Legalized Discrimination

Freedom of Religion....the freedom to practice religion; not the freedom to discriminate against others.

In Idaho, Lynn Luker, a Mormon, has proposed a state bill that would allow anyone to discriminate against single Moms and the LGBT community:

House bill 427-FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGION - Amends existing law to provide that a person whose exercise of religion is burdened in violation of specified law may obtain appropriate relief against any person relying upon any government action, enactment or law that burdens a person's exercise of religion.

This is a letter to him and anyone who supports the bill,

I have been a single Mom for seven years. I have raised three daughters. I have worked two jobs in that time, one full time and one part time. Contrary to the myth of what a single Mom looks like, I have never received public assistance of food stamps or Medicaid during this time. I have money in savings and money in retirement programs. I take care of myself.  My car is paid off, I pay my bills on time, and I have raised my daughters to be independent members of society. My youngest just received a $50,000 scholarship to the Culinary Institute of America in New York.  My oldest just graduated with her Masters in Economics and has landed a job in Seattle. My middle child is working on her bachelor’s degree at Portland State University. 

I have many friends who are gay, straight, married and single. I love all people equally, regardless of their economic status, their sexual status, or their religious beliefs. I do not support your bill, H-427 on many levels. 

I have read the Bible many times, and I've read nothing in it that says single Mom’s are evil and should not be allowed to receive services in restaurants, healthcare, law enforcement services, etc. If I am the victim of domestic violence and I call the police, will it be okay for them to not arrest the perpetrator? If I am strangled, is it okay for the paramedics to not give me treatment? What if I die because of my injuries due to my inability to receive services? You are okay with that? Why is it now okay for men to kill me simply because I am female and single?  The state penitentiary is full of single men. The government spends money to take care of them, therefore they are now of more value to the state simply because they have a penis. Even though I work and support myself and my children, I am of no value simply because I am female and a single Mom. I am currently dating a single Dad and there are no potential laws to discriminate against him; why?

Gay men and women also work, support themselves, go about their business and do no harm to you or others in any way. Yet, you are enacting a law that would allow people to publicly discriminate against them when they have done no harm to society.

There are a lot of misunderstandings about what the Bible teaches about gays. Take the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, for example. They were not destroyed because of their sexual sins. According to Ezekiel 16:49  Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.  Also, in genesis 19, this is about gang rape, not about consensual gay sex. I don’t know anyone who would admit that gang rape is accepted or approved. In Matthew 10 and Luke 10, Jesus also associates the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah with not aiding the poor or being hospitable.

Leviticus 18 and 20: Both these scriptures condemn homosexuality. There is no doubt about this. Yet, the book of Leviticus condemns eating shell fish, pork, combining two types of threads in any given garment (think of a cotton/poly blend, for example) cutting men’s hair at the side or the head, making a fire on the Sabbath (which begins on Friday at Sunset and continues to Saturday at Sunset) walking too far on the Sabbath, having sex with a woman who is menstruating, and over 600 laws. Today, Christians and most Jews do not follow these very restrictive laws.

In 49 AD, there was a counsel held to determine how to accommodate gentiles who were joining into the new faith but not living the kosher laws as described in Leviticus, as well as circumcision.  The decision was made that none of the 600 kosher laws of culture and identity contained in the book of Leviticus would be applied to the Christian/gentile converts. This can be found in Galatians 6. There is no reason to believe that only two verses of scripture would apply today while the rest would be discarded. Paul speaks of the old law as one of slavery and to not be burdened by it. In Colossians 2:13-14, it states that God says that the Old Law has been cancelled. In Romans 10:4 Paul says that Jesus is the end of the Law and in Hebrews 8:13 it states that the old covenant is obsolete, freeing Christians from the old Law. For Christians, then, the book of Leviticus cannot be used to justify prejudice against gays.

In 1 Corinthians 11:13-15 It states that it is unnatural for a woman to pray with her face unveiled, or for a man to grow his hair long.  In order to understand this scripture, we need to understand the Greek and Roman meaning of the words, ‘natural and unnatural, disgrace, and shameful’.  The Greeks interpreted the word ‘natural’ as ‘custom’. So the proper meaning of this scripture is this, ‘do not the customs of our day dictate that it is shameful for a man to have long hair.’ This makes more sense than believing that men naturally will have short hair.

 What makes this scripture and meaning so important is that it is so similar to Romans 1:26-27 Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.  The proper interpretation, then would be, 'Even their women exchanged customary sexual relations for uncustomary ones.'  The Greeks and Romans considered a man’s natural sexual role to be active, a woman’s natural sexual role to be passive. If these roles were reversed, this would be unnatural and shameful. The term ‘nature’ refers to social custom, not to biological order. Therefore, the New Testament cannot be used to justify prejudice against gays.

I look forward to the day when all people will be accepted as equal.

Discrimination no more

IF....
Any privilege, power or money is denied any group of people that is given to another group of people, that is the essence of discrimination.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvX2qP_F13I&feature=youtu.be

It is time to end discrimination.

Not Good for Women VII

Progressive, forward thinking, working women, artists. The mormon ads portray the women in the mormon church as all of these things. Yet, is this really the belief of the leaders and doctrine in the church?

Try on this latest quote:

‎"The most important thing for a woman in this life is to be the wife of a worthy

 priesthood holder and the mother of his children."

"We know that every father can, or should be, an officer in the priesthood,

meaning that he holds the priesthood and presides over his family in 

righteousness."

Boyd K. Packer

Saturday, February 11, 2012http://www.lds.org/broadcasts/article/worldwide-leadership-training/2012/02/priesthood-power-in-the-home?lang=eng

Note the date.

The man presides OVER his family. Wow. Not the words that translate into equality.

Not the attitude of a progressive church that treats women as equals.

Not Good for Women ~ Part IV

Discrimination vs Equality
We can learn a lot from the civil rights movement. Any group of people who have money, power, or privileges withheld from them are being discriminated against. During the civil rights movement, many people tried to state that separate was the same as equal.  No, its not.

I hear women say all the time that they are just fine with not holding the priesthood and they don't have to have it to be considered equal with men.  That may be so, but just because they are not give the title of having priesthood authority, does not mean they are equal in all other ways.

Let's take money.  Do the women in the church receive the same and equal access to money that the men do?  Any budget I ever saw and worked with in the young women's organization never even came close to the young men's budget.  The boys scout's budget also superseded that of the teenage girl's.  The teen boys were also allowed to solicit for money.  If the teen girls were allowed to solicit, their abilities in this area were severely restricted. I was in many wards were they asked for money for the boys scouts directly over the pulpit, called each member of the ward for money (regardless of whether you had a son in the program or not) and they held several fun raisers throughout the year. The girls were allowed only one fundraiser for girls camp--that was all.

Let's take power.  The church tells people and especially the women that they are in charge of their own organizations (Relief Society, Young Women's and Primary for the children). The church calls these organizations- 'auxiliaries'.  By the churches own definition of an auxiliary, 'is not essential and not truly independent of male oversight, it only spells out that women are not to be trusted with any real authority themselves.' http://facsimilogos.blogspot.com/2011/12/10-reasons-to-leave-lds-church.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxiliary_organization_(LDS_Church)

Women must have a man present at their activities, must report their activities to male leadership, must have male approval for their activities and must get approval for any funding for them.  There is no such thing as female power.  Women who speak in general conference, primarily speak to the children, female youth, are given short speaking assignments, and rarely are given time on Sundays-- the highest watched times.

Let's take privileges.  Many years ago, I worked in the young women's program. We were trying to motivate the teen girls to read the book of mormon.  We came up with the idea to take all the girls who read it in a certain time period on a trip to Salt Lake to visit church history sites.  The girls were to have fund raisers to raise all the money by themselves, thus not being a financial burden on their families or the church.  We were denied our request by the bishop.  We appealed to the stake president.  We were denied again.  That same summer, the teen boys took a trip to Lagoon for fun and enjoyment.  Although they said it was for boys scouts, no merit badges were earned.  All the money for the trip came out of the ward budget.

Boys are allowed to go water skiing, camping, skiing, hiking,swimming, site seeing in other states, etc.  All these privileges are denied the girls.  All these privileges are put under the umbrella of boy scouts, yet few merit badges are earned on all these privileges and equal access for something similar is not granted to the teen girls.

Girls are required to learn to sew, learn how to cook, be a good mom and stay a virgin until married.

Does this meet the level of discrimination? Good thing the church isn't the government; they'd likely be sued.  Why do women tolerate such discrimination? Because they are told they are special.

Not Good for Females

I have repeatedly said that one of the main reasons I left the morg is because it is not a good place for women.

I have given my personal story of how I have been harmed by misogynistic leadership.  I have heard so many women who have shared similar storied to mine.  The pat answer I get back is that *the church is perfect, the leadership is not*. This is so completely lame, it doesn't deem a response. However, since I hear it so often, I will respond.

If the church were indeed receiving guidance from god, then it would not be making poor choices, repeatedly, that harm a large group of people over a long period of time.

If the church were indeed receiving guidance from god, then its leadership would be making choices that were god-like, not human-like.

If the church were indeed receiving guidance from god, then its choices would reflect equality, love and acceptance, not judgement, condemnation and subjugation.

People would not be leaving in droves due to pain and disillusion.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52448399-78/moon-church-abuse-report.html.csp

Fallacy: Separate but Equal

I have many regrets. One of the biggest is that I bought into the Morg's idea of separate but equal. I am an advocate for women, yet when that church taught that women should be treated differently than men it didn't mean they were not equal to men, but separate. They separate women from men in the temple, in church.

 In the temple they make the women bow their heads and promise to obey their husbands. In the temple they make the women pull a veil over their faces to cover their faces before they can say a prayer to god. They teach that women should be separated out in the home by doing women's work of raising the children, cleaning the home and not working with men in the world. http://lds.org/library/display/0,4945,161-1-11-1,FF.html . They begin this separation at the age of 12.They have the teen boys going out on hiking trips, water skiing, camping, basketball, taking trips out of state. They have cooking classes for the girls, they teach them how to be a good babysitter, they have service projects where they clean the nursery toys. I have even heard of one where they took the 16 and 14 year old girls to a bridal shop and had them try on wedding dresses! They teach that only women can fulfill the  role of nurturer and they are not suited to working in the world.  It goes even further since men are given the priesthood where they are allowed authority over other men and all women.  Even a 12 year old boy has more authority in the mormon church than any woman has.

Women in the mormon church are not even allowed to hold their babies when they are blessed. These blessings are not even a saving ordinance.  Women are not allowed to hold positions of authority over men, to rise  to a position of bishop, etc.

This idea of separate but equal was tried with race. This country had separate places on buses, separate drinking fountains, separate cafes for blacks. This idea was ruled unconstitutional. The Morg fought against the women's rights movement in the 70's. The Morg poured lots of money into this idea in California in Proposition 8 in fighting gay marriage. That idea will also lose. You cannot treat a select class of people as separate and then claim they are equal.

Equal means they have the same access to opportunities, money, authority and rights. If these are being withheld in any form, then this set of people are being discriminated against. This is the definition of discrimination. It is a fallacy that any group of people can be treated as separate yet be equal. The Morg treats women and many other groups as less than equal to white men.

Please consider signing the following:http://whatwomenknow.org/