My name is Joe. My family converted to Mormonism when I was nine years old. It was a great fit, and I developed into the person who I am today because of the Church. The Aaronic priesthood (and its accompanying leadership positions) and the Young Men’s program gave me guidance and confidence to face the modern world. I am very grateful for this experience. I went on to serve a mission, marry my lovely wife in the temple, and was moving into leadership positions when I immersed myself into the history and doctrine of my faith. I read everything produced by the new Mormon history. This education caused me to realize nothing was black and white in Mormonism. In fact, I realized that the Mormon God was quite flexible and had no dogma. The dogma clearly was coming from the men who were in, or who had the top leadership positions.
I remained active and enjoyed my time with people at Church, but prop. 22 (the Knight initiative) entered the California political arena, and then into the buildings of Mormon churches across our great state. I could not tolerate the hate I was seeing from people in the Church who were my friends towards people who were my friends and employees outside my church activity. At this point I physically removed myself from activity.
As I wrote in my first paragraph, from my study I learned the Mormon God is quite flexible with people. Ordaining women would not be difficult doctrinally, nor inconsistent with the history of Mormonism. What would be difficult is the acceptance of this change by the leadership and some of the faithful. In a short time it would be embraced and even incorporated to the point that most folks would see any denial of priesthood as an archaic idea. We have a modern example with the 1978 policy change where all Mormon men of color were allowed to be ordained to the priesthood and all Mormon people of color allowed entrance into the temples. This would be a major step forward for the Church and help with the changing dynamics of a large percentage of women now serving missions. I believe that the ordination of women to the Mormon priesthood would be a wonderful step forward.