Monday night, I saw a clip on Twitter of Young Men general presidency member Brad Wilcox making a tremendously racist statement in a youth fireside. I posted about it yesterday and, in the comments, people told me it wasn’t just racism. There was misogyny and religious bigotry mixed in too.
So last night I looked at a little more of his address and, well, it too is not good. So today I’m going to add a little. I’ll note that I still haven’t watched the whole thing and today’s post will be a lot shorter, in large part because I have to do actual work that I get paid for; thus, I’m going to pull out one or two parts.
Today’s post won’t be overshadowed by questions of the sincerity of the apology though because, unlike his statements on race and the priesthood, there has been no apology.
And with that, here we go:
Between his statement on the priesthood and temple restriction and his statement on women and the priesthood, it looks to me like Wilcox has a favorite rhetorical device: take an issue where a marginalized group faces marginalization and claim that no, it’s not them, it’s actually the dominant group that faces marginalization. With race, it was the idea the white people didn’t have the priesthood for 1,829 years. With women, it’s this:
What else don’t women have? Priesthood ordination. They’re not ordained to the priesthood. “Well, how come they’re not ordained to the priesthood?” Maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe we should be asking, “Why don’t they need to be” … So what is it that sisters are bringing with them from a premortal life that men are trying to learn through ordination? Maybe that’s the question that ought to be keeping us up at night.
Let me be frank: what men can learn from priesthood ordination that women already know is absolutely not the question that ought to be keeping us up at night. It’s along the lines of looking at the fact that only 41 Fortune 500 companies have women as CEO and, instead of asking, “What systemic, legal, social, economic, etc. impediments do women face in the workplace,” asking, “Why is it that men need to be CEOs to learn something women already know?” It’s pedestaling, it’s a weird kind of gender essentialism, and it’s deeply, deeply beside the point.
Women don’t get ordained because the church has a doctrine/policy[fn1] against it. Why? I can think of a lot of possible reasons, but women are inherently more righteous than men and don’t need it is absolutely not one of those reasons. We believe that to each of us is given different gifts of the Spirit; we don’t believe that those gifts are the same across gender lines. I am entirely sure that there are women who are better people and more spiritual than I am. I’m also entirely sure that there are women who are worse people and less spiritual than I am.
In fact, this idea resonates with other offensive group stereotypes. A friend of mine of Chinese descent, not Mormon but very familiar with Mormonism, read that. His immediate reaction was, “This sounds like the gender-equivalent of ‘Asians are good at math.'”
Let’s not “Asians are good at math” women.
Moreover, Wilcox doubles down on the idea the women already have access to the priesthood:
Girls, listen closely, because I don’t know that you’ll ever have somebody explain it quite this point blank again. You have access to every priesthood blessing. There is not one priesthood blessing that you are denied. And you serve with priesthood authority. When you are set apart in a class presidency or you’re set apart as a missionary or in any calling in the church, you serve with priesthood authority. You will go to temples where you will be endowed with priesthood power, and you will dress in priesthood robes.
That has always been a weak justification for not giving women the priesthood. What it amounts to is an assertion that priesthood doesn’t matter, that ordination doesn’t matter, because, well, reasons.
But after two years of a pandemic, it’s self-evidently and obviously wrong. Women expressly do not have access to every priesthood blessing. When the churches were shut, most, if not all, stakes authorized families to administer the sacrament at home. But that only happened in homes with priesthood holders. Single women, women married to non-members, and others without a priesthood holder in the house did not have access to the sacrament unless some ordained priesthood-holding man brought it to their home.[fn2]
The thing is, Wilcox recognizes that women not holding the priesthood is a problem. But his proposed solution—putting women on a pedestal and claiming that it’s men who are in the worse position anyway—is misogynistic.
And again, this is an individual problem but it’s also a systemic one. At our last stake conference, the visiting Area Authority spoke. At some point during his talk, he offered the obligatory praise of our stake president. And he said something to the effect of: “When we choose a stake president, we look for the most spiritual, organized person in the stake. And then we call her husband.”[fn3]
It was meant to be funny. But the thing is, it’s not funny. And it’s not funny in an in-your-face way. It highlights that, no matter how qualified a woman is, there’s a ceiling to what she can do in the church. Because if the point of calling a stake president is to find the most spiritual, organized, or otherwise qualified leader, then the church should call that person, not their spouse.
And if, for whatever reason, that’s not possible—if church leaders have sincerely inquired and cannot extend priesthood to women—they need to own that. Own it in a way that acknowledges the hurt and pain and unfairness. Because telling women they have priesthood when they self-evidently don’t, telling them they’re better so they’re second-class citizens, isn’t the balm some leaders think it is. This is another place where the church needs to repent and figure out a way to move forward.
And honestly, Wilcox needs to expand his apology.
(There was also some troubling discussion about how leaving the church will cause a person to lose everything. And that’s frankly entirely wrong and flies in the face of the sentiment behind Pres. Hinckely’s near-constant refrain of: “Let me say that we appreciate the truth in all churches and the good which they do. We say to the people, in effect, you bring with you all the good that you have, and then let us see if we can add to it.” Inherent to Hinckley’s statement is the idea that there is, in fact, abundant good outside of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But I’ve spent more time on this post than I really have to spend on it, so I’ll leave off highlighting the problem without expanding on it.)
[fn1] To be clear, “doctrine” means “teaching”; it doesn’t implicate eternal or unchanging and, frankly, in my mind its interchangeable with “policy.”
[fn2] I’m a middle-aged guy who loves to torture his kids by misusing teen slang, so take this with a grain of salt, but I’m pretty sure that’s what people these days call gaslighting.
[fn3] To be clear, I don’t remember precisely what superlatives he used. But it was superlatives along the line of what I wrote.