I've been arguing with some local yocals in an anti-Mormon thread on a politics board. The feminists seem to think that Mormonism is the worst thing since slavery. I pointed out the great irony that these feminists are badgering Mormonism, despite the fact that Mormons were among the first to give women the right to vote in America (in 1870) after which the US Government took that right away from Mormon women.
Giving Mormon women the right to vote in 1870 may have been a bit of a ploy by the LDS Church to show the world that Mormon women would not vote to end polygamy.
From wikipedia:
"...some early victories were won in the territories of
Wyoming (1869) and
Utah (1870), although Utah women were disenfranchised by the
U.S. Congress in 1887. The push to grant Utah women's suffrage was at least partially fueled by outsiders' belief that, given the right to vote, Utah women would dispose of
polygamy. It was only after Utah women exercised their suffrage rights in favor of polygamy that the U.S. Congress disenfranchised Utah women.
[7] Other territories and states granted women the right to vote in the late 19th and early 20th century, but national women's suffrage did not come until the
Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1920. "
On the other hand, I think the Church was much more progressive, free, open (and unusual) in the 19th century. We were shut down in the 1800s for being too liberal. As a reaction to pressure, we ultimately became too conservative.