#chieko okazaki

This empathetic quote was quite the opposite of the messages coming from Church leaders. 2008 is the year of the California ballot initiative Prop 8 to make gay marriages illegal. The Church put a lot of time and money into that fight. There’s a leaked video from 2008 of Elder Ballard saying the reason to use “same-sex...(fill in the blank, attraction, marriage, and so on)” is because it sounds the worst of the possible phrases that could be used, including “same-gender”. 

I’m thinking of the church we could have. A more truthful, transparent view of our history. More freedom and less authoritarian. More emphasis on Heavenly Mother. A move towards higher & more Christlike love. Looking at what’s best for LGBTQ members rather than what would be best for the comfort of non-queer members. A church that is more generous, kind, understanding and loving.

We’ve had prominent members push us to be better, and almost always they get trouble for challenging the status quo or for presenting an opinion different from the leaders at the top.

With the passage of time, it shows they were largely correct. I feel sad at what could be and how different and better things ought to be, especially for those who don’t fit the current church & culture, which is essentially anyone who isn’t married. The church seems to hold at arms length anyone who is queer, women who believe they should have chances to lead, people of color, and the same is true for people with disabilities as they also are pushed to the sidelines.

I’ll give some examples of people who urged us to do better.

Juanita Brooks (1898-1989) : “I feel sure that nothing but the truth can be good enough for the church to which I belong.”

She wrote the book The Mountain Meadows Massacre. Church leaders urged her not to look into the events because she would besmirch the good name of the Church.

Her book showed the rhetoric of Brigham Young contributed to a tense atmosphere that made conditions ripe for this massacre, but that he had no direct involvement in ordering the attack. A Mormon militia was responsible for the massacre, and Brigham Young was involved in a cover-up and he made John Lee a scapegoat. 

Juanita was ostracized by church leaders, although no official church discipline occurred. Despite critical acclaim, the book was for many years considered taboo by church members, but in time the Church accepted her account of the massacre.

Hugh B. Brown (1883 - 1975) : “Avoid those who preach evil doctrines of racism. When our Father declared that we, His children, were brothers and sisters, He did not limit this relationship on the basis of race.” (He said this at BYU in 1968)

Hugh B. Brown was an apostle from 1958 to 1975. He served as a counselor in the First Presidency from 1961 to 1970. In the 1960′s, he made several attempts to end the priesthood ban of men of African descent. In 1969, Brown convinced President McKay to ordain Monroe Fleming, a very faithful long-time Church employee who was well-known to Church leadership. When Harold B. Lee and Joseph Fielding Smith found out, they put an end to it by claiming this must have approval from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. President McKay said he’s too old to fight Harold B. Lee, and it was gonna be Harold B. Lee’s problem soon (Elder Lee was 2nd in line to succeed President McKay and was 70, the man ahead of him was in his 90′s).  

Upon the death of David O. McKay in 1970, Hugh B. Brown was not kept as a counselor in the First Presidency by the new church president, Joseph Fielding Smith. Never before in the 20th century had a new president of the church not kept a counselor of the previous First Presidency as a counselor (we wouldn’t see this happen again until 2018 when President Russell M. Nelson decided to replace Elder Uchtdorf with Elder Oaks). 

Eugene England (1933 - 2001) :  Regarding gay partnerships, he felt the church was “waiting patiently on the Lord and society to move us to the point we could live the higher law of unconditional love.” 

However, when Elder Oaks condemned same-sex marriage in a 1995 Ensign, Eugene felt this was “binding on me and an expression of the will of the Lord at this time. That phrase ‘at this time’ is of course crucial to any resolution of the dilemma I have just stated: that my two core convictions about Christ and the Church give somewhat opposed results, that stable same-sex partnerships would be better than the choice of celibacy or excommunication but that the official Church position must be supported.”

Eugene was a frequent contributor to Sunstone magazine and a founding editor of Dialogue magazine. He was a proponent that being spiritual and religious didn’t mean one couldn’t be an intellectual and academic, that the Spirit requires first we work things out, then seek confirmation. He was a professor at BYU for over 2 decades, during which he had a series of correspondences with the apostle Bruce R. McConkie which served to illustrate the difference between authoritarian control (McConkie) and free expression (England). 

During a Sunstone Symposium, Eugene mentions the Committee to Strengthen Members and how it gathers info on members to keep tabs on them and use against them, and this gets widespread reporting, and is the first that many members had heard of such a committee in the church.

England felt increasingly under attack for his work, so he retired in 1998 and took a position at Utah Valley State College, but died a few years later due to brain cancer. 

Leonard Arrington (1917 - 1999) - “I do not think we could determine the truth of what had happened in history by having the Quorum of the Twelve vote on it.”

From 1972 to 1982, Leonard was the first non-general authority Church Historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) since 1842. Arrington granted generous access to church archival material to both Mormon and non-Mormon scholars. 

The History division was not subject to the Correlation Program, which edited publications to ensure that they presented a consistent message that LDS Church authorities agreed on. 

Several apostles (Mark E. Peterson, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, Boyd K. Packer) disliked the historical articles being produced. Elder Boyd K. Packer preferred a sanitized version of history to be published. Elder Mark E. Petersen planted spies in the History department who compiled what they believed to be heretical statements by researchers & employees and passed them along to the Twelve Apostles and ultimately the offender's bishop. 

Chieko Okazaki (1926 - 2011) : “It is very likely that every person in the Church knows someone--a family member or a friend--who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual. I also think it is very likely that many people do not know that they know a homosexual or bisexual person because that person is afraid to reveal that part of himself or herself for fear of being rejected, punished, or excluded. Nothing has suspended the commandment of Jesus to love one another and to bear one another’s burdens.” (from the book Disciples published in 1998)

Chieko served as First Counselor in the General Relief Society Presidency from 1990 to 1997. The themes she spoke about were recognizing & celebrating diversity in the church, and the topic of sexual abuse of women. She also pushed for women to be included in the decision making of the church. She felt the Relief Society president should be in council meetings with the bishop. She pushed to add, but was denied, women on the temple design committee & the building design committee, and the committees that made lesson manuals for Priesthood/Relief Society.