My response to a Letter of Kindly-Intended Correction Regarding My Pro-Female Ordination Stance

woman at well

By Spunky

On October 5th, there are a group of Mormon women who will go to the Priesthood Session of General Conference and request entry. The action is meant to draw attention to the inequality of a male-only presiding priesthood, and draw attention to the concept of female ordination. I live too geographically far away to attend, but I support these women. In my small and distant way, I have been advertising my pro-female-ordination position on Facebook by including pro-ordination posts. Like many of the women involved in OW, I have received some unsupportive, even unkind comments. But now and again, I get a message from someone who is well and truly concerned about my eternal destination, and sends a sweet and concerned message.

Below is my response to one of the kindest messages of non-support I have received. When I wrote it, I felt like my life had been in preparation for seeking ordination.

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Dear Sister V,

Thank you so much for your beautiful and precious words. I do appreciate them and am very grateful that you took the time to write to me. I love you and am so very grateful that you care enough to address this with me. This is a testament to me that you do love me, and for this, I am sincerely grateful. Please know that twenty years ago, I was of similar mind to you. But you and I have very different lives. That is one of the blessings of the gospel; it is applicable and pertinent to all of us, no matter how different we are. Like you, I do not wish to enter into a debate. That would only cause hurt feelings, and that would crush me as I love you and respect you so very, very much. I also know your message was coming from a place of love and that I felt that love. My message is seeking empathy, to which you may agree or not.

I was born without a uterus. It is an unusual condition, but nonetheless, and as you have now comprehended, I can’t have children naturally. It is impossible. As a young woman, I sat through chastity meetings telling me that sex was only for the purpose of having babies; in this, I was confused. Even if I was having sex, I could not have babies- was I meant only to be Isabelle, the harlot as described in Alma 39:3 since it was presumed I would be sexual- but it was impossible to have a baby? It occurred to me that if sex was only for having babies, and women are “only” meant to be mothers- that my spiritual value was only in my physical body. This is something I have no real mortal control over. Why were the Deacons, Teachers and Priests taught they had spiritual power through Priesthood, yet I was only valued for my body?

This confused and frustrated me. I could not bring myself to pray for someone — another woman –   to break the law of chastity so I could adopt. I was left as being less valued that my Mormon peers-male and female, and I did not understand why.

I was 30 by the time I married. Before then, I sabotaged dates with fabulous returned missionaries, because I could not bring myself to admit to them that my body had no value in a Mormon context because I could not have children. For the very few I shared this with, one was a celibate, gay returned missionary who wanted to be a father, so was happy to be in a sexless marriage with me. The few others wanted to “bless” me better–something done by stake presidents and bishops before then–to no avail. My self-worth plummeted, because my spiritual value was labelled only in motherhood, achievable only in my physical, mortal body. I saw a church image with a paraplegic male missionary in a wheelchair. His mortal body was disabled, but he still did his priesthood duty. It was crushing for me to know I had no value because my body could not perform what I had been taught it was foreordained to do spiritually.

I finally married a fabulous man, who loves me for my spirit and my body. Unlike many of the returned missionary men I dated before him, he did not marry me for my baby-making abilities. Because of legal challenges with international adoption and other personal issues, we chose to go the route of gestational surrogacy. In my life, I have been blessed to have half a dozen Mormon, female friends offer to be surrogates for me. We finally made plans with one beloved friend, and began the surrogacy process. The thing is, although she offered to carry a baby for me, we had to go through the First Presidency to gain permission to do this, rather than risk excommunication because of the anti-surrogacy policy in the church handbook.

Why did we have to do this? We were both temple recommend holders, and felt spiritually inspired to engage on this path. I can think of only examples of men who committed murder for needing First Presidency approval to receive the priesthood. Is my infertility akin to murder in the church? Seems so. None of the women I knew had any issue with surrogacy, even though they may have understood they could never be a surrogate. In this, I began to wonder: if a woman were to write the church handbook, might some of these policies be enlightened, changed, freed–so my infertility and my friend offering to help would not be forced to go through the same process of approval as a murderer who sought baptism and priesthood.

Mid-process, I had IVF complications. I had to go through IVF 4 times to get the embryos from me and my husband. I cried, kneeling and praying over so many toilets in the hospital bathroom stalls begging to be a mother. What man, with a temple recommend and a dozen people fasting for him, cries like this just for the ability to use the priesthood? The priesthood/motherhood comparison well and truly died for me then. It is unequal, and makes no sense. I am sorry, but your argument in this is worthless to me.

In this same period, my husband took a rural job that paid well so we could pay for surrogacy and numerous IVFs. We found ourselves in a rural town where we travelled an hour each way to meet at a branch for a basic sacrament meeting. It was here that I learned that we could go weeks at a time without the sacrament if no men attended church due to distance and/or shift work. One week, just after Elder Perry’s talk about women wearing thongs as being a sign of disrespect at church, I found myself staring at a man at the front of the chapel, wearing shorts and thongs, as all the women surrounding him were in full church dress. He was blessing the sacrament and partaking of it before me, symbolic of his masculine place of being God accepting the atonement. The cigarette scent on his fingertips permeated the sacramental bread. Why was he more worthy to bless the sacrament than any of the temple-recommend holding women in our company, when he himself did not have a temple recommend? Why was I judged in conference by my shoes, when he could wear what he wanted because we women sought the sacrament? This again, made no sense to me.

I also felt very inspired, nay, commanded, at this time to start doing temple work for some of my deceased family. In this, I arranged to drive 22 hours to a temple. Aware of the importance of planning to do family work, and the distance and cost associated with attending the temple for this, I called a month ahead, and ensured there would be “priesthood” there to support the work. The “priesthood” had my phone number, but I received no calls. On the day I went to do the work, the “priesthood” just didn’t show. Not a single one! As I sat crying in the baptistry, I was surrounded by women. In praying for forgiveness for not doing the work I was commanded to do (redeem the dead- one of the purposes of the church), it occurred to me that I had done nothing wrong. At this time, I felt it was revealed to me that the answer was in women receiving priesthood keys so we could witness, officiate and ordain, in order to fulfill the purpose of redeeming the dead. In counting the women at the baptistry who were cleaning, doing paperwork and organizing, I came to understand that if we had priesthood keys, enough people were there that we could have been proxy to, performed, witnessed, and recorded baptisms that day. But we were without men, so the work did not go forth.

I understand that you have always had men around you to do the work of the priesthood. And you did not have to question your personal worthiness as your mortal body is in line with your spiritual assignment to mother and nurture. I also anticipate that you would tell me that I can nurture without being a mother, just like a man without the priesthood must be the present “authority” for priesthood-holding missionaries to teach his wife.

And yet. Consider my next door neighbours, whom I invited the missionaries to teach, but they refused because her husband did shift work, and my husband travels for work, so she was unable to see baptism and eventually gave up, because of logistics with missionaries needing other males around. It is yet another witness that the work ceases because women do not have priesthood or priesthood authority.Even though I am not a man, and am not a mother, I still seek to serve in a better capacity. I believe that my life  was intended to be one who brings about understanding for the need of female ordination in the church.  If nothing else, I’d like conference talks — including the ones at the Relief Society General Meetings that you mention- to reflect better what I know: that I am a daughter of God, and He loves me, and that I am worthy to serve Him in redeeming the dead and bringing about the immortal life of men and women through baptism in Christ’s church, regardless of my physical body.

I do not expect to change your mind on this topic. But I do hope you will gain some understanding of my position, of my desire to serve,  of my commitment to the church and my devotion to God, Christ and the gospel. My only purpose is to serve, just as you and your husband.

Thank you for your message, your love and your concern.

Much love, appreciation and respect,

S