Oh well indeed. You see Dan, you cannot wave your hands and pretend that you were a stand up guy about it at the time. You weren’t. You raised your hand to the square to sustain those leaders who maintained the ban on black men and women entering the temple, and the ban on black men holding the Priesthood. By not raising a dissenting vote you are as culpable for it as the Church is.I hope that I’ve made it clear enough and mentioned often enough that I found the pre-1978 priesthood ban baffling and, to say the least of it, awkward, and that I was absolutely delighted when it was rescinded. The day that I heard about President Spencer W. Kimball’s priesthood revelation — I was in Zollikofen, Switzerland, at the time, slowly returning from six months in the Middle East — was one of the happiest days of my life. I glowed for weeks thereafter. (Of course, I’ve had a few critics claim that I’m lying about this, just as I lie about almost everything else. I was, they insinuate, entirely on board with the ban because I’m both servile and a racist. Or something to that effect. There seems no point in insisting that I’m telling the truth, though; once they’ve decided that I’m an inveterate liar, they’re not likely to accept any claim that I make. Oh well.)
Will you now publicly apologise for voting to sustain the Priesthood Ban in the years prior to June 1978? Your post is cheap gaslighting unless or until you are willing to do that.
Personally I have already apologised on this board for sustaining it by voting in favour of sustaining the leadership of that time period. Yes I was quite young at the time. Not an adult. But I’m still embarrassed that I didn’t have enough about me to recognise that it was wrong and to say so, and to take a stand at the time. Howabout you Dan?
Quite the washing your hands of it there Dan. With such flimsy and meaningless fencesitting, is it any wonder that your fellow members in Utah are still exhibiting racism towards black members? Is it any wonder there are no black Apostles? How many black men or women are presenting at this year’s Interpreter Conference Dan?That said, however, I tend to resist confident assertions that the priesthood policy was, simply, the product of racism, that it was an evil mistake, and that the Church should therefore apologize for it. I have no theory of its origin to offer, no theological justification to provide for it, no apologetic to make on its behalf. I simply point to the fact that at least some Church leaders had hoped to rescind it earlier but felt themselves prevented (by the Lord himself) from doing so.
