I’m C.M. I’m from the SF Bay Area, completed college in St. Louis, and just finished my master’s degree in LA. In between college and grad school, I had stints as a substitute teacher and in the military, and now I work in politics. As for my connection to Mormonism: well, I was baptized a Methodist, but didn’t practice any faith growing up. The way I came across the church was accidental: after being cut from the basketball team in high school, I gave volleyball a try and played for 3 years. Over half the team was LDS.
My time in grad school put organized religion (among many other things) on the back burner until one day I struck up a conversation with a girl who, it turned out, was from a city 25 minutes away from my hometown. She invited me to her Young Single Adult Ward. The people I met there were very nice, welcoming and genuine. We could all take a lesson from the core values of Latter-day Saints in order to bring a greater sense of decency into society and the world as a whole.
I did have one reservation, though: being black, and was aware of the racial policies regarding the priesthood employed by the Church prior to 1978. Though I would never hold any member of the church responsible for the past, the few times I posed questions about this, I was not entirely satisfied with the response. For this reason, I declined a couple requests to be baptized into the Church. I’m conflicted about it to this day. I stand with anyone who advocates for social justice in any form; therefore, I stand with Kate Kelly. The more I learn about her personal story, the more I recognize that her crusade for equal rights comes straight from the heart. Beyond that, I’m just a fellow human being, and watching her anguish at being excommunicated is heartbreaking.
I believe women should be ordained.