40 years ago today - 40 years ago - Aug 18, 1978

Mormon feminist Sonia Johnson cables Utah Senators Orrin Hatch and Jake Garn: "Since you have announced your intention to filibuster when the ERA extension bills comes before the Senate, I am announcing my intention to begin fasting on the Capitol steps in Washington as soon as the filibuster begins-a genuine Mormon fast, without food or liquid-and to continue until you stop talking or I die." Johnson later applies for a permit to stand on the front steps of the Capitol building. "Mormons Against ERA" in reply announce their intentions to hold family home evening on the Capitol steps. Garn and Hatch decide not to filibuster. Johnson writes "I rather think that neither the church nor the Utah senators were willing to chance the sensational headlines: 'Mormon Woman Dies of Mormon Senator's Prolixity.'" Fifteen months later Johnson is excommunicated.

In a talk at BYU Apostle Bruce R. McConkie discusses the recent revelation granting "all worthy males" the priesthood. "The Lord could have sent messengers from the other side to deliver it, but he did not. He gave the revelation by the power of the Holy Ghost. Latter-day Saints have a complex: many of them desire to magnify and build upon what has occurred, and they delight to think of miraculous things. And maybe some of them would like to believe that the Lord himself was there, or that the Prophet Joseph Smith came to deliver the revelation (see Time, 7 Aug. 1978, p. 55), which was one of the possibilities. Well, these things did not happen." He further states, "Forget everything that I have said, or what President Brigham Young or President George Q. Cannon or whomsoever has said in days past that is contrary to the present revelation. We spoke with a limited understanding and without the light and knowledge that now has come into the world. We get our truth and our light line upon line and precept upon precept. We have now had added a new flood of intelligence and light on this particular subject, and it erases all the darkness and all the views and all the thoughts of the past. They don't matter any more. It doesn't make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of Jun of this year."

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