Sexism
Remember the days of Ordain Women? Remember how gender equality became a real topic at Church? It concerned Church leaders so much that we got a slew of talks about how women already have the priesthood and we just hadn’t noticed. We got an endless string of assurances that God loves his daughters Just As Much as he loves his sons.
Nothing much really changed. Women pray in General Conference once in a while. Women can witness baptisms now. But the real issue, the real Thing That Isn’t Fair, was always about excluding women from the decision-making process. I, personally, was a lot more bothered about the fact that women’s voices are missing from the decision-making leadership than I was about the fact that I couldn’t baptize my son (though he did ask me) (a cousin baptized him instead) (the hope was that baptizing his younger cousin would inspire older cousin to go on a mission) (didn’t work).
The disabled community has a slogan: No Decisions About Us Without Us. Catchy, right? The idea is that disabled people have opinions, perspectives, and really good suggestions, and it’s wrong for non-disabled people to take away their voice and make decisions for an entire group without actually listening to that group.
And this, folks, this idea that you don’t make decisions for a group that you’re excluding from the discussion, is why diversity matters. Straight white Christian men should NOT be making all the decisions for gays, people of color, the vast number of people who are not Christian, women, and nonbinary people.
A challenge the Church faced during the Ordain Women phase was that women were equal everywhere else. Women held leadership roles. Women were respected. in the workplace, men showed that they could work for women supervisors and managers and it went just fine. Women got used to speaking with authority and having their input seriously considered. Sometimes, not as often as men, but sometimes, the women were actually the decisionmakers.
It would be a whole lot easier on the Church if women stopped being equal everywhere else. Secular equality led women to hope for equality everywhere. Fortunately for religious conservatives, secular equality is disappearing.
“From the Pentagon to the U.S. Department of Education, the Trump administration has vowed to root out policies that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, from every layer of government.” [source] For our conservative readers, I will inform you that DEI was never about quotas (surprise!), or promoting/hiring less qualified minorities. Duh. That would be stupid. DEI was about making sure that qualified minorities got a chance too.
But now the federal government is actively removing women and minorities and replacing them with white guys. The Trump administration rejected all four women farmers chosen by their peers to represent them in an industry group called the United Soybean Board earlier this year, a rare intervention by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blocked the promotions of four Army officers — two Black men and two women — to the rank of brigadier general. Plus, Brown and Franchetti, among other top military officers, were fired by Trump in February 2025. That decision left no women in the top ranks of military leadership.
Utah’s state government (wholly dominated by Trump-loving Mormons) hasn’t quite dared to fire women, but for the last three State Supreme Court seats, the list of candidates is men only.
Women are farmers. Women serve in the military. Women are greatly affected by the decisions of the Utah Supreme Court. And yet women are being escorted away from the table (and back to the kitchen).
Racism
Republicans don’t even pretend to conceal the fact that they’re racists anymore. As soon as the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act by removing race as a factor in electoral districts, the Republicans raced to redistrict and dilute Black votes. They had those maps prepped and ready to go. As mentioned above, two of the people whose promotions Hegseth blocked were Black men.
Remember when a whiff of racism was enough to end someone’s political career? Remember when being racist was a bad thing? Remember when the Church was getting pressured to apologize for its racist history? That’s gone now. Because of Republicans.
Why Christians Support Trump
If you want to know why faithful Christians support Trump, take a look at the sexism and racism. Trump is willing to openly and defiantly demote women, push women aside, and silence them. This benefits Christianity because if women don’t participate equally and fully in secular life, then they’ll stop asking to participate equally and fully in religion. Republicans are racist and they’re mean about it. This benefits Christianity because if the secular world is viciously racist, then Christianity’s more benevolent racism looks good in comparison.
Christianity in general, and the Church in particular, does not embraced equality in areas like authority and representation. God’s love may be given to all equally, but that doesn’t translate into representation and authority.
Questions:
- Please feel free to leave comments explaining about how DEI really worked because conservatives have to hear things at least twenty times to counteract the million times they’ve believed the conservative propaganda. For example, the DEI at my work meant that we made sure we posted job listings in all the regular places, plus we made sure to post the listing in publications aimed at racial minorities and women. Then we interviewed whoever responded and hired the most qualified. DEI was to make sure the applicant pool wasn’t just white guys.
- Isn’t that such a great slogan? No Decisions About Us Without Us.
- Does secular gender equality threaten religious sexism?
- Remember that post I wrote about how religious doctrine would change if women were equal? Don’t you wish we could get all those revelations? What has religion lost by silencing female voices?
- Does secular racial equality threaten religious racism, including Bible-based justifications for slavery?
- What does the Church lose by maintaining a leadership with a supermajority of white guys?
Wheat & Tares 
Oh Janey: Ever the Justice Warrior. Treating people with a level of respect and decency is one thing – having an expectation of “equality of outcomes” is simply Bat Sh*t Cray Cray. Talk about Societal Suicide through Kindness! So many people (including me) are fully exhausted and sickened by the efforts to drag everyone to the lowest common denominators. Whether you like it or not, much of the World appears to be moving back to some semblance of merit (performance based) systems; regardless of your race or sex. Thank God! Even Nature itself expects this……..
(Yes, the LDS Church is something else entirely – and – of course – they’re paying the price by people simply leaving and not making the emotional investment any longer.)
grizz – I compliment you on actually engaging with the topic, rather than what you usually do. However, you misread the post. Nowhere did I talk about equality of outcomes. And nowhere did I say anything against merit based performance. I’ve noticed that conservatives tend to do strawman responses. I made a good point and you don’t have a rational response to what I actually said. So you created a ridiculous idea and responded to that. That’s a strawman argument. I didn’t say what you are responding to.
The conservative assumption is that only straight, white Christian men are competent to make decisions for everyone. This is false. Women should participate in the decisions that concern women. People of color should participate in the decisions that affect people of color. Disabled people should participate in the decisions that affect disabled people. Straight, white, Christian men have held an outsized amount of power for centuries. Secular society was moving towards greater equality. Conservatives are trying to set society back to a situation in which straight, white, Christian men get all the power simply because of their identity. I’ve worked with mediocre white men who got the job just because they’re a white guy. Their lazy entitlement is a real drag on a company. Equality of opportunity (not outcomes) displaces mediocre white guys. Talented, hardworking, white guys still get jobs.
There are a lot of straight, white, liberal men (some of whom are Christian) who understand that equality strengthens society and improves conditions for everyone. Combine those men with women, people of color, gays, the disabled, and I have hope that society will wholly reject the return to Jim Crow and sexism.
The post was about how Christianity in general, and the Church in particular, benefits from secular institutional racism and sexism.