Ralph, you’ve gotten into a bad spot with fellow LDS intellectuals from a lot of different fronts.  My concern with your recent editorializing is that while you claim to appeal to “reason” and to contradict the “fundamental assumptions” of “liberal Mormons,” I don’t see anything substantive in your arguments that amounts to anything more than 1) appeal to prophetic and “majority” authority and 2) vague assertions about what a fictionalized anthropologist might say about the value of normative sex roles.  With respect to #2, suffice it to say that your assertion reflects a misunderstanding of how anthropologists deal with gender norms (anthropologists are more likely the “relativists” you condemn than offering a defense of the kinds of assertions you’re making).  With respect to #1, certainly appeals to authority are important for certain kinds of claims, but they should not be confused with the appeals to “reason” that you assert you are making.  One could certainly argue that Mormons should accept the authority of a particular, even dominant strain of Mormonism, but if such an argument is to arise beyond an appeal to the “authority” of that strain, arguments from reason should be given.  Perhaps you really have real arguments about the problems of equal status for women and non-heterosexual individuals, but so far you have been coy.  Overall, I find your assertions about feminism to be, lets say, shallow in the extreme, but perhaps there is more than what appears to be only a passing familiarity with stereotypes about feminist criticism.  In an effort to draw out your arguments from “reason” in favor of differential treatment, I would like to see you answer a few questions:

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