Definitions of Equality Can Differ

Try dividing some item up equally between people and you will immediately encounter the difficulties in how people define equality. For example, try dividing up a cake equally. Do larger people deserve a larger piece than smaller people? What if the smaller people are young children? Should pieces be adjusted to ensure equal benefit given someone's metabolism? Should you save a piece of cake for someone in the restroom?

What about people who could not be present because of illness? Should you just hand everyone a fork and declare it to be equal access?

Synonyms for equality suggest fairness, equal rights, equal opportunities, even handedness, justice, impartiality, etc. However, fairness can differ dramatically from equal opportunity. Even the word, impartiality, suggests some sort of judgment call.

Legal Equality Versus Divine Equality

When people complain about equality for women in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they generally refer to legal equality, which may not coincide with divine equality at all.

Legal equality for genders usually focuses on equal rights in our secular world. But as Elder Dallin H. Oaks has pointed out, in the gospel, the issue should be responsibilities, not rights:

Latter-day Saints surely recognize that qualifying for exaltation is not a matter of asserting rights but a matter of fulfilling responsibilities.

Women are not being kept from anything necessary for their advancement.

Woman are able to achieve the highest level of the celestial kingdom, exaltation, without ever being ordained to the priesthood. Further, men cannot attain exaltation without women and women cannot attain it without men, as equal partners.

Priesthood Duties in the Old Testament

In the Old Testament church, priesthood responsibility was reserved, by the Lord, for men who were Levites, or in other words, descendants of Aaron.

In modern times, men who are not descendants of Aaron can receive and exercise the priesthood.

The priesthood which is the power and authority to act in God's name here on the earth is not fodder for people to argue about. The power comes from Heavenly Father and He can bestow it on those of His choosing. He is not bound by modern, earthly definitions and notions of legal rights.

How Does Heavenly Father Define Equality?

A history of inequality in the mortal world, does not immediately suggest that the Lord must conform to secular ideas of equality or that inequality actually exists in gender responsibilities in the Church.

It makes sense to appeal to the Father of all creation in order to understand the correct notion of equality. In addition, we may discover that Heavenly Father's definition is different and He is not as preoccupied with this notion as we are.

Guidance from Elder J. Reuben Clark is instructive:

The law of consecration was designed to make us equal in temporal things, but as President J. Reuben Clark Jr. pointed out, this equality is of a special kind. “One of the places in which some of the brethren are going astray is this: There is continuous reference in the revelations to equality among the brethren, but I think you will find only one place where that equality is really described, though it is referred to in other revelations. That revelation (D. & C. 51:3) affirms that every man is to be ‘equal according to his family, according to his circumstances and his wants and needs.’ (See also D. & C. 82:17; 78:5–6.) Obviously, this is not a case of ‘dead level’ equality. It is ‘equality’ that will vary as much as the man’s circumstances, his family, his wants and needs, may vary.” (In Conference Report, Oct. 1942, p. 55.)

There are Different Roles and Responsibilities for Each Gender

In the gospel of Jesus Christ and in His church, there are divinely appointed roles and responsibilities for both men and women. In effect, they are separate, but equal. The world rejects this notion, because efforts by imperfect people will never be equal as long as they are separate.

In the divine world created for us by a loving, and perfect, Heavenly Father, the gender responsibilities are equal. Only an omniscient, omnipotent God could make them so. This is not possible for human efforts.

There is an underlying assumption in the demands of people who insist on women being ordained to the priesthood. It is this: they consider the priesthood role to be more important than the divine role assigned to women. We know Heavenly Father does not consider these roles to be imbalanced or the women's role to be inferior, even if the secular world thinks it is.

Should Heavenly Father wish to bestow priesthood authority on women, He is free to do so. It is His church, after all.

Women who are not happy being wives and mothers in this life, probably will not be happy being wives and mothers in the next life either.