Not sure a white man writing about a religion that favors white masculinity is as insightful as the article’s tone suggests. It glosses over the church’s racism, barely touches on the misogyny, and omits its problematic history with Indigenous people. https://apple.news/AABhXl-UPTEKfs1FBw8tq5w

t’s great that LGBTQ+ rights are the acceptable cause célèbre for progressive Mormons right now, but this eagerness to divorce LGBTQ+ rights from gender equality reveals a desire to protect the status quo (and a misunderstanding of LGBTQ+ rights which necessarily involve gender).

The article gives the impression that Mormons simply have a history of persecution; therefore, it’s taken them a bit longer to come around but don’t worry—the Mormon Church is on the right track. Again, I don’t think someone writing from this author’s position can claim that.

Let’s just take gender. 40 years ago, the Church urged my mother to quit her job once she had kids. She did, and it tanked her mental health. 20 years later, Church leadership asked me to leave the ward where I grew up because I’d become—at 18—“a temptation to the married men.”

I was sent, at 18, to a separate ward for singles where the branch president told me he would marry me off within 18 months. I was in college. I didn’t want to get married. He thought I was being stubborn, and he made me into his project. I left the Mormon Church soon after.

So his claim that a Mormon woman advocating for equal rights was excommunicated because she got publicity grossly misunderstands the ways that women—just trying to live their lives—can easily challenge some of the Church’s most fundamental beliefs about gender.

I do believe that most Mormons are decent people and good neighbors, and I see this author trying. But the time has come for women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC members/former members to be the ones who have authority to speak on what the Church is doing right—and what it must do better.