Posted by:
elderolddog
(
)
Date: May 23, 2016 12:56PM
It's not unprecedented, nor is the acceptance on the part of the priesthood unprecedented. Here's a short extract from Connol O'Donovan's 'history of The Mormon Gay':
"In 1883, 33 year old (Mrs.) Louie Felt (first wife of Joseph Felt) met 19 year-old May Anderson, and they also fell in love. This time, however, May did not marry Joseph Felt. (He'd previously married two young ladies Louie fell for.)
"In 1889 May Anderson moved in with Louie, and Joseph permanently moved out of the house Louie had built and bought on her own.[12] Thus began one of the most intense, stable, and productive love relationships in turn-of-the-century Mormonism.
"These two women lived together for almost 40 years, and together presided over three of Mormonism's most significant institutions: the General Primary Association (for Mormon children), the Children's Friend (a magazine for young Mormons), and founding the Primary Children's Hospital.[13]
"Louie and May were fairly open about the romantic and passionate aspects of their relationship, as reported in their biographies published in several early issues of the LDS Children's Friend. According to their recent biographer, Felt and Anderson's relationship was a "symbiotic partnership with each compensating for the weaknesses and complementing the strengths of the other".
"The 1919 Children's Friend biography more bluntly declared that 'the friendship which had started when Sister Felt and [May Anderson] met...ripened into love. Those who watched their devotion to each other declare that there never were more ardent lovers than these two'.
The same biography also calls the beginning of their relationship a 'time of love feasting', and makes it clear that the two women shared the same bed.[14]
"Twice in the Children's Friend, Anderson and Felt were referred to as 'the David and Jonathan' of the Primary, which, the magazine explained, was a common appellation for the women. For centuries, the biblical characters David and Jonathan have been classic signifiers of male-male desire and homoeroticism, because in the Hebrew scriptures, it was written in 2 Samuel 1:26 that upon Jonathan's death in battle, David lamented, 'very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.'[15]
That these two women were described as 'David and Jonathan' simultaneously masculinizes them and firmly encodes their love for each other in a homoerotic context."
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http://www.connellodonovan.com/abom.htmlI bet the openness of their relationship is a real ball buster to current TBM mormon lesbians. (although the notion of TBM lesbians is hard to fathom...)