My first Mormon post

[thetatiana]

Reading my postings here, one would never know I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Just now I had a strange thought. Why are baptisms for the dead only done by proxies of the same gender as the dead person? I'd like to baptize my father. I'd like to serve him in that way. After someone is dead, our memory of them is always there, but there isn't any chance to do things for them as we did in life.

Baptism for the dead is many things, but I believe one of its primary functions is that it's a way we can render loving service to our dead ancestors. This act serves to bind us together in love as a family. They did so much for us. They bore and raised and loved us or our forbears. They gave huge chunks of their lives and resources to do that. We don't always realize how much they're a part of us, how much we owe to them, while they're alive. We don't get enough ways to show our appreciation, especially to gruff unsentimental fellows like my dad, during their lifetimes. Here's our chance to do something for them of eternal significance. If they accept, if they want to, they can be part of our eternal family. Being loved enough to be invited to be in someone's family forever is a precious gift we give to one another. As a convert with no family in the church, I'd like to offer that gift to my father personally.

I could submit his name, and have it done by someone else. But it would be so much more personal if I could be proxy myself. So I started thinking, why is it so essential that we be proxies to those of our own gender only? What would happen if we did it differently? Would the ordinance be invalid? Why? Would it make my dad somehow less manly in the eternities? Would it make me butch? I've never heard any doctrine about it. It seems to be something that just isn't done. Why not?

Maybe this seems self-evident to people with a stronger sense of gender essentialism. Does it? Maybe because I've always felt more comfortable with guys than girls, and was called a tomboy growing up, maybe because I spent so long straining my neck trying to kiss my elbow when I was younger, maybe for that reason it's very easy for me to think "if I were a guy then ..." I had a real problem with gender essentialism, in fact, when I first learned the teachings of the church. What about hermaphrodites? What about trans-gendered people? What about female XYs, those who are female from birth because their gene-for-maleness on the Y chromosome is never expressed? What gender are they in the eternities? What about gay people?

Is a tomboy someone who is just a little way along the path toward the opposite gender? I feel 100% female and 100% straight, but I also don't feel that gender is necessarily an essential part of who I am as a person. Is that feeling alone enough to make me less than fully female somehow? These are all deep personal questions.

I'm curious now if I'm the only one. What percentage of Mormons feel gender is an essential part of who they are as a person? What about non-Mormons? When you dream, do you always play a female character in your dreams? I know that occasionally I'm male in my dreams, which I attribute to the fact that the default protagonist of stories in our culture is male. "Look at Mr. Squirrel eating that corn! Oh wait, it's obviously a nursing mother, look at Ms. Squirrel eating the corn!" My dreams often take the form of elaborate stories, which resemble novels in their scope and detail. Many times I've thought, upon waking, that I need to write that dream down and publish it. I have the distinct sense, in those type dreams, of playing some character other than myself. The viewpoint character in those might be male or female. I don't know if that's common or just because I read too many books, so my brain thinks in stories.

I also have a feeling of dissatisfaction with the way our doctrine handles gays, trans-gendered people, hermaphrodites, etc. which at this point we mostly leave them out. I mean I guess they can go be angels, but we deny them higher exaltation. That seems obviously wrong to me. There must be more revelation yet to come. Maybe polygamy (both polygyny and polyandry, which must go together either both or neither) will come clear at the same time. Is anyone praying to receive such revelation? Maybe we're not ready yet to hear it.