An Open Letter to Ordain Women

I am a woman. I do not support feminism.

Contrary to feminism philosophy, feminism is not a progressive ideology about gender equality; it is a digressive movement toward female supremacy. And I will not support the supremacy of one sex over the other.

I believe in equality.

The History

I am a firm believer that masculine and feminine can (should) exist in a balance without both sexes fulfilling identical roles in society or religion. Not that either sex cannot fulfill the others' role in society or religion, but that they don’t need to in order for humanity to experience a balance between masculine and feminine.

In fact, the historical world successfully practiced this balance between masculine and feminine for thousands of years.

Until the reign of the Roman Pagan leader Constantine the Great around 300 AD, there was a balance in the world between masculine and feminine with an emphasis in the religious world on matriarchal paganism. (And, yes, Constantine was actually a Pagan. He was baptized into Christianity on his deathbed when he was too weak to protest.)

In response to the increasingly tumultuous uproar between Christianity and Paganism in Rome during his reign, Constantine began to fuse the two religious ideologies together in an effort to save his country. (And humanity, though Constantine was less concerned about humanity than he was about Rome.)

This is why there are so many symbolic similarities between Pagan religious practices and Christian religious practices. But we won’t go into that now.

It was this fusion of religious practices that ultimately began the shift in gender equality from the generally-accepted matriarchal paganism to the new-world’s view of patriarchal Christianity. Only, Constantine’s efforts dove-tailed over the next several centuries, resulting in a wide swing of the gender equality pendulum in favor of the masculine.

Throughout the next several centuries, this imbalance between masculine and feminine continued to escalate in favor of masculinity until the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960’s. It was at this point that society began to get a handle on the pendulum again and start working it back toward a balance.

But, as history would have it, misunderstanding and miseducation has mislead society to believe that in order to be “equal”, the gender equality pendulum must now swing toward the feminine on as wide a margin as it had the masculine. It is this ideology that has driven the feminist movement to take a firm hold of that pendulum and begin forcing it into a wide a swing toward the feminine.

And while that may be “fair”, it will not result in gender equality.

And yet, the feminists insist on taking on Constantine’s role in the new age, and maintain that the only way to achieve “gender equality” is to create as wide an imbalance toward the feminine as history had it toward the masculine.

Which, again, is not equality. That is feminine supremacy. Just like it was masculine supremacy when Constantine swung the pendulum toward the masculine in the first place.

The Misunderstanding

Constantine did not reign until somewhere around 300 years after the death of Jesus Christ. Which means that Christ organized His apostles (and His entire church) during a time in history that was already practicing a balance between masculine and feminine. A time in history when women were respected the same as men.

The men and women of Christ’s day recognized that although masculine and feminine roles were not identical, they were equally important and revered by each other, by society, and by religion.  

So the ordination of men to the priesthood by Christ would have been universally accepted, by men and women alike, as a masculine responsibility. Nothing more.

Not male supremacy. Just a masculine responsibility.

It was in no way related to Constantine’s shift from matriarchal Paganism to patriarchal Christianity and the male supremacy that followed, on account of Constantine wasn’t even alive yet.

The view that the ordination of only men to the priesthood is masculine supremacy is a new-age view, and is ultimately incorrect; it is a view that has been forced on society by the feminist agenda through new-age lenses that have been tinted by the religious and societal effects of Constantine’s reign.

Lenses that were unequivocally nonexistent during the time of Christ.

This is why leaders of the LDS church continue to reiterate that the roles of men and women in the church are “separate but equal”; because this is how Christ organized the church originally during His lifetime. And the LDS church believes that Joseph Smith restored the gospel the way it was originally organized by Jesus Christ.

In short, “separate but equal” refers to the balance between masculine and feminine that society experienced during the time of Christ. Men and women had different roles to play, and different responsibilities to contribute to religion and to society, and the assignment of those roles as either masculine or feminine did not make one gender superior to the other.

And it still doesn’t.

There is nothing in the LDS doctrine that forbids women from being ordained to the priesthood. It is entirely possible that that may happen someday; that God will assign "ordination to the priesthood" as a feminine responsibility.

And maybe He won't.

But the decision from God to either approve or deny women's ordination to the priesthood -- if such doctrine is ever established -- would have nothing to do with the new-age view of “gender equality”, and everything to do with divine necessity.

In the meantime, we can find a balance between the masculine and feminine by recognizing each sex’s separate yet equal responsibilities in religion and society today. We can find a balance between the masculine and feminine by embracing the ancient balance and living up to our potential in the masculine or feminine roles that we each possess.

We cannot find a balance between masculine and feminine by launching a forceful Constantinian movement for female supremacy in an attempt to be “fair”. Constantine was not fair to women. Let us not remake his historical mistake by working toward such a drastic imbalance of masculine and feminine. 

Instead, gender equality can be again achieved by understanding and to executing a balance between masculine and feminine responsibility, the way it existed during the time of Christ.

I have never once felt like my church, my God, was oppressing me because of my feminine responsibility in His organization. I have always been encouraged to pursue secondary education, develop a career for myself that is important to me, and "fly in the development of [my] own talents" (Hinckley). I am proud to have been entrusted with the ability to bear children -- a responsibility that can never be masculine -- even when the world tries to tell me that it's burdensome, or that it's God's punishment for Eve's "original sin."  

And I have never once felt like God cared for me less than He does for His sons. Only that we have each been entrusted with different responsibilities in order to maintain a balance between masculine and feminine.

That is equality. And I believe in equality.