LDS General Conference: ‘Ordain Women’ Feminist Mormon Group To Attend, Demand More Gender Equality

This weekend, tens of thousands of faithful Mormons will descend upon Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, to attend the LDS General Conference. Included among those numbers will be representatives from the group Ordain Women. Fox 13 Now reports that members of the organization will attend the LDS General Conference in order to continue their mission to bring more gender equality into the LDS Church.

Ordain Women previously made a name for itself when it launched a vigorous outreach campaign designed to compel the LDS Church to grant the priesthood to female members. Their attempts to persuade the LDS Church to ordain women were unsuccessful, and their dogged efforts to bring gender equality to the highly-conservative and notoriously patriarchal LDS organization resulted in the excommunication of Ordain Women’s founder, Kate Kelly, in 2014, reports the Salt Lake Tribune.

This time around, Ordain Women isn’t seeking anything as “radical” as the priesthood for women. Currently, Ordain Women is attending the LDS General Conference to ask LDS leaders to allow women “smaller” opportunities within the church that have historically been denied them, despite the fact that there is no official priesthood requirement within church doctrine for those who perform them.

To the layperson, it seems that Ordain Women’s requests at the LDS General Conference are small and almost inconsequential. Specifically, the group is attending the LDS General Conference to ask church leaders to allow women to hold a baby during its blessing and to be able to be able to serve as “official witnesses” at temple ceremonies, baptisms, and leadership interviews.

Apparently, women in the LDS church are currently not trusted with these small tasks, and Ordain Women (as well as others among the rank and file) believe that the LDS church is not treating the genders with equality or fairness by denying women these small concessions.

Prior to the LDS General Conference, Ordain Women has spent the previous months calling upon both its supporters and non-affiliated members of the LDS church to share their written thoughts about these proposed changes, reports Fox 13 Now.

On Friday, just before the LDS General Conference, the group made an effort to deliver about 150 of the letters it collected to LDS Church leaders, but were denied the opportunity to do so. According to an LDS Church spokesperson, the decision not to receive the hand-delivered letters at its Administration Building was not political or a snub directed at Ordain Women. The spokesperson went on to say that all deliveries to the building are required to come through the mail due to long-standing policy.

Ordain Women has a slightly different version of events. They told the media that they’d written to several LDS Church officials well in advance asking them to personally receive the letters on Friday, but all failed to respond to the request.

The women who attempted to deliver the letters to the LDS Administration Building prior to General Conference, including Debra Jenson and Bryndis Roberts, reportedly stood outside the building until it closed at 5 p.m. Both women had plans to return, along with Ordain Women supporters, on Saturday and Sunday during the LDS General Conference.

Mormon visitors to the LDS General Conference didn’t seem to think much of the efforts of Ordain Women, according to reports. One such visitor stopped at the Ordain Women table and demanded to know when Debra was going to “follow the prophet.” Susan Herbst, another Mormon visitor General Conference was “disappointed” to see fellow female mormons being so “unnecessary” and “divisive.”

“It’s just a really silly argument to me that people feel like they need to have the priesthood when they obviously don’t understand that the priesthood is all about service. It’s not any big thing to the men, it’s not some crown on their head. It’s just an authority to do acts of service. And women get all the acts of service we need and want.”

Despite Herbst’s opinions, it’s clear that (at the very least) the women of Ordain Women do not get “all the acts of service [they] need or want.” Which is precisely why they group made a name for itself seeking priesthood ordination for females and continues to strive for gender equality within the Mormon church by bringing attention to disparity between the genders and their roles within the church.

#ldsconf – #elderanderson wife that said to let the children in… We need more women in our leadership. #ordainwomen

— Dave Henrichsen (@daverdh) April 2, 2016

Representatives from Ordain Women claim that the 150 letters they tried unsuccessfully to deliver were just a portion of the ones they’ve collected throughout their campaign to spread gender equality to everyone, even members of the LDS Church. The group claims to have already sent dozens (if not hundreds) of such letters to LDS leadership through the mail.

The group says that if they are unable to deliver their remaining letters during General Conference, they may mail them at a later time. However, Ordain Women is still hoping that a church leader (or leaders) will willingly choose to speak to them and accept the letters during the LDS General Conference weekend.

[Image Courtesy Of George Frey/Getty Images]