[UUPoly-L] Nuance and the Church of LDS

[Elizabeth Gish <egish@hds.harvard.edu>]

Re: <<This is a group who'd be happy if women never got the vote--why 
should they need it when their husbands can vote for what is best for the 
family?>>

Greetings.  I have been an observer for a while and appreciated all the 
thoughtful comments.

As a student in divinity school, I have had the privilege to meet people 
from the LDS tradition and do some reading on the tradition.  While 
certainly the church structure is quite (in my opinion) hierarchical and 
oppressive, and not friendly to women's equality or GLBTQ issues, I think 
that there is a marked difference between characterizing the church 
structure and characterizing LDS "as a group."  Just as the church 
structure of the Catholic church marginalizes women and GLBTQ-identified 
folks, this does not necessarily characterize Catholics as a group.  It is 
a diverse group of people, many of whom are amazing feminist and queer 
activists.  While I think the progressive tendencies within the church of 
LDS are less than found in the wider Catholic community, certainly many (I 
would suggest most) LDS-identified individuals support women voting.  I 
just think it is important to nuance characterizations of particular groups 
or religious traditions, just as we would want people to nuance their 
characterization of polyamorously inclined folks.  All the best,  Elizabeth