LHB: According to my very limited understanding of feminism, or how it began in the Latter-Day Saint church and in my readings of Margaret Toscano and Janice Allred, her sister, is that Joseph Smith very much believed in a priesthood of women, and in the same true equality of women where we were priestesses to God and not priestesses to men. So basically in my understanding of feminism, with those two women, and what I like about it and agree with (and so want to seek it out), is a way for women to find out how, as a woman we relate to God and how we relate to the gospel and discover: Is there a Heavenly Mother? Are the women in the scriptures of value? Are we truly of equal value? And what does it all mean about women and our own femininity? Apparently there is the negative feminism as well, which is the only one I was aware of that existed and have always eschewed or shied away from, and that is the idea that women are like men, in this militant chop off your hair and your boobs, get a job, put on some pants. But apparently from the true feminist position, they believe because we have basically rejected our entire gender and made us less than men, and even less than our own male children, the only way women have been able to identify with God is, or the gospel of Jesus Christ, is through a man. Because of that, they have, in a sense, developed manly ideas, feelings, desires and attributes, and have they formed the new negative feminism of manliness and doing away with womanhood.

MSB: So your definition of feminism embraces the difference and is seeking for the strength of it?

LHB: My view of it is there is obviously a difference because there are men and women, and obviously somehow women have to be of some kind of value. There must be some meaning if there are this many of us. There must be some truth about us in the gospel. So my feeling is that just because we don't understand anything -- I really liked what the Toscanos just said in their fourth discourse about God and angels, and Paul's idea of angelology. It's that really nobody knows anything about Heavenly Mother, and that's the truth. People have also been punished because they were trying to discover things about Heavenly Mother. We say that we have a belief in Her but then we also act, as Mormons, as if we are embarrassed by that and pretend that it doesn't exist and it's not part of our theology and you are punished if you discuss that theology or idea.

Anyway they went on to talk a little more about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and then they realized they actually don't know anything about Heavenly Father either. The only thing we know about, really, is Jesus Christ, and what we know about Him is also a hard and very hard and difficult thing to understand. And so the truth is, we don't know anything, and I wish we could all just realize that and work with each other.

We do have some knowledge that came to us from true prophets, but even when you consider the whole landscape of eternity and God, we don't know anything. We are an embarrassment because we run around acting like we're filled with knowledge punishing others and condemning them.

MSB: The feminism you're talking about is like the original liberalism, which meant the study of liberty which the founding fathers did, and not what it's become today.

LHB: Yeah.

MSB: If priesthood is defined as an association with heaven, then of course, women are equal to men. That association begins as soon as the voice of God is able to be discerned and then followed. They become a priest or priestess. Then those who strengthen their faith, can recieve angels which is another association as we are taught in the temple. All of these are available to women equally as they are to men.

Someone once said that it is a unique ability that men have to look over a room full of men and women and completely not be aware that the women exist. I think this was a reference to the endowment room.

LHB: The church teaches that men hold priesthood, and women are mothers. Those advocating for women holding the priesthood say that the equivalence of motherhood is not priesthood, but fatherhood and so there is an imbalance. But motherhood is truly more involved than fatherhood. Fathers play a small part, and they can't carry a child in their body, or have the opportunity to birth a child or feed them with their bodies.

MSB: So priesthood ordination is given to them as an adornment, a trinket, to prove them. To see what they will do with what they think they have in accordance with D&C 121.

LHB: It makes us need each other.

MSB: So it sounds like these women inherently know they have access to something just like any man, but can't articulate something that is fundamental to their natures, to their understanding, except to express it by saying they want to hold a priesthood office in the church. That's the manifestation.

LHB: Well, there are some Mormon feminists that are sick. That really do just want to hold an office to be able to be administrators and share in the control of others.