To see all of the photos in this stream click HERE.
UPDATE: October 8th, 2013
Here is a little chat I had with a gal in the comment section of Joanna Brooks Blog. It further clarifies my position.
Jenny Marie Hatch
“I am wondering who is paying Joanna and Kate to organize and agitate naive young LDS Women…
Sara Anne to Jenny Marie Hatch
I don’t even consider myself a part of the Ordain Women movement, and I still find your thoughts in this post offensive. I also can’t believe that you could possibly fault someone for her “well timed book rollout” and public appearances when the entire right hand side of your blog is filled from top to bottom with self-promoting advertisements for your own financial endeavors and public appearances.
Jenny Marie Hatch to Sara Anne
Sara Anne,
Media appearances on the level that Joanna has enjoyed are never an accident. They ALWAYS further someones agenda. The elites reserve a unique level of hate for the happy and contented Home Maker, because she stands at the crossroads of all of their agendas and plans for the collapse of the American Family.
I have no problem with anyone promoting, selling, or writing books on any topic. The common themes for all of my work is “Mother, get your butt back in the Kitchen”, so Joanna and her feminist friends are my ideological foes.
I have a deep understanding of psychological media campaigns designed to breed discontent in certain populations. And I am just cynical enough to believe that the contented mormon homemaker would be high on Madison Avenues list to target.
LDS Men are the kindest, most well behaved, gentle souls on Planet Earth. And the sisters of the church would do well to get on their knees every night to thank God for the blessing of having them in their lives.”
Go read all of the comments on the blog, it will provide quite a cross section of thoughts on this topic.
Jenny Hatch
UPDATE: October 7th
I believe this group of activist women are an organized cabal of professionally trained leftist agitators who have been tasked with doing a well publicized stunt in order to be excommunicated so they can then then whine to the media for the next twenty years about how evil and patriarchal the church is, having put their Feminist beliefs on the line and paid the seemingly ultimate sacrifice. I just wonder how much money they have been paid to do it…
I have quietly observed Joanna Brooks well timed book rollout, her many blog posts, media appearances, book tours, and I even attended her lecture on the campus of SUU last fall. She is a statist progressive who has no clear understanding of the basic doctrines of the church.
She is someone who believes her agenda of ordaining women to the Priesthood will “shape” the future of the Faith I love.
And I am here to tell you, “No, it will not”.
In her post today she made it clear they are just getting started as a group.
Here are my thoughts:
Thoughts on the Ordination of Women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints
By
Jenny Marie Hatch
I hanker for Zion.
One heart, one mind, no poor among us…
As I have studied the scriptures these forty odd years since learning to read, one theme, one image has been a constant wellspring of delight, and that is ZION!
The big question in my mind all of these years has been, What will it look like? How will we live? How do we move from the Babylonian nightmare to the prosperity and peace of Zion? Where, if scripture is true, all infants will live and all men will reach the ripe old age of a tree.
As I have studied these prophecies and lined them up with current reality I must admit to feeling somewhat baffled how we are going to manage the faith leap from so much societal despair to the health and wholeness of a healthy Zion existance.
I love to read history and political commentary. In fact I spend several hours each day reviewing the political scene as America has been, to borrow a phrase from Robert Bork, “slouching towards Gomorrah”.
I must confess to a certain orthodox view of Latter Day Saint life, especially in the covenants I have chosen to make and keep with my Heavenly Father, but as a registered Libertarian, my “Live and Let Live” appraoch to economics and personal choice as to how each individual decides to spend their mortality may appear at odds to some observers.
To my way of thinking if Free Will was important enough for us to have a war in heaven to the degree that 1/3 of our Fathers children lost their first estate, then as an eternal principle to be held up, revered, and reverenced, freedom of choice is one of the main principles of earth life.
So why do I find myself so wracked by the idea of women being ordained?
I have read many of the most visible and trafficked arguments, commentary, and interviews located on the web.
As I was pondering the spectacle of a march on the ticket office of the conference center less than 24 hours after typing this post, which will undoubtedly be exploited in a million different ways by the Media, I found myself tearing up, frustrated, and exasperated that this is where we are as a people.
And that angst is tied up in how distant I perceive Zion to be from where we are now.
In an ideal society the Priesthood would simply perform the sacred ordinances of sacrament, baptism, endowment, and marriage.
Since we know the church infrastructure is NOT an eternal system, these ordinances will eventually be performed by men and youth holding the priesthood in mostly intimate family settings and our temples throughout eternity.
In reading the arguments from our sisters who hanker for the supposed power, authority, and esteem granted to the males of the LDS faith, it is obvious to me that many of them have adopted a statist view of family life and believe it is appropriate for government and church to step in to take over roles that were always intended to be played by individual men and women, husbands and wives sealed together and prepared and ready to provide for children and grandchildren.
As the family has declined in functionality (and the many, many whys of that decline are not the purpose of this essay), and various state and church infrastructures have stepped in to attempt to fill in the gaps, we now find ourselves in a place where Bishops and other priesthood holders are involved in situations that simply would not exist if we were all vested in and living a Zion Life.
As young feminists observe the baffling spectacle of priesthood holders attempting to play the roles of provider, social worker, therapist, and doctor to the families in their care while Mother and Father default on their own God Given roles, they perceive it might be fun/enticing to get in on some of that action.
Men tend to be better about chilling and not over reacting while families are in crisis.
The last person I want giving me advice on personal matters during a family crisis would be some busybody feminist who bows down and embraces humanism with her left hand while sustaining the Prophet with her right.
Some of these sisters completely misunderstand their own eternal potential as woman by believing that it has been more important to spend time and money focused on careerism than in bearing and raising children.
Again, this is the sort of individual I personally would NOT want as my Bishop while struggling with a family or spiritual issue.
To me, ordaining women with Priesthood Authority would be a leap backwards away from simple Zion living and an acceptance and even promotion that those who have chosen to invest their all into Motherhood really are in need of Sister Bishop Social Worker to step in and raise and provide for the children, because the uneducated and uncredentialed females in our midst are just too ignorant to do the job right.
In an ideal Zion society all families are healthy, whole, and the Priesthood is simply the power and authority of Heavenly Father to conduct saving ordinances and blessings.
I do not need to be ordained because I can tap into my husbands priesthood power any time the need arises to bless my family and posterity. The Holy Spirit taught me how to utilize this blessing over many years of seeking for the spiritual gifts. If a young female wants to learn more about it, I would encourage her to humbly petition her Father in Heaven who will quietly teach her.
I look at the gals who will be agitating for Priesthood Power the same way I look at those who tried to buy it for money from the Apostles.
When and if these sisters raise a righteous, whole, and healthy family of their own…then and only then will I pause in my own beliefs to consider some of the arguments presented.
Until then?
Mind your own beeswax and stop insulting and distracting from the most sacred weekend our family enjoys together every six months as we bask in the sweet spirit of General Conference.
Jenny Blogs at The Natural Family BLOG
Jenny Hatch
Natural Family Blog, an online journal written by Jenny Marie Hatch 
So when missionaries knock on my door, can I quote you and just tell them to mind their own beeswax?
Of Course!
My son is serving a full time mission and he has had much worse than “Mind your own beeswax” tossed at him.
The thing is, I believe females were gifted with all of the rights and authority of Motherhood and this sacred blessing to give birth is of such significance that it is only fair that the righteous males have some sort of similar role to play in the human family.
If women are able to rob Mormon Men of their special role in the Plan of Salvation it is just another layer in the War Against Men.
I know I have strong feelings about it that for some reason many have found offensive, but it is how I really feel.
Jenny
Ouch.
So, as a woman of faith, a temple married RM who agrees with your political ideas of freedom, lean government, and could hardly be considered leftist as a registered republican…how do I fit into your opinion? I can’t have children. I may never adopt. Your litmus test for raising a righteous family falls flat when you look at my life. What then is the litmus test?
If you’re serious about zion, I think ordination of women (or at the very least a more equitable distribution of responsibilities so that women like me can still have a seat at the table of our faith instead of being sidelined for the grievous sin of malfunctioning biology) is a part of making that a reality.
Perhaps the conversation should not be “women nurture” but rather “WE as humans must all nurture and learn to be kind and gentle to those more vulnerable than ourselves.” It doesn’t have to be a zero sum game where my career negates the value of your motherhood. I don’t feel that way at all. Conversely, I would expect that your motherhood would not be considered better than the career I choose because children are outside the realms of my possibilities.
I really, sincerely, want to understand my place in my faith. I have always striven to do the right thing, I always want to please God and serve his children. Now that it is clear I will likely never be a mother, I feel very, very lost. It’s an incredibly painful, lonely place to be, and sometimes the depression is ferocious. It’s like I’ve spent my whole life training and preparing for motherhood as if it was a definite thing, instead of preparing to be an adult.
I am not the only woman shattered by this. I would speak up in support of a more equitable situation in the church whether or not someone was paying me to. That was a pretty disingenuous assumption on your part. I hope that explaining my situation helps you to respond to your sisters in Christ with more compassion that you’ve shown here. Because truly, compassion is what every single one of us needs, above everything else. For that reason, I want to reiterate that I’m not trying to attack your position as a mother. I respect that role deeply and am grateful you have that opportunity. I hope you have a great day.
Annie,
I was burned by the Feminist Movement and just about lost everything because I believed so much of what they spewed into my head while I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s.
Now that my daughters are 25 and 21, I wrote this post for them and the second generation and third generation feminist women who are maturing amidst so much diseased thinking about what it means to be a woman today.
My two daughters and I have spent hours this past weekend discussing this topic and I had them each read my essay out loud, then discuss, and ponder what I was saying. I feel that it is my job as a parent to help prepare them for the briars and weeds that are waiting to engulf them during their adult life.
The Feminist Movement was founded by Marxists, pushed by Statists, and has evolved to the place where it has overtaken the Media, the University Systems, and the Culture at large.
I am one lone Mother, one Blogger, one voice yelling, warning, and demanding that everyone pause and look at the roots of this ordain woman movement to discover what exactly is going on.
Every tactic Joanna Brooks has engaged in these past few years is out of the Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinam, Ms. Magazine Playbook for creating fake rage and discontent among the most blessed population of women who currently walk the earth. LDS Women enjoy the amazing partnership of Priesthood Conferred men as Husbands, Fathers, Sons, Bishops, Home Teachers, and Friends.
It would be a mistake to allow the current War on Men to simmer in LDS circles because some statist, marxist agitators decided to attempt to take the naive women in our midst down the misguided path of feminist discontent.
I wish you well in attempting to reconcile your infertility with a desire to perform Priesthood Ordinances.
Jenny
Respectfully, not all women who seek to understand certain things about the Church are professionally trained leftist agitators. There IS inequality in the Church because there IS inequality in the world. That doesn’t mean that the Gospel is not perfect. It is perfect. We are learning and progressing, and questioning, and IT’S OKAY to have diversity of thought as Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We are indeed “minding our own beeswax.” One of our articles of faith states that we believe we must allow all to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience. That INCLUDES members of our own faith too.
Lori,
The whole history of the Feminist Movement is riddled with leftist agitators and their “well timed” books, magazines, and media appearances.
I do not believe all of those leading or involved in this campaign are paid agitators. Just some of them, like Joanna Brooks.
Jenny