All the world’s a stage,
William Shakespeare, As You Like It
And all the men and women merely players …
I just finished reading Taylor Petrey’s Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism. As Petrey explains in an interview you can listen to if you haven’t read the book, one of his central claims is that there is a fundamental tension in LDS teachings about gender. On one hand, Church leaders currently* teach that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” As Petrey puts it, “[leaders] taught that sexual difference was an eternal characteristic of one’s identity and was not chosen or subject to being lost.” At the same time, those leaders harbor an intense fear that unless proper gender roles are modeled and taught in the home, and policed by legal and social norms in society, sexual differences will evaporate: “Though it was supposed to be eternal and essential, sexual difference could still be weakened or lost if not practiced and reinforced.”
Petrey’s book is filled with quote after quote demonstrating this tension–a fear held by leaders that differences between men and women would be “erased” and we would become a “unisex” society if we do not carefully maintain gendered boundaries they claim God defined through husbands and wives modeling these gender roles in the home and society upholding gender norms in legal and cultural norms. Indeed, multiple Church leaders (including Dallin Oaks) expressed fears that if we allow gay marriage, the human race could go extinct in “a generation”–suggesting that homosexuality is a far more compelling proposition for people than heterosexuality, and making me wonder if the brethren really do dislike women that much after all!
This fear helps explain why Church leaders have been so active in two key political battlefields. First, the fight against the ERA in the 1970’s and 80’s, which they based on a fear that the ERA would erase differences between men and women. And second, the fight against gay marriage in the 1990’s and 2000’s, which was fundamentally rooted not so much in sexual orientation specifically but gender roles more generally: Church leaders’ primary opposition to homosexuality seems to be their belief that homosexuality is a failure in gender norms; i.e., gay men are not performing their gender properly, because a real man should be sexually attracted to a woman. Many Church teachings and approaches to homosexuality among men have focused on a belief that homosexuality in men results from men not having had sufficient male role models and so not “learning” how to be a man. Church views on lesbian women, on the other hand, tended to view lesbianism as a result of sexual trauma. This belief about gender fluidity and sexual orientation also helps explain why the Church for many years continued to insist on the validity of conversion therapy to treat “same-sex attraction”; while the Church does not formally advocate for conversion therapy anymore (asserting instead that the “conversion” to heterosexuality will occur after death), many Church leaders–such as Boyd K. Packer–really never bought into the argument that sexual orientation was not chosen.
This concern about the slipperiness of what is otherwise an “eternal” gender identity was reiterated in Dallin Oaks’ April 2022 General Conference talk, where he cited the Family Proclamation’s claim that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose”. (As an aside, let it not be lost on us that Oaks likely had a major hand in drafting this language, so he is essentially citing himself as an appeal to authority.) He continued, “[t]hat is also why the Lord has required His restored Church to oppose legal and social pressures to retreat from his doctrine of marriage between a man and a woman, to oppose changes that homogenize the differences between men and women or confuse or alter gender.” This is nearly identical to comments in made in a similar talk in October 2018, where he said that “[o]ur knowledge of God’s revealed plan of salvation requires us to oppose current social and legal pressures to retreat from traditional marriage and to make changes that confuse or alter gender or homogenize the differences between men and women. We know that the relationships, identities, and functions of men and women are essential to accomplish God’s great plan.” He likewise alluded to gender confusion in October 2019, where he discouraged “premature labeling” of “children who are uncertain about their sexual orientation.”
While Oaks has now made this virtually identical statement in two recent Conference addresses, he has not (as far as I know) actually defined what it means to “confuse or alter gender or homogenize the differences between men and women,” nor has he told us what “relationships identities, and functions of men and women are essential to accomplish God’s great plan.” Interestingly, “gender confusion” seems to be a newer focus of his. Oaks’ October 2017 talk, which focused on the Family Proclamation, did not mention general confusion / alteration, but primarily focused on same-sex marriage. Prior to October 2018, when Oaks began what seems to be a campaign to unofficially canonize the Family Proclamation following President Monson’s death and his elevation to the first presidency, Oaks rarely spoke about gay marriage or gender identity during General Conference at all (though of course he was deeply involved in the Church’s campaign against gay marriage from his earliest days as an apostle).
While it’s clear to me what he means when he says we can’t retreat from the doctrine of marriage between a man and a woman, and he has been teaching that for many years, I am genuinely curious what he means when he tells us we must “oppose changes that homogenize the differences between men and women or confuse or alter gender.” Nor do I understand what “relationships, identities, and functions of men and women are essential to accomplish God’s great plan” other than opposite-sex marriage and sexual reproduction. So is that all Oaks is asking us to do, or is there some other component to our gender that we need to be concerned about properly performing? Surely, given that this is a talk where he explains (like he did in October 2019) that people who do not live up to gender norms will not go to the Celestial Kingdom, it would be important to understand what those gender norms are so that we can obey. As Oaks, a lawyer, knows, rules that are so vague that they don’t give people any idea of how to follow them are unconstitutional because they are fundamentally unfair. This new rule not to “confuse or alter gender or homogenize the differences between men and women” strikes me as unreasonably vague. I genuinely do not know how one would follow it.
Some hypotheticals:
- If I am a woman and I want to deepen my voice because I’ve been told I sound unprofessional so I go to speech therapy to do so, am I “confusing” gender? If I am a trans woman and I want to make my voice higher pitched to avoid bullying, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I am a man and I grow my hair out longer because it’s the prevailing style, am I “confusing gender”? If I am a trans man and I cut my hair short as part of socially transitioning, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I am a menopausal woman and I take hormone therapy to help with hot flashes that alters my progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone levels, am I “confusing gender”? If I am a trans woman and I take hormone therapy to help with suicidal thoughts and depression and relieve gender dysphoria, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I am a woman with a career in a male-dominated field like engineering and my husband stays home with our children, are we “confusing gender”?
- If I am a gay person who remains celibate to stay in good standing with the Church, rather than express an attraction to / have sex with a member of the opposite sex, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I am a gay man who wants to remain celibate to stay in good standing with the Church, and I undergo an orchiectomy to reduce my sexual drive to help me stay celibate, am I “confusing gender”? If I am a trans woman and undergo an orchiectomy as part of my transition, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I am a woman and I say a prayer with my hands on my child’s head and ask God to heal her, am I “confusing gender”? If a bishop were to ask a woman to say the opening prayer in sacrament meeting between 1967 and 1978, would he be “confusing gender”? If I am a woman and I pick which family member says the prayer over dinner, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I am a man who gets regular manicures and pedicures because it helps deal with ingrown nails, am I “confusing gender”? If I’m a trans woman and get regular manicures and pedicures, am I “confusing gender”? If I’m a man who wears makeup to cover acne scars, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I’m a woman who grows out my leg and armpit hair because shaving irritates my skin, am I “confusing gender”? If I’m a trans man who grows out my leg and armpit hair as part of socially transitioning, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I’m a woman and I get a masectomy and hysterectomy because I have a strong genetic predisposition towards certain kinds of cancers and I want to mitigate risk, am I “confusing gender”? If I am AFAB and experience gender dysphoria and get top surgery to relieve depression and suicidal ideation, am I “confusing gender”?
- If a girl plays on a boy’s sports team because the sport isn’t offered for girls in her area, is she “confusing gender”? If an AFAB transgender boy plays on a boy’s sports team because he is transitioning and doesn’t want to be “outed’ by playing on a girl’s team, is he “confusing gender”?
- If I’m a polynesian man and I wear a lavalava to Church in Utah, am I “confusing gender”? If I’m a woman and I wear men’s clothing because it’s more comfortable, am I “confusing gender? If I’m a trans woman and I wear a skirt to Church, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I am a Muslim or Sikh man and I decide (against my religion) to shave my beard, am I “confusing gender”? If I’m a Muslim woman and I choose not to wear a hijab after moving to a Western country am I “ confusing gender”?
- If I am a pregnant woman and I wear my husband’s garments because they fit my pregnant body better (I know tons of women who’ve done this!!!) am I “confusing gender”? If I’m AMAB experiencing gender dysphoria and decide to wear women’s underwear privately because it feels more comfortable, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I’m a male artist who doesn’t make enough money to support my family and my wife supplements our income, am I “confusing gender”? If I’m a woman who works not because it is required to make ends meet but because I’m really professionally ambitious and do not like staying home with children all day, am I “confusing gender”?
- If I’m a man who doesn’t want to have children because genetic testing shows they are extremely likely to inherit a fatal genetic defect, am I “confusing gender”? If I’m a woman who doesn’t want to have children because I have serious mental health problems I fear will make me unable to handle pregnancy, post-partum, or parenting, am I “ confusing gender”?
- Were the women who petitioned for and were first admitted to West Point Academy in the U.S. “confusing gender”? Were the women who fought for the right to vote in the U.S. “confusing gender”? Are men who push for paternity leave policies “confusing gender”?
- Are women who refuse to participate in female genital mutilation in cultures where that is expected of them “confusing gender”? Are men who refuse to take on multiple wives in cultures where that is expected of them “confusing gender”?
- Is a grandpa who bakes pies for his grandkids confusing gender? Is a woman who doesn’t wear lipstick confusing gender?
Hopefully this list of examples drives home the idea that many, many gender norms are socially and culturally constructed. The only norms that I can really identify that come from Church teachings are the following:
- Men provide; women nurture. Except that women can also provide and men can also nurture.
- Men preside in the home (as “equal partners” with the non-presiding spouse, whatever that means) and in all Church environments (Oaks made this abundantly clear during the Women’s Session of the most recent Conference).
- Men are to be sexually attracted to and reproduce with women; women are to be sexually attracted to and reproduce with men.
- Men are to serve missions. Women can also serve missions.
- Any actions taken by a trans person in order to socially or physically transition or manifest their gender identity are wrong; the same actions taken by a cisgender person for other reasons are fine.
There historically have been a lot of other norms discussed at Church–like a much stronger prohibition against women working outside the home and much more gender essentialism around the characteristics of women vs. men. But much of that seems to have fallen away as the Church moved away from a focus on the patriarchal family as ideal (the battle over the ERA) to a focus on the heteronormative family as ideal (the battle over gay marriage). As far as I can tell, gender really does seem to boil down to (1) performing priesthood leadership responsibilities and (2) opposite-sex marriage and reproduction.
What’s so ironic about that is that Church leaders consistently counsel gay Church members not to define themselves by their sexuality but instead as a “son or daughter of God.” But it is Church leaders themselves who define one’s maleness or femaleness as boiling down to one’s sexual orientation. It’s Church leaders who are so reductive about our sexuality–even our humanity and identity as children of God. That is the single most important component of a person’s gender performance, which is in turn supposedly “essential” as non-performance will not qualify you for celestial glory.
Don’t get me wrong–I am certainly not suggesting our leaders should be telling us more about how to be men and women. I’m not interested in that because what they’ve said so far is not impressive. What I am saying is that they’ve essentially reduced the plan of salvation and our discipleship of Christ to opposite-sex marriage and reproduction–something that Jesus Christ never taught during his ministry (hence their talks largely simply cite the Family Proclamation, which they wrote, and earlier talks they’ve given). Properly performing gender is center-stage in their version of the gospel, and seems to have a larger role in discussions of “the plan of salvation” than the Author of and Redeemer in that Plan. Even if this focus weren’t homophobic, anti-trans, and sexist–which it is–it is, above all, a spiritually impoverished gospel that resembles nothing I learned about being a disciple of Christ from Christ’s own life or teachings.
But hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there is a lot more to performing gender roles than what I’ve said above. If there is, though, I’m definitely missing it.
Questions:
- If gender is eternal, why is it so slippery? How do you reconcile those positions? Do you agree with Church leaders that normalizing same-sex marriage will mean that the human race will go extinct???
- What exactly does it mean to “homogenize the differences between men and women or confuse or alter gender”? Are there gender characteristics / roles that Church leaders currently teach that I’m missing above? If you’ve been following along with our purity vs. compassion discussions, do rules about gender roles originate in purity culture or compassion culture?
- If appropriate gender performance is so central to God’s plan for us, what do men learn about performing their male roles from their Heavenly Father and in the scriptures? And, more importantly, why don’t women have a female role model? If sexual difference is so fundamental, why are women asked to model their lives off of two men (God and Jesus) and told not to worry about the lack of a female model? Doesn’t that risk women not learning appropriate gender roles and becoming too masculine?
*Church leaders didn’t always teach this, which Petrey’s book details, but that’s outside the scope of this post …
Wheat & Tares 
You raise many interesting questions. There are so many. Here’s a couple of more questions:
1. Do the Brethren claim that their views on gender are influenced by a specific revelation, or just general inspiration? I’d like to know when and to whom a revelation on gender took place. Do the Brethren even claim revelation on this point? (I happen to believe they feel the way they way feel based on a traditional Mormon upbringing).
2. Why is the Proclamation on the Family not canonized? Like Elisa says, there has been a movement in the last few years to basically canonize it but that has not happened formally? Why not? Do we consider the Family Proclamation doctrine given that it meets Elder Christofferson’s requirement that all members of the Q15 agree to it (they all signed in in 1995)?
Here’s what I’m getting to: There’s nothing in any of our scriptures about gender, as Elisa points out. Nothing. So what are we basing current beliefs on? If not scripture, revelation. If not scripture or revelation, inspiration???? And how much you want to bet that “inspiration” is just the philosophies of men mingled with General Conference talks.
Conference talks which warn about homogenization of genders, or assaults on religious liberty without ever defining anything clearly make me both upset and bored simultaneously. (I’m a complicated person.) They’re dog whistles, where anyone is free to interpret these vague statements in whatever manner makes them feel completely justified by the Q15. In reality, they accomplish nothing, while leading to more confusion and more disagreement in the church. If President Oaks would answer even a fraction of the list of questions proposed in this post we could have a discussion about whether we agree or disagree. Instead, I’m left in a place where I don’t even know how to have an opinion. I can either guess at what DHO thinks (in which case I’m not likely to agree) or I can decide that in the absence of clear statements I should fill in most of the details as best I understand life and the gospel (in which case I am conveniently always right!).
Another great post, Elisa. There is a LONG history of anxiety concerning gender identity and the conflation of different gender identities. In the Renaissance, one reason why many conservative religious types objected to poetry was because they believed that poetry (and the arts generally) had an effehminizing effect upon men. I think the same goes for popular music in the 50s and 60s. The examples are endless. And of course, if sexual or gender identity is malleable, that makes it awfully hard for orthodox religions to make any definitive pronouncements about it. In a way, the complexities and conundrums you highlight are only partly related to gender and more fully related to a world that is mutable, uncertain and obstinately resistant to any sort of oversimplified attempts to explain it.
As Judith Butler noted many years ago in Gender Trouble, and as many of your questions imply, gender is essentially performative and malleable, not fixed or stable. The West in general (and America in particular) has a long history of attempting to essentialize both sex and gender, and those efforts are still present in much of the rhetoric of church leaders, though as both josh h and the OP point out, there is remarkably little on this issue in scripture, which in turn puts a lot of pressure on religious leaders to try to construct a bankable narrative about gender essentialism. The Proclamation on the Family is just one of these. It’s a cliche to fall back on this idea, but at the heart of a lot of this, I think, is simply fear. I mean I think your comments about Oaks are really revealing. He’s clearly terrified that men and women will stop (or slow down) procreating, thus threatening the existence of the church and of the so-called “ideal” family unit. And the church bases most of its teachings as well as its existence, on the nuclear family so-called. So this is the reason for all of the absurd rhetoric that started in the 70s about “LGBTQ people are threats to straight marriage”. As crazy as that sounds, it is nonetheless understandable that the fear on the part more conservative, “family values” folks would drive them to such ridiculous lengths; the very fabric of the theoretically most “stable” relationship/family unit was, according to many conservatives including church leaders, under an existential threat from contemporary and evolving ideas about gender, relationships and what constitutes a family. And that continues to be the case.
To answer one of the questions you posed above, gender performance is obviously not important to God. If one returns to the teachings of Christ, it’s obvious that gender identity has nothing to do with them. Anyone, regardless of their identity or orientation, can be kind. Can feed the hungry. Can comfort the afflicted. Can increase their capacity for empathy. Can love. Indeed, anyone who puts pressure on binary notions of gender is not a threat to the church at all. The real threat to the church is the possibility that more and more people will discover that it inhibits their capacity to learn and grow by embracing the fundamental teachings of Christ. IMHO, the church, ironically, ultimately feels most threatened by the possibility of its followers actually embracing Christ’s teachings rather than obeying the church’s teachings. And that’s a tragedy.
I think we all recognize that this gender performance hysteria is just a post-WW2 cultural artifact. There is a lot of interesting science emerging about what actually makes someone a “woman” or a “man,” and it has more to do with hormones than it does one’s sexual organs, and the underlying fact is that a bright line definition between genders is manufactured and not natural. But it’s necessary if you are giving one sex preference over the other one, and that’s why some Church leaders are obsessed with it. How else do you justify sidelining over 50% of the church membership? You have to reduce them to a different and inferior class of people.
@angela that’s a really interesting point. Reminds me that one of the motivating factors in lifting the race-based temple and priesthood ban was the realization that they couldn’t actually figure out who was black or not in Brazil. Likewise, if you can’t figure out who is male or female, you don’t know who to exclude from a male-only priesthood.
The idea that gender is eternal became really hard to swallow when I learned that in the lower kingdoms there will be no genitalia. Yes I realize gender and genitalia are two different things (though I sometimes wonder if the Church realizes this), but it seems like gender is eternal until it isn’t.
I had a visceral reaction the first time I heard someone mention that we are a Rocky Mountain sex cult, but I’m starting to see their point of view.
I think it really comes down to scarcity. Many church conservative types truly believe there is only so much clout to go around and to share it would reduce their value. Hogwash in my opinion but I’ve been unsuccessful at convincing anyone otherwise.
I’m so tired of talking with folks in my community about this. I really wish everyone, including the Brethren, would just zip it and listen to the marginalized on this one. Their stories are completely genuine and always leave me with a resolve to be more inclusive.
Thank you for this post. You made a lot of great points and asked a lot of valid questions. I wish I felt like church leaded are sincerely interested in having real conversation about the questions you asked. The first point that made a strong impression on me was when you wrote “Indeed, multiple Church leaders (including Dallin Oaks) expressed fears that if we allow gay marriage, the human race could go extinct in “a generation”–suggesting that homosexuality is a far more compelling proposition for people than heterosexuality, and making me wonder if the brethren really do dislike women that much after all!” But you hit one or two other home runs as well!
Thank you for this post. You made a lot of great points and asked a lot of valid questions. I wish I felt like church leaded are sincerely interested in having real conversation about the questions you asked. The first point that made a strong impression on me was when you wrote “Indeed, multiple Church leaders (including Dallin Oaks) expressed fears that if we allow gay marriage, the human race could go extinct in “a generation”–suggesting that homosexuality is a far more compelling proposition for people than heterosexuality, and making me wonder if the brethren really do dislike women that much after all!” But you hit one or two other home runs as well!
One more comment I don’t have time to research but is a memory from my teen years. Church policy about transgender individuals, which at the time just meant post-operative transsexuals, restricted trans men from ever being ordained to the priesthood (I’m not sure if that has changed, but I suspect it’s still the same). Essentially, how that sounded to my young ears was that women are so far below men that some of them would try to trick their way into being men just to get access to the oh-so-important priesthood, and by all means, that could not be allowed! Well, it sounded pretty ridiculous to me at the time that anybody was so eager to get the priesthood that they would (with no other pressing reason) undergo sex reassignment surgery. But clearly that was what Church leaders were thinking might happen. I was just a teenager, but that one left me shaking my head in disbelief.
@angela right …
If the Church makes being a woman so bad that it has to police women staying women, and makes marrying women so bad that it has to enforce men marrying women … well … seems like the Church has a problem. Not the woman.
(And yes I realize that’s ridiculous. But that’s what the Church’s position assumes.)
I’ve had to think long and hard about gender. I was in high school the first time I thought to myself, “I really should have been a boy.” I didn’t even know the word ‘transgender’ at the time. I’d heard of transvestites and had a vague knowledge that drag queens were men dressing up like women. But other than being a tomboy, there wasn’t any acknowledgment (in my bubble growing up in the 1980s) that someone assigned female at birth could identify more with men and masculinity. I tried to humble myself and find joy in my assigned gender roles, but that blew up in my face and I caused a lot of hurt and damage to myself and others. After quite a bit of navel-gazing, I concluded that I am fine with being a woman, but I really hate gender roles.
This leads me to a comment on this part of your post, Elisa:
//As Petrey puts it, “[leaders] taught that sexual difference was an eternal characteristic of one’s identity and was not chosen or subject to being lost.” At the same time, those leaders harbor an intense fear that unless proper gender roles are modeled and taught in the home, and policed by legal and social norms in society, sexual differences will evaporate: “Though it was supposed to be eternal and essential, sexual difference could still be weakened or lost if not practiced and reinforced.” //
I’m okay with being a woman eternally. Like, I have no problem with having a woman’s body. I am not okay with performing my life in feminine gender roles. I suppose my label is GNC (gender non-conforming). She/her pronouns are fine, but I haven’t worn a dress in years. My haircut matches my teenage son’s haircut (he’s fine with that). I work in a male-dominated field. I NEVER giggle after I say something. I adore children as long as I am not left alone with them (except for my own). My actual gender is fine, but the role the Church wants to put me in because I have a uterus is intolerable.
So in that way, I can harmonize those two teachings you quote. I’m fine with being a woman, but the Brethren would still disapprove of me because I do not fit into Church-approved gender roles. The Brethren would probably judge me for homogenizing gender.
The line that Mormon Mouse quoted also caught my attention as well, if only because my life also contradicts it in an unexpected way. I married a man, had children, and was so miserable in a hetero-marriage that I filed for divorce. If I ever marry again, I’d prefer to marry a woman. So I’ve done my procreative duty, and now I want a marriage with someone who truly is my equal. (I am not criticizing any of W&T’s marriages; many hetero marriages are equal. It’s just not a risk I’m willing to take again.) There are a lot of gays who want children. I have a gay friend who is working with a fertility clinic to get pregnant without actually putting herself through the ordeal of the sacred procreative process. Homosexuality doesn’t extinguish the desire for children; it just means you have to come up with alternative methods for conception. Obviously the Brethren would disapprove of that, but the point is that even many homosexuals want children, so the human race is in no danger of going extinct even if 100% of people wanted a gay marriage. The birth rate would drop, but not to extinction levels.
Chadwick is right that the leaders are afraid to share power. They have to keep 50% of the Church ineligible to have any real influence or they might not like the changes.
Great post, Elisa.
I imagine that DHO’s version of hell would be to discover that after dying, his time at the bar of judgment is having Jesus go down Elisa’s list of questions and having DHO answer them.
Worse yet, then have Jesus saying to him, “Well , I am afraid you wouldn’t like living here in my kingdom much because that’s not how we roll here. I do have a little place down in what I guess you would call the telestial kingdom. There are a bunch of men that share your views there, and you can hang out with them as long you want. If you ever decide you want to love others as I have loved them, you are free to come back here, but I think you would be very uncomfortable with the ways we do things here in heaven.
@10ac, love picturing DHO answer those questions to Jesus and Jesus totally calling him out if he gets all lawyerly. Thanks for the laugh on an otherwise bleak news day.
And I also agree that he deserves the telestial for all the work he’s done to convince us it’s where queer folks go and that’s totally fine.
Nothing more to add but wanted to say this is a great post. Thank you Elisa.
I’ve been thinking about this post. It helped clarify something for me. The Brethren think the desire for sex and the desire for children are the same thing, i.e. there’s a 100% overlap between wanting sexual pleasure and wanting children. They’re wrong. Most (all?) people would not want to have a child every single time they experience sexual pleasure. I have enough divorced friends with difficult ex-spouses to know that sometimes you were sexually attracted to someone that you *never* should have procreated with. It’s pretty typical to want sex with someone whom you do not want to share a child with (crushing on a famous person, for an easy example). Or you may want to have a child but without dealing with sexual procreation (like my friend at the fertility clinic). The desire for sex and the desire for children are NOT the same thing.
The Brethren want to tie sexual pleasure and children together 100% and say that you can’t have one without the other. That’s just not the way human bodies work, even for heterosexual people. Women can get pregnant without experiencing any sexual pleasure at all (hi, yes, I did this, completely consensual and still unpleasant). Women can even get pregnant during the most horrific experience of their life (rape). For women, procreating and sexual pleasure can be entirely separate. Maybe that’s part of the reason women are more likely to support LGBTQ rights – they’re well aware of how unpleasant it is to be pressured into a sexual relationship because of economic or social factors. A gay man might want children, but isn’t sexually attracted to women. The Brethren (and some other straight men who believe sexual pleasure should be restricted to only acts that they personally enjoy) keep insisting that God created sexual pleasure for procreation and that’s the only righteous way to have sex.
No real conclusion here. Just an observation about how far apart my life experiences are from the Brethren’s life experiences. Religious beliefs about sex and procreation simply don’t match up with the actual life experiences of many people.
So much of this LDS rhetoric is just a 1950s mentality struggling to ignore or reject everything that has happened since. Now it’s true that when society’s norms and related laws change (generally in a good way) it takes time for some people to catch up, but most do, even the older folks. LDS leaders never catch up.
I think there’s also an anti-science thing at work here. In the last century, that anti-science view was most evident in the rejection of evolution by LDS leaders, and it still haunts the Church (cough, CES, cough). Presently, the anti-science view seems most evident in the rejection of anything science or medicine tells us about sexuality and gender. It’s “men are men, women are women,” and any science or medical knowledge that complicates the story is just the work of the devil. I suppose you could add to that the fact that when the senior leadership of the Church gets together, there’s only one gender at the table. If we called three women apostles, some discussions would be dramatically improved.
when men worry that homosexuality is a far more compelling proposition for people than heterosexuality, it usually means they are more attracted to men than women. I have long felt that DHO was gay or bi with a leaning towards men. Straight men simply do not have those thoughts.
@janey, the way Church leaders talk about sex and reproduction is a really excellent example of how their experiences are centered in male experiences. And in this area, men and women’s experiences can be VERY different! Honestly it makes me really angry that a lot of the sexual practices they’ve “banned” in the past have IMO disproportionately negatively impacted women. Traditional missionary style sex that could result in a pregnancy generally works for men physiologically but often not for women. A lack of sex education and sexual exploration is much more detrimental to a woman’s opportunity to experience sexual pleasure than a man’s.
And don’t get me started on how ridiculous I think the idea that a loving God would intentionally design reproduction to work as it does, with all the the burden of painful and inconvenient monthly menstruation for forty years, discomfort and health problems from pregnancy and childbirth, and often permanent injury to health and well-being ALL borne by women.
So when men say have kids early and often and suggest that God designed procreation perfectly and intentionally, well, then God must really hate women. (Which I don’t believe, but that’s what their perspective suggests, because they have no appreciation for women’s experiences).
Anthropocentrism never ceases to amaze me. There are a trillion galaxies each containing a trillion stars but Earth and human being are special? There’s a creature/spirit who created all this and it’s obsessed with my gender?
I suppose it all still boils down to the brethren believing that sexual orientation is a choice. There isn’t a statistically relevant difference in the birth rate since same sex marriage became legal in the US. Gay folks were already having all the procreative sex they wanted to. And if the law is reversed, the birth rate is not going to jump up.
The only people in play are in mixed-orientation marriages that are trying to live up to religious or societal expectations by being heteronormative baby makers. That sliver of the population may not be making as many babies when they leave their mixed marriages in favor of same sex relationships – but it is nowhere near enough to wipe out future generations.
My gay son can break a wild mustang, whip up a gourmet five-course meal, replace the starter on a pick-up, and write poetry that will make you cry (well, maybe DHO wouldn’t cry). What’s any of that got to do with gender or being confused?
An insider on Gina Colvin’s podcast (which is winding down – hurray for her, sad for us) said that 3 of the top areas the church spends its international legal dollars on are keeping its tax-exempt status (much harder outside the US), defending sex-abuse lawsuits, and fighting for religious liberty. If you dig around enough in that heap of “protecting the money”, I’m sure you can find a moral imperative – or maybe even a revelation.
I’m going to expand on BeenThere’s insight:
//I suppose it all still boils down to the brethren believing that sexual orientation is a choice.//
The Brethren believe that sexual *feelings* are a choice. An orientation is based on feelings, yes, and I want to expand the wording to capture sexual feelings even beyond homosexual feelings. If an impure thought enters your head, you are to banish it by singing a hymn. It’s wrong to want sexual pleasure like masturbation. Sex is a beautiful expression of love within a committed relationship. These are all feelings that the Brethren are trying to mandate as obedience.
The thing is, sexual feelings are not a choice, they’re just feelings. The Brethren don’t just define behaviors as sin; they define feelings as sin. They’ve backed off on this a bit – they’ve gone to saying that having feelings of same-sex attraction is not sinful as long as you don’t act on them. But FSOY pamphlet still tries to ban sexual feelings in hetero-dating relationships too.
I’m not promoting wanton orgies (disclaimer to reassure John Charity Spring), but sexual feelings are not something you can massively change just because you want to be obedient.
After I got married, I was very concerned about the fact that I disliked sex. Before marriage, not wanting to make out and etc was a good thing. I was faithful, righteous and pure! But not wanting sex after marriage puts a strain on the relationship. I kept praying. I talked to therapists. I read books. One book was “And They Were Not Ashamed” which is one of those LDS-focused books about marital intimacy. The entire second chapter was a compilation of quotes from Male General Authorities telling women to enjoy sex. It was couched in kind and concerned language, things like “dear sister, your Heavenly Father wants you to enjoy the sacred procreative process” and the like. Every single quote was from a man. That chapter creeped me out so badly that I couldn’t read any further.
I have a friend who was sexually molested as a child. One of the ways (not always) that a child self-soothes after trauma like that is to seek sexual feelings, out of confusion, despair and self-hatred, not out of a desire to sin. Beyond the trauma created by the sexual abuse, this friend was further traumatized by the Brethren’s insistence that fantasizing about sex was a sin. Once he was into therapy, and learned that his mental obsession (he was not promiscuous) with sex was a trauma coping mechanism, and not a desire to be wicked, it caused a faith crisis too.
Or just ordinary teenagers experimenting with their bodies to find out what feels good and what doesn’t. That’s not a sin and they shouldn’t be shamed for it. Honestly. I want to explain my experiences to the Brethren and then ask them: “You have a choice for your son. Do you want your son to marry someone chaste, pure and untouched, like me, and then find out that she wants to remain untouched? Or would you rather have your son marry a woman who understands her body and what she likes and knows she enjoys sex?” (Again, JCS, I am not advocating for orgies.) Elisa is right when she says the Brethren’s restrictions negatively affect women more than men.
The Brethren go way too far in trying to command sexual feelings. It causes damage not only to the gay community, but also to sexual trauma survivors. The gay community includes asexuals and demisexuals who are never/rarely interested in sex. And heterosexuals can have widely varying sex drives as well. The Brethren’s life experiences are apparently quite narrow.