Replies

I didn't mean to imply that any force was involved. However, there is plenty evidence on the record that many of the women at the ERA conference had no opinion at all on the subject until they were told by their men what opinion to have. And, just in general (i.e. not specific to Mormons), women who married young, have several children, and no way of supporting them on their own are much less free to disagree with their husbands than women in other circumstances -- like anyone they'll tend to rationalize decisions as being their own to avoid confronting the distressing fact that they are trapped. This is not to say that I think most of the women at this conference were "trapped" -- just that the social norm displayed would make it extremely difficult for the few who were "trapped" to escape.

This whole episode was, as I recall, over 20 years ago, at a time when the Church was still into a pretty heavy reaction against the social upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, the women who showed up for the conference were probably more conservative and passive about following directions from men than the average Mormon woman at that time. I know that the Church endorses a good deal more flexibility in women's roles now than it did then, and Mormon women have picked up a greater sense of entitlement to self-direction from the trends in the society around them. However, it's also true that since that time, the priesthood has taken complete control of the Relief Society, which was once a completely independent organization, with its own money, uncensored publications, internal choosing of its leaders, etc. If you doubt that, please read up on it.

I'm not at all anti-Mormon, but try to see the faults and drawbacks of the Church and its culture just as objectively as I see the faults of other groups, and just as objectively as I see the positive side of various groups. Overall, I think the Church is an overwhelmingly positive institution, and those areas in which I think it's fair to say it goes too far, are generally areas in which I'd fault mainstream U.S. society and many liberal churches for going way too far in the opposite direction. Nobody's perfect!