Exponent II's Blog, page 102

Women Should Be Bishops

Imagine how great it would be to have Bishop Reyna Aburto conducting on Sundays and meeting you for your tithing declaration.

I think that women (not just men) should be called as LDS bishops. In fact, I think women should be bishops more often than men. When people argue about whether or not women should or could be ordained in the future it often comes down to the concern, “Do you want a young mom with little kids called as the bishop? That would be impossible for her!” But I disagree. I think it makes sense for women to be bishops at all stages of life, and for a lot of different reasons. I’ll go through a few scenarios in this blog post.

WOMEN WITH YOUNG FAMILIES: 

Regarding the question of whether I want young mothers called as bishops, my answer is, “No, of course I don’t. But I don’t want to call a young dad with little kids to be the bishop, either!”

However, if the church is small in an area and the parent of a young family does have to be called into a leadership position, which makes more sense in a traditional family with a stay at home mom and an employed dad? I think it’s the mom!

Imagine a typical weeknight for them. She’s been home all day with young children, or if she’s outside of the house she’s been hauling them around with her while running errands and fulfilling her responsibilities. The dad has been away from home and his kids, dealing with adults and solving problems at work. By dinnertime, the mom is very ready to have a break from childcare and interact with adults, and the dad is very ready to spend time with his kids and unplug from the outside world. But what do we do? We call the dads into bishoprics, pulling them away from home on evenings and Sundays for church duties and meetings, and moms stay at home – isolated and without support from her partner.

Many women I’ve interacted with at church really enjoy callings in the Young Women’s program- not only because they love the teenage girls, but because it gives them a weekly evening outing and summer events like Girl’s Camp and Youth Conference where they can leave their children behind in someone else’s care for a few hours or days. It’s a chance to interact with other adult leaders, plan and carry out activities, and feel useful to others outside of the sometimes drudgery of day-to-day care of babies and toddlers. Because of this, Young Women’s always felt more glamorous than say, nursery or primary callings. Those callings teaching young children usually require fewer hours and less work overall, but they rob the women called of their adult time in Relief Society class or with other leaders in the youth program. 

Yet we continue to call young dad into bishoprics, and their wives into nursery. I propose we swap that trend! Let the dads spend time with the toddlers, and the moms spend time running the ward and helping the grown-ups. 

Dads are great at taking care of their kids while their wife is out of the home doing her church calling!

 

Other congregations are led successfully by females of all ages and family demographics. Women make great ecclesiastical leaders!

 

WOMEN WITH OLDER FAMILIES AND EMPTY NESTERS:

I once overheard someone ask the wife of a new stake president how she’d been doing since her husband was called. She shrugged and said, “Well, I’ve just gotten used to being alone a lot!”. Her husband owned his own business and went to work all day, then in the evenings he’d often go straight to church meetings. They’d see each other for only minutes some days. She was canning and gardening, hanging out with her grandkids, taking institute classes, and passing the time. She wasn’t unhappy, but I do think she was seriously underutilized by the church.

We could stop calling young fathers to be bishops by broadening the pool of possibilities to include older women who have spent decades raising their families but not working outside of the home. Their husbands still go to work because they haven’t reached retirement age, but these women don’t have a career and aren’t planning to start one at age 55. They have a lot of life experience, wisdom, patience and compassion that younger people don’t always have yet. More than anything, these women have time. Unlike young parents or older working men, they have the flexibility in their schedule to meet people when they are available or immediately in need. They could drive to the hospital at 10:00 am or go to a house late at night without disrupting a work schedule.

Older women are too often greatly underutilized in the church. I see very capable women with time to spare called to publish the ward newsletter while a younger, overworked man is put in charge of running the entire ward.

SINGLE WOMEN:

I would argue that both single women AND single men would be great candidates for ward bishop – but for the purpose of this blog post, I’ll focus on single women. 

Recently Exponent blogger Trudy wrote a great post about why she believes LDS singles should be integrated fully into family wards, and I agree! Many girls and young women growing up in the church will not have the opportunity (or desire) to marry when they reach adulthood. The current unintended messaging to young people is that a woman who doesn’t achieve marriage and motherhood is not fulfilling the measure of her creation – and she’s sent away to the singles ward until she can find herself a spouse and then return to the family ward, finally able to serve. What better way to change this false idea than to let young people see single women serving as bishops in their wards as they grow up?

Sometimes people worry about a single person being qualified to counsel families and married members of their wards if they have never been married themselves. However, male bishops currently give advice and counsel on all kinds of things they have zero firsthand experience with. (Single motherhood, divorce, abuse, loss of testimony, etc.) Spiritual leaders in many other religions are single and yet lead and counsel their congregations (for example, a Catholic priest who can’t marry still regularly provides marital counseling to members of his parish). Even Wendy Watson Nelson, wife of the current prophet, was a successful marriage and family therapist for decades as an unmarried woman. There is absolutely no reason to believe that a married man will give better support to families in crisis than a single woman could. 

IN CONCLUSION:

Have I ever dreamed of being called as a bishop? Nope! It sounds terrible. So many uncompensated hours, plus thankless work and stressful nights. But just because I don’t want to be in charge of a ward doesn’t mean I don’t want any woman to do it anywhere. 

I also don’t want to be the president of the United States, but I’d never say, “I don’t want any woman to be president, because if we’re allowed to I might have to do it!” That’s silly. No woman ever has to be a bishop, simply because it’s permitted. (No man ever has to be one either, for that matter – because it’s a volunteer position and you can decline it.) Permitting women to be called as bishops would allow the entire church community to benefit from women’s distinct leadership skills in positions of authority and decision-making power. This filters up to the men in charge above her, finally able to have female voices directly included in meetings they are absent from now, and filters down below them to those they counsel and lead. Just because an individual woman doesn’t want to be a leader herself should never make her wish to ban all women from ever becoming leaders themselves. 

I also don’t want to be a politician, a brain surgeon, a Navy Seal or a lawyer – but I still want those fields open to as many women as are drawn to them. We all benefit from women writing our laws, doing our medical research, and defending our freedom. 

Why are we so comfortable seeing women in every one of these areas except church leadership?

The church would benefit so much from opening priesthood positions (like bishoprics) up to women. I understand why it didn’t make sense to have women included in church authority in the 1800s when the church was founded, but we are now living in the year 2022. Women are no longer relegated to second class citizenship like they were then. We vote, we own property, we go to law school, we sit in congress – and it’s time we sit on the stand in Sacrament Meeting. There is zero scriptural or doctrinal mandate for a male only clergy, other than it’s just the way things have always been done. We’ve changed and adapted many other things since the 1800s that were fine one way then but aren’t anymore (like polygamy, slavery, Word of Wisdom, temple ceremonies, garments, tithing, etc…). If we can change all of that, why can’t we also change from a male only priesthood? Is the church not a church of continuing revelation?

The first time there’s a female bishop on the stand, I’m sure it will feel strange. It always feels weird when women are allowed to do things they’ve never done before. It felt strange the first time Saudi Arabians saw a woman driving a car! It felt strange to see women in space, voting in elections, doing police work, leading construction crews, or enlisting in the military. But it will only feel strange for a minute, and then it will be normal. Let’s practice making female leaders at church feel ordinary!

 

What the Church can learn from Victoria’s Secret

Never did I ever think I’d write that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints could learn something from Victoria’s Secret, but. . . the Church could really learn something from the PR response of Victoria’s Secret to the song “I know Victoria’s Secret” by Jax that has become a viral phenomenon.

Jax reacting to the CEO of Victoria’s Secret response to her viral song, “I know Victoria’s Secret”

Jax, previously a competitor on American Idol, wrote this song for a girl she babysits who was struggling with body image. Jax knows body image struggles all too well, and says that media portrayals of the ideal body type she saw as a teen encouraged her to develop body dysmorphia and years of eating disorders. So she wrote “I know Victoria’s Secret” to address how girls are manipulated into unhealthy thoughts and actions.

The chorus of the song reads:

I know Victoria’s secret
And girl, you wouldn’t believe
She’s an old man who lives in Ohio
Making money off of girls like me
Cashing in on body issues
Selling skin and bones with big boobs
I know Victoria’s secret
She was made up by a dude (dude)
Victoria was made up by a dude (dude)
Victoria was made up by a dude

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by JAX (@jax)

Jax first shared the song on Instagram and Tik Tok, and when it took off, released it as a single with her label, Atlantic. It has been streamed millions of times, is playing by radio stations, has hit the Billboard 100 chart, and is part of viral content with people sharing their own stories on social media.

While the song calls out Victoria’s Secret specifically, Jax has clarified that it isn’t about that one brand, but larger systemic issues of corporations and media that feed the idea of only one acceptable body type in order to push products to obtain the unobtainable. For her, it isn’t about the models who have been used by the system, but the impressionable young girls who are told they need to contort themselves into a single shape to be worthy of love.

When a corporation is called out by name, they can respond in various ways. They can have lawyers send a cease-and-desist letter to have the content removed (as singer Cherie Call once experienced), and if the artist will not, proceed with a lawsuit for civil damages. They can attack the character of the content creator. They can ignore the callout and pretend the conversation about systemic issues isn’t happening. They can use their immense financial resources in any number of ways to make the life for the artist challenging.

But in this instance, the CEO of Victoria’s Secret, Amy Hauk, responded on Instagram with a hand-written note thanking Jax for addressing important issues and committing to do better in building a community “where everyone can be seen and respected.” She said, “We make no excuses for the past. And we are committed to regaining your trust.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Victoria's Secret (@victoriassecret)

Brava, Amy.

Of course, this is not the first time that Victoria’s Secret has been called out for ways that they have strategically marketed a single body type that is unrealistic and unhealthy for most people. And despite recent changes with new plus-size options and broader visual representation with their models, Victoria’s Secret has a long way to go to be an inclusive, body-positive brand. But just because they have not always responded with a public commitment to change in the past does not mean that they cannot or should not do so now.

Maybe this is just a PR stunt to offer a positive public response and private legal action will follow. I hope not. But responding to criticism with grace, no excuses, and a commitment to listen and change is an excellent place to start. It will need to be followed with meaningful action, or any future response to criticism will ring hollow.

When an individual speaks out that they have personally been harmed by a multi-billion dollar organization and that they see ongoing systemic issues that continue to hurt people, it is possible for the organization to do more than ignore the issue, make excuses, or attempt to diminish or silence the speaker.

If Victoria’s Secret can publicly acknowledge problems and commit to doing better, then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which teaches a gospel of repentance, can do so, too.

My Black Voice is (s)ILENT

During the early days of the pandemic, I spent a lot of time watching LDS influencers interact on their various social media channels. With nowhere to go and nothing to do as the world screeched to a halt, I found myself immersed deeply in the #ldsinfluencer hashtag on Instagram seeking like-minded individuals who shared both truthfulness along with relatable and optimistic messages.

Maybe, I was searching for something. A part of me believes that I was seeking to find connectivity in a church that despite their best efforts doesn’t quite reflect my blackness back to me. Still, I remained optimistic that somewhere…somehow, I would find community.

I had long dubbed myself an anti-influencer. I didn’t share the bubblegum messages of peace, love, and charity. I didn’t push my followers with content about following the prophet. I didn’t stick to the surface-level script most influencers have that diminishes their real-life problems into the categories of “punishment versus unworthiness”.

George Floyd’s death woke me up. But why did it seem like everyone else was asleep?

Instead, I spoke about the hard things. I shared the good and bad parts of my journey and how being a member had impacted my ability to remain resilient in the storm. I testified that as much as the gospel had changed my life, there were temporal aspects from my pre-baptism life I held onto. I didn’t make cute sappy messages where I used my “church voice” to appear as though I had the answers to life’s problems. I was me…sassily expressing myself and sharing my own take on living the gospel life while preserving my true self.

I had first noticed the shift in my followers following the death of George Floyd. Like other black Latter Day Saints, I awaited some sort of message to soothe pained hearts from the church. When no response came, I took inspiration from a returned missionary and started to talk about the experiences I had while visiting friends in Utah.

My follower count which had been steadily growing started to decline. No longer was I seen as the “agreeable” black woman but I had somehow in the opinions of many politicized my page. Without outwardly expressing their disdain, I had been asked to “turn my blackness off” for the sake of likes, follows, and engagement.

 I just couldn’t do that.

Over time, I’ve realized all LDS influencers seem to be reading from the same script. In my mind, I thought I could change it. I was wrong.

Engagement with my posts hit an all-time low. Even while still churning out content, I was seeing how these “surface messages” seemed to prosper over my own. Things deteriorated further when I placed more emphasis on speaking about the topic of mental health. While mine was deteriorating following my bout with Covid-19, I decided to speak openly about my own struggles dealing with anxiety and depression.

The hub of “friends” from the community was silent. My message fell on deaf ears as my follower count decreased even more. Five hundred followers by then decided that I was no longer their cup of tea and vamoosed for the nearest exit.

I stopped posting on my Instagram page, feeling the hypocrisy of the LDS influencer space. I started to open my eyes to how performative it all seemed. There was no message of support or a true sense of community.

Instead, I realized that in a gospel of perfection, the color of my skin often excludes me from the narratives that I might experience struggles. When white friends posted about their challenges with their lives and mental health hardships, they were immediately flacked with support and care.

I, on the other hand, was expected to endure.

I realized that the culture which surrounds church members excludes BIPOC from ever experiencing difficulty. We are expected to be hard, tough and endure every difficulty that comes our way so we will be deemed the “Golden covert”.

After losing my grandmother in 2018 and sharing my experiences with the grief that consumed me, a follower kindly reminded me that I should focus on the good and just focus on producing content. In her words, “I knew where my grandmother was going and I should just try to return to normal as quickly as possible”. It mattered very little that I was in pain. In her eyes, I was simply meant to fake it for the sake of being a good member. I was expected to sit down, shut up, focus on the Spirit and go back to life as normal.

After these encounters, my wheels fell off. I decided to live life away from the hashtags and the performative captions. I decided to focus my energy on my other writing projects and began writing the hard-hitting content for my Exponent articles. In my mind, if my black voice had no power…if it contributed nothing to the conversation then I would simply remove myself from the narrative that failed to provide me with the community I needed.

A weight has been lifted off my shoulders as I find comfort in having these hard conversations in spaces where my voice adds value instead of living in a faith-based fear that my words will be misinterpreted and misconstrued.

I’m much more aware of the energy of spaces that allow me to use my voice as a woman of color. I am protective of the spaces that accept me as I am and don’t ask me to change what makes me uniquely me for the sake of fitting in with the model example of what makes a good member of the church.

I’d like to think there’s a community for black women in church spaces. I’d like to believe that somehow, we break glass ceilings with our words and in speaking out about the disparities that exist in our church culture.  Our voices and opinions add spice and flavor to a church that might not project our blackness back to us but allow us to feel as though we do add value to the conversations that surround us.

I hold on to the hope that one day our voices won’t be silent. I pray for the day we add value instead of being seen as less agreeable if our opinions differ from the major. That day will come.

Learning to See Story

“For most women, to let die is not against their natures, it is only against their training.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves, 120

When I was young, I examined the blue veins that spread under my grandmother’s pink, brown, and white splotched skin and traced her exposed metacarpal bones with my index finger. Those old hands rubbed my back while she sang love songs to me in her shaking voice. I would play with the folds of velvety skin on her cheeks and neck; that beautiful old woman.

 My grandmother’s hands are colorful: pink, purple, blue, white, red, black, and brown. Her white hairs glisten in the sun and her gentle hands cling to someone’s arm as she slowly walks. She used to be young with fewer colors and wrinkles on her skin. More flesh on her bones. But I don’t know that woman, that girl she remembers, all I know is my wrinkly, wise, wonderful Grandma.

Paradoxically, I’m afraid of looking old. I buy hopeful adjectives that are magically infused into serums, toners, and creams that I know don’t work: illuminating, resurfacing, age-defying. When I smile, my eyes crinkle and when I concentrate, my eyebrows squeeze together – no number of adjectives will resurface my wrinkles. I’ve been young, now I’m growing old and shaving my lip and peeing my pants; chasing my mom through time like she chases her mother, my colorful grandmother.

Wrinkles are the writings of time, teaching us to let things die; teaching us to see our stories and let our younger selves die. I remember my mom pulling her skin back to her scalp, smoothing out her wrinkles, or saying “you’re giving me grey hairs,” like it was a bad thing. But I loved how her white strands reflected the sunlight like diamonds hidden in her muddy hair. It meant she was still alive.

Plump skin rolls around my daughter’s thighs and neck as she skips and twirls through life. My greatest hope for her is to live, to grow, to become old and wrinkled and slow. She already traces the purple veins that bulge from my dry-skinned hand like a map of the desert and knows the wrinkles on my face when I smile. The wrinkles that teach her about life and story and death. She wants to grow old with me, too. Aging doesn’t happen to everyone, but death does. My daughter’s smile reminds me that I do want to get old and my grandmother’s smile reminds me of that too.

My grandmother had just returned from Cambodia, her third senior service mission, when she laid back in a dentist’s chair for the first time in 18 months and accidentally forgot who she was.

“Good news, you don’t have any cavities,” the dentist said before adding, “I’m curious why you haven’t ever had braces?”

“Oh,” my grandmother said, “I just never thought about it, I guess.”

“I don’t see teeth this terrible anymore,” the stranger said, “You should have gotten braces sooner, but I will recommend some really great orthodontists to you.”

When my grandfather drove her home, my grandmother was unsmiling and small. Surprised, my grandfather assumed she had cavities that needed filling. But she said no. Pain? No, she said. For days my grandmother didn’t smile. Her usual sunshine self was snuffed with humiliation.

Finally, my grandmother wept the story into the room as she hid her mouth from her spouse of fifty years.

“Why have I never thought about my teeth?” she cried, “I should have gotten braces years ago. I’m so embarrassed.”

My grandpa reached across the bed and held his old wife in his aged arms.

“Your smile is beautiful,” he said.

“No. It’s not. My teeth are so crooked. The dentist was right,” she said.

Holding my grandmother’s face in his hands, forcing her to look him in the eyes, he said, “No. He was not.” Tears traced the wrinkles down his face, too. “Everyone looks at your smile and sees your love. Think of the way our grandchildren’s faces light up when they see you. All they see is you, their grandmother, who smiles every time she sees them. All they want is you. Your teeth are crooked, and I love them. All I want is you.”

All I want is wrinkly, saggy, crooked teethed you. Because there is more to being human than attempting to erase time and stories from our bodies. So much more.

That dentist was wrong – my grandma’s smile is the most beautiful, old, imperfect thing that lights up the faces of those who know her. That dentist, like myself so often, was distracted by the artificial and aesthetic current ideal. He didn’t see the cleft palate she was born with, the years of occupational therapy that taught her to talk when she was five, the life within her glowing crooked smile. The dentist was distracted by cultural perfection and missed the deep history of her overlapping teeth; “fix it,” he thought, instead of witnessing the story written on her body.

My daughter is young with her fleshy plumpness, my grandmother is old with her saggy exposed colorfulness, and my mom and I are sliding somewhere in between – all of us imprinting our lives onto our bodies. Mary Oliver, in her poem “The Summer Day,” asks, tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? My grandmother chooses to smile. I long to hold the stories of women in my hands; not with the regimen of distracting participial adjectives, but with flesh and wrinkles and veins, with my body just the way it is right now because it will change tomorrow – teaching me to accept what is coming.

Guest Post: I Want Tithes to Help Victims of Abuse Not the LDS Church’s PR and Legal Team #tithes4victims

Guest post by Tara T. Boyce

Children were raped and assaulted by their father for seven years and LDS officials knew and did nothing to stop it. LDS bishops and stake leaders tried to help the father, tried to get him to stop his abuse until they excommunicated him, but they did not report the abuse to state or protective services, nor did they help the children. What happened to those children and the systemic failures that failed them matters.

Photo by Salman Hossain Saif on Unsplash

The AP News article released last week details an investigation into the deliberate inaction of many Church leaders at many levels, sustained by a Churchwide system, which requires local lay leaders, such as bishops, to call an LDS “help line” operated by LDS social workers. When cases are deemed high risk, the protocol requires that these cases “immediately” be transferred to LDS defense attorneys. In the case of MJ, the oldest and first victim of abuse in her family, LDS attorneys advised or have been said to have legally threatened one bishop not to act on behalf of the victims. Though Arizona state laws say clergy may withhold reporting as it relates to church doctrine, the law does not say that they have to. LDS officals chose to. 

They just let it keep happening,” said MJ. “They just said, ‘Hey, let’s excommunicate her father.’ It didn’t stop. ‘Let’s have them do therapy.’ It didn’t stop. ‘Hey, let’s forgive and forget and all this will go away.’ It didn’t go away.”[1]

Though the official handbook and PR Team of the Church says “[a]buse cannot be tolerated in any form,” the LDS protocol for reporting and handling abuse as revealed by AP News is itself an incubator for abuse. “Very few of the scores of lawsuits against [The Church] mention the help line,” writes the AP, “in part because details of its operations have been a closely guarded secret.” The process for reporting and handling abuse is non-transparent, insulated by Church defense attorneys, and unable to be accounted for, let alone by anyone without institutional ties. The Family Services Department which currently operates the help line, originated as an office of Risk Management, which tracks lawsuits that pose risk, including sexual abuse, against the church. A Church attorney reported he could not say how many calls to the help line were not referred to police or child welfare officials. And all records of calls to the LDS help line are destroyed at the end of every day, according to the Church’s Director of Family Services as reported by AP.

Regardless of whether or not initial help line workers are sometimes able to help victims through reporting or providing welfare services, cases deemed “high risk” are all transferred to LDS defense attorneys at Kirton McConkie who legally represent the LDS institution.[2]  This protocol jeopardizes victims the second a victim’s interests become at odds with those of the institution.

The Church cannot claim to be intolerant of abuse if victims are ever a second priority. The current system requires them to be.

MJ’s case is not one instance of an otherwise healthy system dropping a child or a family of children through the cracks and back into the hands of an abuser. After all, documentation of MJ and her sibling’s abuse were only discovered while U.S. officials were investigating another non-related LDS sex abuse case. To suggest this case does not reveal a systemic failure worthy of fixing is either ignorant of the many stories and research shared on LDS platforms[3] decades prior to the AP News article, or dishonest, both of which are ways of turning away from victims.

Kirton McConkie, the Salt Lake City firm that represents the LDS Church, is now in a legal battle with MJ and her siblings–all 16 years of age or younger–for requesting monetary and policy restitution. One attorney argues the legal case as a “money grab,” and that local leaders did “nothing wrong” to MJ or her siblings because leaders did not violate the law.

I want to pause here and step back.

A religious institution, claimed to be supported by state laws that do not require clergy to report abuse because of its doctrines, is fighting children of abuse about the institutional right to not actively protect those children.

The best legal and non-legal action for victims of abuse is a worthy and necessary discussion to have, but for now, this is not my point. The law is not our moral compass. LDS Church policy is not our moral compass. Honoring human dignity–the right to every body’s safety and protection and healing–could and should be our moral compass.

I cannot help but imagine Jesus’s rage.

Though I no longer affiliate with the LDS Church or a particular Christian denomination,  I still find resonance in Jesus’s ministry and teachings, resonance I believe many practicing and post- Mormons might share.

Marcus Borg, a New Testament scholar and theologian, identified “systemic injustice” as one of the most influential and consistent themes of Jesus’s ministry. Borg argues that systems of injustice are the “single greatest source of unnecessary human suffering,” including oppressive religious systems, which “became the overarching moral issue [for Jesus] because it involved the methodical but taken-for-granted mistreatment of God’s children.”[4]

How is the LDS Church’s process for handling abuse not only unsupportive of, but also antithetical to Jesus’s ministry committed to fighting systems that exploit? And what can LDS members do about it?

John Dominic Crossan, a New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity, explained the concept of the Kingdom of God like a “well-run household” where the temporal and spiritual needs of each member are considered with questions like, “Do you have enough?” If not, Jesus would not approve of the household. And, Crossan argues, a household “where some members are exploited or some have far less than they need, while others have far more than they need, is a household that horrified the conscience of Jesus, destroyed the integrity of the household, and dishonored the householder.”[5]

A system that hides and perpetuates abuse is a house that exploits the abused and is a house deemed dishonorable. The householder, the LDS First Presidency who created the protocol in 1995 and continues to sustain institutionally-loyal protocols, who has been reported to sit in on meetings about the help line and protocols,[6] has acted dishonorably. Jesus had harsh words for those who did not alleviate suffering, and especially for those in positions of power who added to it:

They ‘crushed people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.’ They were ‘hypocrites . . . blind guides . . . fools . . . snakes . . . and sons of vipers.’”[7]

To believe the LDS system for handling abuse is exempt from Jesus’s harsh judgment because it is endorsed by those deemed spiritually authoritative is a way of thinking that encourages abuse, and it is a way of thinking Jesus condemned. Unchallenged authority or power allows abuse of the vulnerable to thrive.

Jesus doesn’t have to condemn abuse or abusive institutions for them to be immoral. Abuse is immoral because it hijacks a person’s real and perceived sense of safety and freedom, and when anyone, including LDS officials and members, turn away from victims of abuse, when they ignore, when they stay silent, when they do not proactively act on behalf of victims in the interest of the victims, they often cause more trauma for victims, sometimes even worse than the original abuse because doing so makes a whole community feel unsafe in addition to the abuser. The Church’s helpline and protocol can and has in the case of MJ and her siblings encouraged leaders and abusers to do just this: turn away, stay silent. This leaves victims powerless, nestled in the hands of the abuser who can use an authoritative institution’s inaction as a type of justification for the abuse. 

We do not honor the dignity of those abused if we pretend LDS victims do not deserve a life and community that is better than what current LDS systems are. We do not honor the dignity of abusers or institutions who enable abusive behavior by pretending they are not capable of accountability or restitution.

The LDS Church has been reported by some organizations to receive $7 billion annually in tithes, and to hold over $100 billion in stocks. Sources claim the Church gives less than 1% of its revenue to charity,[8] less than it requires of its own members, which is 10% of their income. We do not know the exact finances of the Church because the Church does not make their finances public, but it is safe to assume that the LDS Church has the means to financially support victims like MJ, but chooses not to.

“We just don’t understand why they’re paying all these lawyers to fight this,” says Matthew Whitworth, a family member representing one of the children in the case. “Just change the policy.”

What if all of us practicing, post, ex, adjacent Mormons showed solidarity with LDS victims of abuse by donating this month’s tithing or charity funds to organizations committed to helping victims of sexual abuse rather than to the Church’s billion-dollar PR and legal team which has shown themselves to be capable of further traumatizing those abused? We can’t do much to change top-down LDS protocols, but we can voice our convictions with our money, which the Church continues to prioritize.

Act 1 in Solidarity with Victims of Abuse

Donate your tithes or charitable giving this month not to the LDS Church but to organizations that deliberately act on behalf of those abused. Here are some organizations in Utah and the U.S. where I live that have been recommended by mental health professionals, though you can find organizations closer or more meaningful to you. Consider donating to international organizations, especially if you live outside the U.S. (See below for insight into how to find and evaluate local charities in your area):[9]

Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Utah Children’s Justice Center Program

RAINN

Act 2 in Solidarity with Victims of Abuse

Then speak up online to honor victims of abuse who are often threatened into silence. Use the hashtag #tithes4victims and invite others to do the same. A collective act of solidarity says that these holy bodies matter to us more than illusions of a perfect household. Illusions are a guaranteed way to never achieve a healthy household, so help break an illusion.

And Lastly, Together

Rumi writes, “What is a real connection between people? When the same knowledge opens a door between them.” Let this news open a door between all of us who sense systemic injustice and work for healthy households and communities that not only properly handle abuse or work to prevent abuse, but also practice deliberate, self-extending love for the most vulnerable, like MJ. Her sister. Her unnamed sibling. Every precious victim. LDS officials and their defense attorneys may not do this, but we can.  

If you or a loved one has been affected by sexual violence, the National Sexual Assault Hotline, operated by RAINN, is available at 800.656.HOPE or via live chat at https://www.rainn.org/. Communication is available 24/7, confidential and free of charge.

Tara T. Boyce

Tara T. Boyce is an ex-writing scholar and instructor turned writer committed to living a creative life. She has published poetry and creative essays in Segullah, Inscape, Euphemism, Criterion, Feminist Mormon Housewives, and Exponent Blog. Her substack newsletter Restoration: Writings on Discovering and Restoring an Authentic Self is set to release next month at thisismyrestoration.substack.com. You can follow her on IG @taratuulikki and Twitter @taradiddling.

[1] “Seven Years of Sex Abuse: How Mormon Officials Let it Happen,” by Michael Rezendes in AP News, August 4, 2022

[2] Rezendes, AP News; See also “1999 Protocol for Abuse Help Line,” Mormon Leaks, www.mormonleaks.com

[3] See, for example, A Thoughtful Faith Podcast, “Sexual Abuse Church Coverups,” www.athoughtfulfaith.org/tag/sexual-a... “Sexual Abuse” in The Sunstone Education Foundation, www.sunstone.org/?s=sexual+abuse; Lavina Fielding Anderson’s published catalogues on sexual and ecclesiastical abuse, Sunstone Magazine, www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/092-65-79;

Mormon Stories Podcast, “Sexual Abuse.” mormonstories.org/episodes/sexual-abu...

[4] Marcus J. Borg, Jesus and the Christian Life

[5] John Dominic Crossan, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer, 14, 45, 50, 78

[6] Rezendes, AP News

[7] Matt 23:4, 15-17, 33 NLT

[8] “Mormon Church Has Misled Members on $100 billion tax-exempt investment fund, whistleblower alleges,” by Jon Swaine, Douglas MacMIllan and Michell Boorstein, The Washington Post, December 17, 2019; “Mormons Inc: Church Accused of Multinational Tax Rort,” by Ben Schneiders, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 3, 2022

[9] To find more organizations in your area or country, consider exploring Guidestar, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, CharityWatch, or Charity Navigator. Look for orgs with at least 75 percent of income spent on programs or on the nonprofit’s mission. See also “How to Choose a Charity Wisely” by John F. Wasik, New York Times

The Body is Political: Part 4

On the Mormons Building Bridges Facebook group, someone asked, “How long do you leave your Pride flag up?”

I responded, “All year. Cuz we’re gay all year.”

This is a Pride post. I’m posting it in August because I’m proud all year.

Awhile back, when I was hanging onto church attendance with everything I had, Colorado had a bill before the state legislature. First, a bit of background. In Colorado, sex education is a district and school based decision. There is no mandate. If the school chooses to provide sex education, every individual family is allowed to opt out. In other words, no one is forced to learn accurate sex ed. The bill in question clarified a sex education law that had been in existence for years. Thanks to propaganda by right-wing conspiracy groups, the area presidency got the notion that the new bill mandated education on LGBTQ identities for everyone. It didn’t. Sex ed was still completely voluntary, and nothing changed regarding the inclusion of LGBTQ identities in the course material. Any education on LGBTQ identities was limited to definitions, not how-to manuals. But not having done the homework of reading the actual bill, the area presidency sent a message to the stakes telling them to let their ward members know about the “dangerous” nature of the bill. It said they should encourage their members to “get involved.” Some stakes chose not to forward the message. My stake, being extremely rigid on LGBTQ issues (but, interestingly, willing to bend the rules when it comes to money) sent the message right away, urging us to get involved.

I did. 

I testified before the legislature in favor of the bill. 

I posted the video of my statement on social media.

I supported my teenager as she drafted a statement and testified before the legislature in favor of the bill.

My actual statement read, “What is my child’s LGBTQ agenda? Simply to survive.”

Because I believe in transparency and naming oppression, I emailed my stake presidency and told them about my advocacy.

Why? 

Because we are gay all year long.

Because our friends are LGBTQIA all year long.

Because our family members are LGTBQIA all year long.

Knowing how to have safe sex does not make a person have sex regardless of their orientation. 

Knowing that LGB people have sex does not make a straight person gay. 

Knowing that trans people exist does not make a person trans. 

Accurate sex education reduces sexually transmitted illnesses, pregnancy, sexual abuse, suicide, and early marriage. For trans and nonbinary children, it can help reduce gender dysphoria. Accurate biology, taught in an open and affirming way, also reduces incidents of violence against LGBTQ people. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough Matthew Shepards and Tatiana LaBelles. Standing in the way of accurate sex education hurts everyone, and yet that’s exactly what our church does. 

I love Pride. And I’m proud of a lot of things.

I’m proud of my genderqueer and gay children, those born to me and the bonus kids who have come into my life. I’m proud of my extended family who have brought their spouses into our lives and made us all richer. I’m proud of the BYU students who light up the Y and the campus with their beautiful out and proud selves.

But I am not proud of my church. My church consistently and systematically opposes all efforts at safety for LGBTQ people.

Recently in the US, there has been traction among some conservative religions for the Fairness for All Act. Some say that it’s a good compromise because it gives LGBTQ people some protections while allowing religions their freedom. With Obergefell on the chopping block thanks to recent Supreme Court decisions, now more than ever we need to enshrine access to marriage, bodily autonomy, healthcare, and services. Failing to do so strengthens oppression while eroding basic living conditions for LGBTQ people.

But the bill is not a good bill.

If someone told you that they thought you should sacrifice your right to live comfortably in your body because it’s a good “compromise,” what would you say? What would you say if I told you that the “compromise” involves the religious right giving up nothing? They still have the right to deny housing, employment, education, and service to LGBTQ people. They don’t have to provide insurance or medical care. Adoption and foster care organizations can refuse to serve or work with LGBTQ people. Religious organizations can continue to receive federal funding while refusing all of those services. It shields organizations and individuals from lawsuits if they foster a hostile work environment, including hate speech and antagonistic behavior. 

Is it a good compromise if it means people who aren’t like you continue to suffer abuse and exclusion?

Is it a good compromise if it means that the people who oppress continue to oppress?

The LDS church has no interest in creating a safe space within its walls for LGBTQ people who live honestly. It has no interest in creating a safe space in the world for LGBTQ people. The LDS church is interested in promoting the well-being of the corporation of the LDS church. While it may no longer mobilize an entire state to vote against marriage equality, it does mobilize an entire state to vote against the physical and mental well-being of LGBTQ children. And in the future, it will likely attempt to mobilize the church body again for similar purposes. Church leadership is persistent. They didn’t give up when they lost the vote in Hawaii and they haven’t given up now. And while the Fairness For All Act and the Supreme Court decisions are specific to the US, the anti-LGBTQ actions of the church affect us on a worldwide level, costing us tithing money, endangering BYU students, and putting missionaries in an impossible situation: tell the truth about our anti-LGBTQ stance or lie. Worse, they give sustenance to hate groups like DezNat, groups which have recently seen a rise in visibility and intensity. Make no mistake: what the LDS church says and does through its rhetoric, policies, and legislative advocacy directly and negatively impacts the life and health of LGBTQIA people.

I won’t support any “compromise” that oppresses people God has given to me to love. I won’t support legislation that oppresses people I have promised to protect. I won’t obey anyone who actively undermines basic human dignity while he claims to speak for a God of love.

To view the summary of the bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1440?s=1&r=1

The Body is Political: Part 1 (Intimate Partner Physical Abuse)

The Body is Political: Part 2 (Intimate Partner Sexual Abuse)

The Body is Political: Part 3 (Women Denied What Men Control)

Do Publications by and for Mormon Women Still Matter?

Our sisters ought at least to be able to keep up one journal exclusively for their own benefit, when the brethren maintain so many publications.

So says an editorial of the Woman’s Exponent in May of 1880. The Woman’s Exponent ran from 1872-1914 and was the primary publication by and for Mormon women.

The editorial argued for the value of publishing women’s voices:

The Exponent has been instrumental in removing much of the prejudice which has existed in regard to the condition of women in this Church. Through its columns the sisters old and young have spoken to the world, as they could not have done in any other way; giving free expression to their views and feelings in a simple and untrammeled manner that could not fail to give evidence of their liberty of thought and action, and their religious sincerity. They have also told the story of their own hardships and persecutions suffered in consequence of the bigotry and superstition that is always opposed to the dawn of new light.

Photo by Simon Wilkes on Unsplash

When I encountered this 1880 editorial, reprinted in the Fall 1979 Exponent II, I had to pause and ask, is this still the case? 150 years after the start of the Woman’s Exponent and nearly fifty years after the start of its spiritual descendent, Exponent II, do Mormon women still need a dedicated place to publish their voices? Certainly after all this time, women have gained an equal voice in the church and in society, right? Ha!

Some things have changed. Our collective understanding and language for gender have expanded and Exponent II now seeks to be a place for women and gender minorities along the Mormon spectrum (including both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and others with connections to Mormonism). Indeed many beliefs, church doctrines, social conditions, laws, living conditions, and more have changed so that one would not expect to read a blog post or magazine article today and think they had fallen into the 1880s. One could not pick up a copy of the Ensign and be able to confuse it with a nineteenth-century LDS periodical, and one should not expect that here. And of course, no one publication can or should attempt to speak for all Mormons, women, or gender minorities. No one publication can speak for all modern Mormon feminists. No one publication is sufficient.

But despite vast changes in society, the imbalance of voices, influence, and power in the Church remains skewed, with women having fewer opportunities to make decisions, speak, and publish. Women’s representation in general conference has grown since the nineteenth century, yet women remain a small minority of the speakers (and gender minorities lack any visibility). President Oaks made it clear that even in the women’s session of general conference, the speakers and music are designated by the all-male First Presidency. Cis-male leaders have ultimate control over Church communications and publications, and the Church does not sponsor a publication by and for Mormon women and has not since 1970. It seems that even in 2022, Mormon women still need a space of their own to give “free expression to their views and feelings in a simple and untrammeled manner.”

I’m reminded of an editorial that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich wrote in the December 1976 Exponent II in support of this budding publication:

First, it is our conviction that the writing of Mormon women matters, that it touches some of the deepest and most important issues in the Church today. One of the unfortunate consequences of the traditional put-down has been the reluctance of our brightest and best female writers to confront women’s topics. As a result, many of them have been unable to follow the most basic advice given to any aspiring author: ‘Write about what you know.’ This is changing. Women’s traditional concerns can no longer be dismissed with a paternal pat.

The writing of Mormon women matters. And Mormon women are competent and willing to discuss the issues that matter to them. Exponent II is primarily a place to share stories about our lives and experiences. In sharing and listening, we help carry each other’s burdens. We expand our understanding. We learn we are not alone. We gain the courage to work towards equality for all people.

Like in 1880, we still need places for Mormon women and gender minorities to tell their stories. Exponent II is far from being the only important venue for the voices of marginalized Mormons. And we need more still. This issue should be addressed with a mindset of abundance, not scarcity. More voices. Always.

Lori LeVar Pierce, president of Exponent II, invited reflections on the Woman’s Exponent’s 150th anniversary. Her challenge led me to consider this editorial and its relevance today. We are still seeking guest posts about the Woman’s Exponent, as well as any other topic relevant to Mormonism and feminism. We need more voices to “bring the dawn of new light” in order to share one another’s hardships and dispel bigotry (including our own bigotry and systemic inequalities—motes and beams). We need to support these voices. One way to do that is to subscribe to Exponent II magazine. And in the comments, I’d love to hear about your favorite publications, blogs, or social media pages that share the voices of marginalized Mormons.

Apologists Facilitate Sexual Assault Coverups

TW: child rape, mention of suicide*

Children are highly vulnerable. They have little or no power to protect or provide for themselves and little influence on so much that is vital to their well-being. Children need others to speak for them, and they need decision makers who put their well-being ahead of selfish adult interests.

Dallin H Oaks, October 6, 2012

A cadre of apologists use logical fallacies and outright lies to prop up the Church’s image in the midst of irrefutable evidence of harmful practices. Those apologists use Kirton McConkie, official church statements, and repeated gaslighting to weave a tapestry of falsehoods that lull us into passivity. It’s tempting to believe what they say. We’ve been taught to trust and love our church leaders. It hurts to see ways they privilege their own image over the safety of children. But if we’re going to end abuse, we have to understand how apologists work. Doing so will allow us to recognize the same strategies when we encounter them in other places.

As an example of the monstrous results of false representation, I’m going to answer Public Square Magazine’s (PS) recent post by C.D. Cunningham about the AP article on sexual abuse and the helpline. While I target this particular writer, he is not alone in how he operates.

I want to be transparent. I’m a survivor of years of child sexual abuse that was ignored by my bishop, among other adults. So I come to the topic with big emotions.

Cunningham writes, “Amidst 12,000 pages, there is undoubtedly a great deal of context and detail that is being missed.” I do not disagree with this statement. I’m just not sure why it’s relevant to a discussion about the effectiveness of the Church’s helpline or best practices to end child abuse. Michael Rezendes, the author of the Associated Press article, won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003 for his work in exposing the Catholic church’s cover-up of clergy sex abuse. He also won the George Polk Award for National Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, and the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting for the same coverage. He won other awards (and was a Pulitzer finalist) for similar investigations. Surely Cunningham isn’t saying he is a better investigative reporter than Mr. Rezendes.

But my larger question in light of Cunningham’s non sequitur is this: what context would make child sexual abuse ok?

Cunningham continues, “To suggest the primary aim (of the helpline) is to help avoid liability is a transparently cynical framing of the Church trying to sincerely obey the law in the states and countries where they operate. By all honest measures, the Church’s primary concern is helping victims of abuse. To reiterate, the current guidelines state, ‘When abuse occurs, the first and immediate responsibility of Church leaders is to help those who have been abused and to protect vulnerable persons from future abuse.'” Cunningham asserts without proof that Church leaders have helped and protected vulnerable persons from future abuse. I would like to know in what way they did so in the cases outlined by AP news.

I argue that it’s “a transparently cynical framing” of the victims to insist they are money grabbing opportunists. It’s “a transparently cynical framing” of the bishops to assert they lied about the advice they received from the helpline.

The helpline appears to be one way Cunningham sees the Church protecting children. Regarding the usefulness of the helpline in urging clergy to report, he says, “The Church confirms that in Arizona alone, this has happened hundreds of times.” He again links to the US News reprint of the AP News article. I’m flummoxed by his choice to relink to the article rather than to any hard evidence which would prove his statement. I would love to see the primary source documentation for his (or the Church’s) assertion that the helpline has helped hundreds of times in Arizona. Not that it has received hundreds of calls, because that’s different. Taking calls is not the same as ending abuse. I want evidence that the helpline has, in fact, helped. Cunningham quotes the Church’s website as proof that the helpline works. But goals are not the same as results, and wanting the helpline to end abuse doesn’t mean that it actually does.

We have primary testimony that refutes Cunningham’s unsupported belief that the helpline ends abuse. The AP article says, “The help line has been criticized by abuse victims and their attorneys for being inadequate to quickly stop abuse and protect victims.” When the people most affected by proffered help repeatedly report that it is inadequate, an honest organization would listen to that critique and make changes so the help was more effective. Actions always speak louder than vague, blanket statements of concern, and the Church’s failure to act makes their thoughts and prayers ring hollow.

Cunningham writes, “Arizona had a type two law. Clergy are required to report abuse unless maintaining confidence is ‘reasonable and necessary’ under the beliefs of the faith.” The law actually reads, “Any person who reasonably believes that a minor is or has been the victim of physical injury, abuse, child abuse….shall immediately report or cause reports to be made of this information to a peace officer, to the department of child safety….” That means that any adult who has a reasonable reason to believe that a child is being purposefully harmed is required to report it immediately. Shall. Immediately. Those aren’t suggestions or pleas. Those are enforceable laws. The required reporting must happen immediately. Not after chatting with lawyers, not after interviewing additional family members, and definitely not after waiting 7 years. Just to make sure the “shall” and “immediately” are understood, the law repeats the mandate further down, in section L: “This subsection does not discharge a member of the clergy, a Christian Science practitioner or a priest from the duty to report pursuant to subsection A of this section.”

Cunningham seems to have become tangled up in the part of the law that reads “a member of the clergy…who has received a confidential communication or a confession in that person’s role as a member of the clergy…in the course of discipline enjoined by the church to which the member of the clergy…belongs may withhold reporting of the communication or confession if the member of the clergy…determines that it is reasonable and necessary within the concepts of the religion” (bold not in original). May. They may withhold reporting. When? Only when it is both reasonable and necessary within the concepts (or doctrines/policies/theology) of the religion. I remember Jesus teaching that “…it were better if a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” than hurt a child. Have we officially rescinded that teaching? Because I’m struggling to understand how that particular clause can possible apply to any member of our religion. I don’t see that doctrine in any of our sacred texts, including General Conference. Quite the opposite. I believe official doctrine would say that it is reasonable and necessary to protect God’s most vulnerable children. There seems to be a disconnect between official doctrine and what the policies actually do, however.

Bishop Herrod was also the family physician, another category Arizona specifically names as a mandated reporter of child abuse. Since one of the pillars of our faith states that we obey the law, I would have expected a man who has been named a mandated reporter twice by the state would report the abuse under at least one of those titles he holds.

Cunningham rightly points out that laws vary around the world and can be confusing. That’s why states like Arizona provide easy-to-access mandated reporter training online. If I were LDS church leaders, I would require every person called to a position in contact with any youth to take whatever training local agencies made available. I know the Church can do it because as the Primary President I was required by my bishop to attend the Boy Scouts’ child protection course. The course had clear steps to follow. When we suspected child abuse, our first step was to call the Boy Scouts’ hotline. From there, we would be instructed on if and how we should inform other people, including the parents and the authorities. If the suspected abuse happened during a camping trip, we were to finish the trip, stay silent until the Boy Scouts’ offices were open the following week, and then make the call. If that sounds like the Church’s policy, I can promise you it was equally as effective at ending abuse.

Cunningham engages in dishonest interpretation when he writes, “Confessing instances of abuse to a clergy member can often set abusers on the path to deep changes in their behavior. Whereas if they don’t go to see a clergy member because they’re worried about being reported, their abuse will continue without anyone knowing. Clearly, the victims need to be our top priority. But there are many victims. And some of those victims will only be helped if their abuser comes forward. And those abusers might only come forward if they trust clergy confidentiality.” 

In the same vein, Cunningham insists, “A reasonable argument can be made that, in the aggregate, maintaining some degree of clergy confidentiality helps reduce child abuse over the long term.” He’s basically saying, ‘We can’t report abuse because a lot of children are abused and some of those abusers may or may not talk to clergy and may or may not become hesitant to do so if the clergy may or may not report it so it’s probably better to just not report it ever.’ We have a real-world example of this thought process in action: the Adams case. Not reporting abuse led to 7 more years of abuse. It led to an additional infant being raped. If Cunningham is going to insist that clergy-penitent secrecy leads to less overall sexual abuse, he’d better back it up with solid stats. And those stats should be free from the misinterpretations he so frequently writes.

In order to understand how he misuses stats, I’m going to outline a little tour of logical fallacies in Cunningham’s article. He cites a 2020 law passed in Queensland, Australia, which removed the confessional seal from Catholic priests. Cunningham says, “In the two years since the law was passed, most crimes went down in Australia, but domestic violence and sexual abuse rates began to increase at a higher rate and continue to rise.” He’s trying to convince us that removing the confessional seal for Catholic priests (and it was just Catholic priests) in Queensland (and it was just Queensland) directly caused domestic violence and abuse to increase. The Guardian article he links to is entitled “Queensland Domestic Violence Offenses Increased 17% During Pandemic, Data Shows.” Domestic violence is believed to have increased AROUND THE WORLD during Covid. Why? Is it because Catholic priests in Queensland no longer had clergy-penitent privilege? Property offenses were also up across Australia. Does that mean that the new Queensland law caused an increase in vandalism as well?

Let’s take it from another angle. 21.7% of the population in Queensland self-identify as Catholic. The data in the report include all sexual assaults reported to police, not just those committed by Catholics. The data he links to also do not confine the numbers to Queensland. So, Cunningham took a fact (that sexual abuse reported to police has risen all over Australia) and assigned the cause to one law that affects one subset of a particular subset of the entire Australian population.

Even using Cunningham’s logic, if we’re talking about sexual assaults reported to police, that doesn’t mean that sexual assault itself is up. It means it’s reported more. Which is the purpose of the law. Knowing about a problem doesn’t create the problem.

If we narrow the data down to Queensland, every measured offense except homicide increased in the same timeframe. Are we going to attribute robbery, unlawful entry, motor vehicle theft, and other theft to the updated Queensland mandated reporting law? Correlation is not causation.

Not every church agrees with Cunningham’s slippery slope analysis. After the Queensland law passed, the Anglican Church immediately confirmed that priests are to comply with mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse. They simply decided to protect children over predators and presto! done. It seems that they, too, believed Jesus when he said, “Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.”

But let’s address his assertion that mandated reporting laws themselves actually harm our efforts to end abuse. He uses a couple of links as evidence, but neither link says what he says it says.

The opinion article he links to in Psychology Today addresses valid concerns regarding state mandated reporting by licensed therapists when therapists learn (or suspect) in the course of providing therapy that their client is a sexual predator. The article also deals with the issue of public access to private therapy notes. But Bishops are not therapists and should not be used as such. Bishops do not have the skills to help predators end predation, as proven by both bishops who failed to stop the abuse. It’s bizarre to assert that a non-professional volunteer clergyman, reporting known abuse to law enforcement as required by law, is the same as mandating therapists report their clients or publish their notes on the internet.

Next, Cunningham theorizes that mandated reporters cause many of the problems that make mandatory reporting laws ineffective. This time, he links to a study. I urge you to read the study. It doesn’t say what Cunningham says it says. Here is part of what the study does say: 

“Physician reports of suspected maltreatment of children have been shown to be the most likely to be supported be (sic) subsequent child welfare investigation. Yet nonreporting among physicians continues to be a challenge. Nonreporting can stem from various reasons, often tied to the correct identification of at-risk children and trust in the Child Protective Services response and is also subject to individual bias….In contrast, mandatory reporting by the lay public is more likely to result in spurious reports.” 

The report states very clearly that when child abuse is reported by physicians, it’s effective. It also calls out physicians’ underreporting of suspected abuse and theorizes some of the causes. It doesn’t say physicians shouldn’t be mandated reporters: it concludes that laws may not increase the rate of physician-based reports of child abuse even though those reports tend to be the most effective.

The research also suggests that mandated reporting laws may not be helpful when lay people are required to report signs of abuse. It is not applicable to a situation where the perpetrator confesses the sexual assault multiple times, nor does it apply to physician-based reporting WHICH THE RESEARCH SAYS IS EFFECTIVE AT ENDING ABUSE. The bishop/physician didn’t just suspect Adams of abuse; he had confessions and witness statements.

There is one area that the study levels criticism applicable to this particular case. Since Bishop Herrod was both bishop and family physician, he was a mandated reporter on two fronts and, as physician, falls into the category of physician under-reporting of abuse.

One peer-reviewed article in an outstanding publication called Child Abuse & Neglect published by one of the leading multidisciplinary databases in the world, ScienceDirect, addresses Cunningham’s concerns that mandated reporting is harmful. It is. Sometimes. When lay people are mandated reporters, they file spurious or injurious reports of abuse based on their own prejudices and lack of training. So, Wilma next door might report abuse simply because she’s biased against certain people. But we don’t need to worry about that in the cases addressed by the AP article because there was clear, irrefutable evidence that Adams was abusive and that he was likely to continue the abuse. The only bias evident in this case is bias against victims in favor of predators.

In order to exonerate the Church, Cunningham dips his toes into the misogyny of victim blaming when he turns his focus on Leizza Adams. “The bishop encouraged both the perpetrator and his wife to report the abuse. The Church chose to maintain clergy confidentiality in this case but took no proactive steps to hide it from anyone else and, in fact, encouraged reports to be made.” President Faust had a lot to say about the sin of omission and I, for one, take no comfort in the fact my bishop knew I was being abused but chose to do nothing about it.

According to Cunningham’s logic, encouraging Adams to turn himself in should have been more effective than reporting the abuse. It was not. The abuse continued. In fact, Adams expanded his pedophilia to include an infant daughter. Self-reporting doesn’t work in movies, and it certainly doesn’t work with a man who bragged to friends that he could rape his daughters whenever he wanted.

The bishop also encouraged Leizza Adams, the predator’s wife, to turn him in. I don’t think she’s exempt from blame, but I would like to reflect on what her life was like because that speaks to why she didn’t turn him in.

Financially, she couldn’t. She was a woman living in an isolated location with 6 kids and no source of income.

Physically, she couldn’t. According to the perpetrator’s coworker (who was Mrs. Adams’ best friend), Paul Adams had an explosive personality and a horrible temper.

Emotionally, she couldn’t. That same bishop told one of the perpetrator’s coworkers that he knew Mrs. Adams was unlikely to stop her husband because she seemed “pretty emotionally dead.” Emotional disconnect or apathy is a common result of spousal abuse. Rather than laying the responsibility to report on the bishops, Cunningham blames an abused and traumatized woman who, after reporting, would have had to return to her abuser.

Cunningham asks a valid question, “Did the church support the abuser?” He then skirts the issue by saying that the Church supported him the way they support all Church members.

They did not.

They did not support the children who were being abused. Instead, they broke the law by refusing to report. Consequently, they were complicit in the ongoing abuse.

Cunningham says the Church has less sexual abuse than other churches. Sexual assault/rape is under reported in every sector of society. Given the way the apologists have come out en masse to hurl accusations of “money grab” at the child whose father raped her throughout her entire childhood, we can begin to understand why those rates are low. And since the bishops failed in their duty to care for her and prevent abuse, we can see why victims would believe reporting their abuse is pointless.

Although Cunningham claims to use data in his analysis of the frequency of sexual assault, he doesn’t link to the data. Instead, he references his own write up of a report, but that write up also fails to link to the primary source. I believe he references this primary source document from 2012 published by MormonLeaks in 2018. The document doesn’t purport to be a list of all reported sexual abuse in that month, let alone all sexual abuse, including unreported cases, in the Church. Rather, it’s a snapshot in time of one living document meant to keep multiple attorneys in the loop about the specific situations they were working on together. In other words, it would be like someone creating a google doc for a group project in school. No one would look at that single google doc and assume it included all work from every classroom in every nation over the course of a month, and yet that’s exactly what Cunningham is trying to get us to believe.

The Truth and Transparency Foundation (which grew out of MormonLeaks) has several well documented examples of predation covered up by, or at least not reported by, the LDS church, examples which occurred at the time of the 2012 document but which are not on it. For example, the child sexual abuse in this story took place over several years, including 2012, but was not reported to clergy until 2016. Even when it was finally reported to clergy, they did not report it to authorities. Instead, they allowed the predator to live in a home where his parents ran a day care. I’m just saying that there are other situations of abuse that go unreported to clergy, and which are unreported to authorities even when confessed to clergy. Cunningham’s math doesn’t add up.

Looking at another example of how Cunningham twists information he doesn’t like, we can see outright lies. In his article from 2018 (the one he references), he says, “According to the document, the Church is very legally compliant. In one case a missionary confessed to sexting a fifteen-year-old prior to leaving on his mission. The Church knew the Stake President was a mandated reporter, and would not consider asking for an exception.” The document actually says, “The missionary department is reluctant to send this Elder home to (redacted) where he may face prosecution for a felony. His conduct is clearly unlawful in (redacted), and his Stake President would have a duty to report. The Elder also recently confessed to kissing and some touching with a 15 year old girl in the mission field. It is clear that the Elder needs to go home. Direction?” It says, in very plain language, that the law firm and Church leaders knew about this man’s repeated and ongoing criminal sexual abuse of minors. He had established a pattern of criminal conduct. They knew he would likely face felony charges, at least for the abuse he perpetrated while at home. Did they report him as required by law? No. Instead, they hid his patterns of abuse so he wouldn’t face charges. This, then, establishes another pattern; the Church and its lawyers refuse to turn in sexual predators regardless of what the law requires. Cunningham calls that “very legally compliant,” a statement I find incredibly disingenuous.

To think this isn’t a systemic problem requires Pollyanna-ish trust in an organization that hasn’t proven worthy of that trust.

Cunningham insists that AP misstated its report of 7 additional years of sexual abuse. He reasons that since the perpetrator was only a member of the church for an additional 3 years, the article should have used that as the metric. I’m struggling to understand this logic. The child and her siblings did experience 7 years of abuse after Adams’ initial confession to Bishop Herrod. The abuse continued until Interpol traced a video of child rape back to Adams, at which point he died by suicide. In those 7 years, the Church never did help end the abuse. It wasn’t until the abuse was reported to authorities that it ended.

Furthermore, why does it matter when the perpetrator left the Church when the victims still remained in the Church? Even assuming that bishops aren’t tasked with caring for those who have left the Church, or with spreading the gospel to those who are unbaptized (Ward Councils everywhere would disagree), those children and their mom were presumably still part of the ward. The bishops were charged with ministering to the entire Adams family, but after talking to the helpline, they chose instead to prioritize the predator. So, how exactly does it make sense to reduce their culpability to 3 years? There’s no discount on abuse just because the abuser stops walking into a certain building. There’s no point at which the continued abuse stopped mattering to the children. The fact is, it took 7 years from the time of the first confession until the abuse ended, and both bishops made multiple decisions that facilitated the abuse. There’s no absolution for ignoring abuse just because the abuser walks out of your building. 

Cunningham next makes an interesting observation. “Churches who operate as independent entities get no oversight. They mess this stuff up far worse than groups like The Church of Jesus Christ that are willing to take consultation outside of the immediate local context. In a closed system, the temptation to bow to strong personalities is just too strong—and many of the independent churches without oversight are so personality-driven that this is destined to happen.” What is his definition of a church that operates as an independent entity? And where is his proof that these nebulous, unidentified churches “mess this stuff up” (by which he means they facilitate child abuse) more frequently than the LDS church?

Even assuming he has some foundation for his claim, and assuming we can figure out what these “independent entities” are, where is the oversight for the supposedly dependent LDS church? Cunningham and the Church clearly don’t believe evidence of wrong doing from moderate, well-documented reports written by Pulitzer-prize winning journalists in well-respected news outlets, so where, exactly, is this mythical oversight Cunningham says we have? One man set apart as Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, believed to be the mouthpiece of God, wielding the threat of excommunication, with 14 similarly placed men backing him up on every single decision, is the very definition of “strong personalities.” When we find ourselves in front of a disciplinary committee because we advocate for an end to abuse, where, exactly, do we go to access the oversight so we don’t have to “bow” to those men?

There is no oversight, no control mechanism to force Church leaders to adopt best practices. The Church doesn’t accept consultation unless we count the lawyers and publicists. They certainly never accept consultation by the people their policies harm.

We see how 15 men, with complete control over the finances, policies, and messaging of the Church, misuse that power. When confronted with evidence of failure to protect, a church dedicated to protecting the vulnerable would ask themselves what went wrong and how they can fix the system. When faced with a lawsuit from a child who faced years of abuse without any help from the leaders charged with ministering to her, an honest church would find out what she needed to begin healing from the trauma. Instead, they called her a gold digger. Instead, they deleted Tweets that called them out. Instead, they excommunicate members who call attention to abuse.

A church that uses its vast resources to hire lawyers instead of taking care of the widows and orphans is a church that cares more about money than about the vulnerable. A church that hides behind a screen of misinterpreted legalese is a church that has lost itself.

Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the Lord.

Jeremiah 23:1

*I use phrasing that might be offensive to some people (perpetrator, pedophile, abuser). I recognize that in the context of transformative justice, those are harmful words. In the context of responding to systemic protection of abusers, I’ve chosen to directly name the harm they inflict by focusing on the words we have for that harm. In a different context, I would likely choose different words.

Guest Post: Old Testament Resources from my Non-LDS friends

Guest Post by Ann. Ann has a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and recently earned a second one in Accounting. Contrary to what some people told her, she has been able to use the degrees while raising her four children. 

Here we are. Halfway through this year of studying the Old Testament at a breakneck pace. 

Do you feel like you’ve gained a deeper understanding of the Old Testament with the new Come Follow Me Curriculum? Or does this feel like the same sprint we do every four years?

For me it feels the same as always. We spent a disproportionately long time on the Creation and the Garden of Eden stories, and we’ve been zipping through the rest of the content. This curriculum feels like I’m on a pogo stick- jumping from book to book and chapter to chapter. Never stopping long enough to really get to see where I am, but just keep jumping, jumping, jumping. After all, we have a lot of material to cover. 

I’ve often wished that we could slow down our study of the Old Testament. Perhaps split the book over two years instead of one. I think our study of our other books of Scripture would benefit from a deeper understanding of the Old Testament. After all, New Testament authors constantly refer back to the Old Testament. Jesus himself quotes extensively from it. The Book of Mormon narrative arises in the Old Testament. And Joseph Smith was obviously inspired by the Old Testament as he organized the church.

It’s a shame we spend such a proportionally small amount of time there.

Last year I joined a women’s Bible Study group with a local nondenominational church. (Studying the Doctrine and Covenants was not giving me the spiritual nourishment I craved.) My friends in this study group have impressed me with their knowledge of the whole Bible. They don’t talk in the vague platitudes that you often hear in LDS Sunday School or Relief Society classes. They quote actual scriptures. They’ll talk about Psalms that have touched them recently or bring up something Jesus said. I’ve been impressed by their knowledge.    

Over the last year the women in my Bible Study group have provided me with resources to better understand the Bible. I’ve incorporated them into my study of the Old Testament with wonderful results. I feel like I’m actually learning things about the Old Testament.

I’ve compiled a list of four  resources I’ve found most helpful. I’d like to share these with you in case you are also looking for additional resources as you study the Old Testament this year. These resources aren’t meant to replace the Come Follow Me Curriculum, but to help enhance your study. There will be times that these resources don’t line up with LDS teachings. You are spiritually mature enough to work out your own understanding when the differences arise. 

ESV Translation of the Bible – The first new resource I added was a copy of an English Standard Version of the Bible. Reading the Bible in the King James Version is hard for me even though I went to seminary in High School and I have two bachelor’s degrees. I really struggle with all those Thees, Thous, and Thines. It takes me so long to figure out what the scriptures are even saying that I never move on to figuring out what they mean. So switching to primarily reading an ESV Translation has helped immensely. As an added bonus, the Student Study Version is full of helpful footnotes. 

I bought my copy from Christianbook.com. I was amazed at all the options for layout and cover designs available. I’m so used to the limited cover options at the Distribution Center that picking out a sky blue leather cover with cute details seemed liberating.

Women of the Word by Jen Wilken. This little book was loaned to me by my friend and later I bought my own copy. It is full of helpful advice for how to study scripture. Most of my scripture study habits were developed when I was a busy teenager. I found this book helpful in showing me what scripture study could look like for a grown woman. You can find a copy at christianbook.com or Amazon.

Bible Talk Podcast – If you are craving a deep dive into the Old Testament, this is the podcast for you. Hosted by three Baptist pastors, each episode covers just a few chapters from the Bible. This is the exact opposite of the Come Follow Me race to the finish line. This is a long journey where you stop every two minutes to examine cool things you find along the way. The hosts have been doing this show since 2020 and are only just finishing Deuteronomy.  

I especially recommend the seven episodes on Leviticus. If you only listen to one episode it should be Episode  42 on Leviticus 26-27. This episode ties the Old and New Testament together in ways I’d never known before. You can listen to Episodes on 9Marks.com or wherever you find your podcasts. 

Bible Project YouTube Channel. This YouTube Channel has put together brief overviews of every book of the Bible. The episodes are about 7 minutes long. They have a narrator drawing pictures that show the major themes and events of each book. My friend introduced me to these in March, and they’ve become an integral part of my family’s scripture study routine. Each episode is full of great insight. Recently, my family found the Overview of Ezra-Nehemiah to be especially helpful for explaining the themes of these often overlooked books. 

These extra resources have helped me gain a deeper understanding of the Old Testament as I’ve tried to keep up with the Come Follow Me Curriculum. I hope they are helpful to you as well. I’m always looking for more resources so I’d love to hear about the resources that have enhanced your study of the Old Testament. 

Mormon church sex abuse: AP investigation | AP News

TW: sexual abuse, child pornography

 

This is not an easy article to read. I have included some less distressing bits from the piece in this post. Should you choose to click here and read the entire article, please do so with awareness. Please do not read this if your mental health cannot take it.

 

In summary, this investigative piece by the Associate Press which is considered a centralist view (neither predominantly left or right politically leaning) in their work. In summary, the article highlights a handful of horrific child sexual abuse cases wherein LDS leadership (predominantly bishops) refused to report the abuse, even when the law allowed or required them to do so. Further, the article addresses the bishop’s hotline as being a poor resource for these bishops as the caller is only identified by first name, so state law or any legal issues (such as if the state that they live in requires them to report the abuse to the police) cannot be addressed.

 

It is a shocking look at how wickedly and poorly children in the US church are protected by the church, and how well the policy can enable abusers.

 

Less distressing points from the article:

 

“Who’s really responsible for Herrod not disclosing?” McIntyre asked in an AP interview. “Is it Herrod,” who says he followed the church lawyers’ instruction not to report the abuse to authorities? “Or is it the people who gave him that advice?”

 

 

The lawsuit filed by three children accuses The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and several members, including Bishops ABC and XYZ, of negligence and conspiring to cover up child sex abuse to avoid “costly lawsuits” and protect the reputation of the church, which relies on proselytizing and tithing to attract new members and raise money.

“The failure to prevent or report abuse was part of the policy of the defendants, which was to block public disclosure to avoid scandals, to avoid the disclosure of their tolerance of child sexual molestation and assault, to preserve a false appearance of propriety, and to avoid investigation and action by public authority, including law enforcement,” the suit alleges. “Plaintiffs are informed and believe that such actions were motivated by a desire to protect the reputation of the defendants.”

 

 

Very few of the scores of lawsuits against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mention the help line, in part because details of its operations have been a closely guarded secret. The documents in the sealed court records show how it works.

“The help line is certainly there to help — to help the church keep its secrets and to cover up abuse,” said Craig Vernon, an Idaho attorney who has filed several sex abuse lawsuits against the church.

Vernon, a former member, routinely demands that the church require bishops to report sex abuse to police or state authorities rather than the help line.

 

 

 

The Protocol instructs those staffing the help line to tell callers they are to use first names only. “No identifying information should be given.” Under the heading “High Risk Cases,” it also instructs staffers to ask a series of questions, including whether calls concerned possible abuse by a church leader, an employee, or abuse at “a church-sponsored activity.”

The protocol advises those taking the calls to instruct a “priesthood leader,” which includes bishops and stake presidents, to encourage the perpetrator, the victim, or others who know of the abuse to report it. But it also says, in capital letters, that those taking the calls “should never advise a priesthood leader to report abuse. Counsel of this nature should come only from legal counsel.”

 

(my livid, indignant emphasis is added in bold)

“There is nothing inconsistent between identifying cases that may pose litigation risks to the church and complying with reporting obligations,” church lawyers said in a sealed legal filing.

But one affidavit in the sealed records which repeatedly says the church condemns child sexual abuse, also suggests the church is more concerned about the spiritual well-being of perpetrators than the physical and emotional well-being of young victims, who also may be members of the faith.

 

 

Bishop ABC, in his recorded interview, said church officials told him he had to keep what [the abuser] told him confidential or he could be sued if he went to authorities.