The LDS women pants protest
 

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/top...wl9cVhJ4g.cspx

This has been making the rounds on facebook. Not this article, but other articles.

So I asked my wife if she was going to wear dress pants to church.

Her answer, "I don't own a pair of dress pants."

LOL. Can't even protest if she wanted to.

I must not have enough Utah friends or something. I saw one Facebook post that looked like this:

"So with all this Utah controversy and discussion going on about women, church and pants..."

I had no idea what she was talking about. Women wear pants to my ward fairly often. Not a lot of women, but a couple of them. Of course, they are normally from some kind of unique circumstance (new convert, poor, special needs). I once wore pants to a baptism at a church, and I got a fair amount of flack for that. Actually, I also recently wore pants to a wedding reception at a church, and I am pretty sure I was the only woman in pants. But I was dressed up.

flack from who?

I don't even pay attention.

I don't even own a suit that fits.

We once had a high council guy give a talk in sacrament meeting on the need for men to wear white shirts and not "fruity" colored shirts. I was on the third row wearing a neon lime green shirt.

It's such stupidity.

In my home ward as a young man, the rule was that you had to wear a tie to pass the sacrament. Color of shirt didn't matter. At least one subsequent ward has had white shirts as a requirement.

If you go to a Melchizedek Priesthood leadership meeting in the stake, it's like a white-shirt fest.

I think a valid reason to break the clothing barrier is to blaze the way for others in the future, i.e. combat the mullahs, so that it's no big deal.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...=feeds-newsxml

This is embarrassing for the church because it fits very nicely into the stereotype that the church has very misogynistic views about women.

"Can't wear dress pants to church???"

I have attended foreign wards in jeans. Just because.

I also like to show up without a tie, shocking, I know. The clothing barriers need to be broken.

I had no idea what the pant protest was about. Now I do.

This is supposed to be a statement on equality. I thought President Hinckley sounded pro-equality when he encouraged all women to obtain as much education as possible, but maybe there was a back-handed slap in the face that I didn't pick up on.

Are these same women going to show up early to church to shovel the walks, put up chairs in the cultural hall, and also stay late taking down the chairs?

Hmmm....my wife helped me put up the chairs in the cultural hall many times the past several months. And my kids helped too. Since often no grown men besides me would take on the task.

The funny thing is that, in my opinion, women form the backbone of every ward. If the women get along well, it will be well. If they don't, it will suck.

But at the same time, women don't control much of what's going on.

One thing I like about my current Bishop is that there is relatively little ego with him. I think he would be perfectly amenable to a sister coming to him and giving him frank suggestions. And he also seeks to empower the ward council. Which is really the only venue for leadership in the ward that women have.

This has nothing to do with the way people dress.