Right. You have substituted people totally foreign to this entire discussion for the former Mormon and official apostate, Mrs. Kelly.

If you have anything at all to say in defense of Kelly, as in her high regard of Priesthood authority as presently constituted in the Church, present it.

A Red Herring is not a “rule of rhetoric”; it is a deliberate logical fallacy.

I can appreciate that little Johnny down the street regularly dumps a big one on the middle of the family pool table and is not properly punished. My dear son, Henry, should you dump even a small one on our family pool table, you will receive a scalding of your behind end because those are the rules of this house.

The same goes for the University where I work. We have a conflict of interest policy. If I breach that policy then I will face discipline from my employer which could result in my exclusion from the University as an employee. Of course, as a half time student, I also face rules that govern my academic behaviour. I know the rules and submit to them, they make sense.

It sounds like there are some rules that govern continued membership in the Mormon community. I don’t know what they are, but the Mormons may make their rules, interpret their rules and publish them so people know them.

If there are rules and I don’t know them, I should still be able to appreciate that if my actions lead to embarrassment or division of the organisation, my acceptance by that organisation may be in turn threatened. In asking to be ordained, Kate Kelly did not do anything wrong, but she did show that she lacks, in my opinion, an understanding of Mormon doctrine.

Mormonism cannot ordain women. The Mormon gospel would cease being what it is. A man goes to the temple and is sealed to his opposite sex spouse. Both persons have a new name, the man learns the women’s name so that he can take her through the veil into the glory of the afterlife. The woman does not learn the man’s name. She doesn’t need to know it, as it is the man who calls the woman in the resurrection to him, and any other woman he is sealed to. This is one example only, and to ordain women is to turn this divinely given order upside down. It is to actually admit that Joseph Smith got it wrong, that the order of the sexes in the eternal kingdom is not what he said it was.

Kate Kelly challenged the order and structure of the church, not by asking that women be allowed to participate more fully in the church hierarchy as Sunday School Presidents, Ward Clerks, Stake Executive Secretaries and so forth. Women are already over men when men serve as Primary teachers. It is not a great stretch to build on that and take it further. That wonderful institution of the Anglican Communion serves as a progressive example to the Ordain Women movement.

Kate Kelly was told a number of times, that her message had been heard, it was not agreed with and that she should stop, her actions were deemed embarrassing and out of step with views that could be accommodated within Mormonism. I agree that she aired her views freely and no one said she couldn’t. However, once it was clear that she was offside, the organisation acted within its rights to exclude her from participating. I have no problem with it at all.

Do I think that women should be involved in the Mormon Organisation more fully? Yes I do and it would be easy to remove the administrative practice that keeps them from those positions I mentioned above. There is no doctrine that keeps them from those roles, only an administrative practice. it would be easier to give women those roles than it was to give blacks the priesthood.

Kate Kelly was not challenging the patriarchy, she was challenging foundational doctrines associated with the core beliefs of the church. She should only have received what she should have expected. That she was genuinely surprised by the outcome strikes me as surprising.

Now have anything to say about the actual points I made regarding biblical precedent the the fact that the whole of the excommunication was unjust and in defiance of theological and moral lore?

Kate Kelly has demanded the right for women to be treated as equal to men, she has demanded it of the church and yes indirectly she has demanded it of God, who has set biblical precedent on these matters.

Luke 18:3
Matthew 7:7-8
1 Samuel 1:15-18
Acts 18:26
Judges 4:4
Judges 5:7-8

to name but a few