Women Wanting the Priesthood From a Man's Perspective

This is an article on a VERY controversial subject. Not exactly a smooth way to break in the blog, but an important and relevant one for this upcoming weekend that I believe the First Presidency of the LDS Church will likely address. Please read, and comment on the author's conversational abilities. Here are some prompts just to help the process:

1. What does the writer do to understand the other side's point of view?
2. What assumptions does the writer make?
3. Where, if at all, does the writer label the opposition's views (dumb, unfounded, irrational, selfish, etc.) and how might he word it better?
4.  Is this an effective way to cope with the petition and the implications that it carries with it?

I would like to thank the New York Times for breaking a story yesterday that highlights one of the biggest problems in the LDS Church; i.e., gender inequality. The article talks about a group of about 1,300 women who signed a manifesto for female ordination. 1,300 signatures. That sounds like a lot. In fact, if I write the number out with all caps and bold it, then it sounds like even more signatures: THIRTEEN HUNDRED. Wow.

But what does 1,300 signatures really represent? For ease of math, let’s round the number up to 1,500. According to mormonnewsroom.org, there are 15,000,000 LDS members in the world. Some simple math (on a simple calculator) tells me that the 1500 signatures represent 0.01 percent of the Church. But, you might say, men shouldn’t be included in that calculation because they aren’t the ones who are being oppressed (at least not in terms of receiving the Priesthood). So, for arguments sake, let’s cut the number of members in half to represent the split between men and women. Crunch the numbers and we see that the number now becomes 0.02 percent.

In the spirit of fairness, I decided to look and see how a comparable petition would fair with the US Government. And it’s not terrible. There are 313.9 million people in the United States. According to petitions.whitehouse.gov, in order to cross the threshold and be reviewed, a petition must receive 100,000 signatures in the span of 30 days. Unfortunately 0.02 percent of the United States population only equates to 62,780 signatures. In other words, it was a valiant effort but this petition gets rejected. I’m not saying the petition system is perfect, but it doesn’t seem to miss the important ones; e.g., the petition to deport Justin Bieber that reached the threshold in January of this year.
Other than the fact that Obama wouldn’t care (see what I did there?), we now know that these women only represent a small (dare I say teeny) portion of Latter-Day Saints. Loud? Yes. But small just the same. Doesn’t this make you wonder why the New York Times cares about a petition that doesn’t have enough signatures to make it to paper in the US Government? Let’s save that topic for another day. (Believe me, I have lots to say about the media targeting Latter Day Saints. Like, why is every other episode of DateLine about a Mormon who murdered his spouse or defrauded his entire congregation? Does that really only happen in Utah?)
So I propose that instead of focusing on such a bitty group of loud individuals, we should really start to consider the needs of the quiet majority. I’m talking about men. I believe that there is some gender inequality in the Church. But I don’t think it’s a one-way street. So I’m starting a list of requests that we, men, have all noticed, but until now, have been quiet about. (If you have any to add, then put them in the comment section)

• How come there’s a mother’s lounge but not a father’s lounge? Women get to nurse and feed their baby in a dark, quiet room while fathers have to walk around the Church looking for an empty classroom or use the “stand-and-sway” method to put babies to sleep. Even if we find an unused classroom, we don’t have the rocking chair.
• We want padded seats in our meeting room too. Do you know what men have? We have cold, hard, metal chairs. Are not all bottoms created equal?!
• Male enrichment night. After we graduate from scouting, we get one, maybe two, activities a year for men. (Typically a shooting guns activity with BBQ.) But we want monthly activities like the women. Let’s even up those budgets a little huh.
• Nursery for Elder’s quorum events. Women get the youth to babysit when they have an activity, but it’s expected that men should go to an activity without help. Do you just assume that our wives are always available to watch the kids when we have an activity? On the flipside, are you saying that men are incapable of watching the kids when the women are away to their activities? Either way, it sounds oppressive.
• We want a nice table and podium in our room. Sure, we’re not known for our table decor when it comes to Sunday lessons, but we couldn’t even if we wanted to. We only have a small table with skinny legs. How am I supposed to display my tackle box and Singing Bass wall mount in style when I give my “fishers of men” lesson?
• Finally, I want to propose an every-other-move ordinance where the Elders Quorum and the RS split all of the new move-ins and move-outs in the Ward. Your argument: men are stronger and can lift more. My counter-argument: women are more likely to show up and “many hands make light work.”

Again, I would like to thank the New York Times for pointing out the gender inequality in our Church. We have a long way to go, but I believe we can get there. One padded seat at a time.

http://buzz.io/4219/some-lds-women-want-the-priesthood-well-lds-men-have-some-requests-too/