Jack, I disagree with one of the comments from your blog post. You state, "those pre-1978 rationales for the priesthood ban were never recanted by the church, and Randy Bott is hardly out of line for continuing to believe in things that former prophets and apostles taught." This is untrue. The church has never proclaimed in any kind of official capacity that this or that explanation is formally repudiated, but leaders have denounced those rationales since the 70s. Even before 1978 the church claimed that the exact rationale for the ban was unknown. From a 1969 First Presidency statement:
From the beginning of this dispensation, Joseph Smith and all succeeding presidents of the Church have taught that Negroes, while spirit children of a common Father, and the progeny of our earthly parents Adam and Eve, were not yet to receive the priesthood, for reasons which we believe are known to God, but which He has not made fully known to man.
Here is Bruce R. McConkie to CES employees in 1978:
Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. We get our truth and our light line upon line and precept upon precept. We have now had added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don't matter any more.
Here is Elder Oaks in a 1988 Deseret News article:
Some people put reasons to [the ban] and they turned out to be spectacularly wrong. There is a lesson in that . . . . The lesson I've drawn from that, I decided a long time ago that I had faith in the command and I had no faith in the reasons that had been suggested for it. . . . I'm referring to reasons given by general authorities and reasons elaborated upon [those reasons] by others. The whole set of reasons seemed to me to be unnecessary risk taking. . . . Let's [not] make the mistake that's been made in the past, here and in other areas, trying to put reasons to revelation. The reasons turn out to be man-made to a great extent.
Oaks states that he decided in 1961 that he would never try to put reasons to it, since it would just "reaffirm your prejudices." He also states that he was asked by President Kimball before the revelation what he thought the reasons for the ban were, and he said he had no idea. Here is Jeffrey R. Holland on the PBS special on Mormons:
They, I'm sure, in their own way, were doing the best they knew to give shape to [the policy], to give context for it, to give even history to it. All I can say is however well intended the explanations were, I think almost all of them were inadequate and/or wrong. . . . I think we can be unequivocal and we can be declarative in our current literature, in books that we reproduce, in teachings that go forward, whatever, that from this time forward, from 1978 forward, we can make sure that nothing of that is declared. That may be where we still need to make sure that we're absolutely dutiful, that we put [a] careful eye of scrutiny on anything from earlier writings and teachings, just [to] make sure that that's not perpetuated in the present. That's the least, I think, of our current responsibilities on that topic.
In addition to these comments from the authorities, Mormon and non-Mormon scholarship dating back to the 60s has unilaterally shown that the reasons given for the ban are not based on sound exegesis of any scriptural text, any purported revelation or official declaration, were inconsistently promoted by the church, and haven't been promoted by the leadership since the ban was lifted. Is "we don't know" a thoroughly honest and objective answer? Of course not. We do know. Church leaders were just as much as much caught up in America's racist rhetoric as any other social conservatives, and conventionalized practices and policies in the church became de facto doctrine. Now I don't doubt Bott was raised in the church to believe certain things about the ban, but as an expert in Church doctrine living in 2012, he should have been aware of both the extensive scholarship and extensive general authority statements that reject the doctrinal grounds for the speculation that he offered in that interview. He also should have been aware of the crap storm that such a condescending position would raise.
In my mind, trying to paint Bott as a sacrificial lamb or a modern day John D. Lee is rather weak rhetoric that serves only to spin the church's response into an opportunity to further rail against it for not offering a formal and official mea culpa. I would personally like to see the church do just that, but I don't think this is a productive way to try to twist the church's arm.