Lessons on Faith and Adaptation - with Greg Prince

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett and I am here with more than one person, but I am here— one person I am here with is someone I am here with on every episode, and that's Ian Wilkes. And I'm thrilled to have you here, Ian. How are you, sir?

I'm doing well, Jim. How are you today?

I am well. I want to begin by reminding our listeners that we welcome feedback on these episodes, and we have set up an email account called— and you can reach us at insideoutfeedback@gmail.com. And in light of this, I want to read one of the emails we received. I won't name the name, but it was somebody who sent this on Monday, September 1st, and said, when you interview someone like Greg Prince, please give them more time to speak. I appreciate what both of you have to say, but you have enough episodes when it's just the two of you. When you interview someone Listeners want to hear much, much more of them than you allow. I hope you find this suggestion helpful. Well, Suggester, I do find this suggestion helpful, and I think Ian finds this suggestion helpful.

I do.

And it applies here because we have with us once again Greg Prince is joining us to continue to discuss his roadmap for improving Mormonism. Greg, how are you?

Uh, well, I'm mostly well, but I'm still shaken by the events of yesterday.

Well, you and I both. Ian and I recorded sort of an emergency episode of that to discuss what's going on there, but would be very interested in hearing your insights. What is your reaction here as we're just A day removed from it.

Um, a group of us at Wesley Seminary two years ago were very concerned about toxic polarization in the country, and we staged an event at the National Cathedral in D.C. that involved Governor Cox of Utah and Governor Moore of Maryland. The white governor of the reddest state in the country and the black governor of perhaps the bluest state in the country, showing that you can have civilized discussions. Um, we're trying to continue that initiative. It's hard to get space in the public square for civilized discussion when most people are screaming. I fear that what we're seeing is that when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. We've got to figure out some way to abort this kind of dangerous polarization that reached a crescendo yesterday in a political assassination. It's devastating.

What do you see, um, the impact on the church? I mean, one of the things we talked about when Ian and I were discussing this is that I have since gotten messages. Uh, there are some messages that, that are just essentially, I know where you live kind of messages that are private and I don't really want to give voice to them, but somebody publicly just announced, you are my enemy because you vote for the people who did this. And I see in the church ag— these kinds of political divisions have infected the church and I think are increasing a divide in the church as well as in the nation. Are you seeing some of that, or am I just being paranoid?

Uh, I haven't seen the kinds of threats that you just talked about, but I think that the leadership of the church needs to get off the sidelines and get on the playing field and in a loud and definitive and repetitive voice call out this kind of behavior. They do so at risk of upsetting their base. So be it. If leadership is afraid of its own base, then we're in the wrong game.

Well, uh, and again, Ian and I talk about the fact you had President Nelson's Time magazine article, which is the summation essentially of his entire ministry and focus on the idea of being a peacemaker. And the day Charlie Kirk was shot, the, um, President— or sorry, Elder Christofferson released a video talking about being peacemakers, and it seemed to me to be, you know, if anything were a prophetic message, that's a prophetic message that's entirely timely for this. Uh, do you think that's enough?

No, no, you need to have somebody who, as I recall Dieter Uchtdorf did in one general conference, say, stop it.

Mm-hmm.

It's not enough to say, let's all get nice. You have to call out specifically bad behavior and instruct these people as you should instruct them in the prophetic voice to move to a different way of living.

Uh, I, I, I think you're absolutely right. Because so many— the peacemaker talk, based on my understanding of it, it was aimed at people who were, you know, behaving like this online. And almost all of them have found loopholes, have found ways around it, or found ways to say, oh, well, that doesn't really apply to me. Oh, well, President Nelson says We shouldn't settle for peace at any price. So that justifies me being a bully and being a terrible person and calling out anybody I don't like as being an apostate.

Yeah, nearly 20 years ago, President Hinckley gave a very strong message in general conference condemning racism. It was spot on, but even in the aftermath of that, where he called out bad behavior quite specifically, people were finding loopholes saying, well, he's referring to them and not to me. And so a one-off isn't going to work. And that was a one-off, and you didn't hear anything more about it, and racism in the church didn't go away.

If anything, it got worse over time.

Yeah, you have to learn from the advertising industry They know how many times a message has to be broadcast before it starts to receive penetration.

Well, so if you were writing the General Conference talk that President Nelson or President Oaks or somebody, uh, would need to give authoritatively to establish this, what would you say?

I don't know. Because I haven't thought about that, and they haven't asked me to do so.

Uh, I wish they would. I think it would be a great talk. I think you'd handle that really, really well.

I agree.

Well, then let's move on to the roadmap, because I think that that might be more productive. When we last talked with you, Greg, we had gone through— we've talked about the Book of Mormon and the historicity of the Book of Mormon and all kinds of things. We're— I think we're at a section here where you talk about women, and you say, the problem in the early decades of the church's existence, women played a far more visible role than at present, a role that included prophesying, healing, and blessing other women. That changed in the early decades of the 20th century, and it changed further in the 1970s when the Relief Society was put under direct priesthood leadership and gave up its prior semi-autonomy. Coinciding with the downgrading of the Relief Society was the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The church's strong national opposition to the ERA caused the negative reaction from many LDS women, the formation of Women for ERA, and the excommunication of Sonia Johnson, widely regarded as a public relations debacle. For the church. More recently, ordained women coalesced a new generation of LDS women seeking a larger role in church governance. Their entreaties were met by the excommunication of Kate Kelly. So as you go through this, uh, you say that one of the responses is the sentiment I hear from many women in the church is that they don't want ordination to the priesthood, but neither do they want the status quo Whoa. Okay, so can you outline for me, um, a middle way between the two?

Yes, I can state it simply, and then it will lead into a discussion, I'm sure. What they tell me is they want a voice and a vote, not the all-in-favor vote that is meaningless in our church meetings, but in the councils, to have a seat at the table to have a voice at the table, and when it comes time to have a decisive vote, to be able to cast that vote. There is nothing scriptural that prohibits them from doing anything that I just said.

There's nothing scriptural that prevents them from having the priesthood either, is there?

That's correct. When I was writing my book Power from On High, which was my first book published now 30 years ago, Lavina Fielding Anderson was one of the internal reviewers for Signature Books, which was the publisher. She called me and she said, I read with particular interest your chapter on women. Uh, it was a short chapter, I think maybe 5 or 6 pages. She said, "I wish you had said more, but I understand why you didn't." Uh, what I said in that book, which just covered the Joseph Smith era, so up until his death, was that you can't make a definitive conclusion on the basis of anything he said because he never came right out and said women should be ordained to the priesthood that men have, but he never said or wrote anything that foreclosed that as well. So it remained at his death an open question, and I think still remains an open question. If you look at the Bible, there is abundant evidence of women playing a role in the early church that looks an awful lot like priesthood.

Well, we talk about Junia here. Uh, this is a woman that Paul seems to be indicating was an apostle.

Yeah.

And then if you go back into Old Testament era, you have women who are acting as prophetesses, and nobody seems to be upset by that. Now, you have to be careful because We erringly say, oh, well, Mormonism is a one-to-one restoration of the biblical church. It isn't because there wasn't a biblical church. There were different churches in different geographical areas. And one of the dilemmas the Apostle Paul faced was how to get some regularity between the churches. So you can't say there was a template established. 2,000 years ago, and we are just replicating that template now. Just doesn't work that way. And if you look at LDS priesthood since the 1820s, when the whole notion of authority first arose, it has been an evolving thing. It's organic. Um, we don't talk about it in those terms, But the structure that we have now is quite different than what we had 30, 40 years ago, particularly if you look at what the church did to the Office of Seventy, which goes back, gee, almost 50 years now to the administration of President Kimball. Now, along those lines, since I mentioned his name, I had a good friend who became a confidant of President Kimball, uh, and the president confided in him in the spring of 1978 that he was considering ordaining blacks but hadn't made up his mind yet. And he and Jack Carlson talked about the politics if he were to move forward on that. But he also told Jack that he was contemplating having the Relief Society be part of the bishopric. I've never seen any other reference to that, but I took Jack at his word, and it's, it's an interesting thought that President Kimball was thinking outside of the box.

Well, Ian, you thought about having women as part of your bishopric, did you not?

I did. Uh, it was a, um, that's exactly what I was thinking when I listened to Greg.

That's what I did.

I mean, I had two wonderful counselors, uh, and I had an extraordinary Relief Society president and counselors. And the Relief Society president in particular was, had skills and insights that my male counselors didn't have. I picked up on that pretty quickly. You know, as a bishop, you've really got the responsibility of helping people spiritually, emotionally. Physically, temporally, you are the father of the ward and you're required to help as many people as you can, as much as you can. And I found from, it was a natural, no one asked me to do this, but it was a natural instinctive thought to work, utilize the insights and experience from my religious side of counseling to the equal measure of my male priesthood counselors. In fact, I actually used her more than my male counselor because I was getting more insights, more revelation, more balance, and she was an effective communicator. And I saw things, I only saw, understood things better through her eyes and her experiences that I didn't get from my male counselors. It was a very, the male is very counseling experience in my in my bishop experience was very linear and quite narrow, but working with this, with this lighty presence, it kind of broadened the, you know, the view. I could see more. I felt more. I could see more. I could understand more through her counsel. So she became an unofficial but equal counselor. In comparison to my other counselors. And I only learned that through, I don't know where it came from, just a thought that came to my mind. And we were able to connect and reach more people than we did. So I see enormous value and missed opportunity actually in respect to working collaboratively equally with women across frankly, every function of the church. I am totally comfortable, you know, if I was in the church and a woman was made a bishop, I would be okay with that. I really would. And I know the church wouldn't be, but I think the church can do a lot more and go further and faster to encourage women in leadership. And this is the thing I want to say, and I'll close here, but this thing where we hear from time to time by leaders who go to, you know, male priesthood leaders go to Relief Society conferences and remind women how great they are. You know, and this is your role and you're awesome and we cannot, the priesthood is nothing without you. I don't think they want to be told. I think the intent behind the message is good. I don't think they want to be reminded that they're awesome because they are, but I think they, many of the women, And they will tell you, obviously me, I'm a man here, but will tell you that they have got a lot more to offer. I don't think, it's like a sleeping tiger. I think the women in the church are like a sleeping tiger and the church is yet to understand and wake up to the power and the significance and the value that women bring in equal and sometimes frankly more measure than some of the, you know, my male counterparts. And again, I'm speaking from my own personal leadership experience being in a stake presidency, um, and as a bishop.

Uh, I had a friend, now deceased, who was an attorney. He went on a mission for the church to the regional headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany, and he said he was invited to go to an area conference that was somewhere in East Europe. I don't remember the country. But he said, uh, given the non-dense population of Latter-day Saints in those countries, many of the leaders and their wives had to come a considerable distance and spend a couple of nights there to be able to attend this. So, uh, The priesthood session, I think, was the first session. It was on an evening. Well, many of the wives were there. They didn't have anything else to do, so they just came and sat in the back of the room. The visiting authority, who was a member of the Twelve, uh, kind of freaked out at that. So he called Boyd Packer. And said, what do I do? I've got women in the room. And the response was, under no circumstance are you to allow those women to sit in that meeting. If you do that, they'll next want the priesthood. So this is something that is deeply threatening, or has been at least to some of the brethren. It certainly was to Boyd Packer. I don't know how widespread that concern is. Also heard from a woman in Santa Monica that when Packer attended a stake conference there and they had a priesthood session, that they needed an interpreter for the deaf. And the only one they could find was very proficient at American Sign Language, but it was a woman. He would not allow her to be in that meeting. Afterwards, she asked some of the— my friend asked some of the men who were in the meeting, so what was the special deal? Why were women not allowed to be in there? And they said there wasn't anything in there that women shouldn't have heard.

Yeah.

Just a quick response to that, because I think that's very significant. The church is deeply entrenched into this patriarchal psychology, priesthood leadership, only men have got the authority. It's ingrained, entrenched in all the doctrines, all the policies. We said in an early podcast where we've we had a full conversation around the, you know, the women in leadership in the church, et cetera. And again, speaking from experience, there's no decision of significance really in my experience or view where a woman in the church can make a unilateral decision without the approval of a man. And for the only true church upon the face of the earth, which has this direct insight with God, see the future, is progressive, is equal in every way, or supposed to be. The church seems to be behind the eight ball compared to other parts of the world, which are bringing inclusion and opportunity in equal measure to people. You know, there are laws and regulations now that exist that extend to everyone, women included, obviously, in terms of, you know, equal pay, equal rights, women in leadership. I've worked with these big global consulting engineering companies and they have women in leadership, um, uh, opportunities and discussions. And it's, I see a lot of improvements in the workplace, in the, uh, in industry and professional environment where that is, these, um, certain businesses, certain industries are making reasonable progress. The church seems to be behind that notwithstanding its knowledge and its insights into human nature and the importance of women. Women seem to be like secondary thinking, and that never sat well with me. I just never felt comfortable with that at all. I've been around women who have incredibly— some of my best clients and best leaders and mentors and bosses, frankly, have been women. I've learned an extraordinary amount from women, and I I just think this patriarchy thinking, I think you've got this male thing, you know, beyond the church religion where males, men think or feel threatened by women, period. We see that, there's a history of that. And then in the church, it seems to be magnified or amplified that, you know, we can't let women have any authority because that's just not the way it was, or we feel threatened and we can't let them take any authority or decision away from us because, you know, like Elder Packer said, well, They'll want the priesthood next. It just seems to be so archaic and antiquated and behind, considering you're supposed to be leading these changes and opportunities and improvements.

Well, a bitter pill for the women in the church was in the early 1970s. Up until then, the auxiliary organizations that were headed by women, meaning the Relief Society, the Young Women, and the Primary, were semi-autonomous. They reported directly to the First Presidency, and in the case of President McKay, at least, he gave them broad authority to run their programs. They didn't need to ask anybody's permission to decide what the curricula would be, who would write the lesson manuals. They just did it. Uh, That changed with the death of McKay, because Harold B. Lee was obsessed with the idea of bringing everything under direct priesthood control, which to him meant put it under the Quorum of the Twelve. Until the death of McKay, the Twelve were basically staff to the First Presidency. They spoke at general conference, they conducted stake conferences, So they were out there selecting and setting apart stake presidents and bishops, but, um, none of the organizations of the church reported to or were directed by the Quorum of the Twelve. That changed under Lee, and gradually everything was brought directly under the Twelve. It was particularly painful for the women's organization. Uh, I don't think Primary kids knew or cared what the lines of authority were for the Primary, but for the Relief Society, for them to be stripped of their magazine, of their bank accounts, of their fundraising bazaars, basically of their semi-autonomy, was a very, very bitter pill. And a lot of women to this day resent that that happened to them. So it's not like we've had a steady state for nearly 200 years. We made a lot of progress in the earliest decades in terms of women having an active role in church governance. Then in the early decades of the 20th century, when Joseph F. Smith and later Heber Grant were trying to reestablish priesthood quorums, which basically had been nonfunctional for decades. Uh, some of the things that the women had done were taken away from them, like blessings. Then there was a gradual improvement, particularly with Belle Spafford as the General Relief Society president. But then in 1971, I think it was, all that changed. And no longer were the heads of the auxiliary organizations allowed to stay in place long enough to establish any kind of identity. Spafford had been in, I think, for like 25+ years. Uh, Laverne Parmley as the primary president, I think, was in for over 20 years. Florence Jacobson as head of the Young Women was in for over a decade. But that all changed. And the presidencies of those organizations began to be rotated in just a few years. I don't know if there's a, a particular time limit on it, but it seems to me it's around 4 or 5 years and you get a new presidency. Never long enough that there is a group identity that forms with a particular presidency.

Well, as you talk about this, uh, I, I think you're absolutely right that, that correlation and Harold B. Lee essentially bringing everything under priesthood control was a huge blow for autonomy here. But I keep coming back to this idea of, okay, they don't really want the priesthood, they just want a voice. Is it possible for them to have a voice if ultimately every decision they make can be overruled by a man?

Well, let me modify a statement that you just made. It's not that all women don't want the priesthood. Many of them do want it, but many others are saying, no, we don't want the priesthood, we just want to have a voice. And having a real voice means that you're at the table and you have a vote. Those councils. Um, that doesn't require having the priesthood. It doesn't require a new revelation. It's just something that you can do.

Yeah, but, but it's also something you cannot do. Like, the, the power still is being held by the men, uh, who can decide whether or not they're willing to give it up. And, and allow women to have a voice. But I, I, I, it's, I was interesting because as, uh, there, there was a woman in, in An Inconvenient Faith named Jana Spangler who has, uh, I was on a panel with her talking about An Inconvenient Faith with Stephen Pynecker, and she was part of a 5-hour discussion with John DeLynn, and she was talking about that one of the reasons women don't want the priesthood is that women are already given so much responsibility and so much drudgery. You know, they are expected to stay at home. I mean, we've moved beyond that to some degree, although this language is still in the Family Proclamation, that women's primary responsibility according to the Family Proclamation is the care and tending of the children. And that we still encourage women to stay home, even though we don't really enforce that. And now we have a general Relief Society president who has been a professional lawyer her entire life, and we praise her for that, and rightfully so, I think. But just this tension is that if we say, okay, well, There are some women who say, if you give us the priesthood, then you're not going to take away these other responsibilities from us. You're just going to heap more responsibilities onto us. Do you think there's any merit in that argument?

Well, let me put a big disclaimer in here that I can speak about women, but I don't speak for women. Oh, sure. And we have to put that filter in place. This is a man observing something about which he has very limited knowledge and even less intuition. Uh, you need to have women on to address this directly. But, uh, if you go back before 1971, the women did have the authority to run their organizations. It was just a question of what the men higher up had allowed to happen. McKay allowed it and didn't intervene. Subsequent leaders decided they wanted to micromanage and have the say-so over every decision. Um, that's something that's administrative and could be changed in an instant if you had new leadership who wanted to go that direction. Next week, just to put a sidebar into this discussion, I will be going to Independence, Missouri. To speak at the annual meeting of the John Whitmer Historical Association. That's the Community of Christ's analogous organization to the Mormon History Association. And I will be on the same program with Stacy Cram, who is the first female president of the Community of Christ. So I look forward to that meeting and I look forward to learning quite quite a bit.

That'll be fascinating. I—

you're going to have to come and give us a report of how it's been over 40 years since they decided to ordain women, and it's gone all the way now. Um, first they had female apostles, then they had a woman in the First Presidency, and now they have a female president.

Well, and I know that, um, I know that, uh, they've talked about the fact that so many of them, that so many members of the Community of Christ left when women were ordained. Uh, did have any— and I know that there were splinter groups that were formed. Have any of them had any success, or have they all just kind of fizzled out?

Uh, it's an organic ongoing process. I think you have new bubbles rising to the surface. Some of them remain, some of them pop and go away. I don't know if anybody has an accurate account of what the numbers are and where they are and what they're doing and how large they are. Uh, but the same thing happens with the Mormon fundamentalists. They keep splintering and re-splintering, and you just can't keep track of how many there are. I do know that the former president of the Community of Christ, Grant McMurray, told me that they calculated they lost about a third of their members. I've heard other estimates as high as one half. But he also told me with the grin, he said, if we'd known which third, we would have done it sooner.

Yeah, I've repeated that in a number of occasions, and that's upset some people because I've repeated that in the instance of if the church were to speak out against the political extremism that we're seeing fomented, particularly on the right flank, We would lose a lot of members. And my thought was, if we knew which members we were going to lose, we might have done it sooner. And that was not appreciated by some of the folks hearing that observation. So do you think that if our church were to do the same, that we would see a similar loss of members?

I don't know how to put numbers on it. But if you do anything substantive in any organization, our church not being an exception, you're gonna lose some people. That's just what happens. Uh, they, a lot of people want the status quo and they are averse to any kind of change. Religious traditions tend by their very nature to be conservative. And if you really look at that word, their concern is to hang on to what they received, to conserve it. The flip side of that being the progressive viewpoint that says, let's keep changing because we're in a changing world and we need to adapt to it. So the conservative mindset is by its very nature likely to get upset and maybe even rattled if there's any kind of change, because the absence of change is what they are most comfortable with. Does that make any sense, Jim Bennett?

Sure, sure. Did we see, um, any kind of a mass exodus in 1978? Over the priesthood revelation?

Not that I've ever heard of, nor did we in 1971 with the disenfranchisement of the Relief Society. But I have heard anecdotally that a lot of women just walked away because they were upset at it. The 1978 revelation was so welcomed by so many people that I'm not surprised that there was not a voice of opposition. On the other hand, if you look at the duration and intensity of racism in the church since 1978, you understand that a lot of people were not pleased with that revelation, and their racism continues.

Uh, unfortunately, that's entirely accurate. Uh, but I'm looking at your roadmap, and the next phase in your roadmap, you start talking about LGBTQ. And I— one of the things that I've discovered when you start talking about LGBTQ issues is that there is a very large and vocal contingent online of people who essentially say that if the church were to be more inclusive, uh, for LGBTQ people, and they usually draw the line at the idea of allowing same-sex sealings in the temple, which to me is There are so many other things the church could be— could do to be inclusive, uh, and, and still be well short of that line. For instance, tomorrow they could announce, uh, we are going to take no ecclesiastical action against anybody that is in a legal marriage, period. That would require no revelation, that would require no change of doctrine, it would require nothing happening in the temple. Uh, and, but I think even that would drive a lot of these people out of the church. They've announced that if the church ever changes on this, they've sort of made the proclamation on the family the shibboleth that determines true discipleship, that it, the proclamation on the family for many is more important than the scriptures, more important than anything else. And, and it just makes me laugh because the Proclamation on the Family is so often weaponized for things it does not say. The Proclamation on the Family uses very squishy language and talks about how individual adaptation can change all of this. I mean, there are so many loopholes in it that the idea that it's this militantly anti-LGBTQ wall that can never be, um, can never be penetrated is just ridiculous to me. But regardless, they have made it very clear that they will leave, that this is an issue. LGBTQ issues, as opposed to women's issues, is one that a large segment of the church have said they will leave the church if we were to ever change on that. Uh, why, why is that the case? What— why would you think would that— that's the hill they want to die on?

I think a major issue within the American church really started to come into fruition in 1980 with the successful presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan. But it was at that point when the moral majority allied with the Republican Party so that the line between religion and politics was obliterated in the Republican Party. Politics became religion, and the religious actions and thoughts of people in that sector of American society reflected their politics, which came under the guise, I guess, of revelation to them that this was God's will somehow. And so as you saw wedge issues began to be formulated and driven deeply within the Republican party, uh, look at some of those wedge issues. One of the most successful was gay rights. The campaigns of George W. Bush, once the Obergefell versus Hodges decision came down with the Supreme Court that legalized marriage equality in the country, it took the wind out of those sails. So the next wedge issue became transgender, and that's where we are now. That wedge is being pounded ferociously into the population, and it's showing up all over the place in religious discourse as well. Again, that line between religion and politics, uh, in the conservative politics of the United States has been obliterated. So what you're seeing is an expression in church of what might better be a political issue, but it has become a religious issue.

Uh, so I'm just trying to sort of process that and make sense of it.

Don't try to make sense of it, because it doesn't make sense.

Because it doesn't make sense. I mean, in order to have an us versus them narrative, you have to have a them.

That's right. That's the essential playbook of the autocrat, whether a political autocrat or a religious autocrat. You have to have an enemy to galvanize your base. And for Republican politics, it's been gender for a couple of decades now.

Yeah. And the, well, and the church, I don't think explicitly encourages that, but implicitly when you start talking about the standards of the world versus the standards of the church, you have to find something where the world is really out of step with what the church is teaching. And I don't know that there is, you know, racism, uh, you know, when the church was excluding Black people and the world was not. The world was, I think, ahead of the church on that issue. Uh, that allowed for a certain kind of us versus them enemy status. And well, we that away.

Uh, I'll take issue with what you just said. If you go back and look at the teachings of Spencer Kimball, homosexuality, meaning the, the essence of being gay regardless of your actions, was the cardinal sin that was driven in deeply starting in 1969 with the publication of his book Miracle of Forgiveness. So when you have a subsequent church president saying from the pulpit, saying in writing, that being gay is being sinful and a sin next to murder in seriousness, uh, There's nothing indirect about that, Jim. That's where it really started to get into the consciousness of too many church members. And even though the church subsequently slowly backed away from that, that impression remained. And it remained deeply embedded in those people.

Yeah, I think it's still there. No, I think that's absolutely right. I'm looking at your, your roadmap and you, that's one of the first things you say with regard to LGBTQ. Kimball's 1969 book, The Miracle of Forgiveness, contained a chapter, Crime Against Nature, that is arguably the most homophobic thing ever published by the church. Being homosexual, whether acting on it or not, was grounds for excommunication. An extreme measure that attempted to root out male homosexuals was to have BYU security stake out Salt Lake City gay bars, take down license plate numbers, and bring the suspected gay students into the honor office for a shakedown that demanded ratting out other gay students on campus. I mean, that's just horrific to—

yeah, and that wasn't hearsay. I interviewed Joe Redburn, who was not LDS. I think he was from Hawaii, moved to Salt Lake And I think he established the first gay bar in Salt Lake City. He told me that they would have lookouts in his bar to alert the BYU students when the BYU security was coming. And I said, how did you know it was BYU security? He says, their cars were labeled. They weren't very smart.

Oh gosh. Well, uh, in the, in the '70s, in the late '70s, my father worked for the Osmonds and they had built their big studio that ended up bankrupting them in Orem. That's now a, a detox center, but it was this state-of-the-art beautiful studio for the Donny and Marie Show. And one of their guest stars, regular guest stars, was Paul Lynde. Ian, do you remember Paul Lynde?

I do.

Uh, I was a huge Paul Lynde fan even as a kid, and he was a regular on the Donny and Marie Show. And he had to, uh, stop appearing on the Donny and Marie Show because he was arrested in a gay bar for public indecency. Uh, I'm wondering if he got mixed up in that whole, that whole crackdown. But it It's just such an ugly, ugly part of our history.

Yep.

And as you, as you go through this, you talk about Prop 8, you talk about the 2015 policy. Um, according, according in this, you say, according to reliable sources, over 60,000 church members formally resigned their membership in protest during the following year, uh, in the late—

after the 2015 policy.

Act as a 2015 policy. In the late 1990s, I said to some church leaders, this issue ultimately would rest on biology, and I hoped the church would be on the side of biology. It has not been, and therein lies our current dilemma. It's half-full, half-empty policy that, quote, okay, you may not have chosen to be gay, but if you act gay, we will discipline you. Is not working. It's akin to saying you may not have chosen to be black, but if you act black, we will discipline you. This did not go down— this one did not go down well. Uh, can you talk a little bit more about that? I, I don't know if you want to out who those church leaders were. You probably don't. No. Can you give more insight into that?

No, I, I just had the feeling that this ultimately was going to be an issue of biology. In the '90s, we knew very little at the cellular, subcellular level of what is the biology of non-heterosexuality. And I use that term because it's much broader than just homosexuality. There are many different flavors, if you will, of sexual orientation and self-identity. Um, but it was pretty clear to me even in the '90s— now mind you, I've been a practicing biological researcher, biomedical research, since the early 1970s, uh, that this was going to be decided on the basis of science and the then emerging science of molecular biology, and that's been borne out. Um, I recently did a chapter for an anthology that we hope will be published in the next year or so, diving deeply into the literature, the scientific literature of non-heterosexuality, and, uh, it's amazing what has come to light just in the half— last half dozen years of looking at these various presentations of non-heterosexuality and what are the biological correlates of them. It's not to the point where we can say cause and effect, because to say that you have to set up an experimental system in which you can cause something by putting the effect in, or by putting the cause in and then measuring what happens. That's not going to be the case. What we have are stronger and stronger correlates that show that for many, many presentations, there are definitive biological components that you can measure. For example, there are what are called, um, epi-marks. This is the whole science of epigenetics, above genetics, all the factors that govern how the genes function. There are epigenetic markers that can distinguish between a transpersonal who is homosexual and a trans person who is heterosexual. That's getting way down in the weeds, but it holds up. So here you've got something where free will has nothing to do with it. These people are basically born this way. And I think that our responsibility as children of the same God is to treat them all as our brothers and sisters and not pass judgment on something over which they had no control.

To me, the science behind this is extraordinary and compelling. Compelling, and I wish the church would take it more seriously. I, I see the church, Greg, Jim, as being two-faced on this and somewhat disingenuous and somewhat hypocritical. On the one hand, the church wants to portray that it is respectful and inclusive of LGBTQ individuals. Indeed, the church has officially come out in support of same-sex marriage laws. So officially supports laws and regulations respecting equal rights of gays, supports the federal Respect for Marriage Act. That was, I think, one of the church's latest steps to communicate its welcoming stance or position towards the LGBTQ community. Uh, so this outward-facing, you know, welcome, inclusion, et cetera, a little bit of, uh, referencing, but very limited in terms of the science behind it. It seemed to be terrified, Frank, to talk about the science behind it. Uh, yet we talk about the value of education and science and engineering and so afraid to talk about the science behind these issues, which is again two-faced. But then on the inside, um, Friends that I know who are gay, who are trying to make the faith work, um, report discrimination and, um, exclusion and isolation. Um, it, it's two very different sides to the church. The church doesn't want gays in it. It's clear. The members, most of the members don't want gays in the church. I don't know what the answer is to try to reconcile that other than what we're talking about here.

Well, several years ago, David Bednar flat out came out and said there are no homosexuals in the Mormon Church.

What do you mean?

What does that mean from your point of view?

I have no idea, but he's on camera saying that.

Yeah, I, I, I I've responded to people about that, and you watch the whole context. It's a really, I think, clumsy thing for him to have said. But what he was trying to say seemed to be something along the lines of, uh, we shouldn't define ourselves by anything other than being a child of God. Uh, so I'm not excusing or justifying what he said, but I don't think he was trying to pretend that people are not homosexual. He was trying to make some other point, but those are definitely the words he said, were, there are no homosexual members of the church. And it's really interesting to me, Greg, as you talk about these guys, um, well, as you talk about the science that says they're essentially born that way, The church is not willing to go that far. Uh, the church, the church is, has now gone to the point where they say, okay, you don't choose to be gay. Um, but when, and when Elder Packer or President Packer in that infamous talk where he tried to canonize the family revelation, the family proclamation, also said that nobody is born gay, that was part of the talk that was edited out. So you would think it's okay, they're accepting the fact that you are born gay. And no, the church just insists, we don't know, we just don't know, we cannot tell. I mean, I think back to the Pharisees being asked by the Savior, the baptism of John, was it of heaven or of men? And they knew whatever answer they gave would make them look bad, so they just said, we cannot tell. And that seems to be where the church is on this, because I think if the church were to admit, yes, people are born gay, they would recognize that how we treat them as a result of something they are born with is— it's just logically inconsistent and untenable. But the church is not willing to go that far. They're willing to say, no, you don't choose your orientation, but we're not going to— we cannot tell why it comes. We cannot tell why you are attracted to people of the same gender.

Well, sometimes an institution can move forward by moving backward. In the late 19th century, church leaders, apostles, said from the pulpit that anybody who practiced birth control would go to hell. And they were not speaking metaphorically. A century later, that whole thing went away, not because we moved forward into a positive philosophy of sex and of birth control, but because we backed out of a negative one. And I think that that gives us a model for how would we deal with non-heterosexuality in the Church today? One way is to back out of extreme things that we've been saying, and just quit saying them. I think the same thing, by the way, is happening with the Book of Mormon. That rather than the Church moving forward and dealing directly with a non-ancient Book of Mormon, which, by the way, they did with Book of Abraham, they're backing away from any discussion of the ancientness of the Book of Mormon and emphasizing the theology of it, which I agree with. That's a good stance to take. So on LGBTQ issues, rather than trying to wrestle the beast to the ground, maybe you just back out of the arena and say, what we do know is we're all sons and daughters of the same God. And we need to treat each other as brothers and sisters without malice. To me, that's good theology.

I concur. Uh, and to add to that, if I may, is to, uh, put that rhetoric, that feeling, that communication into action by extending opportunities to serve and treating, um, our gay brothers and sisters with the same respect and love that we will treat anyone else. Real quick here, this is a fascinating conversation. I read a little bit about the science behind some of the non-heterosexual markers that you referenced earlier, Greg. Just real quick here, I have a dear friend of mine who I will not mention out of absolute respect. He's been in the church all of his life. Wonderful man. Uh, enormous respect for him. Good friends. And I learned a few years ago that he, well, he confided in me that he was gay. He was attracted to, to men. And I, I, I struggle to understand, uh, that I just don't understand that, um, fully, uh, by any means. And so I asked him, you know, why are you attracted to men? And he said, And I said, can you explain that to me? Could you help me understand? Because I just don't understand it. I don't, you know, I need help to educate me. And he said, just like a man is attracted to a woman, he's attracted to a man. And it was a quick, short answer. It's very simple. And he's somebody I know really well. I trust him. He doesn't lie. He's in a marriage. He has kids. And he has bottled up these tendencies and these desires. I said, where does it come from? And he said, he feels this. He felt it from a young age of when he was like 10 or 12. It's always been in him. He's thought like this. He's felt like this. This is long before the science came out that we have now, know now. But he always felt attracted to same sex. Um, but when he explained that it was like a, a heterosexual man being attracted to a, a woman, that kind of made a little, made sense actually, um, to me. And so I, but going back to what I was saying, I think the church, yeah, it can step out the arena and, and, you know, let this conversation unfold. But has a bigger responsibility than that. It has a responsibility to lead this, to teach, uh, these principles, to live these principles, and to extend this, um, invitation through love and respect and dialogue, uh, and equality to our gay brothers and sisters, and to help them feel loved and respected and cherished and precious, just like everyone else. I know that's a long way off. The church would prefer this. Again, there's so many problems, isn't it? You know, we prefer the polygamy to go away, the conversation about the Book of Mormon to disappear, this issue about LGBTQ, et cetera, to kind of lay to rest, but it's not going to lay to rest. As the world moves on and progresses and changes, in certain parts of the world. The church seems increasingly isolated, Greg, Jim Bennett, to be just left in the past. And I just don't know how we, Greg, how do you reconcile that thinking with a church that claims to be the only true church upon the face of the earth? And as I got the mind, the knowledge, and the insight of God who is, can see all things and can forecast and prophesy and see into the future. It's supposed to be leading things, not reacting to things. How do you reconcile that thinking?

I don't know how to reconcile that, Ian. If I look historically, on virtually every major issue I can think of, the church, if it has changed at all, has been reactive and not proactive.

Yeah.

It didn't give up polygamy until the cannons of the federal government were pointed at it and the triggers cocked. And then it decided maybe it had to back away. That's not a proactive position. We were not proactive on race. Heavens. Were horrible for over a century. Um, I would like to see a religious organization that is proactive for all the reasons that you just articulated, but the evidence to date doesn't strongly support that. And I don't know how to get us there.

That, that it has to stop making ridiculous claims that it's ahead and progressive and leading when we know across major issues, it has been forced to change, only change because it has to. What kind of organization is that? What kind of organization that, that claims to be this, uh, prophetic, um, um, divine, uh, inspired, God-inspired organization, which it is in many ways, yet is behind on such critical issues which affect millions of lives and claims to be the voice of God, not just for its members, but for the world?

It's the right question to ask, and far too many people have answered it by voting with their feet. And a lot of other people who in the past might have joined are not joining now. In the United States, the growth rate of the church is essentially flat. In Western Europe, I mean, Ian, you know this better than Jim or I, it's negative growth. Yeah, it's true. Our real growth centers are Africa and Latin America. That to me is not the ideal situation, certainly not what I would like to see, because I think what the church has to offer, is such that if we walked the walk and not just talked the talk, it would be very compelling. And even in the developed countries, we would see growth that we're not seeing right now. Jim, we are solid on this. Way in.

I wanna say one more thing and give you guys the rest of the time. I had the opportunity of working with a CEO of a large multi-billion-dollar global engineering company. I'm talking about, it was a great leader. His name was Ralph Peterson, respected in the industry. He did a leadership session every year in Ann Arbor, University of Michigan. I had the privilege of being able to get onto that course and he said many things to to our professionals, engineers, scientists, and other professionals in, in the room there. He said, as an organization, we change or die. He said, we change or we cease to exist, or we cease relevancy. And this was a, a leader of a big successful corporation who had— the company had figured out how to manage change. You have this change strategy document, change document. And he said, what about strategies for dealing with resistance to change. So I think the church can learn lessons from professionals like that, how to manage change. I think you're, I just want to say finally that you're on this conversation, that your podcast communicates in my experience very clearly in a very defined way, the vision and the methodology and the psychology behind the value and importance and significance and the benefit of change. It's in there. And I've said before, I hope that the brethren get a copy of this because it's such a powerful document. And it, it, it's a roadmap. You know, roadmap tells us where we are, where we're going and why, and how we're gonna get there. In, in business, that's how I do roadmaps. That's how I've been taught to do roadmaps by people like Rob Peterson. Your document addresses those across key issues. And so I hope that the leaders will get a copy of this strategic change document for improving the church because it's not a panacea, it doesn't have all the answers, but there's some critical information there that is very significant for decisions. Just closing here, you can't make good decisions from poor information. Or incomplete information or information that's good, but you ignore. You know, decision quality in business and industry is really important. Making the right choices. Anyway, there's good information that the church has access to, including in this document and other documents and other credible people like yourself, Greg, and you, Jim, as well, that it can listen to. You know, grassroots, we talk about grassroots, learning and listening and being humble to learn from the grassroots. Bottom upwards, and not just in America, but international grassroots. That is one criticism I've got with The Inconvenient Faith, that it's more of an American-centric docuseries, which is okay. If there's a part 2, I think you should include some international components, but get some feedback from the international church community across these issues. Listen, be humble, learn, and put together a, and read this document and other insights from people people like Greg to gather the information, which I know it's got, the church has got this already, but have the intestinal fortitude and the integrity and the courage to use that knowledge, use that information to make better, more informed, and yes, prophetic decisions. And yes, if you need to go get revelation, do it. We are advised to go to the Lord and pray and get revelation. Take this information, take these matters to the Lord and listen and see what the Lord has to say in regards to where the church is, where's it going, how does it get there? What's that roadmap that the Lord has for his church?

Yeah, let me just end my part with the, what should be an obvious disclaimer. Look, I'm a white heterosexual guy living in DC. That does not represent a very large demographic within the church. And so I do not purport to speak for the entire church, certainly do not purport to speak as the voice of leadership within the church. I'm just a guy in the trenches who's spent a lot of years thinking and writing about these things. And so I put them out there in the hope that they're useful. But, um, my job, I think, is to put the gift on the altar and then bow out and hope that it makes a difference.

Well, I very much hope that it makes a difference. And I, you know, we are still have a great deal more to discuss of your roadmap, which I think is a very thoughtful contribution to the conversation. And so once again, I, I, if you are willing, I, we would love to have you come back to continue to talk about it because I think these are conversations we need to have and I think your voice is an important voice that needs to be heard.

Let's do it.

All right. Lovely. So with that, let us wind up this episode. Uh, uh, Ian and Greg, thank you both very much. Uh, very glad to have you here and also very glad to have everybody who is listening to this join us as part of this conversation. You are part of this conversation. Uh, please provide us as much feedback as you can at insideoutfeedback@gmail.com. And until next time, we look forward to speaking with you again on Inside Out. Thanks again, guys.