Zelophehad's Daughters

Setting: Camelot Commons

Elayne: I can’t wait for the Camelot Convention next month! I’m going to get in line for the Round Table session.

Percival: If you do that, there won’t be room for the hordes of men who want to attend.

Elayne: But I never have understood why women can’t be Round Table Squires.

Agravayne: Come, now. Everyone knows that women have a very special role. They sew favors for the men, and rejoice in their femininity, the divine adornment of Round Table Squires.

Percival: And don’t forget that women have their own meeting. The fact that a man sits at the head of their table should in no way detract from the flowered tablecloth.

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This guest post comes to us from Esther, a globetrotting sociologist and West Coast native. She loves Jesus, her family and friends, Jimmy Fallon, Michelle Obama, fresh salsa, and Tillamook cheese. In that order.

The obvious drawback of belonging to the Only True And Living Church On The Earth is associating with a lot of people who like to be right all the time. There may be One True Church, but there is not one true political party. Unfortunately, sometimes we confuse our gift to know the truth with an ability to know all truth and to assume that whatever truth God has given to us applies to everyone else. Is it possible that God could inspire two different people to vote for two different political candidates? Read More

Two months ago I had a once in a lifetime experience: I was invited to an Emirati wedding. In a vast, glittering ballroom, chandeliers festooned and arches bedecked with streaming garlands of real flowers, I sat with nearly six hundred Emirati women eating an eight-course gourmet meal, waited on by servants robed in white with gold sashes. As is common in the UAE, the wedding guests were dressed to the nines – full professional makeup, elaborate waist-length hair extensions, and high-end sequined designer gowns with plunging necklines paired with improbably spindly six-inch heels. Arab pop blasted from the speakers, and the female members of the bride’s and groom’s families stood in turn. They danced traditional dances together in front of the seated crowd, ululating and graceful in their glamorous gowns, wending their way up and down the center of the room in a processional toward the bridal bower. No photography was allowed – no cameras whatsoever were permitted in that room. I sat, my brain rapidly stultified by the rich food and blaring music, trying to create a mental video of the glamour and the dancing, trying to make sure I did not miss too many details of this extraordinary night.

And then, at the stroke of midnight, the groom came (looking pale and nervous), escorted by the broadly grinning male members of the bride’s family. And all of the sequins, all of the elaborately coiffed hair of the numerous guests, disappeared in moments under long frothy black abayas and headscarves, leaving only portions of the women’s faces, their henna tattooed hands, and their designer heels showing.** Only the bride, in that room filled with hundreds and hundreds of women, could be seen in her gorgeous gown by her husband-to-be. Only the bride’s immediate male relatives could even enter into the ballroom where the bride was seated, uncovered, surrounded by her vast network of family and friends. (Even the groom’s male relatives were forbidden entrance, and this despite the fact that all of the women other than the bride had covered themselves before any of the select few male relatives had entered.) They had entered into a sacred, private female space. Read More

“The incorrect idea in Christian history that wives should be dependent began with the false premise that the fall of Adam and Eve was a tragic mistake and that Eve was the primary culprit. Thus women’s traditional submission to men was considered a fair punishment for Eve’s sin. Thankfully, the Restoration clarifies Eve’s — and Adam’s — choice as essential to the eternal progression of God’s children. We honor rather than condemn what they did, and we see Adam and Eve as equal partners.” — Elder Bruce C. and Marie K. Hafen, “Crossing Thresholds and Becoming Equal Partners,” August 2007 Ensign

“So we stand, if you want to talk about things on which Mormons stand across the river, if you will, from other Christian faiths, this is one of the most important—that Eve was not an airhead, she was not a murderess. She was, in fact, wise and courageous, and what she did pleased God.” — Valerie Hudson Cassler, “The Two Trees”

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This is the clause I’m adding to my freshman composition syllabus next semester:

If, during the course of the semester, you find that you need something from me, please do not come to my office and ask for it. By doing so you will interfere with the dialogue I am always already having with my students about their needs. Any student who comes to my office asking for something will be redirected to the bar near campus where the college dropouts hang out, which is an ideal place to express opinions and ideas about the classroom that differ from mine. Please remember that students in this class, by a very large majority, do not share your advocacy for anything at all beyond a vague and mostly apathetic hope for grade inflation.

If any student comes to see me in spite of this, I’ll just put a trash can in front of the door to let them know I’m not available.

In this week’s edition of Tuesday’s Twice-Baked ZD we revisit Lynnette’s beautiful reflections on the Atonement.

I’ve always been a bit ambivalent about the stories surrounding Easter. I remember as a child listening to adults talking in solemn and hushed tones about the death of Jesus, and wondering how I was supposed to react. Should I be feeling guilty, since as a sinner I shared part of the blame for his suffering? Should I be feeling horrified? (Some of those who went into excruciating and grisly detail seemed to be hoping to provoke a bit of that reaction.) All too often, hearing the story of Good Friday left me with an image of a Jesus who quite possibly resented me for having messed up so badly that he had to pay for it, and who was now scrutinizing my every action to see if I was good enough to be worthy of his help.

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ETERNAL POLYGAMY AND SEALING INEQUALITY OF LDS WOMEN AND MEN—A SURVEY. Carol Lynn Pearson (www.clpearson.com) is sponsoring a survey to gather information on beliefs and opinions of Mormons (and former Mormons), male and female, on this important subject. Please take the survey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/sealingsurvey and please pass this request on to your friends and contacts. The survey closes on March 31, 2014. Thanks!

This is a talk I gave in my ward at the end of January.

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My husband grew up backpacking, and it was one of the conditions of our marriage that I would learn to backpack too. I do it now, and occasionally even enjoy it, but it’s definitely a stretch to say that I’m good at it or love it as wholeheartedly as Mike.

I say this by way of prefacing a personal story, so that you understand the context when I tell you that once, last summer in Yosemite, I was nearly defeated by a large boulder field at the end of a long day climbing mountains with a heavy backpack.

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When it comes to navigating the gay Mormon thing, I’ve been in many ways incredibly fortunate. When I first came out to my siblings and a couple of close friends several years ago, the response I got was largely a matter-of-fact acceptance, one that left me plenty of breathing room and no pressure—and I got similar reactions as I told more people over the years. When I publicly came out last November, the experience was mostly positive: people responded with kindness and love and support. After years of involvement in the world of Mormon blogging, I am fortunate to have a network of LDS friends who aren’t freaked out by this. And I live in what I imagine is one of the most gay-friendly stakes in the church. As Effie might say, the odds truly have been in my favor. Read More

This the second part of a series in which my friend ajbc gives her personal, long-winded, and rambling answers to each LDS temple question, since the actual interviews do not allow for elaborate discussion. The first post is here.

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It’s taken me a while to get to this second post, in part because I didn’t like part of my answer to the last one.  I wrote that I was most comfortable praying to a male or joint-gender god due to my upbringing, and I’m happy to report that I am now equally comfortable praying to Heavenly Mother as I am to Heavenly Father.  I’ve even had one of my Teyve-style (out loud, casual) prayers to/with her in the celestial room, which, by the way, is my all-time favorite part of serving in the temple–getting the room completely to yourself.

The other reason I’ve been putting this off is because I wrote an answer to the second question a while ago, and was thoroughly unsatisfied with it.  It wasn’t that I was inarticulate (nothing can help me there, save an editor), but that I didn’t like what I had to say.  I’ve been so focused on God in general and also with particular issues with the LDS Church that I had neglected the more middle-ground of Christianity.  Thus, I did some soul-searching, found some peace, and am now ready to answer #2.

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One of my friends has been asking me questions about the Creation stories lately. What’s the value, she wants to know, in reading them? In their neat, tidy rendering of the world, what connection do they have to actual life here, in its complications and messiness? They don’t give us a scientific rendering of the origin of the world, obviously. But what do they give us? So I’ve been mulling over this question for a while, and this is what I’ve come up with. Read More

Following up to my first post on why homosexuality is a theological problem for Mormons—and the stark question of whether gays can be seen as fully human in LDS teachings—I would like suggest a few avenues for theological thought which may yield more encouraging results.

1. One possibility is to conceptualize the image of God in a different way. In my first post, I noted that the standard LDS read is to see it as a statement that humans are literally the children of God and have the potential to become like him—an assertion which is generally tied to gender, as God is understood as literally (and not only metaphorically) male. This is also linked to the scriptural context in which this notion appears in the first place: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1:27)

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