“The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.”-Conquest’s Third Law

A little over a decade ago Kate Kelly was excommunicated. A few thoughts in retrospect.

If I had infiltrated the OW movement with the goal of undermining it in the eyes of the Church leadership and membership, and I somehow rose to the very top, I would have essentially done what Kate Kelly did. The Ordain Women movement was a complete disaster for them if their goal was to actually, you know, ordain women, but from the outside it looks like the primary goal was to create martyrs, with the policy goal secondary. 

Pushing against the Church or trying to embarrass it to force change doesn’t work for trying to change the Church. This should be obvious, but I suspect the Walter Mitty-esque fantasy for this kind of activism is one where the Church’s PR situation and embarrassment is so incredibly acute that they absolutely have to respond–and then the activists can dictate terms. Where Newsies-like youth across the Wasatch Front leaving their Sunday School classes to march on Salt Lake City demanding change. 

I think this is one reason why that Pew survey that showed that most LDS women weren’t clamoring for the priesthood struck such a cord, it challenged the idea that the Ordain Women folks were representing the authentic woman’s voice in the pews. (This is the same kind of vibe that led the Democratic party to being befuddled when blue-collar Hispanic men swing for Trump. But they represent The People (™)!)  

The last time there was some kind of grassroots organization challenging the Church that elicited a public sit-down-and-debate response was the Godbeites (historians who know more than I may need to correct me on this point). And Ordain Women never got close to the numbers needed to brute force that kind of response. Instead, they ended up branding their approach as per se apostate. And the fact that Kelly was kind of spitting at the Church on her way out, like some former employee burning bridges because it makes them feel better, didn’t help the apostate branding either. 

Around this same time a much more savvy and diplomatic approach was taken by people like Neylan McBaine, who, while you could tell was also pro-female ordination, saw that there were a lot of reasonable changes that could be made before we reached that more controversial point. 

However, at this point we’re running out of runway. I’m sure people can think of a few things to better involve women, but the low-hanging fruit has been picked and the remaining things are flirting with the priesthood line. For example, young women passing the sacrament; of course, if you’re pro-female ordination that’s completely fine, but I don’t know a lot of people who are pro-women passing the sacrament that are against female ordination. Incidentally, Catholicism has an analog here, some people suggest that they could have female deacons without female ordination, but in practice the two are correlated to something like .9 if I recall correctly, so the one typically follows the other even if they are technically and theologically distinct. 

Perhaps because of the branding issue, people tend to speak in code now without saying “ordain women.” (There’s an analogous situation with the Church’s heteronormativity. People rarely say “same-sex sealings,” instead they’ll say things like “gay members should have the same expectations as straight members.” Given what those people mean by “expectations” it means the same thing as same-sex sealings, but it feels like they’re doing a milk before meat thing with more conservative members, trying to wade them into the cold water slowly.)

As somebody who’s on the other side of this, I do find the wordplay annoying and disingenuous at times, but from a purely tactical perspective I get it. When certain catchphrases, individuals, and groups have become branded as being on the apostate side you want to avoid them. Instead, you want to come off as fresh-faced seminary teacher type who blushes at “damn,” but who also happens to think that women should be ordained. Again, I find the play acting frustrating but I have to concede that it’s much more effective than the Kate Kelly approach.