San Francisco had women sitting on the stand! Well that is no longer allowed.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRvuxj2c/

Wow. I guess it's never too late to shoot oneself in the foot.

There is also an article in the SL Tribune behind the paywall. It is a scathing commentary about what happened in the SF Bay area wards regarding a common practice there of allowing the woman leaders in the ward to sit on the stand.

The comments are priceless!!

Talk about putting these uppity wimmen in their place...this just proves the patriarchy is still firmly in place.

> Talk about putting these uppity wimmen in their
> place...this just proves the patriarchy is still
> firmly in place.

Exactly. It's hard to fathom how they possibly think this is going to help the church.

They are not even pretending to care about women's issues. That's tone deaf beyond belief.

Let me see if I understand this correctly. During sacrament meeting, the bishopric encouraged or permitted leaders of the various auxiliary leaders to sit on the stand regardless if they had ward business to conduct or not?

I don't think this was common at all and it's very likely that this ward had gotten away with this unusual practice. For the invocation (opening prayer) the general practice was to invite the person to sit on the stand before the open prayer began. However, some members balked at that invitation and would sit/sing from the pew and then walk up to the stand. Some would even walk up to the stand during the last stanza of the hymn and not know what to do so he/she would sit down and pretend to know the words to sing.

Personally, I hated sitting on the stand during sacrament. I did it a lot as a deacon assigned with the special assignment to relay messages for the bishop. I probably sat up there close to 30 times as a 12-13 year old. This was before cell phones so many eyes were looking upon you. I couldn't draw/sketch, fall asleep or lay down on the pew to relieve my back problems.

I saw lots of wandering hands during sacrament. Some hands were inside loved ones' clothing and others were friendly with people in the pews behind. It was an eye opener for sure. Saw people picking their noses, sneezing without covering their face. Sister Yoga was overtly active doing her Jane Fonda leg lifts in the back row pews too :)

As boring as church was, I always liked sitting with my family and not on the stand.

The only time church auxiliary leaders sat on the stand was during ward conference because stake leaders were there to reorganize (release and call new leaders).

I don't think this is about women who have been assigned to speak or offer a prayer sitting on the stand. Or about the ward organist/pianist or chorister sitting on the stand. However, many refuse to sit on the stand and are excused to sit with their families during sacrament when not performing their musical duties.

One part you don't understand correctly is that it wasn't one ward. I don't know how many wards or stakes were involved. the article doesn't say, except to indicate it was more than one.

All the heads of LDS auxiliary organizations sit on the stand at General Conference, whether they have speaking assignments or not. This is probably because having a couple dozen men and one or two women was bad optics for a church known for its sexist doctrine. They were trying to improve their image, which was in desperate need of improvement.

The San Francisco area stake leadership people probably figured if it was good enough for General Conference, why shouldn't it be good enough for local wards? Show the women as, if not equal partners in running the ward, at least some level of partnership.

I suspect the practice was spreading, and the GAs finally decided to put their patriarchal foot down. Just because the face that the church presents to the world in General Conference presents women as being in positions of authority, doesn't mean that it is OK to portray women that way in the face that the church presents to the members in ward Sacrament Meeting.

Ugh, stands. Why is there a stand? Many churches don't have stands. But Mormon wards, stands. Because the ward leaders literally stand above you. Simon gets a special place.

Hi, Brad!

Once I set up folding chairs in the gym ...er Cultural Hal l for PH mtg ... in a CIRCLE You'd think I had started a REVOLUTION!!!

“Think of the children!!”

What if mom & dad were BOTH ON THE STAND!!

Who would portion out cheerios to the future tithe-payers ?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2023 11:31AM by GNPE.

Luckily they got them unity women off the stand before any of the menstruated on it!

Over 10 years ago I resigned from Mormonism good choice. It is the year 2023 and women can not sit on the stand. Nope man and women are not equal in the church.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRv9Rnws/

When you take a peek at the mainline church's history, you find that the women had complete control of two major units in the church: Relief Society and Primary.

Here's a bit of an overview:

First came the Relief Society. I was already aware became quite a force after the saints settled in Utah.  The women were quite independent...

One thing I learned from the below-noted link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relief_Society

...was that they funded the building of their very own building, The Relief Society Building, whose groundbreaking dedication took place during October conference in 1953 and was completed three years later.  All the funding for the building came from the sisters.


Regarding Primary (which I thoroughly enjoyed in the early 1950s), the church website has very little to say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_(LDS_Church)

Surely, the most noteworthy accomplishment (aside from keeping me in my seat) was the Primary Children's Hospital.  Per Wikipedia, "In 1911, some LDS Church leaders, including May Anderson and Louie B. Felt, pushed for a separate facility geared to the needs of infants and young patients..." and their efforts resulted in the excellent results we're all aware of.

And then, the church decided to divest itself of running hospitals...


As a lengthy aside, a fascinating controversy exists regarding the two people who together were the force behind the establishment of Primary Children's Hospital, May Anderson and Sarah Louisa "Louie" Felt, nee Boulton.

Here's the church's view, as found in the cited Wikipedia article:

    "Anderson had a lifelong friendship with fellow church leader Louie B. Felt.  When Felt was suffering an illness in 1889, Felt's husband Joseph requested May to stay there to care for her while he was away on a business trip.  During the period that Anderson was the editor-in-chief of The Children's Friend, it published an anonymous account of the friendship that existed between Felt and Anderson; the article referred to the couple as the "David and Jonathan of the Primary" organization.  This has led two dissident Mormon historians (what a nasty reference to D. Michael Quinn!) to theorize that Anderson and Felt had a partially closeted lesbian relationship.

    "However, other LDS researchers have disagreed with this theory, calling it a distortion of LDS history and a misrepresentation of facts.  Two researchers have stated: 'No evidence exists to lead us to believe that their relationship was anything but that of true and chaste Christian friendship and sisterly love.'"


And here's what Connell O'Donovan wrote in his "Crime Against Nature" piece, found at http://www.connellodonovan.com/abom.html:


The "David and Jonathan" of the Primary: Louie B. Felt and May Anderson

    "Indeed, at least one Mormon woman went so far as to request that her husband marry polygamously after she fell in love with another woman so that the two women could openly live together.  

  "Sarah Louisa Bouton married Joseph Felt in 1866 as his first wife, but according to a 1919 biography, around 1874, Louie (the masculinized nickname she used) met and 'fell in love with' a young woman in her local LDS congregation named Alma Elizabeth (Lizzie) Mineer.  After discovering her intense passion for Lizzie Mineer, a childless Louie encouraged Joseph to marry the young woman as a plural wife, explaining 'that someday they would be privileged to share their happiness with some little ones.'

    "Joseph married Lizzie Mineer in 1876.  But Lizzie's new responsibilities of bearing and raising children evidently proved too great a strain for her and Louie's relationship.  Five years later, Louie Felt fell in love with 'another beautiful Latter-day Saint girl' named Lizzie Liddell, and again, Joseph obligingly married her for Louie's sake.  Thus, Louie 'opened her home and shared her love' with this second Lizzie.'

    "In 1883, 33-year-old Louie Felt met 19-year-old May Anderson, and they also fell in love.  This time, however, May did not marry Joseph Felt.  In 1889, May moved in with Louie, and Joseph permanently moved out of the house Louie had built and bought on her own.  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, the Children's Friend, and the founding of the Primary Children's Hospital.  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.  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.'

    "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."


It's very likely that attempts have been made in the noted Wikipedia article to document the above and that the guardians of the church's underpants continue to keep what they think are poop stains from showing.  But that's just my opinion.


It seems to me that mormon men live in flux with their women.  Yes, the GAs have mostly got their women walking two steps behind them...

Does there exist a quintessential mormon woman from whom leadership wishes a mold could be struck to be used to create, ad infinitum, the ideal mormon childbearer, cook, and housekeeper?  Also, I think "quiet" is somewhere in the equation.




(Someday, you, too, will be retired and can sit in front of a computer screen flexing your aching time-worn fingers, working at enjoying the time remaining to you before the date and hour of your impending dissolution...)

> Does there exist a quintessential mormon woman
> from whom leadership wishes a mold could be struck
> to be used to create, ad infinitum, the ideal
> mormon childbearer, cook, and
> housekeeper?  

Was it you who submitted my name? Damn phone has been ringing off the hook.


---------------------
> . . . enjoying the time
> remaining to you before the date and hour of your
> impending dissolution...)

You understate your achievements, Jesus. You've been dissolute for decades.

So the purported relationship between Scherie Dew and Wendy Watson Nelson does have an LDS precedent...

Only if facts are of any interest to the parties looking into the matter...

Thank you elderolddog! I had no idea that the Relief Society used to do so much. I knew women in the early church could give blessings to the sick.

You're welcome!  I live to swerve!

what is "the stand" ?

A King novel?

Dave the Atheist "the stand" is the front of the chapel. The bishop and his councilors are sitting in the stand. This ward in San Francisco had the Relief Society president and her councilors also sitting in the stand.

As youth I felt as if the people who are sitting in the stand were looking who was taking the sacrament and who was not.

Thanks for the clarification. I've even sat there a couple of times but I called it the bleachers.

a) I think SCs post about the women's menstruation was out of line, If I was a woman I would certainly consider that offensive.

b) certainly there are some women who would prefer (the recognition, 'honor' of ) sitting on the stand, but

c) just guessing: just like men, many women are nearly 100 % indoctrinated to be apathetic/complacent with things the way they are, content even perhaps happy to Not sit on the stand.

When I was in the church members of the Bishopric, Stake Presidency and High Council sat on the stand. Anyone giving a talk or performing a musical number also sat on the stand.

There would be no reason for an auxiliary leader to be on the stand unless they were part of the meeting program.

Women do sit on the stand in General Conference because they are part of an auxiliary presidency and some give talks.

I would say the decision was to stay with the correlated way of doing things in the church. If the church really didn’t like women on the stand they wouldn’t have them on the stand in General Conference.

Maybe the whole thing is just misplaced anger and they are hitting out at anyone who cares.

It seems like when their little 15 member club gets caught doing bad things and lying about those things, they take their anger out on women-----only because they can. It's like a husband having a bad day at work and then abusing his wife when he gets home.( you can't ______ anymore!)

The Jodi Hildebrand debacle is embarrassing them too. Paying out big money for an abusive therapist is beyond the pale. And then retaliation towards abused members who speak out.

They lied to the SEC and got caught being tax cheats so they tighten rules on gay members.

They lie about the Our Underground Railroad and get caught so they find something the women like and take it away from them. There is a lot of misplaced anger and women and gays are the easiest targets. And then they say they are speaking for God.

Three apostles so far have been caught having known things about Tim Ballard's end game. LDS, Inc. were going to make money and increase membership at the same time. This was the plan.

Tim would take control of all the orphanages in Haiti and the kids would be sold only to worthy church members for 20K to 30K per child. Win-Win. Making money and converting members at the same time. Wow. God is awesome.

It’s a fuck up. Simple as that. The church fucks up all the time.

Wow Villager! Your reply deserves it's own post. Some of your bullet points

-Jodi Hildebrand
-SEC tax cheat
-Our Underground Railroad

Bad publicity.

Ruby and Kevin are getting divorced.

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRvqaWBp/

They are easily offended. They lash out because they believe every non-flattering comment and observation is an attack of their alleged virtue and goodness.

Example: Many first time visitors feel underwhelmed. My grandmother never joined the church. Yet, she accompanied my mom to church several times. She went to a new ward chapel built around 1980.

My Grandmother- You have a clean place to worship. Are they ever going to finish it?

My Mom- They are still working on it. Why do you say that it's unfinished? What's wrong with it?

G- When you walk into the foyer, all you see is a sofa and two chairs. There's a small table. And that's it. No paintings. No signs to remind you where you are or where anything is. (In reality, my Grandmother would look for a restroom when entering. It annoyed her beyond belief that the church wouldn't hang a sign on the sealings. You were supposed to know/memorize where things were located.)

My mom's response was that my grandmother was being too picky. She agreed with church leaders that the sterility of church buildings were the right thing to do.