Introducing Margaret Toscano: Sixth-Generation Mormon

Part 1 of 4 · Ep. 62

John Dehlin [00:00:12] Come, come ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but joy when your way, O heart, to this journey may appear.

John Dehlin [00:00:37] Tell us your name.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:00:38] My name is Margaret Merrill Toscano.

John Dehlin [00:00:42] Tell us a little bit about your early years, where you were born, your church experience growing up, your family, whatever you want to tell us.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:00:51] I was born in Mesa, Arizona. I'm sixth generation Mormon. My family on both my mother's and father's side joined the church. There are all these lines, right. So they joined the church in Nauvoo in Ohio. There were some who were English converts, but six generations back on all sides. So it is a large Mormon heritage. My father's family went down to Arizona to settle in the 1870s. So they were some of the first settlers in Arizona, some of the first colonizers as well as Mormon colonizers. My father was born there in the Safford area. Spencer Kimball was his stake president as a boy. So there are a lot of family stories about church history, family members that lived all of this personally. So that's very much a part of my heritage. My mother's family lived in Utah. My mother was born in Farron, Utah, which is south of Price. During the Depression, they lost their farm and moved down to Arizona. And then my mother and father met there. So I was the third of eight children. My parents very believing, very devout. However, my family was not one of those that I would say were extremely strict. I mean, yes, it's true that very, very active in the church. We didn't ever drink cola drinks when I was young or play with face cards. I don't know where that was an old Mormon rule. Right. On the other hand, my parents were not controlling. We had our family, there was a lot of freedom and we didn't have a lot of rules. So it was a home like that. I think another important thing about my home growing up was that we had a lot of gospel discussions. And in my home those were real gospel discussions. It wasn't just here is what we believe and this is what you're supposed to believe. But there were open ended questions and that was seen as perfectly okay. Even though my parents considered themselves they were very orthodox, they were certainly not intellectuals, neither one of them had a college degree. But very intelligent people very much like to talk about the gospel.

John Dehlin [00:03:27] What was your father's profession?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:03:28] My father, when I was a young girl, had a farm and a ranch with my uncle. And then when I was about, let me think, I was in fourth grade, I was about nine. We lost the whole thing and that was very devastating to the family. That had a huge effect on all of us. There was a period of about five years where my father didn't have a permanent job. He went from one part time job to another. Finally, one of the men in our stake who had recently become the tax commissioner for Arizona got my father a job. And that basically saved the family. But it also meant that during those years of my junior high years, if I had any new clothes, I had to babysit to buy them. So it definitely affected us in a lot of ways. Eventually my father. There was more economic stability, but that was certainly hard. When I went to byu, I had to totally support myself. So I always worked. I went to BYU as a freshman.

Growing Up in the Church: Personal Faith and Community

John Dehlin [00:04:46] What was your church experience personally growing up in terms of primary, young women's, your reflections on what the church meant to you at that age, Your spiritual feelings or lack thereof

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:05:01] growing up? First of all, I think the church was different. I mean this is in the 1950s, the 1960s. It was sort of a hometown religion in many ways. Mesa was settled by Mormons, so there were a lot of Mormons in the city. Eventually Mesa and the Arizona area became more. There was more of an influx of non members. So I think very much like being in Utah, growing up in Arizona, in Mesa, as an LDS person, as a Mormon, the church was your whole life. And you went to primary one day later you went to MIA on Tuesday night or whatever Sunday was. We went to church, Sunday school in the morning at 10 o', clock, right? You were there for two hours. You went home, you had dinner, you visited family. It was all a very family day. And then in the evening you went back for a sacrament meeting. And I remember, for example, in our home ward there in Arizona having Joseph Fielding Smith visit. I remember David McKay visiting. I remember there were general authorities that visited all the time. We had the same bishop for 17, or was it 20 years. I was the type who always really enjoyed. I liked Bible stories, I liked knowing about the gospel. We had Bible storybooks in our home. And I remember being the type of kid that if we'd have little quizzes in Sunday school about information we'd studied, I always wanted to have the right answer. So I was interested in that. It was very positive, very positive. I came from such a believing family that I saw myself as believing. I think by the time I got to high school though, that I began to question certain things. I was very much. I was a good student, I loved reading. I was always an avid reader from the time I was A little tiny girl. My first loves were literature and art, but I was also really interested in film. So I remember in high school, in the 1960s that I really loved art films and I would go to see movies that would have shocked my friends at church. So I think by the time I was in high school, I was very much in the church. It meant a lot to me. I could feel the faith of my parents. I began to question when I was in high school, but I think I still felt myself as a believer very much.

John Dehlin [00:08:05] What were some of your favorite movies? Some of those movies you talked about,

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:08:11] 1967, the Graduate. I think that really influenced me. What is another one? Midnight Cowboy, the Pawnbroker with Rod Steiger. Other movies that I loved in that late 1960s period were the Zeffirelli Shakespeare films, the Romeo and Juliet of the 1960s, and the taming of the Shrew with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I was really interested in movies and in literature. I remember when I was 18 reading Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. lawrence. And I think that was a very important book for me, exploring my sexuality, understanding it, helping me understand it.

John Dehlin [00:09:01] How unique was this for a small town girl from Arizona to be seeing these movies and reading these types of books? Were you sort of very unique? Perceived as being really unique, yes. Did you feel bad about that? Did you feel supported?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:09:18] Well, first of all, it's not something I would have talked to my parents about. Even though my parents were very open and certainly didn't try to control us. They would never have tried to control what we watched or what we read. They were more of the type who they believe that you teach them correct principles and they would trust us to do what is right. So my parents never tried to control that. In terms of my church friends, maybe I even liked being a little bit rebellious in the sense. But it wasn't just simply to be rebellious. I was not the Rebel without a Cause. It was more that I wanted to know. I had a curiosity. But I think I was unique both in. In terms of my church friends, definitely. So they would not have gone to these movies with me. And even in my high school group, there was a small group of us that were part of the drama club. I was in the National Thespian Society and I was in drama. And there was a small group of us that would go to art movies, but that was a very small minority in my high school. Mesa was. How much of a small town was Mesa? Certainly it's next to Phoenix Right. And it was smaller. It's really grown big now. But we had, what, two big high schools? There were probably 3,000 in my high school. So it wasn't like a small high school or anything. So even within that high school, it was a small group.

Seeking Spiritual Confirmation at BYU

John Dehlin [00:10:57] So was there ever a point where you wanted some type of spiritual confirmation? You wanted certainty of the validity of the church and its truthfulness. Did you ever seek for that intentionally as a teenager? And did you ever get the type of response you were hoping for?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:11:18] I took seminary all four years, and I started reading the Book of Mormon. I don't think I finished the Book of Mormon at that point. At that point in my life, I was not as interested in having that sort of a confirmation. I think I just. There was a part of me that just believed. I think that my home was such a. It was not a dogmatic home. But my mother, for example, was the kind of woman who had spiritual experiences and would tell the family about them, and her parents had. And so there was this climate of faith. And I think there was a way in which I just imbibed it. It was not until I was a freshman at BYU that I had that sort of desire to know. I would say that from the time I was from 18 through about 21 at BYU was the period where I was really wanting to have my own confirmation of that. And it really was quite a struggle. I didn't feel it. I remember wanting that confirmation at BYU and praying and not having anything spectacular at all, but finally having this realization that it came from the point, this realization that I had was that. That if I tried to doubt it, that there would be a part of me very deep down that just knew. So what I finally came to realize was that I perhaps was not going to get this spectacular experience that you read about in scriptures. But for me, the important thing was that if I doubted and forced myself to doubt, I knew that really deep down I did believe in the existence of God, that there was truth in Mormonism. So it came more from that negative proposition of. It was very important for me to doubt, because if I hadn't have doubted, then I would have felt intellectually dishonest. I needed to doubt. But the more I doubted and the more I told myself I didn't believe, and the more I tried not to believe, the more I found that there was a spiritual core in me that I didn't know where it came from. That basically I felt something more than just simply the physical reality of things. So I would explain that so that's the experience I had between like 18 and 21 or 22 later, when I was in my 21, 22, I had an experience that I would call a born again experience in terms of reading the Book of Mormon. But that came not so much from questioning or asking, wanting my own testimony. I wasn't seeking for a testimony. I was in deep pain because of depression and was calling out for spiritual help.

John Dehlin [00:14:46] Depressed at byu?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:14:47] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:49] What have you thought about. What was the environment? What were the circumstances?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:14:53] I mean, first of all, depression is a very complex phenomenon, right? And definitely there's depression in my family, and they say that it runs in families. My mother had a lot of depression. Where did it come from? It's hard to explain. I think for me it was part of a whole identity crisis of trying to figure out who I was, what I wanted. Certainly the typical BYU goal of you go there, you meet some great returned missionary, you get married. That didn't happen for me at BYU exactly like that at all. Was that part of it? I'm sure it was, because there is enormous pressure. So to me, it's probably a combination of probably a family disposition toward depression. The fact that I tend to be an interior person. If you go to the Myers Briggs test, I'm very much an interior person. I was always a deep thinker who had to have meaning to things. I want to understand things. That was true of me when I was a teenager, as I said, for all of those reasons, I was seeking to know who I was, what I wanted, what my place was in life. I think this was the beginning of the gender issue for me, that at byu, to be a smart girl,

John Dehlin [00:16:37] on

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:16:38] the one hand, to be a smart girl is a difficult thing because they don't encourage that, or at least they didn't back in the early 1970s when I was there, the late 60s, the early 1970s. So I think all of those factors came together. And then I guess the other factor is that I met a man there who was my first husband, and he was the one who introduced me to Mormon documents. But also he. What can I say? I shouldn't have gotten into this. Right. I may end up revealing more here than I want to. Well, let's just say it this way, having this boyfriend, and he was not the typical return missionary BYU boyfriend. There was a way in which my sexuality. Suddenly I was awakened to things. Gosh, I'm going to.

John Dehlin [00:17:48] I know.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:17:49] Cut, cut, cut, cut. I know Paul's laughing up there. I don't know if we can Edit any of this.

John Dehlin [00:18:01] No, that's fine.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:18:03] But actually, a new world opened to me. But this is all very important because I had. I mean, back in. They probably still do this, that you feel guilty if you pet, right? You feel guilty if you French kiss, you feel guilty if you do anything. Any kind of sexuality outside of marriage, you feel guilty for. But this was very important for my whole spiritual journey. Because, in fact, the irony is that as I explored what my sexuality was and explored my sexual feelings and suddenly saw myself as a sinner because I had crossed some line that you weren't supposed to cross. Because the church had these absolute standards of sexuality, this sort of whole ironic thing happened that as the perfect Mormon girl who had lived all of the rules and had done everything I wanted, I was depressed and unhappy and I couldn't figure out why, if I had lived all the rules and done all the things and supposedly had a testimony, I knew that I believed in God. I had tried to doubt it, but I knew, I felt that there was a spiritual realm and I believed in it. Why was I unhappy? Why wasn't the formula working for me when I suddenly became a sinner? Because I had crossed the sexual line. And as I began then to search in the scriptures and search, I had this spiritual experience where I felt God's grace and God's forgiveness, where these rules that the church had told me were these very strict rules, and that if you defy them and if you go against them, that you're a bad person. And then suddenly I felt God's grace and God's forgiveness. I had an experience where I was so overwhelmed with the love of God, where I felt the love of Christ in a way that made me know that I was okay as a person, which the church had never made me feel. The church makes you feel condemned and judged, and you know that if you do not line up in a certain way that you're not okay. What I felt in this experience was that the love of God was bigger than all of that and that God prized me. And it was not just God. I felt the presence of Jesus Christ and I felt his love. And I felt this transformation in a way that I could deal with my depression and my sense of my inadequacy. The church wants you to be perfect. And I'm already a perfectionist by my personality. And it was killing me because you could never be good enough. And what I felt in this spiritual experience was that God's love, the love of Christ was enough. That that sort of perfection that the church was asking for was death. That that was not what I should be seeking for. What I should be seeking for was to develop my mind, to have more compassion. All of these interiorities that were important to me was what God cared about. That the little rules didn't matter. Those could be wiped away in a minute. But it was the larger issues of spirituality that really mattered. How you treated other people, how you thought, those kinds of things. So, I mean, this was a transforming experience.

John Dehlin [00:21:51] Was there anything specific you were doing that brought it on?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:21:53] Actually, it was reading the Book of Mormon. There were two things. I was in a crisis when I had this experience. It was. I had just graduated from BYU. I graduated in English. This was 1972. I graduated in English. Originally, I was going to do teaching in high school. I had always wanted to teach. From the time I was a little girl, I wanted to teach and I used to play teacher. And I had this big collection of pictures and everything and I wanted to be a teacher. Well, I did student teaching and I found I was not good at it. I was just not confident enough. I was too intellectual for the high school group. I was more interested in ideas. I was more interested in all these questions. And really, if you're going to do high school, you need to have a strong disciplinarian side to you. And I was not like that. So I had a huge crisis over that. I graduated. Now suddenly I knew I couldn't teach in high school. I had this boyfriend that was not church approved who was sort of leading me into areas that the church disapproved of. I didn't have money. I went to Salt Lake. I got a job at a car dealership. I was in a horrible crisis. I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. It was not fitting into the pattern. I decided I was going to read the Book of Mormon again. So here I am, this avid reader and I had read the Book of Mormon in my Book of Mormon class. But it was interesting, but I'd never felt anything in it. So that summer, as I'm reading the Book of Mormon, I'm in this identity crisis. I'm feeling depressed. And as I'm reading the passages in the Book of Alma about the conversion of Alma. And if I had a Book of Mormon, I could read the passage. But there's a passage in there that talks about the spiritual rebirth where he felt the love of God come upon him. And I had the same experience. I mean, I'm going to cry talking about it. It's A long time ago. But for somebody who is feeling so much self loathing, so lost, I was feeling all of those things to feel as I read this. All I can say is that there was this light that descended on me and I felt filled with the love of God and that nothing mattered except for that he loved me and I was worthwhile and that that was enough.

John Dehlin [00:24:37] So read the Book of Mormon. Isn't that the takeaway?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:24:43] Isn't this hilarious that the big apostate, the big dissenter and apostate has this amazing testimony of the Book of Mormon? And so, in fact, it's so ironic because, I mean, I know about all the DNA problems, I know that this sounds like a 19th century document, but the truth of it is that on more than one occasion, I was absolutely transformed by the spiritual power of the doctrine of the Book of Mormon. So I don't know whether it's an ancient document. I mean, the evidence seems to be against it. But for me, it's a sacred text, which is something larger. Because for me, God worked through the Book of Mormon and touched my heart in a way that changed me. And I think the most important message of the Book of Mormon is this personal spiritual message. Because really, I think that's what everybody needs.

John Dehlin [00:25:55] Come, come, ye saints. Nor toil nor labor fear but rejoice when your way, O heart, to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as day. Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive. Do this and joy your hearts will swell all is well. All is well. Do this and joy your hearts will swell. All is well. All is well. All is well. All is well. All is well.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:27:19] All is well.

Margaret's Transition into Mormon Studies

Part 2 of 4 · Ep. 63

Guest [00:00:12] Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but joy when your way. Cold heart to.

John Dehlin [00:00:38] So, Margaret, tell us a bit about your transition into Mormon studies. Now. What were the things you were studying, what were the things you were learning and discovering that led you to be fascinated and want to pursue this area?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:00:55] There were really three things that I would say that that led me in this direction. First of all, I was at BYU during this time period. I've already described a little bit being at BYU in the late 60s and the early 1970s, graduating with my bachelor's degree in 1972 in English. And as I said, my first love was literature, film, etc. When I was a senior, before I graduated, because of my boyfriend who became my first husband, I took Latin and just became thrilled with it. And that led me to come back to BYU to work on a master's degree in classics. So the three things that really led me into Mormon studies were, first of all, that I got interested in ancient languages. I took Greek and Latin and began to work on biblical studies. I started reading regular Christian, Jewish theology and biblical interpretations and reading the texts in the original languages. So that was part of it. So that's one prong. The other prong is that I got interested in early Mormon documents. And that was also because of my first husband. He introduced me to Mike Quinn. He introduced me to Paul, my husband. He introduced me to Hyrum Andress, who was an important BYU religion professor at the time. All of these people were. I mean, this was that. It was the period when they were bringing out new documents. So I started reading things about the 19th century that I had never heard of. And here I'd been in Mormonism all my life. So that was the second thing. And I'll come back to that a little bit. The third thing was being at BYU in the late 60s and the early 1970s and being a smart woman who was interested in ideas and being treated as a second class person. It slowly started to get to me.

John Dehlin [00:03:07] What are some ways that someone in the early 70s, a female, would feel like a second class citizen? I'm putting you on the spot, but

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:03:13] no, I can think of a couple of instances. For example, I remember being asked to teach a Sunday school class at byu and at first it was just they asked me to teach one lesson and I was very excited about it because I was interested. As I mentioned before, I was interested in teaching and I wanted to teach. I liked to present my ideas. So I presented the Sunday school lesson and felt like I did a Fairly good job. I'm always self critical, but it was a good lesson, I think. I remember afterwards one of the men, a returned missionary, saying to me, I don't like. How did he put it? He said something about, I don't like to have a woman teacher. I don't think women should teach Sunday school. So that was the type of thing or just the idea. So that would be one experience. Another one would be that because I began to get interested in theology and in ideas, it was hard to find a context where as a woman you could be included in that conversation. There would be little groups of men who were interested in talking, but it was always the men. So I felt excluded or as an outsider in this area that I was becoming more and more interested in. Fortunately, when I met Paul, he had a group of friends and eventually they included me in their group. I was the only woman. But then that also made me start asking, is there something wrong with me? Why am I the only woman that seems to be interested in these things? So that's another example, a third example. Eventually I started teaching Latin and Greek at BYU in 1972, I began into the master's program in classics. And then I started teaching, first as a graduate student and then I became a teacher there for a while, an instructor. And there were subtle things that little subtle messages that were given. As a woman, you were always subordinate. And I think part of that as well is the fact that again, here I was an intelligent woman. I'm teaching, I'm obviously interested in this. But there was never anybody who said, why don't you go on and get a PhD? I had a brother who was also in the program and they were trying to get him into the program at Princeton. He decided to do something else. But I had all of my male fellow students that they're encouraging to go to, Ph.D. graduate students. And nobody sees me. Here I am teaching, giving all this service to the program, dedicating myself to building up the classic section at byu. And nobody sees me as a serious. This is a serious career for me. And so that was another message. And there was just one thing after another. The way at BYU that the priesthood, the church priesthood structure totally infiltrates the administration. It certainly did in the 70s. I don't know if it's still as strongly that way. And that began to really bother me. So it was a series of things over a number of years that I started really questioning why do I feel like I don't fit in as a woman?

John Dehlin [00:07:02] Wasn't second wave feminism really Coming into its own.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:07:05] It was. And it's funny because certainly in a conscious way, I was not influenced by that at first. I mean, I was in a way insulated at BYU from what's happening in the nation, because absolutely, second wave feminism was just building and building. And in fact, I found myself a little bit defensive at first. I wouldn't have called myself a feminist at first, at all. Oh, no, that's that worldly stuff out there. I'm questioning my role as a woman. I'm upset on a deep level, but I can't even tell myself I'm upset about how I'm treated as a woman. And then they're talking about the era. Eventually there's Sonia Johnson. But I'm feeling very distant from all of that because that has been labeled as somehow worldly and bad. And that's just women trying to change the structure of things. And so there's almost this dissonance in me that at first I don't even recognize that it's conflicting. I distance myself from the era at the same time that theologically I'm asking the question about women's role. And I start reading and using my skills that I'm learning in biblical studies in Greek and Latin to start searching into theology. And I begin to ask the question, does God really want me to be eternally under the rule of man? For me, one of the interesting things that happened during the same time period is that. So here's back to the three prongs. Feeling subordinate at BYU because I'm a woman interested in biblical studies and ancient languages and getting critical tools that are really helping me in my thinking process. And my reading is expanding into. Into other scholarship outside of Mormonism. And then my interest in Mormon 19th century documents because of friends I have that are showing me things. And it was at that time period that I remember first running into the statement by Brigham Young in the Journal of Discourses where he says, that man who honors his priesthood and that woman who honors her priesthood will have an everlasting place in the kingdom of God. And I started running into things like this where I go, whoa, there's something else here. It's not the Sunday school picture. And so for me, those things that I was discovering in Mormon history, there was troubling things that disturbed my picture of the church, but actually they didn't bother me because for me, this narrow little picture that the church was giving me felt stifling. And it didn't work for me on either an emotional or an intellectual level. So the idea that the 19th century was full of all of these radical ideas, whether I agreed with all of them or not was another issue. But at least it was interesting, it was explosive, and it gave me an avenue through which I could ask the question, where is my place as a woman? I think that it took me several years to even know how to ask this. I think all of that was happening in 71 and 72. My first Sunstone speech was in 1984, and that was the missing rib where I talk about Joseph Smith giving Mormon women priesthood through the temple. But in that 12 year period, I'm doing a lot of reading and thinking and talking and working, trying to work through these gender issues and questioning the status quo and Mormonism. And maybe that's the most important thing that I felt entitled. I felt like I could ask, maybe because of this background I had with parents who didn't try to confine me. I think my own intellectual curiosity then, I think for me, the importance of the 19th century documents was that as soon as I realized that the church had not always been the same and that some of the 19th century prophets taught things that were not what the current prophets were teaching, then you had to ask the question, well, how do we know that what they're saying right now is right? If they've rejected Adam God theory and say that's no longer right, how do we know that what they're teaching right now is right? 50 years from now, this could be said to be wrong. So for me, the importance of the 19th century documents was that it exploded the idea of this staid, solid truth that never changes now. Then there was the ethical question, well, if truth seems to shift from the 19th century to the 20th century in Mormonism, how do we know what is true? What are the touchstones for determining whether something is good or bad? And that was a deeper philosophical ethical question that I had to grope with. But then the feminist issue fit in with that too, which is, is this right? I mean, why do I feel so bad about my place as a Mormon woman? Does it mean that there's something wrong with my first question? And that was part of my soul searching.

Historical Documents and Women's Roles in Early Mormonism

The Case for Women's Priesthood in Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:12:47] So what are the. Let's say that there are some young women today who haven't even started studying any of the historical documents. Anything in the 19th century, take us through five or 10, and you can do it through a timeline. Take us through five or ten sort of trends or gifts or teachings that would have emerged from the Nauvoo time period and traced themselves all the way through the early 20th century that young women would be surprised to hear today, but that were actually quite a standard and pervasive for the early saints.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:13:32] I hope I can remember some of the exact things. I don't. I mean, I've done a lot, but let me just give you a feel for this. Well, for me, the most important thing was the idea of women receiving priesthood in the temple. For me, that is just earth shattering and I think very important for women.

John Dehlin [00:13:52] What does that mean? How did that happen?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:13:54] Well, the way I discovered it was reading, as I said, the statement of Brigham Young getting into the Joseph Smith documents, where Joseph Smith, in a series of speeches to the Relief Society, talked about the way in which they would receive priesthood. In both the notes that were taken by people that attended those Relief Society meetings, this was in 1842, he gave a series of lectures. He told them he was going to make them a kingdom of priestesses. He told them that they would have a greater right to priesthood in the future. He told them that they had the right to use spiritual gifts, that just by the power of the Holy Ghost, they had the right to gifts, but that soon they would have even a greater right to those gifts. There were just a number of statements like this. And then in his personal journal, it says so explicitly. I gave a lecture today on how the women would receive the priesthood. I mean, it just says it just like that. So when I began to read those documents, I connected that with my own temple experience where both. I had had a spiritual experience there where I felt endowed with God's power, but also the whole ritual itself. Women wear the same robes of the priesthood that men wear. Women officiate in the ordinances of the priesthood as it talks in the temple language. So for me, that's a crucial piece of evidence. And why is it crucial? Because obviously that priesthood that women receive in the temple is not functional in church today. But for me, it's crucial because again, it opens up the current structure to a reinterpretation and to a critique because it says, is it really God's will that women do not have the priesthood? Now, why do I think priesthood is so important? Maybe I don't have time right now to talk about all the problems theologically with priesthood place because some people say, I just think we should get rid of priesthood, right? It's hierarchical. But in the current church, because everything is run by priesthood, women being excluded from it means that they basically have no vote, they have no voice, they have no input in the official structure. Everything only has to come unofficially as men, allow them to participate. And that bothers me a great deal. So to me, priesthood is the central question. No matter what topic you're dealing with in gender in Mormonism, it always comes back to priesthood. But in addition to that, two or three other things. You asked me the question, what would women be interested in? Well, I think the fact that in the 19th century and up until 1970, the women controlled the Relief Society themselves. It was an independent. Yes, certainly it was an auxiliary within the church. But the women presidency of the Relief Society had real administrative power. They controlled their own budget. They had their own magazine. They had welfare resources that they used independently of the men. I think that's enormously important for women's sense of their own worth and also for their ability to do good and to use their own initiative. So I think that's a second thing I would say. So priesthood, the Relief Society, the independence of the Relief Society. Another thing was the sense of women, of having the ability to use spiritual gifts that in the 19th century, they felt they just had a natural right to. It wasn't just the priesthood that did it, that women did it. I remember reading in my great grandmother's journal about one of her children becoming very ill, and they didn't have the medical kinds of resources that we do now. She prayed and she laid her hands on the child's head, and she felt inspired to give the child something. And the child threw up and the illness kind of broke, but she gave the child a blessing. She felt she had the perfect right to do that. As. As a mother, as a woman, how

John Dehlin [00:18:41] did you feel to discover that, to read that

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:18:46] to me, those kinds of stories? There were quite a few family journals. They formed a lot of my thinking about what Mormonism is. And I think maybe the important part of it is that because this was part of my own history as well as part of the Church's history, that it gave me a sense of empowerment that the church didn't just belong to the leaders, but it belongs to me and my family as well. Maybe that's the most important thing. I mean, another example of that which has nothing to do with women. One of my ancestors is Warren Foote, and he wrote three volumes of beautiful journals. And he describes in there going, would it be Kirtland? Where they went to see the papyri, the Egyptian papyri, and talking to Joseph Smith about them. And the way he describes it is that they were big rolls. They're very different than the thing that we now have. And he describes this that it was all on the floor in this long roll and that Joseph explained to them that the red marks and the margins were the scribes marks. And so I had read that when I was in my 20s. And so when the big controversy came out about the Joseph Smith papyri, I said, well, what we have right now is not what my great great grandfather described in his journal. I remember reading that in my 20s. So there's a way in which that transforms you, I think, to have that firsthand knowledge that you're not just dependent on these other authorities for how to think about history or how to think about doctrine. It gives you an independence of spirit and an ownership that I think are really important.

John Dehlin [00:20:34] It's not just a textbook knowledge, it's part of your history, your heritage, your

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:20:39] family, your right to this organization and church. So those to me are probably the three most important things for women also. Well, maybe four, you ask for five, but I can at least give you four. The fourth thing would be their 19th cent century women's involvement in the suffrage movement and that they felt that they had a right to speak out for women's position. And then later, it wasn't until the early 80s, 1980s I began to read, I went through, before I gave my first sunstone speech, I read volumes out of the Women's Exponent. And you read in there and you see how strongly the 19th century women felt about the importance of arguing for women's rights. I mean their subtitle under Women's Exponent was For the rights of the women of Zion and the whole world. That's what they felt that they were fighting for. When I discovered those documents in the early 80s, that was very empowering as well. The idea that they felt like that it was their duty to fight for the rights of women and that they should do this as daughters of God. That was extremely important. And by the time I read that, that was like 1982, 83 era has passed. I'm beginning to feel upset with myself that I didn't participate in the era because at that back in the early 70s, I was still not quite sure enough of myself to participate in that. And I think that that was transforming for me because I was determined. I felt the same way about the priesthood and the black issue, by the way, that I was not involved in the discussions on that. And so by 1980 I began to feel like that I had not spoken out on blacks in the priesthood, I had not participated in the era, and by damn I was not going to be left behind again. I was beginning to feel that it was my duty as an LDS woman to speak up about issues that affect. I mean, these are not just little doctrinal issues that have no practical application for me. Issues of gender and race and sexuality touch people on their everyday lived lives and how they feel about themselves and whether or not they can relate to God or relate to their children or their spouses, or they can have healthy relationships. These kinds of issues are so crucial. But I felt. Began to feel so strongly that I had to speak up about them. And when I gave that first Sunstone speech in 1984 called the Missing Rib, it caused a stir. And I remember at that point my sister, Janice Allred, asking me, what are you going to do if they want to talk about this in the press or that this becomes controversial? How are you going to handle this? And at first I hesitated, and then I think I made a commitment then that I wasn't going to be afraid anymore that I was going to speak out. And that was more or less my. I mean, obviously I hoped I could keep my membership, but I really felt like I had missed the boat in the past and I wasn't going to miss it again. I was going to speak out because to me, it's so connected to what I think is the most important aspect, aspect of religion, which goes back to this spiritual experience I described, which is the worth of each individual soul and the idea of people being able to feel that God loves them and that they are worthwhile and that what they believe and say is worthwhile and that their voice is worthwhile in the community?

Mormon Feminist Colleagues and the Early Movement

John Dehlin [00:24:55] Who were some of your colleagues in the early 80s, some of the women that you were talking with, who were sort of. And what was the environment like as you guys were trying to discuss how to strategize, how to make progress? Did you have any colleagues or peers?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:25:10] You know, when I first started out, I didn't at all. I was very much a loner. I mean, something that I didn't mention that was very influential was that while I was at byu, Eloise Bell gave a talk about feminism. It never would be allowed now, I don't think, but now I'm forgetting the date. It was probably 74, 75, maybe even 76 when she gave. It was a devotional speech. I was teaching byu. Excuse me, I was teaching at byu, and it was a general BYU devotional to the whole school. And she talked. The subject of her talk was why feminism is not at odds with Mormonism. And that was the first time that I thought, I am a feminist, and I wasn't ashamed. It must have been like 75, 76, when I was teaching at BYU. And I remember just being thrilled by that speech, and I was already feeling all of these things, but I wasn't able to claim the title. So that speech that she gave was very important. Now, if it were the present me, I would have gone and talked to her. At that point in my life, I was more. I don't know if I want to use the word shy, but certainly I was more of a private person. And I didn't go and talk to her. So I was still doing more exploring on my own. It was not until 1984, when I gave that speech at Sunstone, that I began to connect with other women, which then began to be very powerful. But from all the 70s up until 84, I was mostly by myself and just reading. I was reading other. Well, I knew that those women in Boston, that they had brought forth documents about 19th century women, Claudia Bushman and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and other women. I mean, I was aware of their writings. Maureen Beecher Ersenbach. Did I say her name right? I know her. Maureen. I was aware of it, but they were not my friends. 84. When I gave that speech then, I was invited to a couple of. I was invited to Pilgrimage and some other women's retreats. And I started getting to know women. And there were a group, group of us, Lynn Whitesides, my sister Janice, and a few of us that started a book group where we started talking about feminist issues. So from 84 on, I became very involved in Laurie Stromberg. I met her. During that time period, all of us began to talk. I met Lavina, but it was not until 84, when I gave that first speech, I kind of came out of the blue. I'd been on my own, doing all this research, talking to men like my husband and Andy E. Had and Mike Quinn. I knew all of them, but all my friends were men until that point. 84 was the first time that I started connecting with women. And then we started the Mormon women's forum in 1988, four years after that. So from then on, we began to start talking. When we started the forum, which connects with your question, we really. We were very idealistic. Well, at least the two women who actually started at Kelly Frame and Karen Christ Erickson. Christ. They had read some of my work and they'd read other things. And they wanted to start a forum where you could bring together sort of the intellectual women who were doing the research with mainstream women in the church. And they had this idea, we can just get this forum and we can start talking and we'll talk about issues like Heavenly Mother and women in the priesthood. And if we can just get women to come there, they're going to see how important this all is, and it's going to bring about this big change. I was more skeptical by that point, but I said, okay, why not? It's interesting because at first, it's true, we had a lot of attendance at the Mormon Women's Forum meetings. A lot of women from BYU came, but we didn't really ever get mainstream women. It was really difficult to appeal to those women in the wards and the stakes. I know that Karen invited women from her ward for our first meeting, and they were shocked and appalled that we were talking about women having priesthood. And they immediately reported her to the bishop and she got in trouble. Although at first there was the feeling that at least BYU women and other women who were very involved in the church could attend, by the early 90s, there began the polarization and things began to fall apart.

John Dehlin [00:30:05] Would you say a lot of people attended?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:30:07] Oh, two or 300.

John Dehlin [00:30:08] And this would be meet how often?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:30:11] Well, at first we were meeting maybe four times a year. We had one big debate in 1989 on women in the priesthood that we held at East High School. There were at least 600 that attended

Guest [00:30:24] that

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:30:28] in the first debate.

John Dehlin [00:30:29] Whether or not they should have it.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:30:30] Yes. So we had both sides. I was arguing for. And I remember Ralph Ellsworth. Not Ellsworth. Ralph Hancock down at byu, he was against, but the fact that he participated, I always appreciated anybody who's willing to at least talk and not just dismiss you. So between 89 and 93, the Mormon Women's Forum was very vital. We would usually have at least 200 people. But again, it usually appealed more to the Sunstone crowd than mainstream Mormons. It was very early perceived as feminist and dangerous. 93, when you had the September 6th and the excommunications, it very much polarized Mormon feminism. BYU women were more or less told they couldn't participate anymore. Women, because of the excommunications, were afraid that if they got involved, they might lose their church membership. So what I saw Happen in like 1993, in that period, 93, 94, is that you had a huge polarization of women on women's issues, where either they said, I've got to be quiet and go back to church because I don't want to lose my membership or they just walked, just said, I'm out of here. And I know personally hundreds of women that left in that period of the early 90s who left the church because they just said the way that the church has treated people like me, Margaret, Janice, Lavina, Max, seen all the women that got in trouble, and especially because now this was a repeat of the Sonia Johnson, they felt like there was no place for them in the church, and they left. So I personally know hundreds of women that left. It's interesting because in that period of the late 80s, we really wanted to believe that the Sonia Johnson thing wouldn't happen again. We wanted to think that we were approaching this because it was not political, that it was more religious in a way, that we were trying to tap into the roots of Mormonism, that we weren't just bringing in ideas from the feminism and the world, that it was more theologically based, that it would be more Mormon and more acceptable, that it would be different than that. But it wasn't. And to me, that was very sad. So I don't know, but I think there's going to be another wave of Mormon feminism. I think already, like with feminist Mormon housewives and other things on the Internet, that there's a younger generation of women that. Will they find a way to work more within the church? I don't know. To me, the church is so. There's such a male authoritarian hierarchy, and there's such a fear of challenging that that I see that as the huge problem.

Guest [00:33:51] Nor toil nor labor fear but with joy when your way, O heart, to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day. Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares promise to drive to this and joy your hearts will swell all is well, all is well. Do this and join Our hearts will swell all is well all is well all is well all is well all

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:35:08] is well all is well.

Guest [00:35:33] Sa.

The Mormon Women's Forum and Advocacy Strategies

Part 3 of 4 · Ep. 64

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:00:12] Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but joy when your way. Cold heart to this journey may appear.

John Dehlin [00:00:38] So during the 80s, first of all, what was the reaction in your personal life to your presentation, your Adams Rib presentation, your starting of the Mormon Women's Forum? What was happening in your ward with your family members, with your neighbors, with your ecclesiastical leaders? What happened in your world? Were you a BYU professor in 84 when you gave that presentation?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:01:08] I was teaching as an adjunct professor. The whole academic world is so hierarchical. And I taught at BYU for 14 years, but all of that time I taught. I was an adjunct. I was an adjunct instructor. I didn't finish my PhD until 2002. I had my master's degree, so I was a professor, but not in the whole tenured system, which means that you have very little security. So I taught when I taught at BYU from 1975 until 1989 as an adjunct professor, first down at the BYU campus and then when we moved up here, I was teaching a couple of classes at the Salt Lake Center. I was doing a myth class and some classical civ classes also. I was doing that part time because I was also having my children. My children were born between 1979 and 1984. So the adjunct teaching worked very well because I could do it, nurse my baby and run and teach a class and come back again because I wasn't full time. But the teaching was very important. I enjoyed my teaching a lot. I never brought my sunstone issues into my BYU classroom, really. But after I participated in 1989, the debate that I mentioned where the forum sponsored. The forum sponsored this debate about women in priesthood, should women have priesthood in Mormonism? Which was very well publicized. They did a little spot on it on the TV and. And so forth. When was that? That was in, I guess the spring of 89. I was scheduled to teach. I can't remember now whether it was one or two classes at the Salt Lake center that next fall. Suddenly I was all ready to teach. I was getting my syllabus together, went over to the Salt Lake center, and I found out that my class had been cancelled. And it was very strange. Suddenly it was just not on the. I had already talked to the director about that. I was going to teach my regular class and I was getting my syllabus ready. And then suddenly the class is not on the. However they used to do it back then, the. The class schedule for that upcoming semester. And I couldn't figure out why. So I called the secretary and said, I think there's Been a mistake somehow. They haven't listed my class. And she started. She said, oh, well, you're going to have to talk to the director of the center. So I called him up and he goes, well, we've just decided not to have that class. Well, I mean, I don't have time to go through all the ways that Paul and I had already seen. I can come back to one experience that we'd seen, that church leaders, if they are worried about you, that they'll try to silence you. We'd already had that experience on at least three occasions with church leaders. So I was suspicious and I pressured him and I said, could this have anything to do with my involvement in the Mormon Women's Forum? And I pressured him enough, and he was a good enough person that he finally broke down. And he said, well, yes, it does, and I'm really sorry. You've been a good teacher, and I'm sorry, but we can't have you anymore. And then later, I had it confirmed by two people who knew that I lost my position at BYU there as an adjunct teacher because of my involvement in the Mormon Women's Forum. So that was very painful, the idea that it would, you know. And I tried to tell the director, look, I have never used my classroom to push my ideas about church issues. And that was when he said, yes, I know you've been a good teacher, but I'm sorry, we can't have you. I have. I have this.

John Dehlin [00:05:53] But between 84 and 89.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:05:56] So that was 89.

John Dehlin [00:05:57] Were there bishops?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:05:58] Yes, and so I started with that one. But really, there was another instance when we first moved to Salt Lake and we lived over in the Taylorsville area. Paul and I did a little discussion that somehow got written up in the paper, and we heard from a bishop who liked us that he was not supposed to give us any calling or any job. So that happened to us. I'm trying to remember. It had also happened to Paul in Orem, that he had taught a BYU class and he taught about the Book of Mormon and he taught grace. And there was some church, some BYU professor, religion department person who was upset, and Paul got released from calling. So we had that happen in Orem. We had it happen when we were in Taylorsville, when we moved into. We were living over in our condo in Park Place in that ward. We knew our records had been tagged. We found out when we moved from Taylorsville over to the east side of Salt Lake into the. The holiday area, that when we moved, our records were tagged. What does that Mean what it means if your records are tagged. And we found out, I won't mention the name, but we actually had a general authority friend that we checked this out with because we didn't want to simply be paranoid. We wanted to find out if it actually happens or not. And he found out that it did. And what happens is that if you are seen as a troublemaker, I don't know if they still use the same system. So this would have been in about 87. We moved up to Salt Lake in 84. So in 87 we moved to the east side of the valley and found out that our records were tagged, which meant that when they send your records there is some kind of an indication, I don't know exactly literally what they do, but that they have to call the previous record purse, the previous leader who will tell them that you're a troublemaker and that you're not allowed to hold any position. So that's what happened. So that it happened to us.

John Dehlin [00:08:22] So calling ceased at some point.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:08:24] Yeah. Although what we've also discovered, Paul and I, in fact, when we were in that Taylorsville ward, the stake president, they were told from a general authority, from regional representative, our bishop was told. Told that we were to be silenced. Basically, he secretly had us do something kind of on because he liked us and he didn't feel like that it was right what they were doing, that he felt like that we were good members and that we shouldn't have this happen. So he sort of gave us an inconspicuous way of participating in the ward. Eventually when we moved to, when we were in the. I always get the names of the stakes mixed up. It was one of the Cottonwood stakes. We had a very good bishop there that called me to be a Sunday school teacher and Paul to be a Sunday school teacher. So they have quite a bit of discretionary power. In fact, the same bishop that called me to be the Sunday school teacher at the time of the September 6, he was supposed to hold a court on me. He was told to hold a court on me and he wouldn't because he felt like that I didn't deserve it. So that has been our experience, both that and this happened from the early 80s to Paul and me basically between about. We got married in 78, starting with about 79, starting from 1979 until 93, when Paul was excommunicated. During that. What. How long is that? That's quite a long period. We had one run in after another with leaders. But what we found was that it was more Leaders above who, because something was in the news that we had spoken out on a certain topic, that the topic itself, the regional rep or whatever, would tell the local leader that they had to call us in or that they shouldn't let us hold a calling or that we were troublemakers or something like that. So that we were basically branded. The only way that then we were allowed to participate from 1979 until 93 was because of the good graces of some local leader who would talk to us and say, I like these people, I want them to be able to bless the ward in some way. So really it was that long of a period. We were basically branded from 1979 until 1993. And I know it was on a higher level than just that. It was leaders above.

John Dehlin [00:11:11] And were you pained about that?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:11:12] Extremely pained. We were extremely pain. Both my husband and I were. It was very hard. Paul was a convert, but he had joined very much because of a spiritual conversion. As I've already explained, I had this Mormon heritage. I had been a believer. I was very passionate about Mormonism. I think Paul and I though were both also very idealistic. We were part of that 70s generation. It's interesting that when Paul and I first met at byu, we were part of a group that was very interested in the concept of Zion. This idea of this perfect community that would economically have all things in common. And at the time we didn't think about that. We were really being influenced by this larger countercultural movement of the 60s and the 70s, of the idealism of our generation, and that we were just. Imbibing these same ideas and seeing them in the context of the church. That those ideals of our generation, of the anti authoritarianism, the idea of economic reform and helping the poor, the notion of racial and gender equality, all of those issues of the 1960s and 70s, we were seeing the possibility of those. And this is why we liked 19th century Mormon doctrine, was that this whole concept of this Zion community where you had the equality, we saw that as an ideal in the 19th century and we wanted that to happen in the present church. So we were. And what we believed was that this was in the doctrine of Mormonism. You know, all we had to do was reawake to our own heritage and we could find it there. So a lot of us were talking about Zion and we were very idealistic and really felt that the church could be better. And for both Paul and me, we also felt that those social issues were connected with the church's failure to teach. What we saw as the real Gospel of Christ, which was the gospel of love and grace, that for us so often the gospel is interpreted to mean living all the rules of the church. And Paul and I both, we both had spiritual conversions where we felt like that the real gospel was the love of Jesus Christ that transforms you into a person that wants to have a community, that treats everybody in this way of equality. That was what the gospel meant to us. So we were very idealistic, I have to admit it. So I say all of that because that's connected with how much it hurt us that this was happening. And I think that at first I've heard somebody say that there's the old if only we can get to the Tsar, right? If only we can get to the Tsar, it's these mid level bureaucrats that are really causing the problems, but really on the top it's God's church and it would all be okay. And I think that what happened to us in the church was that we were very pained by what happened, but we thought maybe, well, it's the regional reps, it's these people, its people on the lower levels. And between 1979 and 1993, what we came to realize was that at the highest levels of the church and finally with Elder Boyd Packer, who was instrumental in both of our excommunications, that the church didn't want us and that our vision of Zion and our vision of the Gospel was not what the church wanted and that there was really no place for us. And so it was a process from the late 70s to the early 90s of being idealistic and then finally realizing that at the very top levels their vision of what the church was was very different than what we wanted.

John Dehlin [00:15:38] So in terms of strategy, maybe you had different strategic approaches depending on the actual era. Sounds like early on it was just a matter of our strategy is let's get the information out there, let's get people knowing about it. And once the right people know, that in and of itself will be transformative. Was there a point where you realized maybe that's not going to work? Let's go try and set up interviews with these men, let's try and get to them more directly. Or was there ever sort of how much do we really want to be this outspoken, antagonistic or a strong voice of opposition that will just sort of compel over time them to start paying attention?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:16:26] Actually, John, you've just said very eloquently the process, as I said, we started out idealistic and just feeling like, I mean both Paul and I Started out that way, feeling that you just had to preach the truth, right. And that people would respond to the truth, that it was a matter of getting the information out there and that we believed that everybody had goodwill. Right? I mean, Paul and I have very different personalities. For me, with my research on women and the priesthood and Joseph Smith and looking at the foundations of Mormonism, I think that I really felt at first that, as you said, oh, look what I've discovered, there is a basis in Mormon theology for women having priesthood and for women being the equals of men in the structure of the church. I was naive in thinking that people would just respond to it because it was so obviously true from my perspective, and it felt so good and enlightening and felt so wonderful, and I just thought they would respond to it. So there was that at the beginning. But I think that because we also very early began to feel this resistance, that we became realistic pretty fast too, I guess, although I would describe myself as always a mixture of idealism and realism, that by the time we founded the Mormon Women's Forum, I was skeptical, but I still felt it was worthwhile. So I guess I've had always a mixture of that. In terms of strategy, maybe one of our problems is that we've never been really good at strategy in terms of we didn't sit down and say, okay, what is our strategy for change? It was more spontaneous than that. But obviously there was also a process of realizing what worked and didn't work. So you asked, did we ever write letters? Yeah, we did. We both wrote letters. The Mormon alliance, which was founded. What year did we do that? 91. 92. I can't even remember. 92, which was an organization which was meant to deal not with just spiritual abuse within the church, but also to deal with defamation against the church, although that branch has never flourished. We actually wrote a letter to the First Presidency and the twelve Apostles, where we requested a meeting, asking if we could meet with them to talk about some of the issues. Paul had tried to get audiences with various general authorities from time to time and actually did. He talked to Dallin Oaks on one occasion and Marlon Jensen and various other people. So there was an attempt to do that. One of the things that we realized very early as well was that if there were going to be any changes, it was not going to be at a local level. It had to be up here. And I think one of the frustrations in Mormonism is that it's very. In the Mormon LDS community is that it's very difficult to get an audience with the higher level leaders. Because as we found when we sent this letter, the Mormon Alliance, I didn't finish my idea there, but this connects with my other thought, which is that if you want to bring about change, you have to reach the upper level leaders. But there are two big obstacles. First of all, they don't want you to do it that way. They want you to talk to lower level leaders. And yet those leaders have nothing to do with, with larger policy doctrinal issues, which is what we were concerned with. So that's one big problem. And so to even get an audience, they won't listen to you unless you're a family member like Steve Benson or you know them personally or something like that. I mean, the only reason Paul got an audience with Dallin Oaks is that he had been his research assistant at BYU when Dallin Oaks was the president and Paul was a law student. And the same thing. Anytime we've ever been able to talk to anybody, it's been through some connection. So that's one big obstacle and problem. The other problem, which we begin to realize more and more, so maybe we were strategizing more than I thought consciously, is that any kind of either, not just criticism, but even a suggestion that there is something that is wrong, that you might have an answer for, that they would like to hear, is considered almost apostasy in and of itself because it's saying you don't have all the answers. And so that was so frustrating because in fact we did try to before we said some of our strongest public things. We did try to work a little bit more under, you know, in the other direction, but you just can't get access. And anything that you say is seen as you're an upstart, you're insubordinate, Even if you try to be as polite as you can, if you're criticizing, it's seen like that. And that is a huge, huge problem in the church. I think it still is.

John Dehlin [00:21:58] And to what extent did you guys ever empathize with their situation? Because. Because if the church rests on revelation, the prophetic mantle and authority, if the general membership got the idea that just by making suggestions and giving advice they could steer the ship in some way,

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:22:18] it would be chaos.

John Dehlin [00:22:19] Doesn't that totally undermine the feeling that God through the leadership is at the helm? Did you ever get to a place where you said, I'm frustrated, but I totally get why they can't respond to us in a direct way?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:22:36] I guess I feel two things about that. First of all, I'm very empathetic toward them. And in spite of criticisms I've given about either church policy or doctrine or even disagreeing with leaders, I've always tried to be respectful to them as people and to not do any kind of ad hominem attack or say that they are bad leaders or anything. In the recent Sunstone article, I have on Are boys more important than Girls? I do a critique of President Hinckley's talk. I have a great deal of respect for President Hinckley. I think he's a wonderful leader of the church. He's probably one of the best presidents we've ever had. He's very moderate. I think he's very thoughtful. He's an intelligent man. I have respect for them and I know how hard it is to lead anything. I mean, as a parent, how hard is it to try to help your kids? Not over. Not do too much, not do too little, do the right thing. I mean, every parent knows how agonizing. I'm a teacher. It's very hard to lead in anything. I'm very empathetic toward them. I know it's difficult and I really am very sympathetic with that. And I think they do a lot of wonderful things. I think the church does a lot of wonderful things. So that's one part of what I feel, but the other part of what I feel is that I think they could be more open to the members and it wouldn't have to be chaos. You know, most people don't have ideas or don't care. You know, I mean, I don't know. I think that it's a huge mistake on their part to see anybody who critiques or questions as an apostate non believer. First of all, it's not true. And secondly, it doesn't have to be. It's not this one way or the other. Either you buy into everything and everything is top down or the other way that it's chaos and everybody has an equal vote. I'm not arguing for chaos. Everybody has an equal vote. But I think that there have to be some kind of avenues of discussion or. I mean, it's like a family. I remember when we were being grilled by our stake president with the whole question of in August and September of 1993, where the stake president kept saying, just obey me, just obey me. It's like a parent and a child. I am the parent, you're the children. I just want you to obey me and be quiet. And I looked at him and said, that's not my style of parenting. I Never have done that with my children. I always want my children to tell me their feelings, to give me their input. I think we have a healthier family if there's some interplay between us. And I think it's the same way in the church. I mean, we heard later that when the Mormon alliance sent this letter that they were meaning. We got a little dismissal letter back from the Secretary of the First Presidency. But we heard through the grapevine that they saw it as insubordination and they were upset. But why? Why not? I mean, if I'm a leader, if I'm a parent, I don't know what my children are feeling. I don't know what my student, the student back there, I can't tell whether or not they understand what I'm saying up here or if even what my experience is make any sense to them. It doesn't make any sense to me that they have to be so closed. I mean, I am empathetic to how hard it is, but I think that with some creativity that we could open up to something that would be so much more productive in the church because the members. The spirit of God works through each member of the church and their experience matters. And yet there's no mechanism for listening to them. And to me, this whole model that God directs them in every little thing, and we just have to be satisfied with that. To me, that is so simplistic and naive. That is not how it works. Jesus does not show up to them every week and say, do this, this, and this. I'm not saying they don't get inspiration, but we all know that when you get inspiration, that either you can misinterpret it. And not only that, how do you even know that you're asking all the right questions? Air conditioning. If I'm sitting at the front of the room, I'm at the front of the car and the air is blowing on me, and I'm going, it's fine. And I'm controlling the dials. But the person in the very back, we have this huge van. And the person in the back is ready to faint because they are not getting any air whatsoever, Right? I mean, and they go, I'm dying back here. Air, please, air. And the person at the top says, I'm the leader here. If I let all of you control the air conditioning, it's going to be horrible in here. Well, that's just not true. There's a big group here. We've got to listen to all the voices. So I just think that that is a flow false model. The idea that we're going to have chaos if we let members talk about what their problems. Even the fact that if you say, I'm hot, I'm dying, I can't breathe, you're an apostate because you've critiqued the church. Right. I mean, that's basically the analogy. It doesn't make sense to me. I think there's got to be somewhere in between where I've never said that. That they don't have the right to create the rules or whatever. I just think that we could have a more open, well, functioning family, church family. If there were some mechanism and it could be an orderly mechanism for hearing various issues that members have.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:28:58] Come. Come ye saints. Nor toil nor labor Fear but rejoice. Wend your way, Oh heart to use this journey may appear Great shall be as your day. Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to this and joy your hearts will swell. All is well, all is well. Do this and joy your hearts will swell. All is well, all is well. All is well. All is well. All is well.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:30:22] All is well.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:30:34] Sa.

The September Six and Institutional Pushback

Part 4 of 4 · Ep. 65

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:00:12] Come, come, ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but joy when your way, O heart, to this journey may appear.

John Dehlin [00:00:39] Tell us about 1993 and I'll set it up in this way. As I started Studying about the September 6, it was easy for me to feel like you guys were victims. Like, oh, these people were just trying to do what was right. They were just trying to speak honestly and candidly. Like you just said, I'm burning up back here. Some of us are burning up. And so it's just easy to construct a narrative such that you're victims. But as I've gone back and listened to some of the speeches that were being given in 1992 and 93, I mean, they were bold. It almost felt like there was sort of a subtle plea saying, we're ready to take this next step, bring it on, excommunicate us. And we feel like somehow like Galileo suffering what he suffered or Obi Wan Kenobi being killed. Somehow that made Luke more powerful and strong in the end. So I guess it's a two part question. Were you anticipating that? Did you almost want it to happen? And what were you thinking would happen once the excommunications happened? Like if you had to project a timeline, you 95, 98, 2000, what did you see as the storyline and even the positive fruits that might emerge? It's a big question, but you've got

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:02:01] no, yeah, it's a good question, John. Certainly I don't want to think of myself as simply a victim. To me, I never like these sort of false dichotomies. Either you're a victim or the flip side of that that I hear all the time from church members is, well, you made a choice. It was just your choice. You could have stayed in the church. All you had to do was obey your leader and you made the choice. It had nothing to do with anybody else. It was your choice and you have to take the responsibility of that. So those are the two extremes. Either I'm sort of the helpless little martyr victim or I am, oh, I made the choice and I just kind of merrily went all my way and I have to accept the responsibilities. I think it's a much more complex picture of an interactive. And I see that even in terms of, as you said, the boldness and the rhetoric, why did I become bolder? If you look at my 1984 speech, my first speech at Sunstone versus the speech I gave in August of 1993 where I participated on a panel called if Mormon Women have had the priesthood since 1843. Why aren't they using it? By that time, I had been given an ultimatum by my stake president to say that I could not speak, write, publish, discuss anything to do with church history or church doctrine in any form, or they would hold a court on me. So giving the speech that I gave at that sun symposium was, in a sense, my choice that I was saying, no, I will not be silent now. There was a part of me that still hoped that they would see that it was wrong to excommunicate me. But I think that I had accepted my fate by August of 1993, and that was the boldest statement that I had given to that point. In terms of your question about was there an escalation of boldness, I think that there are two reasons for the escalation of boldness. One of them is that you, first of all, you start feeling like you're speaking to deaf ears. So there's a frustration that built between the early 80s and the early 90s where you've tried the private avenues, you've tried to be reasonable, you've given your good reasons why things need to be changed, and there seems to be no response. And so it's sort of like if you use my analogy again, of the person in the back of the bus, you start shouting louder. So part of the escalation or the rhetoric that's rising is your frustration because you feel like you're not being heard. And it's silly on one level, because it's sort of like when you're speaking to a foreigner, that if you. If you talk louder, that they'll understand you. Right. Which, of course, they don't. Well, I mean, it is true that I tried different ways of representing it. So you're increasing your rhetoric because you want to be heard and you want to be clear, and you want people to see how important it is. So that's part of it. The other part is that I think that up until I received the letter, which was the ultimatum, where they said they were going to hold the cord on me, I really did not think it was going to lead to excommunication, because I just could not imagine that for myself. That was like this horror out here. It's like the way we can't really think about our own death. Right. We all know we're going to die, but we don't really believe it on a certain level. And that was how I felt about excommunication when they gave me that ultimatum. I think that there was a part of me I Had to go through that very soul searching process and say, I mean, my church membership meant a lot to me. So it was not something I did lightly. It took a lot of soul searching to say, is this what I should do? Is it worth the price? Should I go ahead and speak? And I felt like I had to. For me not to speak out was to participate in an abusive system. To go along with something that I saw was very abusive. And it wasn't because I felt like I had to talk about women in priesthood. I could have been quiet about that issue. For me, the underlying principle was really the important thing. The underlying principle was what kind of a spiritual community do we have in the church? What kind of relationship do we have between members and leaders and what kind of models? And that was the issue. So it was a conscious decision. I'm going to give that Sunstone speech. I'm not going to be quiet. I told the Stake President at the very beginning, I cannot agree to be quiet. Not because I think that what personally I have to say is so important, but because the principle of freedom of belief and expression are to me so essential to have faith. I don't think you can have real faith if you can't explore your doubts. So there was that. Let me see if I fully answered you. So that was partly why then. I guess the other part of this, of the escalation is that it's like being on death row. If somebody is pointing a gun at you and saying, be quiet or else, and you've decided that you can't be quiet, you're going to say the most radical thing because you already know that you're going to get killed. Right? So what do I have to lose now? Why be quiet now? So that was it then. Once Paul had been excommunicated and we were more or less labeled as apostates and out of the church then. Since that time, even though originally I didn't have a lot of plans to keep writing, I have felt like I'm in a great position now. I've already been Xed. I'm already labeled as a bad person and an apostate. Somebody's got to say the radical things for the people who are in the church. They can't say it. So I might as well be a voice in exile because somebody needs to be that voice. And I'm in the perfect position now that I can be that voice. So that was sort of the process. John, I don't know. Did I not answer one of the parts of the question I'm gonna ask you.

Boldness, Dissent, and the Limits of Church Dialogue

John Dehlin [00:09:04] I'm playing devil's advocate for just a second. Please forgive me.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:09:06] No, no, no, no. That's academia, right? Devil's advocate. Give me your hard question. Tell me I'm wrong.

John Dehlin [00:09:13] No. So there's a. I don't want to call it academic, but there's an intellectual argument that says women are in, that they're lower in the hierarchy, that they don't get to make the decisions, that the men rule, that the women don't have the priesthood, that they're not empowered. I can see all that. But then if you just totally forget, turn off your brain and you just say, what's the average woman experiencing in the church in 1993? My mom, my sisters, you know, they go to church, they serve in their calling, they raise their kids, they have spiritual experiences. They bear their testimony. They have visiting teachers come, they have home teachers come. When their sprinkler system breaks, someone from the ward comes and helps them. They help raise their kids in a place where the kids get ethical nourishment and get a support system that helps them be healthy and successful in life. The women in my life, because they probably weren't academically inclined, have always felt very satisfied with Mormonism. It's not perfect in their problems, but all in all, they felt so grateful that the church has been in their life and that they've had these leaders and examples and experiences. So I offer that as a contrast between the type of language that I hear in 93, that it's like the church is rotten from the core and there's apostasy and there's just these horrible things happening which doesn't necessarily jive with what maybe even a good chunk of women in the church were experiencing. They were actually maybe quite fulfilled. How do you respond to that?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:11:02] I think that your question is excellent. And in fact, in my recent article, or boy is More Important than Girls, I addressed that to a degree. But I think it's a very important question and I have several responses to it. First of all, and I've always said this, I think the church does a lot of good, that there are wonderful things that happen in the church for both men and women and that give so much meaning to people's lives, that help them with their everyday problems that are really empowering. And of course, this is not just in the LDS Church. I also do research on women and religion in a larger context. If you look historically at women's position in various Christian or Jewish or Islamic communities, you always find a mixture religion in General is very empowering for women. And women receive a lot of not just meaning, kind of general meaning that everybody receives, but a sense of having a special place in God's plan that gives them a sense of purpose in their lives. Religion, if you look at it just historically, religion has been empowering for women. At the same time, religion in Western culture is probably the biggest arena where they are second class citizens. And this is a contradiction that you've got to deal with. If you're going to deal with this issue you can't ignore. I don't think you can ignore either side of it. But there is so much empowerment and positive. There are so many positive things that happen for women within religious communities. And again, that's not just in Mormonism. It's all over in religious communities. At the same time that religion has been with the secular world trying to give more equality to women. Even now, Christianity, Judaism and Islam are three of the areas in Western culture where women are still subordinate to men. It happens simultaneously. So I grant that, and I don't want to underplay the positive for women within religion or that most women feel perfectly satisfied. And so I've done a lot of soul searching of why should I rock the boat when most women feel perfectly happy? And not only that, I could even give a further argument, John, that you didn't bring up. Mormonism has one of probably the highest activity rates for males of any religious organization in America. If they didn't have the priesthood, would that be true? If we gave women priesthood, would suddenly that balance be disturbed in a way that would, I don't know, make it so that men lost their interest? I mean, that's a real serious question. I don't say that flippantly by any means.

John Dehlin [00:14:21] As you read comments by Joseph F. Smith early on, Greg Prince actually showed me a 1907 speech where that's exactly what Joseph F. Smith said. He said, we've got these quorums and we've got these leaderships and we got the hierarchy, but the brethren aren't on fire, you know, in the quorums. And so, yeah, there's actually some historical evidence.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:14:45] Well, and you might say that after the 1970s, when you have correlation and the relief system, society has less power, that the men were empowered by basically taking the power from the women. So I have a couple of responses to that and maybe more than two. In terms of the priesthood issue, I'm not a feminist that says that we should erase all differences. I think differences are very important to identity. Even if you're talking ethnic differences. Those can be important to identity. I'm not one that wants all of us to be white, right? Or all of us to be a certain way. So I have argued, and most people haven't read the specifics of a lot of the talks, but I have argued that if women had priesthood, that I think that you could have a women's priesthood and a men's priesthood and that they would function in some ways independently, in some ways coordinate, and that my desire would not be to erase all differences or that say everybody has the same job or anything like that. I think that again with revelation and creative thought, that there are a lot of ways that you could handle that. So that's one response, is that I'm not one that wants to erase all differences. And that I really feel, as a feminist, I feel that. Keeping the listening, going back to listening to people's experiences is very important. I do not believe that my feelings about the church are more important than some other woman's feelings about the church. I certainly don't believe that that is true. I think everybody's experiences need to be valued. So that's one part of it. And I agree that this is very complicated. There's another part of me, though, that says there's something really sick if the only way that we can keep men involved is if we tell them that they're going to be in charge and that somehow they have the special role that women can never have. There's something very disturbing to me about that. It's almost demeaning to man, the idea that we have to coddle them or. Make them feel a certain way. That seems to me dysfunctional on a certain level. So I know that I'm dealing with things that I don't think I have all the answers to. How do we keep difference and the sense of individual identity and missions for both men and women at the same time that we have more equality? I haven't worked all of that out. So on the one hand, I acknowledge that your concern is very valid. On the other hand, for me, it's a little bit like the race issue or like the handicapped issue to say that do we need to accommodate a minority of people because their needs are not being met with the disabled or I don't know what the politically correct term is now. Do we need to build the ramp that's going to cost money to let the person with the wheelchair up? Are there certain women who have been called of God? I mean, if you believe in revelation. And here's one of my points. If we believe in revelation, what does the revelation of women's priesthood in the temple mean? If you're a non believer then maybe this doesn't matter. But if you're a believer in the faith of Mormonism, what does women's priesthood mean? And what would it mean to women's sense of self if they saw themselves? If we saw a woman? I mean, you know how much reverence is given to President Hinckley. What if we had a woman that was held in that esteem that we said here is a woman in the church who she is a prophetess and she speaks to God every Thursday and she's going to give us the will of God. What would that do to women's sense of self and to what they can do and their potential? I guess that I'm bringing up that argument because on the one hand, while I acknowledge all these counter arguments that you've made, I'm thinking that two things. First of all, what if it is a revelation of God that women should have the priesthood and we're rejecting that just like we rejected, I think we rejected the black male members rights to priesthood and we damaged for a hundred and something we damage the black members of the church for that long. What if it is a revelation of God? I mean look at the rlds now, Church of Christ, they have a female apostle. Everybody that is in that church says that's a great blessing to them. What are we missing out on? So my first, what if it is a revelation of God and we are just not receiving the fullness of blessings that we could have because we are not willing to ask that. And the second thing is I think that there is more damage done to women's self esteem in the church than we acknowledge. And just the fact that I see this at the University of Utah, that women do not feel as confident about their opinions about their point of view, about all sorts of things. They defer to men. I see it all the time with my younger students. They'll defer to man. We don't even see it. We're blind to it now. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't say that I have to be right on this, but what if I'm right? So I don't think it's an easy answer, John. And in some ways I think the gender question is harder than the race question. To me the race question is just so obvious that we were prejudiced and we shouldn't be prejudiced because it damages and that all of God's children, no Matter what race you are, we all have equal worth in terms of gender. The reason I think it's a little bit more. It's more difficult is that we do have different bodies. On the other hand, there's so much that we have in common and that those common things in terms of what priesthood is, I mean, this whole idea of women have motherhood and men have priesthood. I have to say that that argument really upsets me. Men have fatherhood, and to say that the fatherhood is somehow not on an equal footing with motherhood, I mean, yeah, I know giving birth, I nursed all my kids. That does mean something. It is different than men's experience. But priesthood is about spiritual fatherhood and spiritual motherhood. And by damn, I'll say it on tape. We need a spiritual mother just like we need a spiritual father. We need a heavenly mother, just like we need a heavenly father. And to somehow in the spiritual realm create an inequality between men and women is so damaging, I think, you know, just as in the home, you need. I mean, you need a male and a female role model. I'm not saying that the nuclear family is the only one that works. We have a granddaughter that, you know, my husband is her big role model because my daughter is a single mom. But to say that we don't need these spiritual mothers in the church, and I don't think we have them. I'm sorry, we don't. I don't buy that. That's one thing where I will just say, on the one hand, I totally agree with you that the church helps women and that women are a valuable, contributing, important part of the church and they do enormous amounts of service and good things. But there's a way, because they do not have the priesthood, that they do not have either the input, nor do they have an image of themselves as the spiritual equals in the way that someone like President Hinckley or the quorum of the 12 is. And I think it damages women.

Heavenly Mother, Priesthood, and Theological Questions

John Dehlin [00:23:33] What about this notion that we don't relegate mother in heaven to a lower status, but that we respect her so much that we choose to.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:23:44] I better not get into how much this upsets me. Well, let me give you an analogy. We don't talk about certain things in the temple because in Mormonism, because we say they're sacred. But we have pictures of the temples all over the place. We talk about the importance of the temple. We talk about going to the temple. Temple, temple, temple, temple. Temple is everywhere in our images, our visual images, in our language. It's there we want to silence speech about Heavenly Mother, but when you silence speech, and I'm not saying that you always can say everything in every form, right? But to not be able to say the name of the Heavenly Mother, to not acknowledge that she has something to do with us on an everyday level, it erases her. It does not make her sacred, it erases her. Another analogy would be Mormons are very literal. I personally do not know really what the spiritual realm is like or what is literal and what is figurative. It's very hard, I think, for us to know what are just simply metaphors and what is real about this realm that we have so little evidence of. So I don't know how much is literal. But if you use the analogy that moral Mormons talk about a literal Heavenly Father and literal Heavenly Mother, and there are parents, what would you think of a husband that told his kids that they couldn't talk about their mother or even talk to their mother on the phone because she was too sacred, that had locked her up somewhere and given no one access to her? I mean, in terms of this idea of the name being denigrated, I mean, I can't believe. I mean, as a mother, do I care even whether my kids, you know, if I had the choice between my kid is going to yell at me because my child is angry at me and my kid is never going to talk to me but be over there, would I choose to interact with them even if it's angry or not to interact at all? As a mother, I would want to interact with the kid. I mean, mothers deal in shit. If to be a mother is to be thrown up at that, the baby's diaper leaks all over you, you know, you can't be a mother without being shit upon. I will say it again, because the idea that motherhood is sacred and so you have to be removed from dealing with any dirty problem. I mean, who are we kidding? So if there is a real Heavenly Mother, she's willing to take the shit. What kind of a mother wouldn't be? I mean, that's a real mother. That's what a real mother is. So it doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. For me, it is a mechanism of dismissing and erasing the Heavenly mother. And I think it's horrible. I think it damages all, not just women, but men, because men need mothers and women need fathers and we need to have good relationships with both. From my perspective, you know what it means to take God's name in vain? To take God's name in vain means to use the name of God, to force people to do things that are not really God's will and to say, I don't think God is so petty. The God that created this large complex universe is not shocked by the F word. I'm sorry. He's not. And she's not. They're not shocked. They are bigger than this. I don't buy it. John, what about the.

John Dehlin [00:27:48] I'm setting you up another softball to hit out of the park. What about the argument that because it may not just be mother, it may be mothers.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:28:00] That.

John Dehlin [00:28:00] That's just a little bit. We don't want to go there.

Polygamy, Legacy, and Closing Reflections

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:28:04] Well, certainly I think the church is very nervous about polygamy. And theologically, I don't know if we have time to talk about this right now. That's a whole other topic. Polygamy. Right. And I don't know what the heavens are like. I certainly don't believe in one heavenly father or multiple heavenly mothers. Maybe we have a council of gods with multiple fathers and multiple mothers. But you know what? Even if the Brigham Young picture were true of one heavenly father and many heavenly mothers, we certainly shouldn't be forbidden to. I mean, think big love. Right? It'd be nice to interact with all those mothers. We can all use a little more mothering down here. Right. But I know the real issue is the church is embarrassed about polygamy and they don't want anything to come up that is going to have to make that issue public. Well, I do have strong feelings about this because I think that the church has. They're being cowardly in a way that is really unfair to members. Okay, do we believe in polygamy or not? Right now our ceilings. I mean, I have a sister that died and my brother in law just remarried a year ago and was sealed to that woman in the temple. So he now has two wives in the eternal world. And my nieces are dealing with the reality of that. Do they have two mothers in the next life that troubles them? President Hinckley got up and said that we don't teach or believe in polygamy anymore. But our sealing practices say we do, that they're not being forthright in a way that is damaging to the members of the church. My nieces who have to deal with this. Do they have two mothers in the next life? Are both of these sealed to their father? So I think the church needs to take a stand on this. If they don't believe in polygamy, then say they don't believe in it. If they do Believe in it. Then they better explain to the women how it's fair because it doesn't seem very fair. And I don't care. You're talking about most women being happy. Most women may be happy with the present church, but most women I know are not very happy about polygamy being an eternal reality. And so the church had better be honest about this.

John Dehlin [00:30:31] What if they don't know?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:30:33] They could say that. They could say that.

John Dehlin [00:30:38] Is that realistic or fair to hope for?

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:30:40] You know what? Well, I don't think it's realistic, but I think it's fair. I think that it would help a lot if the church said, but then they should change their saving policies. I mean, right now, you know, a woman, you know, if a woman wants to, you know, has a husband that dies and then marries again, she can't be sealed to both of them and say, well, I'll choose in the next world. Who knows what the next world will be. So I'll choose because I love them both. Right? Of course. My brother in law, his feeling really is that he does have two wives in the next world. He loves my sister, he loves the new wife. Right. But if they don't know, they should say it. And they should have a policy that doesn't favor men over women. If they really are not sure, they say, well, it seems to be a revelation. And we kind of don't want to just backtrack on all those people that were sealed to multiple people because that wouldn't seem right either. It would be a mess. But they could admit it. There are certain things we don't know. So we're going to try to do the best. I don't know. But at least you could admit that it's complex and a problem. And I don't think that would hurt people's faith. You know, there are certain things you could say we do know. I mean, we know that Jesus is our savior and so forth, but there are other things we don't know and we have to be open about those. And I think members of the church would be fine with that. Especially when it comes to what heaven's going to be like. Who knows what it's going to be like? So I just think that we have to that we could be more open about that kind of an issue.

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:32:37] Come, come ye saints Nor toil nor labor fe. When you wait, O heart, to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day. Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive, Drive to this and joy your hearts will swell all is well, all is well. Do this and joy your hearts will swell all is well, all is well all is well all is well all

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:33:56] is well

Margaret Merrill Toscano [00:34:01] all is well. Sam.