Have you ever thought that your gender could be a privilege? For certain leaders of the LDS church in the 1950s and ‘60s, only the very righteous would get to keep what made them a man or a woman in the next life.
For those who know the sexual teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today, the idea of a genderless afterlife is likely surprising. The Family: A Proclamation to the World, a church-wide document released in 1995, states that “Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal and eternal identity and purpose.” So what changed? We’ll talk with Dr. Taylor G. Petrey, author of Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism about the LDS church’s history of gender teachings over the past 70 years and what might change still going forward.
Dr. Taylor G. Petey’s book is Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism.[IndieBound|Amazon]
