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Many Mormons understand their “orientation” to be to their spouse.  This is commendable, because it demonstrates dedication and fidelity.

However, a spouse for Latter-day Saints means “someone of the opposite gender.”  Homosexuality gets compartmentalized as an affliction that can lead to “selfishness” if not kept in check.

This selfishness is understood to “disorient” a person from their true “orientation”:  that of their potential or current spouse of the opposite gender.  Some gay Mormon men believe their affliction is a “blessing in disguise” because it teaches them to be humble.  Others begin to question the Church’s framing of homosexuality and of gender.

Because the selfishness has been gendered “male” (and selflessness gendered “female”), female homosexuality, in fact, threatens the Church’s patriarchal structure.  It is no coincidence that faiths that approve of same-sex marriage also ordain women.

When it comes to the reason why females don’t have the priesthood, one Mormon man, after asking his stake president, explained it this way:

The priesthood was given to men to help us learn how to do what to women comes naturally.  Everything we do with the priesthood is to help and serve other people—we can’t give ourselves blessings, we can’t seal ourselves to our spouses.  It is all about service to others!  So men were given the priesthood to help us become better people, to be more service oriented and less self oriented.  In other words—we were given the priesthood to help us raise ourselves up to the level where women are already at!

Of course, this logic fails on its face, because if women are “naturally” service-oriented, then they should have had the priesthood from the beginning.  Even if one believes the human experience on Earth is a classroom in which those who aren’t service-oriented (“men”) are the ones who most need to learn how to be (like “women”), this frankly results in a sexist pigeonholing of women as “selfless”—because of their ties to motherhood and so on.

When it comes to homosexuality, Mormon women are believed to be doing a better job at “naturally” keeping their “selfishness” in check (except those Mormon lesbians who leave the Church, who are thought of as acting like selfish men).  The lesbian Mormon in good standing with the Church might not even identify as lesbian or with her attractions, and might simply consider her orientation to be to her male spouse.

Thus, we hear about gay Mormon men who are “becoming humble,” but we rarely hear about gay Mormon women who are “already humble.”

Still, outside the Church, homosexuality is not framed as lending to selfishness, and more and more Mormons believe it doesn’t; I would think more and more Mormons are also beginning to question why there is no female ordination.  The two go hand-in-hand.

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