenly Mother.
Why? Well, the few times the issue has been addressed, we’ve been told, “We don’t talk about Heavenly Mother out of respect. People all the time take God’s name in vain. We can’t have that happening to our dear Heavenly Mother.”
So this woman who has been tried in her mortal existence so thoroughly that she’s made it to the Celestial Kingdom is such a dainty flower that she would just crumble under the pain caused by hearing some guy curse, “Goddess damn it!”
Someone strong enough to become a god is that fragile?
Why are women practically never mentioned in the scriptures? Have they never made any important contributions to God’s work on Earth? At best, considering the number of times they are named, they contribute ten percent? They are the tithing of humanity?
If Heavenly Father is perfect, he doesn’t have an ego that is threatened by sharing the spotlight with his wife. Surely, Heavenly Mother is good for something more than birthing spirit children throughout eternity. Is her womb her only godly feature? Can’t we hear what other significant contributions she’s making?
Until the LDS Church truly considers women equals, we will continue to see such minimal steps forward as maybe a woman actually being able to speak during the regular sessions of General Conference once in a while, or being able to wear a lovely, dressy outfit that includes pants. She might even, at some distant point in the future, be able to help shape policy.
But let’s not get all apostate and think a woman actually capable of such a thing.
Mormon women know their place, and Mormon goddesses do, too.
They’re equal, in that separate but equal kind of way which doesn’t work well when practiced in worldly institutions, but which works just heavenly when furthering gospel principles.

Adam and Steve

      “God didn’t create Adam and Steve!” religious leaders say smugly when addressing city councils or other political leaders as they try to impose their religious beliefs into secular law. What is curious is that they make this statement as if it could possibly mean anything. Let us set aside for argument’s sake the possibility that the Creation story is a myth or allegory. If God created just two human beings, Adam and Eve, and everyone from that time on must be completely like them, then for one thing, we’d all have to be farmers and hunters. So right off, we know that if theirs is the ultimate moral example to follow in every way, we’re in trouble.

       I also can’t help wondering if Adam and Eve were Caucasian. Were they Semitic? Were they Asian? Negro? These are all very distinctive groups of people. Did Adam have one epicanthic eye and one Caucasian one? Did he have blond hair while Eve had black, kinky hair? Then who had the red hair? If Adam and Eve had every possible gene variation in their DNA to account for all the vast differences on the Earth today (we haven’t mentioned Native Americans, Polynesians, sub-continent Indians, Australian aborigines, or pygmies yet), then they were still quite different from each of us today, because we certainly don’t carry genes for all of these groups. We clearly cannot all look just like Adam and Eve or carry the same genetic material as they did. Physically, we are different from them.
     So already, we don’t look like them and we don’t act like them.
     What else is different today between the first man and woman and us? Do we each need to have as many children as they did in order to be considered sufficiently procreative? Are sterile people automatically sinful or criminal? How about a married couple who choose not to have children, or to have only two? Or only five? Do our children have to marry each other as Adam and Eve’s did?
     What about the sexuality of Adam and Eve in general? It’s unlikely they used condoms or pills or IUDs, so do we outlaw all birth control? Since there’s no scriptural evidence of any sort of birth control, do we issue fines against anyone practicing the rhythm method? Since childless couples aren’t “real” couples like Adam and Eve, should these spouses receive insurance or inheritance rights? Surely, we shouldn’t treat them as equals when they clearly aren’t following the only important sexual role models we have.
     What of sex itself? Circumcision didn’t come along until well after Adam’s time, so shouldn’t it be illegal to practice circumcision? There doesn’t appear to be any passage in the Bible where the “missionary position” is listed as the only acceptable form of intercourse. I don’t suppose we can know just what Adam and Eve did together sexually. I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that we can let our imagination run wild on that score and feel confident we’re not doing anything they wouldn’t have done.
     What about celibacy, though? What do we say to the hundreds of thousands of priests, monks, and nuns in the world? Did people run up and shout into Mother Teresa’s face, “God created Adam and Eve, not just Eve!” We condemn gays and lesbians for not following Adam and Eve’s example when they form loving same-sex couples, and then we demand that they continue not to follow their example by remaining celibate.
      Are there any other differences between Adam and Eve and us? Do we all have to belong to the same religion as they did? Hmm. No Mormons back then. No Jews, either. No Catholics, no Baptists, no Hindus, no Muslims, no Buddhists, no Wiccans, no much of anything. They did practice animal sacrifice, though. Do we follow this essential part of their religion? Not even when that religion was taught to them by God himself?
     So far, we’re not like Adam and Eve physically. We don’t have the same jobs they had. We don’t practice birth control as they did. We don’t have the same number of children they had. We don’t have the same religion they did.
     But surely, there are obvious essential ways we are still like them other than just being heterosexual.
      Do we live where they lived? Most religions who believe in Adam and Eve feel they lived in the Middle East somewhere. Mormons believe they lived in Missouri. Well, there are certainly those of us who live in those places, but are they the only people who can be considered righteous? Or is it okay to differ from them in this way and still be accepted by God?
      Do we wear the same kind of clothing as Adam and Eve? Do we eat the same kind of diet? Do we live in the same kind of house? Did they have books to read? Did they listen to rock and roll? Even classical music? Did they watch TV? Surf the internet? Did they drive cars, fly in airplanes, take ocean cruises? Just how much like Adam and Eve do we really have to be? Only in the one aspect of heterosexuality? Nothing else in the world matters in our comparison to them except sexual orientation?
      I suppose many people like to insist on that comparison because it is the only manner these people are in any way like Adam and Eve themselves. We do not legally or morally demand that anyone be exactly like Adam and Eve in a hundred different aspects we could control about ourselves. We only want to force others to change to make life more comfortable for us.
     I wonder. Were Adam and Eve like that?