It was very difficult to want to go back to church after you-know-what restrictions eased. I liked having ten-minute sacrament meetings in people's homes. I didn't miss any of the extra stuff that, more often than not, I found less intellectually stimulating than an episode of Blue's Clues. And for a while I felt justified in not going to Sunday school or Elders' Quorum they were more confined and more crowded than sacrament meeting, and I knew everyone else there was regularly attending large social gatherings with no masks. But then I got fully vaccinated and went back to normal life in every way possible and didn't have that excuse anymore, so I went back to Elders' Quorum just in time to be punished with a lesson about marriage.

The teacher wrote "The Perfect Woman" on the board and solicited desirable traits to list under that heading. I take issue with his phrasing, but I'm sure he and everyone else there were aware that the perfect woman doesn't exist because perfect people don't exist and woman are a kind of people. I know what he meant was "The Ideal Woman". So people listed things and I just felt kind of defensive and prideful and thought, I'm not looking for a woman and you can't make me. But if I was, I'm sure I wouldn't want the same things y'all want, because Utah culture is a crap sandwich. You know the kind of women (and men, but that's irrelevant right now) who populate Deseret News comments sections? I'd want the opposite of that. I'm very picky. I never made a list as such, I just got crushes on a case-by-case basis and figured out what I like and what I don't like and got pickier every time my heart broke. The last one, the literal girl next door, set the bar so high that I haven't caught feelings since and doubt I ever will again. I can be as picky as I want because I'd much rather be alone than with someone who can't make me feel the way she did.

The one item I wanted to suggest for the list was talent and career ambition, but I didn't dare speak such heresy out loud. One guy said someone who thinks for herself and makes decisions without asking him about everything, and that was nice to hear and obviously made BYU professor Rodney Turner spin in his grave. The resident old guy said something about we have to remember "gender roles" even though "the world" talks about "equality". He stopped short of saying women shouldn't have careers, but he said there's just "something" they have men don't have that makes them better with children or whatever. He'd have to do better than that to convince me. He could have at least called the mysterious something a "je ne sais quois" and given it the illusion of greater sophistication. One guy agreed that even if his wife was making six or nine figures a year, he'd want her to stay at home at least part-time to raise their kids. If my wife was making six or nine figures a year, I wouldn't care what she did. I wouldn't ask and I wouldn't tell.

The last item on the list was "Beautiful", submitted by one of those brave people who points out that physical attractiveness is important even though we spend so much effort trying to convince ourselves that it isn't even though we all know that it is. That kind of honesty is refreshing, but people so often miss the follow-up: that beauty is a matter of perception, that it can and does change. If you love a woman's inside then her outside will also be beautiful to you. Simple. The first time I saw the literal girl next door, I thought she was plain, homely, awkward, and forgettable, and promptly forgot about her. A couple months later, she was still awkward but I had decided that she was God's greatest work of art and I was an idiot for ever having thought otherwise.

In conclusion, the teacher asked if we're deserving of this hypothetical perfect woman and if not, how to change that? I'm glad the lesson was actually going somewhere, because I had been thinking of a quote in the back of my mind: "As we visit with young adults all over the church often they will ask, 'Well what are the characteristics I should look for in a future spouse?' - As though they have some checklist of  'I need to find someone who has these three or four or five things.' And I rather forcefully say to them, 'You are so arrogant – to think that you are some catch and that you want someone else who has these five things for you. If you found somebody who had these three or four or five characteristics that you’re looking for what makes you think they’d want to marry you?'"

When I walked into the gym a couple weeks later for the combined fifth Sunday lesson and saw the word "FAMILY" written on the board, I knew the next hour would be less fun than a root canal, and almost walked right back out. But I thought, What kind of person will I be if I just avoid hearing anything that makes me uncomfortable? Maybe if I humble myself and suffer through it, God will teach me something.

The bishop started by telling us each to tell someone, preferably of the opposite sex, what the name of our first child will be. And he was, in fairness, being weird and awkward on purpose. But still, what kind of a question is that? How should I know what the name of my first child will be? Do I look like I've got a seer stone in my pocket? I've never given this subject a ton of thought and I've always assumed it's the sort of thing that will have to be discussed and negotiated when the time comes. I'm partial to Jessica, myself, but maybe my wife will be like, "Ew, no, a high school cheerleader named Jessica bullied me until I developed an eating disorder. I'd rather feed our daughter to a crocodile than name her Jessica." Also, my first child might not be a daughter. Also, it might be adopted and already have a name. So I thought that was a silly question.

His lesson had its positives. He acknowledged that "people experiencing same-sex attraction" exist and told people to chill out if they're in their late twenties and not married yet. Hooray. Much of it, though, took on a very us-vs-them tone, as if members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are the only .02% of people on the planet who believe in family values. He went through parts of the Family Proclamation, a document that he stressed was DOCTRINE, was SCRIPTURE, was from A LIVING PROPHET. Actually, Gordon B. Hinckley is a dead prophet, although he was a living prophet when he gave it, but then so is every prophet when he gives something so I don't know why that distinction is necessary. He said it was prophetic because when it came out in 1995 its teachings were just common sense and he couldn't see the point of it, but now they've become controversial. It was actually written after five years of a court battle over same-sex marriage in Hawaii. The Church was involved in this court battle and had, in fact, been concerned about the prospect of same-sex marriage since the mid-to-late 1970s when that was one of its reasons for opposing the Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution.

Anyway, I braced myself for some thoughtless remarks when he got to the part that says fathers are primarily responsible for providing and mothers are primarily responsible for nurturing, but the thoughtless remarks were worse than I would have ever anticipated. He was very blunt and adamant that God wants all women to be full-time homemakers with unpaid 96-hour work weeks. He straight-up told them to use their college education to be better mothers, not to have professional careers, full stop, no caveats, no nuance. He was also adamant that anyone who feels differently (like me) is following the "natural man" and the world's lies about women's equality. At least twice he referred to the people who feel differently "outside the Church", which came across to me as a conscious attempt to invalidate and put down the many people in the Church that he knows perfectly well also hold that view and constituted a sizable portion of his audience. 

It pisses me off to think that my future wife may have been conditioned by lessons like this one to believe that her career ambitions are sinful, and to think that some women present for this lesson were thus conditioned. It's wrong and it's harmful. It will lead to depression, guilt, faith crises, and disaffection from the Church. Anecdotally, the twenty-something LDS women I know - not all of them raging liberals by any means - are far more open-minded on this topic. A majority of them see no reason why they shouldn't pursue careers and those who do want to be stay-at-home moms have no desire to force their preference on everyone else. Many of the latter will end up working anyway because modern economic realities have made it impossible for many families to survive on one income, the bishop's talk of sacrifice and frugality notwithstanding. I know for a fact that I wasn't the only person in the room who vigorously disagreed with what he said, and that his belittling of us did not persuade us to reorient our thinking. And women whose staying home is in the best interest of their particular families can make that decision for themselves without a man incorrectly insisting that it's the only option God will allow.

Since the bishop made it very clear that he wasn't open to discussion, and I wasn't in the mood to be called to repentance for not being sexist enough, I tattled on him instead of reaching out to him directly.

I'm sure the bishop is a wonderful man and that it's unfair to judge him by his most obvious shortcoming. Nonetheless, I am no longer capable of respecting or trusting him when I remember this lesson every time I see his face. (At least he's still better than my last bishop.) Will there be any sort of public retraction, correction, or apology? Of course not. That would shatter the illusion that our leaders are perfect, which we work hard to maintain even though we all claim to know that our leaders aren't perfect. I felt that my suffering through this lesson and being depressed for a few hours was worth it because I was able to speak out, to do something - but it would have been more worth it if I could know that I'd actually been able to help the women who also suffered through it. I wonder how many of them will leave the Church.

​The Church posted this a few days later:

In essence, Dr. Erica Glenn explains that you can have a happy and fulfilling life even if you, like her, are not married. This should not be a controversial argument, but because Mormon culture is a crap sandwich, it was. On the one hand, people took issue with her not mentioning the Church's teachings on the importance of marriage that everyone in the Church has heard hundreds of times and that necessitated the existence of videos like this in the first place. On the other hand, people - specifically men - jumped to the conclusion that because Dr. Glenn is beautiful, the only possible reason for her not being married is that that she chose not to for selfish reasons, and therefore she's wrong. "She could get married tomorrow if she wanted to," said one sexist idiot who's never met her and apparently thinks she should settle for the first carbon-based life form that has a penis and thinks she's hot. Maybe, just maybe, the whole mindset of needing to get married for marriage's sake, and not because you've met someone you actually want to be with forever, is kind of toxic. But nobody asked me.

Last year, Taylor Petrey published a book called Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Mormonism and it became popular and got flattering reviews. I saw no critical reviews and no response from the Church's self-appointed apologetics organizations, but I recognized from the book's impact that they couldn't just ignore it like they did Moroni and the Swastika. I reached out to Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship - even before I lost respect for FAIR, Interpreter was the organization I trusted most to do an intellectually honest job - and said they ought to put someone on it. On August 23, Steve Densley responded that "a reviewer has been working on 'Tabernacles of Clay.' Apparently, he has found that there is so much to say about that book that we will likely be publishing a number of reviews that address the book in sections. It sounds like we should have the first part ready for publication within the next few weeks." So I waited a few weeks, then a few more weeks, then a few more weeks, and then I concluded that they had found it too difficult and given up.

On March 5 of this year, they published the first and so far only review from Gregory L. Smith. It's very long and has 504 footnotes. Brother Smith spends most of it documenting Dr. Petrey's misuse of sources in the first two chapters. "So serious are these problems that," he writes, "on one level, it is astonishing that this work would be published by a university press. Granted, the book’s ideological agenda and subject matter is popular in some quarters,4 and such works have their place — if they are honest with themselves and their readers about what they are.5 But what Tabernacles offers is not good history. Tabernacles of Clay is a good argument for the necessity of review by experts in both the theology and history of the Church of Jesus Christ when academic presses do 'Mormon' studies. Experts in queer and gender theory might find it compelling; anyone familiar with the religious sources ought to know better." He isn't wrong. Nonetheless, the sources themselves are so interesting that I still wanted to read the book with this caution in mind. So I did.

For this post I will focus only on part of his conclusion that I wanted to share because it stuck with me:

No lies detected. I saw Lynne Thigpen portray a police chief on the game show "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" before I was old enough to know what police were, so it never in my life would have occurred to me that women (or black people) shouldn't be police chiefs. For example.

The ban on female ordination is not, strictly speaking, analogous to the ban on ordination of males of African descent. Black men and women before 1978 were also denied the temple ordinances necessary for eternal families and exaltation, and were said to be under a curse because of things they did before they were born. (On the other hand, black men before 1978 could serve in Sunday school presidencies, which don't require priesthood, but women still can't. Figure that one out.) I actually agree with the logic that people don't have to be the same to be equal, and as long as everyone in the Church is eligible for the same eternal blessings, their role or position in the earthly organization doesn't matter. The President of the Church is no greater than someone who's given a useless made-up calling to make them feel included. So I consider priesthood ordination a far less important issue than whether women are treated as equal partners in marriage and whether they can pursue careers outside the home without men like my bishop calling them to repentance. I'm totally agnostic on whether it should happen at all.

Nonetheless, I have little patience anymore for the reasons people make up to explain why women aren't ordained, reasons that are usually patronizing to women, demeaning to men, or both. And if you go back a few decades, the reasons just become even more blatantly sexist and that should be quite a red flag about how made up they are altogether. Rodney Turner's 1972 book Woman and the Priesthood taught that, notwithstanding "[w]e believe men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam's transgression", women are punished for Eve's transgression to this day. Nowadays we've made the different-but-equal paradigm work by changing the definition of "preside" and disregarding the statements well into the 1970s (or in the temple until 2019) that unambiguously assigned men to a position of authority over their wives. Anyway, I'm not an activist for women's ordination but I do enjoy annoying people by pointing out the inadequacy of the reasons they make up to justify the lack thereof. Michael Otterson was honest enough to cite the one and only actual known reason: precedent.

And while I'm on the subject,

God may, in fact, have some legitimate reason for this division of labor. Even that wouldn't necessarily preclude it from changing in the future. I don't believe for a moment that women's anatomical or mental differences make them intrinsically, eternally, and divinely incompatible with priesthood ordination. I find the notion absurd. I don't predict, as such, a change to this policy within my lifetime, and yet I won't be the slightest bit surprised if it happens either. There have already been several adjustments to the scope and visibility of women's role in the Church within the last decade, largely in response to Ordain Women and other internal feminist movements (copied from my Brief History of Women in the Church of Jesus Christ):

October 6, 2012 - President Thomas S. Monson lowers the minimum age of missionary service for women from 21 to 19.

April 3, 2013 - The Church announces, "The role of sister training leader has been created as more female missionaries serve in missions around the world. Sister training leaders will be responsible for the training and welfare of female missionaries assigned to them and will be members of and participate in, the new mission leadership council."

April 6, 2013 - At the close of the Saturday morning session, Primary general presidency first counselor Jean A. Stevens becomes the first woman to pray in General Conference.

October 5, 2013 - For the first time, the priesthood session is broadcast on the Church's website as all other General Conference sessions have been for years. Having been denied tickets by spokeswoman Ruth Todd, members of Ordain Women wait in the standby line and are turned away at the door one by one.

April 5, 2014 - For this and subsequent General Conferences, the female auxiliary presidencies (Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary) are relocated to sit in the middle of the First Quorum of the Seventy in the Conference Center, a far more visible position directly behind the pulpit.

April 2014 - The annually updated General Authorities chart (which previously included only men) is expanded to also include General Officers, including the Relief Society general presidency, the Young Women general presidency, the Primary general presidency, the Sunday School general presidency, and the Young Men general presidency.

November 14, 2014 - A policy change allows divorced women and mothers of young children to have or retain jobs as seminary and institute teachers. A memo notes, "This change makes it possible for families to decide what best meets their needs as it relates to mothers working while raising children. This policy is consistent with other church departments."

August 18, 2015 - A woman is appointed to each of three formerly all-male leadership councils - Relief Society general president Linda K. Burton to the Priesthood and Family Executive Council, Young Women general president Bonnie L. Oscarson to the Missionary Executive Council, and Primary general president Rosemary M. Wixom to the Temple and Family History Executive Council.

December 20, 2018 - Updated missionary dress and grooming guidelines allow sister missionaries to wear slacks during most weekly activities, though they "should continue to wear dresses or skirts when attending the temple and during Sunday worship services, leadership and zone conferences, baptismal services, and missionary training center devotionals".

January 2, 2019 - The initiatory is changed so that women are no longer anointed to be queens and priestesses "unto your husband". The endowment ceremony is changed so that women no longer covenant to "hearken to the counsel of your husband as he hearkens to the counsel of the Father", and no longer veil their faces during the prayer circle. The ceremony now speaks of "Adam and Eve" instead of "Adam" throughout while Adam refers to "we" instead of "I". The husband-wife sealing is changed so that the woman "receives" her husband just as he "receives" her, but the husband now covenants to "preside with gentleness, meekness, and love unfeigned".

January 17, 2019 - The Church News begins announcing the call of "new mission presidents and companions [wives]" instead of just the mission presidents, though the wives had already been included in pictures and bios alongside their husbands.

January 24, 2019 - The First Presidency states in a letter, "Veiling an endowed woman's face prior to burial is optional. This may be done if the sister expressed such a desire while she was living. In cases where the wishes of the deceased sister on this matter are not known, her family should be consulted."

March 1, 2019 - One of a few policy changes allows mothers with dependent children to serve as temple ordinance workers. The First Presidency notes, "Members should review their circumstances and avoid placing undue burdens on themselves or their families as they consider these service opportunities."

October 2, 2019 - A policy change allows baptized women and children to serve as witnesses at baptisms, and endowed women to serve as witnesses at temple sealings.

January 2020 - The Church implements its new Children and Youth program for members aged 8-18 and cuts its 109-year-old relationship with the Boy Scouts of America. In the process it also ends the longstanding budget disparity between the Young Men and Young Women programs.

March 11, 2021 - The First Presidency creates the new position of international area organization adviser outside the United States and Canada, to be filled by women representing the Relief Society, Young Women, and Primary alongside area authority Seventies.

Would anyone be so naïve as to think that the changes will stop there? Would anyone be so silly as to insist that they know where the changes will stop? Why am I even asking these questions? Of course they would and they will.

Brother Curtis then had a slide that showed a diagram of the Earth with its layers, and a timeline of its scientifically established history starting at the north pole and going around its circumference. I wondered, did he put that up there just to dispute it? But he reassured me very quickly. "Was the Earth created in six days?" he asked the class. I kind of went "Eh" as if to say "I don't believe so, but you can believe what you want." But he answered his own question like, "No! But a thousand years are as one day to God, so was the Earth created in six thousand years?" And I kind of went "Eh" again. But he answered his own question like, "No!" And he had a spiel about the ultimate compatibility of scientific and religious truth, and he spoke against checking your brain at the door of a religious classroom and suppressing secular knowledge or the questions it raises. Stuff I've read and written ad nauseam, but a welcome surprise anyway. He basically straight-up said that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. That was more than I could have hoped for. I get so tired of people pretending that if the Church doesn't have a position on something, any view on the subject is equally valid regardless of basic facts and common sense.

Granted, I had another teacher, Kurt Reese, who said that the Earth isn't 6,000 years old and then said "If anyone here believes the Earth is 6,000 years old, I'm sorry... that you're bad at science." I guess that counts. But he wasn't teaching about the Creation per se - it was a church history class and we were talking about Joseph Fielding Smith's ridiculously fundamentalist readings of scripture, and he liked to joke around and tease like that in general. He would tease you for being from Colorado or being a Democrat even though one of the points he tried to hammer home is that you can, in fact, be a Democrat and still be worthy. He went so far as to imply that it's okay if you observe rampant poverty on your mission and come home feeling "pretty disgusted with capitalism". And he's a Republican himself, but not the evil kind. Where was I going with this? Anyway, his discussion of the age of the Earth was cool and all but not quite as impactful in that context. Maybe I was just desensitized to his heretical teachings by that point in the course.

Brother Curtis pointed out that on this little Earth history timeline, dinosaurs don't seem so ancient anymore, and human history was too brief to even show up. And then he said three incredible words - "Fifty million years." Not phrased as a question. Oh boy. The Earth itself is one thing, but this strikes at the very heart of some people's spiritual identity. Of course, it's the sort of perceived chronological discrepancy that some Latter-day Saints think they can just handwave away with suggestions like "wE dOn'T kNoW hOw LoNg AdAm AnD eVe WeRe In ThE gArDeN." Yeah, whatever. They're the only two people in the world, they can't have sex, literally nothing has been invented yet, and I'm supposed to seriously consider for one moment the possibility that they just chill in the Garden for, say, the entire time that dinosaurs are roaming around elsewhere? Nuh-uh. I give them three months before they eat the forbidden fruit as an attempt at suicide.

His next slide showed a bunch of skulls of our ancient evolutionary cousins and ancestors - either that, or just skulls of people who think Derek Chauvin should have been acquitted. He asked if we have room for these people in our view of the gospel. I discussed with my partner. Yes, we both did. Cool. But Brother Curtis overheard someone say "It doesn't matter how we got here, just that we're here" and called him out on it because that kind of intellectual apathy "won't make us like our heavenly parents." Brother Curtis was very big on intellect. Most religious teachers are in theory, but it's another thing to actually be so in practice and not the type of person who starts sentences with "I love science, but..." He did say he wasn't going to get into all the details of how he worked out science and religion together, which is fair, but I wish he hadn't just said "I find no physical evidence for a flood covering the entire planet a few thousand years ago. None" and left that for us to grapple with. I think the story of Noah is much easier to reconcile than most people give it credit for. I don't know why so many are locked into this false dichotomy that either the flood covered the entire planet or it never happened.

Speaking of heavenly parents, that was a big thing with him. He always said "heavenly parents" where most Saints would just say "Heavenly Father". I don't think he said "Heavenly Father" one time. In fact, in one of his slides he had written "Heavenly Father" and read it as "heavenly parents", which suggested to me that perhaps he, too, just recently had a feminist awakening. These small and simple vocabulary replacements are a huge step toward promoting true gender equality in the Church, showing women that they, too, have a significant eternal destiny and role model, and really leveraging one of the greatest doctrines that separates us from the mainstream Christian world and by all rights should be shouted from the rooftops, not treated as an open secret.

Since this was a ninety-minute night class, we then had another lesson, which was about commandments and stuff and not nearly as interesting because science, but still good. Yes, commandments can change; no, Jesus did not drink grape juice. Brother Curtis remained an engaging and effective teacher but tried a little too hard to relate. He shared that he still hasn't mastered the don't-looketh-upon-a-woman-to-lust-after-her thing. He said, "I'm old, but I'm not that old." TMI, my dude. But I'll let that slide. His whole perspective on things was such a breath of fresh air as I've grown so disillusioned with the rampant stupidity and willful ignorance that sometimes make me very embarrassed to be a believer. It's above and beyond what I've come to expect from an Institute class. He even expressed his gratitude for the LGBTQ community. The experience had me looking at him like

Trigger Warning: Airplanes

My recent trip to Indiana for my sister Melanie's wedding was my first time setting foot on an airplane in nearly three and a half years. For a time, I didn't know if I would ever set foot on an airplane again after reading about the incident of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 on April 28, 1988, when explosive decompression tore off a big chunk of the roof and ejected flight attendant Clarabelle Lansing to God knows where. I can only imagine a fraction of the mindless terror that consumed her final moments. Okay, I thought after reading that, if I ever set foot on an airplane again, I'm staying seated with my seatbelt on at all times, even if it's a twelve-hour flight. But then I proceeded to read about the incident of United Airlines Flight 811 on February 24, 1989, when explosive decompression ejected nine passengers along with the seats where they were sitting with their seatbelts on. At least one had the good fortune of going straight into the engine and not being afraid for very long. Before learning this information, my biggest fear was the airplane itself falling out of the sky. It had never in my worst imaginings occurred to me that being launched into the stratosphere on my own was a possibility. Silly me.

It's no good telling me that airplane disasters are very rare. I know it. They still happen, and if one happens to me, I'm not going to derive much comfort from reflecting on how unlikely it was and what an unlucky s.o.b. I am. It's no good telling me how much safer airplanes are than cars. I know it. I'd rather be in a car crash than a plane crash any day. I've been in three car crashes and nothing happened to me. If I were in a plane crash with no physical injury, I would still relive it in nightmares for the rest of my life. So if anything at all goes wrong on an airplane where I'm a passenger, I want to die, as fast as possible. But as is usually the case after I learn yet another piece of horrible information about the world I live in, I became desensitized to these incidents with time, and returned to my previous default state of fear. I can get on an airplane but I just hate every second of takeoff and every moment that it shakes or jolts or turns slightly. On my first flight I noted the loud noise of the wind around my window, and that it intensified when I pressed against the wall. I wondered what would happen if the window popped out. I assumed it would suck my head out and break my neck.

Prior to these flights, I finally renewed my state ID that expired in 2017. It was already expired by a few months during my last airplane trip, and security told me to renew it but let me through both ways anyway. Since then I've also used it to sign up for utilities, sign a voters' referendum against state Republicans' proposed hike in grocery taxes, and visit a friend in prison. White privilege? In any case, there wasn't much incentive to renew it. But I figured airport security might be less lenient this time.

Indiana was much nicer this time of year than in December. Very warm, much green. I took some pictures that I'm too lazy to retrieve from my phone for the three people who will read this post. Melanie had a nest of robins right outside her window, and they fledged the same day she got married. She and another sister lived there with my parents, and then I arrived, and then my paternal grandmother arrived, and then my sister and brother-in-law and niece arrived, and then my maternal grandparents and uncle and aunt and six cousins arrived. Nineteen people, fifty gigabytes a month of craptacular rural Wi-Fi. Shudder. I got bounced around through four different sleeping arrangements.

Funny Quotes from My Cousins

After I toasted a marshmallow for cousin Hannah, she said to her sister Lucy, "Christopher is a kind soul! You are - a murderer."

*Playing a card game called "You Gotta Be Kitten Me"*
Uncle Russ: Is it wrong to call my son a loser?
Cousin Jaden: I learned from the best, or should I say the worst.
Uncle Russ: Don't talk about your mother like that.

*Playing "Apples to Apples"; the word is "Scrumptious"*
Cousin Lucy: I'll tell you who's scrumptious - this person in my class named Mason.
*Sister Sarah and I look at each other as if to verify that we both just heard what we think we just heard*
Uncle Russ: I don't have enough guns.

​Melanie got married in the Indianapolis Indiana Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I guess it's kind of a cheap temple compared to the one I'm used to, because I could hear traffic outside while in the sealing room. I thought temples were supposed to be soundproofed. What if a fire truck had gone by during the special moment? Everyone also noticed some kind of loud drip-drip-drip from the vicinity of one portion of the ceiling, but it stopped before the ceremony. The sealer gave good and inoffensive counsel. At my previous sister's wedding, the sealer told her and her husband how lucky they both were to be getting married at twenty-three before they got too settled into their single lifestyles, which I found rather insensitive. This guy would have been justified in similarly telling Melanie and her husband how lucky they both were to be getting married at twenty-one long before their brains are fully developed, but he didn't.

My previous sister had kissed her husband long and hard with tears streaming down her face, prompting the sealer to opine, "I think they just had their first family prayer." This kiss was as quick as the one by which Natalie Hinton made me a True Aggie. After that, of course, the guests were to greet the newlyweds as we filed out onto the temple grounds for photo ops, and for some reason everyone made me go first even though I was on the opposite side of the room. I wished someone else had set the precedent because I didn't know what to do. I hugged my sister, of course, but then I didn't know what to do with her husband because I'd exchanged fewer than twenty words with him in my life. I whispered, "Should I hug you or just shake your hand?" He whispered back - but unlike me, in a normal volume that everyone could hear - "You can hug me." Cue giggles.

One of the best-kept secrets on my website is the most comprehensive history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and black people ever compiled. The only reason it's a secret is that Google hates me. For the better part of a decade I've gathered more information than any normal person needs or wants to know. Unfortunately, because the Church for a majority of its history has been led and primarily composed of white people, a majority of the available sources are also from white people. I relish every opportunity to hear from black Latter-day Saints in their own words. Rarer still, and possibly even more interesting, are opportunities to hear from black people who were never members of the Church but had something to say about it. I want to draw attention here to four such interesting sources. In the full compilation, I try to let sources speak for themselves as much as possible and only interject historical context and/or bias when I think it's necessary. But here on my blog, where my standards of scholarly rigor drop from almost nonexistent to nonexistent, I'll indulge myself in a whitesplaining commentary on each one.

Not much to say about this one. It's just kind of funny. I wish Williams had written more about us, but I don't think he stayed in Utah very long. Go bigamy or go home, eh?

Washington raises such a good point here. The Latter-day Saints and the black community had so much to learn from each other. The Saints knew what it was like to be persecuted, so they should have been the most natural allies in the world for black people. But they usually weren't. I don't doubt that the mutual affection between them and Washington during his visit was genuine, but it didn't change their racist beliefs and it didn't lead to the kind of lasting camaraderie or support that one might expect in an alternate timeline where people are wiser and less crappy. On the other hand, in 2020 a well-intentioned but monstrously insensitive post on BYU-Idaho's Performing and Visual Arts Facebook page described in maudlin detail how "my people" (the Saints) were treated so horribly but became so awesome and accomplished so much, and concluded, "Why am I telling you this? Because I know however oppressed you feel, no matter if your skin color, religion, background or heritage,.......YOU CAN RISE ABOVE. You can take your situation and either drown in it or use it.

"God took my people ...who were hated, despised, and ridiculed and abused, And through these trials, He humbled them, and taught them love, patience, and kindness.

"My people although given some of the worst treatments known to any religious group learned to forgive and heal. Truly following the path of our Savior to forgive those who offend us."

After people, including both of BYU-Idaho's black students, understandably got kind of pissed off, the post was deleted and the university refused to talk about it. I'm 99% sure Elder Quentin L. Cook had this post in mind when he said in his speech at BYU-Not-Idaho two months later, "Before reviewing some of the discrimination Church members have experienced, let me be clear that this discrimination is not comparable to the devastating personal impact and societal consequences of slavery." I mean, hello, people of African descent have been systematically oppressed since the early 1400s when Portugal decided to circumvent Islamic slave traders by getting all its slaves from West Africa**. Latter-day Saints haven't even existed for a third of that time.

*This is a joke. I don't know the actual number of black students at BYU-Idaho. I don't think I'm far off, though.

**Yes, slavery (which has existed pretty much forever and for most of that time had nothing to do with skin color) created prejudice against black people, not the other way around, though I wouldn't call it "racism" as such because the modern bogus social construct of "race" was invented much later by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in the late 1700s. His ideas were completely wrong, but he actually believed that black people were intellectually equal to white people, unlike everyone else who used his ideas to assert the opposite of that.

I love Thurman's deadpan snarker sense of humor and his contempt for everyone. If I had been around in 1926 and been fortunate enough not to be racist, I bet we would have gotten along great. It's interesting and a little sad, however, that he reserves his harshest words for black people even though he is one. Looks like internalized racism to me. In his book How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi insists that it is possible for a black person to be racist against black people. (Candace Owens, anyone?) As a teenager, he blamed the black community for all of its own problems, disregarding the external effects of generations of systemic racism, and that seems to be what Thurman is doing here as well.

He also describes a fact that I've just recently learned: throughout history, the United States has not followed an automatic or consistent trajectory from "more racist" to "less racist". The Founding Fathers (despite often being slave owners themselves) deliberately set the stage for slavery to be phased out in a couple generations, but then that didn't happen because the southern states became more economically dependent on slavery and consequently more racist. After the Civil War, it was actually fashionable for a while to advocate for black equality, but then the southern states pushed back with Jim Crow laws and the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was constitutional. And Thurman here mentions "the post world war migration of southern Negroes to the north which was accompanied by a post world war wave of Kluxism and bigotry" in Utah and presumably elsewhere (and, interestingly, correlates it with "the Gentile population [growing]"). I'm sure these fluctuations have continued. From my limited perspective, it seems to me that the United States is more racist today than it was twenty years ago. I wonder why that might be.

Isaac and Jane Manning James weren't the first black people in Utah - that honor goes to three three slaves named Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, who were part of Brigham Young's advance party when he showed up and said "This is the place." It's interesting that, unlike Williams or Washington, Thurman hints at the priesthood/temple restriction (which did indeed prevent black people from practicing plural marriage even if the women would have consented to it) but doesn't bother to comment much on it. I have one item of correction - "enter[ing] into Heaven as an angel" is not actually a good thing in Latter-day Saint theology. I mean, it kind of is, but it's what you get if you don't qualify to be exalted in the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom because you didn't get sealed in an eternal opposite-sex marriage, and thus it means you are "deprived of full privileges in Heaven".

This self-published book is now extremely rare, and the only copy I'm aware of is in the BYU Special Collections, and unfortunately I haven't made my way down there to read it, but excerpts are available in a few other sources like Wallace Turner's book The Mormon Establishment and Jerald and Sandra Tanner's booklet "Joseph Smith's Curse Upon the Negro". You can see here that society had changed to the point where the priesthood/temple restriction could no longer fly under the radar and had become a more pressing topic of discussion than polygamy. When I was younger and stupider, I whitesplained Oliver's perception of poor conditions for black people in Utah by pointing out that he himself had managed to become a lawyer, and that Booker T. Washington hadn't mentioned any similar complaints fifty years earlier. Of course, I now recognize the possibility that Utah was in fact more racist in 1963 than it had been fifty years earlier, and Wallace Thurman confirms that such a transition took place.

I trust Oliver's decription of these conditions, which is corroborated by other contemporary sources, but I still don't think he was correct in attributing them to the Church's teachings or policies (and certainly not to rumored "behind the scenes opposition"). Sociologist Armand Mauss did some work a few years later and found that "no systematic differences in secular race attitudes were to be seen either between Mormons and others, or between orthodox and unorthodox Mormons. In most of their responses, Mormons resembled the other 'moderate' denominations (such as Presbyterian, Congregational, Episcopalian), rather than the 'fundamentalists' or the sects. To be sure, Mormons did differ among themselves in the tendency to hold negative secular attitudes toward Negroes, but these differences were not so much between the orthodox and unorthodox, or the active and inactive, as they were between the educated and uneducated, the manual and the professional, the old and the young, or the rural and the urban (as in any denomination).... This accords with other studies which have found socio-economic status an important determinant of attitudes toward minorities."

Though the Church certainly could have been far more outspoken in their favor, I don't think it was to blame for Utah's apathy toward black people and civil rights. Stereotypes to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not the only, or even at times the most powerful, influence on its members' views. As evidence, I submit modern Utahn Latter-day Saints' politically driven and profoundly embarrassing response to the coronavirus pandemic. Their rabid individualism and disdain for doctors and scientists is the exact opposite of the Church's response. As even more relevant evidence, I submit that today the Church has officially partnered with the NAACP and called on its members to root out racism, yet most of these same peoples' politically driven response has been "What racism? I'm not racist and nobody I know is racist. White privilege isn't real. Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group. George Floyd was no saint." Wallace Thurman's observation that "Everyone in the state seems to be more or less of a vegetable" is just as true today as it was ninety-seven years ago.

"The Etyomological Roots of Mormon and Moroni

"The Book of Mormon covers the historical periods of 600 B.C. to 421 A.D. Moroni, the Negro angel, revealed to Joseph Smith in 1823 the existence of golden tablets upon which were written the sacred / secular account upon which the Book is based. Four years later, in 1827, Joseph Smith received the plates and translated the African writings inscribed upon them. After publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830, the Black son of Mormon (Moroni) took the plates away.

"Upon what basis does this writer establish the African identification of Mormon? Of Moroni? Why is 'African' used to describe the writing contained on the plates? Read on.

"The Moors Head

"In looking at some of the major languages of the world, the selections Mormon and Moroni are found to be merely variations of the root Moor or Mor-. This is borne out in the many copies of family coats of arms (Rogers, Nature Knows No Color-Line, 1952 pp. 69 - 107). Other sources validate Roger's claims (Fox, Davies, Arthur Charles, 1904; Franklyn, Julian and John Tanner, 1969; Brooke- Little, J. P., 1973; Gough, Henry, 1967 and Hubert Allcock, 1962). The sources cited above speak with one voice regarding the art of heraldry (science of armory) or coats of arms.

"The only people who needed 'arms' were the gentry. Those who were worth recognizing in battle or who were invited to tournaments and who needed a seal. Arms, therefore, were tools of the nobility. They were assertains of descendancy. In short, they proudly displayed one's family history.

"A common figure in heraldic art is the Moors head; depicted as Black, wooly-haired, broad nosed and thick lipped. In contemporary jargon, this translates into Negro's head or Black family crest. Meaning, of course, that the surname associated with the shield (along with the figures) established the 'Negroness' of the family.

"Black families of nobility, then, existed within many major nationalities. Mormon is simply one of these family surnames which prove beyond a doubt that Mormon refers to Black family roots.

"​McRitchie said that 'families with the name Moor, Moore, Morris, Morrison, and other derivatives of Moor had Moors as their ancestors' (Rogers, ibid).

"Throughout antiquity and as late as 1900, Moor was synonymous with Negro. Blackamoor is translated as 'black as a moor'.

"Blacks (Africans) brought into England were baptized into the church and given the surname Moor or: More, Moore, Moryen, Morrow, Murray, Blackamoor.

"The Roman 'Maurus' occurs in the European languages as: Moor, Mor, Mohr, Morian and Morien (Rogers, 1952).

"In this writer's opinion, Moroni (Mormon's son) is simply a variation of these examples.

"The English Morison means son of the Moor (ibid). On page 83 of Nature Knows No Color-Line, 'Moorman' appears on a French coat of arms accompanied by a Black wooly-haired thick-lipped life form. Another such depiction which closely resembles Mormon and Moroni is: Morini (ibid, p. 84).

"It must be understood by the reader that Moor in antiquity - through the 1800s referred to race as well as religion. The only time the word was used in reference to religion was to show contrast, e.g., Moor vs Christian (i.e., Estevanico the Black/negro/moor). In further support of the foregoing: African Moors (that is un-mixed Negro) ruled Spain for 200 years (1285 - 1485 A.D.). Further: African Moors first entered Spain in 711 A.D. These were indigenous, or 'pure' African. It wasn't until 12 years later (723) that Asian Moors entered what then was referred to as Iberia.

"Mormon then, is to be translated the same as would be Moorman = Black or Negro man; or as Morison = son of the Moor or Negro. The only difference being one vowel (a/o).

"Oweing to the common error of time, this writer submits that Mormon or Moor- man most likely originated as Moormon or Moorman; Morini, quite conceivably, is a mere extraction of Moro (black) with the ending -ni serving no etymological pur- pose but perhaps to embellish the root Mor....

"The Golden Plates

"According to tradition, the Book of Mormon was translated from language written upon golden plates by Joseph Smith. This sacred record written upon the golden plates was in an African language. This African language was translated by Joseph Smith with the help of two interpreters Urim and Thummin. It remains in character then, for two African 'fathers' (Mormon & Moroni) to deliver the sacred scripture written in an African language. How is 'an African language' justified? Read on.

"The inscriptions on the plates were written in hieroglyphics, which is nothing less than a European name for the language used by the early Black Africans. The Blacks never referred to the characters as hieroglyphics. English translators did.

"It happened in this way. 'The ancient Egyptians were African and spoke an African language' (Budge, 1895).

"The Greek Herodotus described the 'Egyptians' of Africa as: black, wooly- haired, flat nosed and thick lipped (ben-Jochannan, 1970).

"Xenophanes (570 B.C.) was the first Greek to describe them in that way, but he was followed in kind by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

"The sacred golden plates given to Joseph Smith, then, contained the language of an ancient Black African people.

"These indigenous Africans spoke a language called Coptic. Copts were descendants of the original inhabitants of Egypt who were un-mixed African (sometimes referred to as Ethiopian). Their language is directly descendant from the ancient Egyptian (African) language.

"Indigenous African priests (erroneously called 'Egyptian') had to be proficient in the 'magical language' of the sciences, math, logic, astrology, etc. This 'magical language' was their language- written using various characters and symbols to portray thought. Europeans (Greeks) erroneously called the unknown language hieroglyphics. They (Greeks) took the Coptic word 'Gyptios' and made it into Aigyptios (meaning black, puffy-lipped, wooly haired, etc.) which was further corrupted into Egyptios or Egyptian.

"The term, Egyptios, was used to referto the indigenous inhabitants of Africa BEFORE the Arab conquest.

"This African language was the language contained upon the plates which were translated by Joseph Smith.

"From Smith's translations, we now have the famous Book of Mormon.

"It stands to reason, of course, that a Black Man (Moroni) would write and speak in his indigenous African language. Smith, in essence, received the Mormon's sacred prophecy, commandments and revelation from a Black angel; who was the son of a Black man (descendant from a Black land in Africa) - written in a Black African language. 
​
"Origin of Nephites

"Mormon, not wanting his 'records' to fall into the hands of the Lamanites, made them out of the plates of Nephi and hid them on the hill Cumorah (see Book of Mormon). These were the golden plates given to Moroni who in turn gave them to Joseph Smith.

"Mormon was descendant from the Nephites. Nephi or Lehi led his family out of Canaan, land of the descendants of Ham, to America. Moroni was the last in the line of the Nephites. Did the Nephites reside in the land populated by the descendants of Ham? Read on.

"The Book of Mormon is in error in calling the area from which Nephi departed to America Israel or Jerusalem. Israel is of recent vintage. At the time Nephi left for America, the land had been known as Canaan. Canaan was a son of Ham.

"The primary reason why Black of African descent are denied Mormon priesthood is rooted in the so-called 'curse of Ham.' Yet, Nephi, through whom the Mormons trace their ancestry, resided in the land populated by the son of Ham. Observe the chart below.

"The sons of Ham were: Cush, Phut, Misraim and Canaan. Some biblical scholars speculate that Misraim is the ancestor of the Egyptians and Canaan is the ancestor of the Ethiopians or Africans. A moot point. Both Misraim and Canaan are sons of Ham.

"If Moroni translated the sacred records from the Egyptian, then Mormons have to recognize that one version traces the Egyptian back to Noah's Black son, Ham; Ham being Misraims [sic] and Canaan's father.

"From this writer's standpoint, Nephi left Africa for America from the land of Canaan; Canaan being also the son of Ham. This writer also speculates that the hill Cumorah, where Joseph Smith obtained the plates, is merely a dedication to one of Ham's other sons, Cush; Cush = Cushmorah or Cumorah.

"Recent Discovery I

"In the February 1977 edition of the Readers Digest was published an article, 'Who Really Discovered America' by Thomas Fleming, Harvard scholar. Of interest is Fleming's reference to a people who came to America about the same time the ancestors of the Mormons (Nephites) were supposed to have arrived. Fleming states that when these people died, they left their written testimony buried under mounds of earth. Although much of Fleming's work is based upon the work done by a Harvard marine biologist, Barry Fell, the coincidence is nevertheless fascinating.

"Thomas Fleming speculates that Europeans lived in America as early as 800 B.C. According to Barry Fell, inscriptions in a buried mound near Davenport Iowa (1874) were written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Punic and Libyan.

"Egyptian hieroglyphics have already been established as being of African origin in this writing. Libya was one of the names used to describe all of Black Africa. Libyan script, then, would have to refer to Black African writings, not European. Too often white researchers allow their latent racism to cloud their so-called scientific work. Has Libya ever been in Europe?

"The Lord's Prayer was found to be written in Egyptian hieroglyphics also as reported in this same article. Could these early travelers and the ancestors of Mormon have been one and the same? If they were, they wrote in the language of the indigenous Africans.

"Another language referred to is that of the African Libyans. Whether hieroglyphic or Libyan, the roots are both Black African. And if these travelers were indeed the relatives of Nephi, it is but one more piece of evidence oweing to the Black ancestry of Mormon and his son, Moroni.

"Recent Discovery II

"In a March issue of Jet Magazine under the Book section, a Black author/anthropologist, I. Van Sertima, of Rutgers University, stated that Black Egyptians came to the Gulf of Mexico area as early as 700 B.C.

"Sertima has published his discoveries in his book, They Came Before Columbus (Random House). Since explorers of 'New Worlds' tend to travel extensively, it is not inconceivable that these same Black Egyptians were the same party discussed by  Fleming and Fell. Of particular interest in these 'recent' discoveries, is the coincidence of dating. Give or take a hundred years or two, references to the Nephites landing in America coincide with the probable dates established by contemporary writers/scientists in their references to early African explorers.

"If this be so, then it lends additional support to the Black African ancestry of the people who now embrace the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.

"Other Relative Data

"When Joseph Smith migrated west and founded Salt Lake City, Utah, July 23 [sic], 1847, a Pioneer Monument was erected. Names of 'Negroes' appear to this day on the plaque gracing the monument. They are: Green Flack [sic], of North Carolina, Hark Lay of Mississippi and Oscar Crosby (Rogers, Africa's Gift to America). Doesn't it seem somewhat hypocritical to have the names of Blacks placed upon this monument while denying them access to the Mormon priesthood? Another Black, Abel Burns, was the trusted servant and friend of Joseph Smith prior to and during his journey west.

"How Can Blacks be Denied the Priesthood?

"According to Mormon tradition, American Blacks will someday be given the right to become Mormon priests. The 'curse' does not apply, however to Blacks of the South Pacific.

"Did not Blacks from the South Pacific come originally from Africa? Affirmative.

"Is it really likely that Blacks (Egyptians) writing in an African language (hieroglyphics) in the Mormon Book of Abraham would actually deny themselves from the Mormon priesthood when the very names of Mormon and Moroni refer to Black people? Not likely.

"The Hypocrisy

"Each year some estimated 25,000 Blacks who physically do not resemble 'Blacks of African Descent' cross over the color line. In other words, they pass for white. How many of these are currently occupying positions in the Mormon priesthood?

"Thousands upon thousands of white men and women (including children) were driven into slavery along with their Black counterparts in America (Rogers, Sex and Race Vol. II pp. 208 - 213). Some were bought and sold outright, some kidnapped and some were simply denied proof of their white ancestry, and documentation of this fact exists in many valid resources. The point is this: how many 'whites' are unknowingly 'Negros of African descent' in the U.S. Today - since here one drop of 'Negro' blood makes one a full-fledged Negro? How many of 'these' have become Mormon priests?
​
"Conclusion

"Irregardless of the facts contained herein, can a church really claim to be practicing Christian ethics while denying the priesthood to Blacks? How does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints explain the dichotomy between their works and their word relative to the following from the Book of Mormon: 3 Nephi, 18:22 'And behold ye shall meet together oft; and ye shall not forbid any man from coming unto you when ye shall meet together, but suffer them that they may come into you and forbid them not.'

"In 1972, there were 240 Black Mormons in the area of Salt Lake City (Time, Oct. 23, 1972 under Religion). They believe that the Mormon Church is the true church. In light of the evidence contained in this thesis, the weight upon the 240 may soon be lifted."

The portion I omitted was just more mor- etymology from various languages, which I found unnecessary and a bit tedious.

I assumed, of course, that this was a work of satire - if he really believed the Book of Mormon was historically true, he should have already been a member of the Church, priesthood restriction notwithstanding - but after visiting his six websites, Blackscifisoulman.com, blackscifisoulman.net, blackscifisoulbrother.com, blackscifisoulbrother.net, blackscifisoul.net, and black-scifi-soul.com, which share an identical layout and disorienting design scheme of red, black, and green stripes, but each contain a different selection of poems, I'm not sure. If it is satire, the amount of research and thought put into it is incredible. But it's perplexing that with all this research and thought he made a couple of basic factual errors. The Latter-day Saint pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, which has been a statewide holiday since then, and Joseph Smith was not among them because he had been dead for three years. Also, Nephites have never been regarded as "the ancestors of the Mormons". As Wells himself wrote earlier and then apparently forgot, "Moroni was the last in the line of the Nephites."

Anyway, I looked up this article after I saw it cited in J. B. Haws' book The Mormon Image in the American Mind: Fifty Years of Public Perception as one of the few examples of continued criticism of the priesthood and temple ban in the years just prior to its repeal. By that time, the era of gung-ho civil rights advocacy and protesting had fizzled out, the Church's and BYU's PR efforts to explain that they weren't really racist had been very successful, and most critics of the policy had given up and moved on. I looked up this article expecting a run-of-the-mill plea for equality, and instead found something more wonderfully bizarre and creative than I could have imagined. It deserves to be a lot less obscure than it is. I think there's some legitimate value in an ethnic or racial group claiming Mormon and Moroni as their own, even in a tongue-in-cheek manner with dubious scholarship, sort of like how people paint Jesus as Caucasian or African when he was neither of those things, and every culture produces beautifully diverse nativity scenes that they know perfectly well aren't accurate depictions of stables in first-century Bethlehem.

"​​When it comes to others’ choice of religions, I’m pretty much a live-and-let-live guy. In fact, I don’t believe in religious litmus tests of any kind. Frankly, I think they are self-righteous and insulting. Yet I must admit that there is something about Mitt Romney’s religion that I find deeply troubling, particularly in light of the possibility that he could become the next president of this nation. What concerns me is this: the Book of Mormon, the book that Mitt Romney and all Mormons embrace as divinely revealed scripture that is more sacred, more true, and more inerrant than any other holy book on earth, declares that black people are cursed. That’s right. Cursed. And not only accursed, but lazy and aesthetically ugly to boot.

"I’m not talking about ascribed racism such as we see in Christianity, in which racist meanings are attributed to certain verses of the Bible that actually contain no such meanings, as with the Gen. 9:25 cursing of Canaan (not Ham!) which, though used as 'proof' of black wickedness and inferiority, in actuality has nothing to do with race.

"​And no, I’m not talking about a single ambiguous, cherry-picked verse, either. I’d much rather that were the case. The sad truth is that the Book of Morman says it explicitly and in numerous passages: black people are cursed by God and our dark skin is the evidence of our accursedness. Here are a few examples:

"​And the Lord had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them (2 Nephi 5:21).

"And I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark and loathsome and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations (1 Nephi 12:23).

"O my brethren, I fear that unless ye shall repent of your sins that their skins will be whiter than yours, when ye shall be brought with them before the throne of God. (Jacob 3:8).

"And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men (Alma 3: 6).

​"It would have been infinitely more righteous if Mormons had relegated the sentiments of these verses to the scriptural sidelines of their faith, but the historical record tells us otherwise. Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism, repeatedly ordered his Church to uphold all slavery laws. Although Smith had a change of heart toward the end of his life, his successor, Brigham Young, did not. Young instituted social and ecclesiastical segregation as the Church’s official policies, thus excluding people of black African descent from priesthood ordination and full participation in temple ceremonies, regardless of their actual skin color. Moreover, Brigham Young, whom Mormons revere almost equally with Smith, proved to the end of his life to be a brutal white supremacist who fervently supported the continued enslavement of African Americans; he was so convinced of black accursedness that he declared that if any Mormon had sex with a person of color, 'the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot.'

"The Book of Mormon’s teaching of the accursedness and, therefore, the inferiority of blacks - if blacks are cursed, then by definition they are inferior to the divinely acceptable whites - was reaffirmed by numerous Mormon leaders for a century and a half. As late as 1969, even after the Civil Rights Movement had dismantled de jure segregation throughout the land, David O. McKay, then president and 'living prophet' of Mormonism, still publicly justified its segregationist policies by declaring that 'the seeming discrimination by the Church toward the Negro... goes back into the beginning with God.'

"Now, some will argue that I should dismiss the codified racism of the Book of Mormon as the unfortunate folklore of a bygone era because of the 1978 revelation by Spencer W. Kimball, the Church's president and 'living prophet' at that time, that after a century and a half black males were finally un-accursed enough to fully participate in Mormonism’s priesthood and sacred temple ceremonies. However, even if we ignore the suspiciously coincidental timing of this 'revelation' (it conveniently appeared when the Church’s federal tax-exempt status was imperiled by its racial policies), an attentive reading reveals that Kimball’s proclamation did not in any way address the question of whether or not the Church still considered the Book of Mormon's assertions of black inferiority to be divinely authorized. In fact, the specific contents of Kimball’s revelation were never made public. Nor has the Church ever disavowed the Book’s white supremacist passages or the past racist practices and pronouncements of its leaders.

"What makes this all the more problematic for me is that at no time has Mitt Romney ever publicly indicated that he seriously questioned the divine inspiration of the Book of Mormon’s teachings about race, much less that he has repudiated them. It is true that in a 2008 [sic, 2007] Meet the Press interview with the late Tim Russert, Romney did vigorously assert his belief in equal rights for all Americans in every facet of life. As part of that narrative, he cited his parents' 'tireless' advocacy for blacks' civil rights, including the dramatic exit of his father, Michigan Governor George Romney, from the 1964 Republican convention as a protest against nominee Barry Goldwater’s racial politics. He also shared that he wept when he learned of Spencer Kimball’s aforementioned revelation. Yet from Romney’s remarks it is not clear whether he wept for joy because Mormonism was eschewing its segregationist policies or if he wept from relief that the announcement promised to quiet the public outrage that those policies were causing. And significantly, while he recited his parents’ efforts to confront racial injustice, Mitt Romney pointed to no such activities of his own.

"But let me be clear: this is not a 'gotcha' political ploy. In all honesty, I am neither saying nor implying in the slightest that Mitt Romney is a racist. I simply do not know that to be the case. Nor do I mean to overlook the racial progress that the Mormon Church has made in the last several decades. What I do mean to say is 1) that Americans of goodwill owe it to ourselves not to turn a blind eye to the possible implications of the white supremacist legacy of candidate Romney’s religious tradition, no matter how noble our intentions; and 2) that Mitt Romney himself owes it to America to address the issue. Why? Because Romney was tutored into adulthood by a holy book that declares that all Americans like me are cursed by God. And he is not only a believer; he has served as a leader in his faith. This is indeed a crucial point for consideration because, as this nation has seen time and time again, the inevitable consequence of America’s policy-makers considering people of color as inferior to whites is that blacks' social and material interests have also been considered inferior - and quite often treated that way.

"I admit that this question of religion and racism is quite complicated and I don't claim to have all the answers. But I do know that recognizing the equal rights of black Americans under the law, while of paramount importance, is not the same as recognizing our intellectual capabilities and moral character as inherently equal to whites. And I am aware of one thing more: that when Tim Russert invited Romney to repudiate his Church's racist legacy on Meet the Press, Romney refused.

"That is why, Mr. Romney, as an American citizen whose president you seek to become, I must insist that you honestly and forthrightly attest to me and all Americans of goodwill that you actually can be my president, too, fully and completely. You can accomplish this by publicly disavowing the portions of your holy book that so sorely denigrate the humanity of me, my loved ones and all people of black African descent.

"It is incumbent that you do this, candidate Romney, for the sake of all Americans."

Obviously the Church has plenty of racism in its history, but the very core of Hendricks' thesis here is wrong. The Book of Mormon says nothing about black people of African descent. The people cursed with a "skin of blackness" in the book are ancestors of indigenous Americans. This presents its own separate and somewhat tangential issue. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of course most members and leaders took this skin color change literally, but a closer reading of the text and an understanding of Hebrew idioms suggests that it's metaphorical, and the Church as an institution has quietly moved toward that interpretation with changes to scripture headings and footnotes and the revision to this year's Come Follow Me manual. And even with that being the case I'm willing to concede that the book's authors were more than likely prejudiced against the Lamanites and that this comes through in the text in the form of unfair generalizations and stereotypes. But even if we assume for the sake of argument that these verses are downright racist, black people of African descent are not the ones who should be offended by them.

In all my research over the better part of a decade, I have not found one instance of a church leader citing or extrapolating from the Book of Mormon to explain the separate and distinct "curse" on black people of African descent (though one clueless missionary did so in 1964). They relied instead on verses from the Books of Genesis and Abraham that only work that way if you start with the assumption of the curse and then look for an explanation. The Lamanite curse and the African "curse" were also entirely different in nature. The Book of Mormon teaches that the Lamanites are a remnant of the House of Israel, are freed from the curse whenever they repent and are baptized, and will eventually convert to the Church en masse. Consequently white Latter-day Saints took quite an interest in the salvation of Native Americans and didn't, on the whole, harbor a great deal of prejudice against them. This is entirely different in tone from the assertion that the African race was to be denied priesthood and temple blessings indefinitely because they were less valiant in a previous life, whether they joined the Church or not.

Most criticisms against the Church come down to quibbles about context, paradigms and interpretation of various facts, allowing critics to protest that they're "just telling the truth", so it blows my mind how many people repeat the objectively false and virtually baseless ex-Mormon fantasy that "the Church’s federal tax-exempt status was imperiled by its racial policies". So far as I've been able to find out, this claim first appeared ten years after the priesthood revelation, coming from a former member of the Church in a newspaper article about the revelation's tenth anniversary. He cited no source for his lie, and most people regurgitating it continue to cite no source, though occasionally someone cites one sentence from a 1987 book claiming that when Bob Jones University lost its tax-exempt status for forbidding interracial dating and marriage, "Rex Lee, who had been sworn in as Solicitor General seven months before, had once represented the Mormon church when it faced a problem like Bob Jones's and, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, he had taken himself off the case." Wow, that sounds definitive. So what was this alleged other case where he represented the Mormon church, hmm? I'll wait.

Despite these egregious errors that kind of ruin it, Hendricks' piece raises legitimate questions. The scrutiny brought to the Church's past racism by a Latter-day Saint running for president against a black incumbent encouraged it to disavow said racism instead of ignoring it and hoping it would go away on its own. The next month, outrage and embarrassment over quotes from BYU professor Randy Bott in a Washington Post article about "The Genesis of a church's stand on race" compelled the Church to immediately issue not one, but two statements disavowing the past racist explanations given for the priesthood and temple ban (a move they resisted in the mid-to-late nineties when a couple of black members advocated for it). In late 2013, the "Race and the Priesthood" essay that would become part of the seminary and institute curricula went far more in-depth and repeated the disavowal. This essay would have happened anyway, since it was part of a larger series of essays geared toward greater transparency and accuracy in controversial areas of church history and doctrine, but Romney's campaign controversy demonstrated that there was a greater need for it than leaders previously supposed.