[SeattleUte]

Tex, you're missing the whole point. This isn't hard, and I know you're a very bright man.

A religion is just an eleemosynary institution (at best) if you take away the doctrine and claim to some kind of divine imprimitur or authority. Thus, it's important that the Mormon church formally repudiate the priesthood ban as not having arisen from the purported divine/doctrine realm. For me, it's as simple as that. Until the Mormon church formally repudiates the priesthood ban it should lack any moral authority. In some respects, because the priesthood ban was based upon a story about blacks being descendants of Cain who were less valiant in the pre-existence, this is more critical than, say, Catholic apologies for in some instances appeasing Nazis during the holocaust. No one ever had reason to believe the Catholic Church appeased Nazis believing it was part of God's divine plan. Rather this happened because of in many respects understandable human frailty.

The Mormon Church needs to repudiate the priesthood ban not only because it's racism (we have discussed the reasons why ad nauseum). It's doctrinal underpinnings depend upon crude creationist dogma. Science has long shown that Creationism is mythology (exute told me all I needed to know about him when he argued against gay marriage saying that if Adam and Eve were gay none of us would be here). Ergo, a story that all blacks descended from Cain is demonstrably bullshit. The LDS Church needs to formally repudiate any such belief.

Of course, an "apology" would follow in the ordinary course. But 99.999% of blacks haven't cared and really wouldn't care and never will care. Among the people the LDS Church should apologize to are those such as myself who bear the shame of having taught and enforced the loathsome priesthood ban while young men, hardly adults, on their missions.