Exponent II's Blog, page 250

Guest Post: Choose Ye This Day. . .

I got a message from an old college friend a week or so ago. She had always been a champion of conservative politics, from BYU College Republicans to canvassing for the Romney campaign. A Texas Republican if I’ve ever seen one. And while we had long disagreed on a number of political issues, she was and is a kind, compassionate human being I counted as a true friend.

When she learned of the Family Separation Policy, I watched her via social media take up a sword and actively fight against the callous and cold responses from her uber-conservative friends and family. I offered her solidarity in the form of likes and a few fact-filled comments where I saw space for dialogue. And after a few days she messaged me, a plea filled with anguish and sorrow, “How do we stop this?”

Image of children in a detention facility sleeping on mats with mylar blankets.

As we talked, it was clear she was hoping there was a simple answer. A single policy that could be overturned, a law suit that would prove the governmental actions violated the law, or even an opportunity to “help the one” by flooding child and family detention centers with blankets, toys and funeral potato casseroles. But as I explained to her the legal realities of administrative law, plenary power, and the systemic denial of due process, I had to make it clear. This is just the tip of the iceberg of a deeply-entrenched and sophisticated system designed to dehumanize and marginalize immigrants—especially those with black and brown skin.

See, what we are finally seeing now is nothing new. Not really. The zero-tolerance and family separation policies enacted in the past two months are a particularly heinous variation on a theme, but if you search google for articles about why children and families are being detained, why refugees can’t get asylum, and how ICE and CBP are rife with unchecked abuse and violence, you will be surprised by how many mainstream news articles are dated 2016, 2014, 2011, or earlier.

There are no clean hands, left, right, center or agnostic. We are all complicit in our blindness.

What we are seeing now are the visible manifestations of a necrotic, dehumanizing system that has always been driven more by racism and xenophobia than any other so-called ideal or interest. We are facing that moment when the cancer has spread so wide and deep that the tumors are visiblelly pushing through the skin. And suddenly, we can’t look away.

Image of Uncle Sam kicking Chinese immigrants out of the US.

The history of immigration law is the history of our shifting scapegoating against whatever ethnic group presents as simultaneously the most threatening and the most vulnerable among us. Citizenship has historically been withheld or stripped from Black slaves, Native Americans, Chinese workers, and Mexican Americans — overtly, explicitly and without apology. The first major cases you read in immigration law class is Chae Chan Ping — “The Chinese Exclusion Case”—named for the Chinese Exclusion Act which they upheld and ensured that the thousands of chinese laborers who built the impressive US railways could easily be exploited, oppressed, and expelled from the country. Overt racial quotes have given way to xenophobic dog whistles, but this is far from the first time the US government has sought to actively stripped citizenship from people of color and deported them based on skin color and surname.

Newspaper clipping

I am the granddaughter of an undocumented Mexican migrant worker on one side and refugees from Nazi Germany on the other. Since law school, I’ve focused my work on immigrant and refugee rights. What I’ve learned is deeply troubling. Beyond the substance of our laws, the system we have designed to destroy any shred of due process is impressive in its efficacy. And the work it is going to take for us to dismantle it and reclaim our own complicit souls is going to take a long, sustained, committed fight.

In this moment — this terrifying, soul-crushing moment — I am inviting you to join that fight. Decide now not simply that separating families is a bridge too far, but that you will allow this moment of moral clarity to plant itself in your heart. Like the seed of faith, let this moment grow into a fierce and fearless commitment to our shared humanity. Decide today that we will no longer allow migrants, refugees, brown and black children to be the acceptable collateral damage in our social and political negotiations.

What can you do? I’m answering that question at Torchlight Legal Communications with information, education, and recommendations on how to fight both the immediate and systemic harm. I welcome your contributions, collaboration and suggestions. “If ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work.”

Graphic describing how people can help detained/separated families.

Jennifer Gonzalez is a legal communicator, information designer, & immigrant and refugee rights advocate who produces articles and media at Torchlight Legal Communications. She earned a JD at Stanford Law School while exploring human-centered design theory, narrative and storytelling, and documentary filmmaking as a tool for understanding the human impact of law and policy. During her post-JD fellowship, she assisted refugees fleeing gang and cartel violence in Latin America through the North Carolina Immigrant Rights Project and has dabbled in the world of silicon valley startups and legal technology. She has two degrees from BYU (BA and MA in English), but deftly escaped without an MRS and embraces her life as a radical, single, latinx, mormon, feminist bruja and rockstar auntie to her seven niblings.

This article has been cross-posted at Feminist Mormon Housewives.

Here’s the video of Be One, the 40th anniversary celebration of the extension of LDS priesthood and temple worship to people of African descent.

I watched this with my kids and I found it a great way to teach them about this part of our history. My 10-year-old son cried when the narrators told the life stories of African American, African, Jamaican and Brazilian Mormons barred from the temple. The show starts 25 minutes in, after a talk by Elder Oaks.

Dreams of (and for) my daughter

When my only daughter was not yet two years old, I had a vivid dream.  It was soon after the emergence of Ordain Women, and I was trying to sort out my feelings on female ordination.  I desperately wanted more inclusion for women and girls in authority and decision-making positions, but hadn’t yet made the jump to supporting ordination.  I worried about what my daughter would be taught if she never saw women as spiritual role models, and if she never got to fully participate in church ordinances.  In the middle of the wrestle, I dreamed that my daughter was standing in the chapel, a few pews ahead of me, with her arm bent at the elbow, waiting to return a sacrament tray to the front of the chapel at the end of the sacrament.  She was there with her peers, both boys and girls, participating in a ritual that is currently for boys only.

When I woke up, I felt a profound sense of peace.  I don’t usually think of my dreams as visions; I’ve had far too many wacky and/or terrifying dreams to read too much into them.  But this one felt more visionary.  It felt like God was telling me to stay the course, that changes were coming, and that my daughter would be included in church administration going forward.

When my daughter was three, she would reverently fold her arms and close her eyes during the Sacrament prayer.  But she would also softly – almost imperceptibly – repeat the words of the sacrament prayer as they were said every single week.  At first she would say each phrase after they were said, but by the time she was four, she could say them in unison with the priest offering the prayer.  She knew the sacrament prayers better than I ever have, and would occasionally start repeating them under her breath as she played with her dolls or ponies or even just as we drove to the grocery store.

My daughter is five now.  She no longer repeats the sacrament prayers (at least not aloud), but she is very focused and reverently waits for the sacrament to be passed to our family.  She never lets the tray pass down the pew without putting her hand on it, helping to pass it along.

Yester[image error]day, as the sacrament was being passed, I looked over to see her standing straight up, with her arm bent at the elbow, perfectly mimicking the deacons who were standing in the chapel, waiting to return their trays to the front of the chapel.  I gasped just a little, because she looked like a miniature form of herself during that dream from years ago.

Now, as you can probably tell, my daughter is quite the mimic.  She engages in pretend play exponentially more than her brothers ever did.  She dances around the house and tells me that someday she’ll be a ballerina.  She draws rainbows on any spare scrap piece of paper, and gives them as gifts to people in our family and neighbors.  She regularly dresses up as a doctor and gives us all exams, which is adorable until you realize that the cat is covered in band-aids (apparently the cat was very sick).  Last week, an adult asked her what she wants to be when she grows up, and she said, “I’m going to be a doctor and an artist and a ballerina.  I’m going to do all three.  I’ll be very busy.”

I love watching her understand and experience the world this way.  I love that she truly believes that she can be all three things if she puts her mind to it.  But I worry for the day that she realizes that her expert studying in sacrament-passing isn’t enough to be qualified to pass it.  I worry about the day that she subtly understands why she can’t pass it, and it’s not because she’s not skilled enough or unwilling, but that she was just born out of it. I think of somebody telling her that girls can’t be artists, or that girls can’t be doctors, or that girls can’t be ballerinas, and I’m filled with a visceral anger at the arbitrary nature of those limits.  But with priesthood functions, I feel a combination of dread and passive defeat.  I want to believe that women and girls will be more included in the future.  I really, really, want to hope for that.  I want to believe that the brethren will heed Bonnie Oscarson’s impassioned plea to incorporate women and girls into church functions.  I just have learned to keep my optimism guarded, protecting myself from what feels like inevitable heartbreak and disappointment. But as I saw my daughter in that perfect pose yesterday, with her arm bent, I pleaded with God in my heart: please let that dream be not just a vision, but a prophecy.

Walls

Joshua at Jericho

Before the crumbling walls

A brand new Warrior/Prophet

Saw God by the falls

 

Are you for us? Or against?

I lead the hosts of God.

Jericho before the war

Was sacred, holy sod

 

40 years of manna

Hear the ram’s horn sound

Seven years of battle

Walls come tumbling down

 

 

(Photo credit: “wall” by rot_grad, license here)

 

R-Rated Scripture

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Ammon Defends the Flocks of King Lamoni, courtesy of LDS Media Library

Through a little skit, Mormon children were learning a Book of Mormon story. In the scripture story, a missionary named Ammon gains favor with a king by cutting thieves’ arms off. The young girl portraying Ammon  passed a bunch of paper arms to the person playing King Lamoni. “Thank you,” ad-libbed the King. “But I don’t like arms.”

I don’t either, at least, not bloody disembodied arms that have been amputated by force. I don’t like gruesome stories in general, especially those in which the protagonist happens to be the perpetrator. These stories make me squirm even when presented in scripture format. I feel even more antsy when kids are in the room. One night, after family scripture study, I admitted that I hoped the kids hadn’t understood a word of what we had read—it was Nephi’s account of chopping off Laban’s head.

Such stories aren’t limited to the Book of Mormon. The Bible is another rich source of questionable subject matter. Many of these stories are wisely deleted from children’s lessons—I’ve never heard the Lot family incest story in a Primary setting—but others are kids’ favorites. Consider the battle of Jericho, which features kid-pleasing trumpets, magically toppling walls, and um, genocide.  That’s part of the reason that I enjoy sharing Bible stories with my children in Veggie Tales format, where wars are portrayed as pie fights and King David’s voyeurism is directed toward a rubber duckie instead of a bathing woman.

Mormon adults are studying the Old Testament in Sunday School this year. As I review these Bible stories with my fellow Mormons, it occurs to me that these stories aren’t necessarily uplifting to adults either. The most common way scriptural text is interpreted in Mormon circles is as an accurate, historical account that also serves as a perfect model for how we should live our lives. With this premise, discussions  can delve into why murder or slavery or rape or whatever other objectionable action that particular scripture hero performed was good and right in that particular circumstance.  The best explanation derived is usually that the hero’s actions were justified because he was perfectly inspired or perfectly obedient. Unfortunately, a side effect is concluding that immoral behavior can be excused when obeying orders or simply feeling inspired.

For grown-ups, pies and rubber duckies are probably not the solution. (Although personally, I would love to spend Sunday School reviewing Veggie Tales.) But letting go of the compulsion to interpret scripture in a way that mandates such extreme moral relativism could help. Here are some other ways to interpret the text:

1. Read the text as an historical account that is descriptive, not prescriptive. Instead of starting with the assumption that everything a scripture hero did was right, readers can first discuss whether or not it was. Moral lessons can be derived not only from emulating scriptural heroes, but from not repeating their mistakes.

2. Read the text as an historical account that may be flawed and biased because of the limited perspectives of its human writers. Nephi himself admitted that his words were “written in weakness.” (2 Nephi 33:4) Because virtually all scripture was written from a patriarchal viewpoint, feminist theologians often employ this strategy. How would the story have been different if it had been written from someone else’s perspective? Consider the biases that might have led the text’s author to interpret his own story in a certain way and the blind spots that may have prevented him from acknowledging his own errors.

3. Read the text as an allegory. We can derive insights just as well from fictional stories as from true ones, so in this kind of interpretation,  historical accuracy is largely irrelevant. Mormons have a great deal of training in this kind of reading; we apply it regularly as we read scriptures that are overtly identified as parables, but several other scripture stories that we traditionally read as if they are history might be more uplifting when viewed from an allegorical perspective (especially considering that the literal historicity of many aspects of these accounts is questionable). Could chopping off those arms be a metaphor for eliminating  barriers to serving people of another culture?  Could the tumbling walls of Jericho symbolize overcoming our fears?

Guest Post: Prodigals

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art by Charlie Mackesy

by Caroline Crockett Brock

Prodigals

I imagine a cosmic welcome party thrown in our honor.

The prodigal daughters have come home to their Mother.

Long lost in the world and enslaved to foreign Masters,

They return.

And Mother’s embrace fills an ache as deep as the ocean.

I imagine a cosmic welcome party thrown in their honor.

Our Husbands, sons and brothers–prodigals no more.

Their spiritual amnesia gone, they cry out “Mommy!”

She answers.

Like a mother standing in the doorway of her sleeping child’s room,

She’s been there watching, waiting all along.

 

Caroline Crockett Brock: Lover. Mother. Writer. Goddess in Embryo.

LDS Church to revise Hymnal & Children’s Songbook for global church and to fill doctrinal gaps!

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Did you see this statement by the church newsroom?  They’re assembling a committee to revise the Hymnal and Primary Children’s songbook!

More information also here at the LDSCHurchNews site.

What’s so notable about this?! Everything!

They’re going to make every hymnal have the same songs on the same page in every language, including translating language specific hymns into English!  Hopefully this will be a representative work of many styles of music from all the various cultures of the world where the church has members.

Did you see the teeny snippet about making sure the hymns fill “Doctrinal Gaps”?!?  Wouldn’t it be great if this means we’ll be seeing hymns and primary songs about Heavenly Mother?!

Please, oh please, poets and musicians of the Exponent II ilk, submit your songs about inclusion and Heavenly Parents to them for consideration!

Guest Post: #MormonMeToo — Actionable Steps

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Photo by Rosie Fraser on Unsplash

Assembled by Dana HC

This list grew out of a “Mormon Me Too” discussion at the 2018 Midwest Pilgrims retreat (May 4-6 in Morgantown, Indiana).

Actionable Steps to Prevent and Address Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse

General

1. Publish and distribute any Church protocols for addressing domestic violence and sexual abuse so that all members can access them.

2. Ask ward and stake leaders to publicize the updated guidelines for interviews from the pulpit.

3. Ask bishoprics to invite occasional Sacrament Meeting speakers to address the importance of healthy relationships, mutual respect, and appropriate boundaries using Preventing and Responding to Abuse.

4. Call for general Church leaders to create a domestic violence and sexual abuse survivors’ hotline that is independent and run by third-party professionals with a prompt response protocol.

5. Call for general Church leaders to establish church-wide protocols that direct every victim or survivor to a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) or professional therapist and local support resources.

6. Call for general Church leaders to state in public written materials that Church leaders are generally lay people who rarely have expertise in the areas of psychology, mental health, or family law. Further, lay leaders cannot be expected to function as professionals in fields outside their expertise and must refer members with specific health or legal needs to outside experts.

7. Call for general Church leaders to create a protocol for situations where a Church leader such as bishop may have conflicting stewardships over both an alleged perpetrator and an alleged victim.

8. Call for general Church leaders to direct all members to respond to information about possible abuse by contacting appropriate child protection, law enforcement, or other government agencies before contacting Church leaders.

9. Ask leaders to designate and train a female advocate for sexual and domestic violence in each ward and stake.

10. Encourage wards, stakes, and other Church units to support violence shelters as part of humanitarian or community service. Help organize volunteer hours, donations, food, etc.

11. Post fliers and pamphlets about community resources for domestic abuse and sexual harassment on Church bulletin boards and in restrooms. Make this information readily available, not secret and shameful.

12. Discuss domestic abuse and sexual violence as part of ministering. Offer a listening ear, emotional support, or help accessing professional resources, if needed.

Children and Youth

13. Set aside an annual Sharing Time for the bishop to explain interviews (including the option to have an adult present). Teach in age-appropriate ways about personal boundaries. Invite parents to attend.

14. Send all parents of children and youth under age 18 a paper copy or email link to Preventing and Responding to Abuse.

15. Conduct interviews with minors in rooms with windows if no adult other than the bishop is present.

16. In a Sharing Time, teach children to identify five trusted adults they could tell if they (or another person they know) were being abused. Role play telling an adult about a friend who is being scared or hurt. Emphasize that Jesus taught that children should be cared for lovingly, and that we honor Jesus when we keep children safe.

17. Teach children that no adult should ask them to keep a secret (except about happy surprises like birthday gifts, etc.).

18. Ask bishops to share a list of interview questions with parents, teachers, and youth in an annual combined Young Men/Young Women meeting.

19. In a combined YM/YW meeting, teach youth to recognize warning signs of “grooming” (a perpetrator identifying and gradually acclimating someone to abuse), steps to report abuse, and local resources that can provide support. Role play reporting an abusive situation to a trusted adult.

20. With YM/YW, highlight the fact that most perpetrators of sexual violence are acquaintances, family members, or romantic interests of the victim.

21. Teach that respecting adults (including sustaining Church leaders) does not include allowing them to violate personal boundaries.

22. Make sure that children, youth, and adults are aware that 1/3 of child victims are boys. To reduce stigma, include examples about boys and men as victims and as helpers.

23. Consider watching and discussing the movie Spotlight (rated R) with older youth or young adults.

24. Share videos or writings of LDS abuse survivor Elizabeth Smart with youth. Invite parents to join a discussion.

25. Teach youth that blaming the victim is wrong.

26. Do not attribute sexual assault or abuse to the victim’s clothing. Do not imply that modest dress prevents assault or abuse. Perpetrators are not motivated by sexual desire but by the desire to exercise power over another person.

27. Teach that “virtue” cannot be taken from someone. Discuss the 2016 revision to Personal Progress books to eliminate the verse on rape.

28. Offer healthy relationship classes for YM/YW and through Young Single Adult wards.

29. To help youth function successfully in broader settings, teach the concepts of sexual consent and sexual harassment as currently used in many U.S. schools and workplaces. Note that consent applies to hugging, kissing, and touching as well as intercourse. Teach youth that they have legal as well as moral agency.

Adult Classes and Meetings

30. Look for ways to mention Preventing and Responding to Abuse in class discussions. Normalize talking about domestic violence and abuse so that victims and others can speak freely and without fear of judgment.

31. Make reference to recent news about LDS people involved in domestic violence and abuse to underscore the relevance of these topics for LDS audiences.

32. Discuss the pressure some members may feel to portray their marriages or families as celestial or perfect. Since a focus on appearances may make people less willing to report actual domestic abuse, talk less about “the family” and more about the wide range of “families.”

33. Ask if Relief Society presidents or other women leaders could be available to sit in on interviews if requested by the interviewee.

34. Role play ministering to a woman who seems afraid in her home or who hints at abuse. Role play contacting local authorities.

35. Teach parents not to make a child hug or kiss relatives, family friends, grandparents, etc., but rather affirm the child’s agency in choosing appropriate boundaries.

36. Invite a LCSW or other social services/mental health/justice system professional to teach adults and youth about domestic violence or sexual assault during a 5th Sunday combined meeting.

37. Invite women to lead combined 5th Sunday discussions on these topics.

38. Include men in discussions of domestic violence and sexual abuse. Do not allow abuse to be a woman’s issue.

39. Use 1st Sunday Council Meetings to discuss these issues. Ask Relief Society leaders to take ideas and recommendations to ward councils. Follow up on implementation.

Language

40. Teach ward leaders to model direct, plain language (assault, rape, abuse) rather than vague euphemisms (non-consensual immorality, getting physical, etc.). Professionals can provided guidelines on helpful, accurate language.

41. Avoid language that communicates shame (worthiness, purity, etc.).

42. In any discussion about the importance of marriage and family, mention that unsafe home environments are not “of God.” Marriage is not more important than physical or psychological safety.

43. Adopt language of empowerment (choose, want, prefer) rather than of obligation (should, supposed to, must, need to, have to, etc.). Emphasize each person’s fundamental agency.

44. Do not equate virtue (behavior showing integrity) and virginity (the state of never having had sexual intercourse).

45. Avoid or explicitly point out flaws in traditional purity metaphors: chewed gum, licked cupcake, crushed rose, etc. These metaphors objectify women, undermine the concept or repentance, and communicate harmful views of sexuality.

46. Reject as irrelevant any information about a person’s dress or sexual history in cases of abuse or assault.

Resources

• January 2018 BYU Benjamin Ogles Speech about Sexual Assault (text and video) https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/benjam...

• October 2002 BYU Chieko Okazaki Speech “Healing from Sexual Abuse (text) http://www.ldswomenofgod.com/blog/wp-...

(video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs4XJ...

Template for (More) Successful Recommendations

1. Situation/The Nod: Using neutral, uncharged language, describe a single issue in terms your audience can agree with. Both parties should be able to nod in agreement.

“Historically, church leaders have interviewed children and youth alone in private offices.”

2. Complication/The Blood Pressure Spike: What has happened to alter the situation? To minimize defensiveness, externalize the problem (“the world has changed”) rather than highlighting internal deficiencies (“you blew it”). If possible, create sense of urgency and show the danger of inaction.

“Recent abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and the US women’s gymnastics team have highlighted the need for greater protections for children and youth. Organizations that fail to safeguard minors betray their most basic stewardship. They may also be vulnerable to criminal and civil charges.”

3. Question/The Set-up: Ask a question that sets up your recommendation.

“What can we do to facilitate safe, appropriate interactions between church leaders and children or youth?”

4. Answer/Your Recommendation: Simply and clearly, make your point.

“Inform children, youth, and their parents that a second person can participate in any interview. Meet in rooms with windows. Provide list of topics or questions in advance,” etc.

A Love Letter to My Fellow Mo-Fems

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I just wanted to send off a quick missive to let you know that I see you, and I love you.

I see that you notice the damage that white patriarchy does to people of all ages, races, genders and sexualities. I see you working to build a better world, struggling to find your place, and worrying about the vulnerable people in our society.

I see you, re-writing lessons to remove damaging quotes, marching in pride parades, teaching your children to notice who needs help.

I feel the same pain of a society that often values power over humanity. A society that takes resources from native peoples and then calls them non-citizens, that uses the strength of immigrant labour to produce food as cheaply as possible and then denies them health and family, that allows men to harass women in the workplace in the name of creativity or idiosyncrasy – as long as it leads to profits.

I know that you’re doing the best you can, even if that sometimes looks like sitting on the couch with netflix and ice cream, or crying in the shower. It’s okay to have times like that, because sometimes your best is amazing. Sometimes your best is having a difficult conversation with your spouse about gender roles in your marriage, because bringing your whole self into the relationship is more important than sticking to the roles you expected to carry out when you were young and your eyes weren’t yet opened. Sometimes your best is drawing boundaries with your family, which is difficult and sucks. Sometimes it’s preparing for social events, to have the words and emotional bandwidth to explain why those sexist/racist jokes aren’t funny. Sometimes your best is making sacrifices to support other people financially. Sometimes your best is a blog or Facebook post showing others the gap you see between where the world is and where you know it could be.

I love to see so many of you living in that uncomfortable gap. We don’t fit in the new world, and it’s not easy to feel ourselves stretching to fit there. But this, I think, is what it means to work out our salvation before God. If we want to be like Them, to return to Them, we have to be able to feel what they feel. That surely includes a lot of pain and anger at injustice, but it also means feeling joy with those who are rejoicing, and building hope (and heaven) together.

I think about this Ira Glass quote pretty often, and it occurred to me that we can see social justice work as, ultimately, creative work:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

It’s okay for your intersectional feminist awakening to take a while. It’s normal to take a while. I see you, living in the gap between what you know can exist and what you’re currently capable of, and I love you. Stick with it, stay with us, keep fighting your way through. We’ll get there in the end.

And if you want to tell me what you’re proud of, or what you’re struggling with, I’m right here. I love you.

Wolf Pack Patriarchy

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Earlier this year I helped my 1st-grader make a wolf habitat diorama and discovered that wolves take their pack hierarchy very seriously.

Remember Benevolent Patriarchy and Chicken Patriarchy?  Today we’re adding Wolf-Pack Patriarchy to the list.

Wolves are highly social animals that live in extended or intimate family groups. The pack is led by a mated pair: the Alpha male and female. These family leaders can bond for their lifetimes and are the only breeding members of the pack allowed to reproduce.  The Alpha male breeds with the Alpha female when she is in heat, then guards her from all other interested lower-ranking wolves by biting, barking and growling at them to stay away.

He similarly deters any possible suitors away from lower ranking female wolves when they are in heat (but does not mate with her himself.) This makes sure that only the Alpha genes continue in the pack. Controlled access to females limits which males are allowed to mate.  All other wolves in the pack are single and not allowed to mate with each other.  (with an occasional exception for the Beta male and female)

Lower ranking single wolves often stay at the den to babysit the pups when the Alphas go out to hunt with the pack.

Alphas establish the rules of the pack: who eats first, where each wolf sleeps, who stays with the pups and so on.

Wolves hunt as a pack so they can take down larger prey animals together, since no single wolf can hunt a deer or elk alone. Packs are territorial in where they live and hunt, rarely overlapping with other packs.

The lowest ranking wolf of the pack is the Omega. This wolf is picked on, bullied, teased, dominated and forced to submit.  The low-ranking wolves can be ousted from the pack and forced out on their own. (The “lone-wolf”)  Without a pack, these lone wolves can starve to death.  Sometimes lone wolves or other outcast Omegas band together and become their own pack, with a former Omega male and female becoming the Alphas of a new pack.

The Alphas use the lower ranking wolves for help raising the pups and for hunting as a group, but low-ranking wolves are significantly underprivileged with restrictions about eating, sleeping, procreating and general status in the pack.

Similar hierarchy systems exist in Mormonism, with Alpha male and female – or AlphaMormons (monogamous couples sealed in the temple, one or both returned missionaries) being the acknowledged “ideal” and given leadership callings within the church. Bishops, Stake Presidents, Mission Presidents and Temple Presidents, Area Authorities and Apostles must all be temple-married at the time of their calls.  Individuals married to a non-member are like BetaMormons: allowed a few more privileges than single people, but still not fully respected or allowed to lead. Single people are the Omega -automatically lower ranked and not considered for leadership callings, with the exception of single women being called as auxiliary leaders at local and general levels.  Like members of the wolf pack, childless women are told that they are “all mothers” as they nurture other people’s children.

The “Patriarchy” part of this analogy is that the AlphaMormons in power are the ones who control access to reproduction and the raising of children. For example, chaste single women in the church are discouraged (and sometimes disciplined) by church leaders and handbook policies from having a child via artificial insemination and raising them as a single parent.  Single people are discouraged from adopting or fostering children. Through church policies, it is dictated that same-sex couples may not marry or raise children.  No exceptions seem to be made for single people who are exceptional nurturers or who would make excellent foster parents, nor for committed same-sex partners to experience the joys of family life. The “joys of family life,” it seems, are reserved only for AlphaMormons, and the rest of the pack is barred from full participation.  Even those who have chosen a satisfying and fulfilling life without spouse or children are told that they’ll get those “blessings in the next life” as though it’s automatically assumed they want those things and are missing out on something in the meantime.

Children aside, the Wolf-Pack-Patriarchy mentality means that any non-Alphas are forbidden from having any sort of sexual expression as a part of their single life. (ironically one of our “God-Given” inclinations)

By extension, AlphaMormon Heaven is exclusive of single people, relegating them to the status of “ministering servants” to the fully exalted couples, as though heaven didn’t have enough room for everyone to have full privileges.

How did Jesus treat single people, or those with differing marriage practices? We know Mary and Martha (single women and sisters living together) were his beloved friends and disciples.  The Samaritan woman at the well had been married 5 times and was cohabitating with a man to whom she was not married but was the first to receive his declaration of his divine mission.  The woman taken in adultery was not condemned, but forgiven and excused to go and sin no more.  For those who will argue “it’s not man’s prerogative to change the patriarchal structures God has put in place,” let’s reaffirm that Jesus is not the source for discriminatory actions against single people, nor does he place restrictions on who can care for children, so long as they don’t abuse his “little ones.” Jesus declares himself both “Alpha” and “Omega” – showing that his empathy is for both leader and outcast.

It’s time to abandon the language of hierarchy and superiority when it comes to marriage, children and sexual expression.  In our deepest hearts, we know this exclusive mindset is discordant with the wishes of a loving Mother and Father God for their children. Salvation is individual and unique!  It’s time to make our worship services and church fellowship fully inclusive of all individuals, without teaching that some members have more ideal lives than others. Nobody should be judged for having a “counterfeit” lifestyle when they are in the pursuit of what brings happiness and goodness to their lives.

This analogy shouldn’t have been so easy to write.