On Parenting, Pornography and the Priesthood

Most times, the simplest answer is the best one.

Not to toot my horn or anything, but I think John and I have done a pretty good job of parenting.  Like Alma, I'm not boasting in my own strength, but I'm thankful that the Lord has been there with us, helping us along the way.  We didn't have the best of examples as parents, nor did we grow up in ideal situations.  It would have been easy for us to continue the dysfunctional cycles that we were shown, but we have fought hard to create our own, new style of parenting with the Lord's help.

There have been times along the way that we simply haven't known what to do, and we have gone purely on instinct and the Spirit.  I felt that was a better way for us than getting advice from parenting magazines and from other people.  It hasn't always been easy, feeling rather blind at times, but we have been blessed.  Our kids are making righteous choices in their lives, and we are thankful.

Funny thing, that Spirit.  He doesn't give us long, complicated answers or advice.  It's usually simple advice--move to Pennsylvania...go to college....don't say that hurtful thing--and when we listen, our lives are better.  I felt the Spirit influencing my parenting on a daily basis when my children were young, and I was so thankful because I felt, on a daily basis, that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing!

Pornography.  It's a major problem worldwide now.  If I didn't think pornography was wrong because our church teaches it, I would think it is wrong because of how it objectifies women.  When I think of the women who are posing for those lewd pictures, it makes me sick--I just want to hug them, let them know they are loved, and help them understand that they are daughters of God.  Our church is putting more and more focus on helping kids avoid the pitfalls of pornographic materials, just in the last few years even.  I don't think it was such a focus when my boys were young.  However, John knew and felt how damaging pornography could be, and so we developed a plan to help the boys.

Two words:  look away.

This wasn't something that we consciously thought about or decided.  It just happened when the Victoria's Secret commercials began airing on primetime TV.  We didn't have a DVR back then, so we were either watching the commercials live, or fast forwarding through them on a video tape.

Two words for all of us:  look away.  In fact, someone in the family would quickly voice those two words as a reminder to the rest of us when something vile came on the TV, and without a second thought, we would all turn away from the TV.  No questioning, no quick glances.  It was immediate.

These words stood the boys in good stead when we moved to Germany.  For those who don't know, pornography is rampant in Germany, and I might go so far as to say it is accepted by everyone.  In fact, it's impossible to walk into a convenience store, or gas station in Germany without nude images of women plastered all over the counter in front of the cashier.

Two words:  look away.

I don't know if this was the best way to teach the kids how to handle the pitfalls of pornography, but it worked for our family.  In fact, our boys never had a problem.  I believe, however, that they are in the minority.

A couple of years ago, the bishop of our ward held a special meeting discussing pornography with the parents of youth in our congregation.  He wanted to share ideas of what we could do to help the youth avoid all kinds of pornography, both printed and online.  The discussion quickly went to computer/software "blockers"--software that blocks pornographic images and websites.  I sat back in disbelief as different names of different companies were thrown around, and the intricacies of each program--their pros and cons--were discussed ad nauseum.  What works on an iPhone or an Android, what works on a home computer and does it works for every computer in the house.

Seriously?

I didn't feel that I had much right to participate in the discussion because my boys had already survived this era of their lives.  However, I couldn't stay quiet after about ten minutes of this discussion.

So, I tried to explain our method.  Two words:  look away.

I was given a courtesy smile, and the conversation returned to software and such.

I was so frustrated with that response.  I have heard through the grapevine that people in our ward incorrectly assume that my children are "special"--they think that they are "special" spirits, better than the norm.  They think that John and I just got lucky with such righteous kids.

While I can't deny that as a mother, I might actually think they ARE special (what mother doesn't?), they don't claim some special link to a higher realm.  They are just normal kids who have been taught to make good decisions.

However, I couldn't get that idea across in the 20 seconds I was given to speak.  In fact, I'm not sure that I actually understood that feeling until I read a news article yesterday.  The author was discussing social media and how parents should allow kids to "run wild online".  While I didn't condone her main point, two sentences struck me:

Rather than helping teens develop strategies for negotiating public life and the potential risks of interacting with others, fearful parents have focused on tracking, monitoring and blocking.  These tactics don't help teens develop the skills they need to manage complex social situations, assess risks and get help when they're in trouble. (Time, "Let Kids Run Wild Online", March 24, 2014, p. 40)

THANK YOU!  That's exactly the point I was trying to make in that meeting, but couldn't express it well.  Those parents can talk all they want about blockers and such on computers, but what happens when that teen/young adult is presented with pornography without a blocker in place?  Will he know how to handle the situation?  I would say no, he will NOT know because he has not been taught.

I go back to the simplest and easiest answer:  look away.

Onto a new discussion:  the priesthood.

Yep, it's pornography for the boys, and the priesthood (or the lack thereof) for the girls--Satan's vices to pull us away from what is good and right.

There is a small group of Mormon women who have started a group called "Ordain Women".  They believe that the women in our church want the priesthood, and they believe that we will all be happier if we indeed hold the priesthood.  They are the smallest of minorities.  In fact, I read a fun blog (andykano.com), written by a Mormon dad, putting the numbers in a tongue-in-cheek perspective:

I would like to thank the New York Times for breaking a story yesterday that highlights one of the biggest problems in the LDS Church; i.e., gender inequality. The article talks about a group of about 1,300 women who signed a manifesto for female ordination. 1,300 signatures. That sounds like a lot. In fact, if I write the number out with all caps and bold it, then it sounds like even more signatures: THIRTEEN HUNDRED. Wow.

But what does 1,300 signatures really represent? For ease of math, let’s round the number up to 1,500. According to mormonnewsroom.org, there are 15,000,000 LDS members in the world. Some simple math (on a simple calculator) tells me that the 1500 signatures represent 0.01 percent of the Church. But, you might say, men shouldn’t be included in that calculation because they aren’t the ones who are being oppressed (at least not in terms of receiving the Priesthood). So, for arguments sake, let’s cut the number of members in half to represent the split between men and women. Crunch the numbers and we see that the number now becomes 0.02 percent.

In the spirit of fairness, I decided to look and see how a comparable petition would fair with the US Government. And it’s not terrible. There are 313.9 million people in the United States. According to petitions.whitehouse.gov, in order to cross the threshold and be reviewed, a petition must receive 100,000 signatures in the span of 30 days. Unfortunately 0.02 percent of the United States population only equates to 62,780 signatures. In other words, it was a valiant effort but this petition gets rejected. I’m not saying the petition system is perfect, but it doesn’t seem to miss the important ones; e.g., the petition to deport Justin Bieber that reached the threshold in January of this year.

Other than the fact that Obama wouldn’t care (see what I did there?), we now know that these women only represent a small (dare I say teeny) portion of Latter-Day Saints. Loud? Yes. But small just the same. Doesn’t this make you wonder why the New York Times cares about a petition that doesn’t have enough signatures to make it to paper in the US Government? Let’s save that topic for another day. (Believe me, I have lots to say about the media targeting Latter Day Saints. Like, why is every other episode of DateLine about a Mormon who murdered his spouse or defrauded his entire congregation? Does that really only happen in Utah?)

Yep, these women don't account for much in our church, but they have created quite a stink, presenting the idea that they represent the population of Mormon women.  Well, let me set the record straight:  they do NOT.

Working in the presidency of the Young Women's organization for our stake (12 congregations in the area), we are preparing ourselves to answer questions from the teenage young women about this issue.  No doubt, it's going to come up at some point, and we don't want to be caught off guard.

In our presidency meeting last night, I listened to a suggested response from one of our members.  It was so convoluted, and in all honesty, it made me feel a bit sick.  It was suggested that we women don't need the priesthood because we are given the gift of bearing a child (ugh, I feel ill just writing that statement).  Men are given the priesthood as their gift, and ours is to bear a child.  *gack*

As a teenager, this response would have driven me AWAY from the church, seeing as I didn't even think that I would ever want a child.  It makes the assumption that all young women want to have children, and that all young women will have children someday.  While I hope this will be true, seeing as I'm a mother now, I would never impose that assumption on any young woman.  If anything (and this idea was brought up by a kindred spirit in our presidency), the other side of motherhood in a parenting partnership isn't the priesthood; it's fatherhood.

I have my own philosophy about this which was shared with me by a very loving, very wonderful priesthood holder ;-)  Want to hear it?  Believe me, you do if you are a Mormon woman because it's freaking brilliant! And keep in mind that this philosophy was shared with me....by a man.

Women are innately service oriented.  We care about things...and people...and animals...and anything that moves, or belongs to us.  Shoot, Johannah feels tender feelings towards the beat-up old Honda Element that gets her to and from school each day.  In other words, our hearts are tender.  Trust me, it goes way beyond brownies and babysitting too.  I read another article about a woman who was running Smith Barney at Citi, but was fired for caring too much about the clients (versus the conventional wisdom of caring only about the figures).  We want to care.

Men are innately opposite to this.  Of course, there are exceptions to both rules, but men's top priority isn't generally people...or emotions.  It's about solutions, and money, and what's for dinner.  They think simply while we women don't.

So God gave them the priesthood.  What does the priesthood encourage men to do?  It encourages them to serve.  Passing the sacrament, giving blessings, home teaching.  It elevates them to think beyond themselves, an idea that comes so easy to the majority of women.  It helps them (and all of us) come closer to our Heavenly Father.  If they didn't have the priesthood, whom do you think would fulfill all of those service responsibilities?  That's right, ladies.  We would.  And I can't think of a sadder, more pathetic church than that.  I want to be evenly yoked to my husband, and the priesthood allows that to happen.

Back to the idea of the simplest answer is the best.

I can't say that my idea is simpler than another.  It feels pretty complicated when I write it all out.  However, there's an even better answer to this discussion:

Men have the priesthood in our church because it's the Lord's way.

End of discussion.  It's a question of faith if you want to believe that, and my hope would be that every young woman would.  There are always things in religion that don't make sense, and we don't have the vision of an all-seeing deity.  It's up to us to trust in him and his ways.  That's the best answer.

And it's also the simplest.