The beguiling of Eve

[Tacenda]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Completely incorrect.

I don't know where you get this stuff.

LDS Apostle Charles W. Penrose wrote:

In the divine economy, as in nature, the man “is the head of the woman,” and it is written that “he is the savior of the body.” But “the man is not without the woman” any more than the woman is without the man, in the Lord. Adam was first formed, then Eve. In the resurrection, they stand side by side and hold dominion together. Every man who overcomes all things and is thereby entitled to inherit all things, receives power to bring up his wife to join him in the possession and enjoyment thereof.

In the case of a man marrying a wife in the everlasting covenant who dies while he continues in the flesh and marries another by the same divine law, each wife will come forth in her order and enter with him into his glory. (Charles W. Penrose, “Mormon” Doctrine Plain and Simple, or Leaves from the Tree of Life, Salt Lake City, 1897, p. 66)

LDS Apostle Erastus Snow preached the following on Sunday, October 4, 1857:

Do the women, when they pray, remember their husbands? . . . Do you uphold your husband before God as your lord? “What!—my husband to be my lord?”

I ask, Can you get into the celestial kingdom without him? Have any of you been there? You will remember that you never got into the celestial kingdom [during the temple ceremony] without the aid of your husband. If you did, it was because your husband was away, and some one had to act proxy for him. No woman will get into the celestial kingdom, except her husband receives her, if she is worthy to have a husband; and if not, somebody will receive her as a servant. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, p. 291)

[Raymond Ellis]

Why did Satan beguile Eve instead of Adam? We have to realise the whole thing is a metaphor for something else. I believe Eve was the first to fall for the worship of power in work or sex or in both. She was probably beguiled to want to experience things more intensely and wanted to be excited not just joyful and at peace in the garden of Eden -- these feelings were inculcated into Eve from Satan's spiritual (or psychic) power, meaning Eve was probably not beguiled by words, or not by words alone. Once Adam and Eve tasted excitement their eyes were opened to a knowledge of good and evil: pseudo good and pseudo evil. Because their worship of power (intensity and excitement) meant they had formed a 'covenant with death and agreement with Sheol' (Sheol the spirits of Satan): Isaiah 28:15.

In the covenant with Sheol, some of the spirits of Satan's soul were taken out and formed a co-dependency with some of the 7 (10) spirits of the soul of a righteous person. We see the devil has seven heads and ten horns in Revelation 12:3, then he transforms into a beast out of the sea, having ten crowns on his horns instead of his heads, then the final transformation is into a false prophet that makes an image to the beast: the image consists of four of the spirits of the beast, with the false prophet one of the four. So the full covenant with Sheol is four of the spirits from God in an agreement with 4 of the spirits of Satan. These four spirits are mentioned in Zechariah 1 or 2, and Isaiah 66:17: Idol (false prophet), mouse, swine, and abomination or might.

In Adam and Eve's case they were not totally beguiled by the worship of excitement because they lived some 900 years of age, it took a while for people to be totally beguiled by feelings of intensity and excitement, so the full fall of the world from Eden to desolation took a few generations. People began to be so evil because of their worship of power that God had to destroy them in the Flood. The only moral of the worship of power is that is you are strong enough or powerful enough to get something then you are justified -- which leads to robbery and murder, and all kinds of sins such as pride.

Paul in Corinthians wrote 'it is good for a man not to touch a woman'. Even today women are beguiled by feelings of power, lust, and excitement, and teach their men to feel the same. The New Testament warns against lust over ten times. Lust is unnaturally high intensity of feeling in work (such as sport) or in sex. 1Thessalonians 4: 1-8 speaks about making love in sanctity and honour and not in lust -- it must be possible to do or the author wouldn't have been inspired by God to write it.

Why was Eve beguiled first and not Adam? That's a hard question to answer. Paul writes: men are the glory of God and a woman is the glory of a man. The world will only be a better place when women voluntarily decide to worship their husbands. The gate is wide and the road broad which leads to destruction: it is the wide gate and broad way of the worship of power; the gate is small or precise and the way narrow and difficult that leads to Salvation.

 

 

[carbon dioxide]

On 3/28/2018 at 3:03 PM, theplains said:

Moses 4:6 says, "And Satan put it into the heart of the serpent, (for he had drawn away many after him,) and he
sought also to beguile Eve, for he knew not the mind of God, wherefore he sought to destroy the world."

Does this mean God wanted Eve to eat from the forbidden tree and if he [Satan] knew the mind of God, then
he would not have tempted Eve?

If Satan did not do this, he would have been out of a job.  Even if Satan knew the mind of God, he probably would not been able to help himself for too long. 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

LDS Apostle Charles W. Penrose wrote:

In the divine economy, as in nature, the man “is the head of the woman,” and it is written that “he is the savior of the body.” But “the man is not without the woman” any more than the woman is without the man, in the Lord. Adam was first formed, then Eve. In the resurrection, they stand side by side and hold dominion together. Every man who overcomes all things and is thereby entitled to inherit all things, receives power to bring up his wife to join him in the possession and enjoyment thereof.

In the case of a man marrying a wife in the everlasting covenant who dies while he continues in the flesh and marries another by the same divine law, each wife will come forth in her order and enter with him into his glory. (Charles W. Penrose, “Mormon” Doctrine Plain and Simple, or Leaves from the Tree of Life, Salt Lake City, 1897, p. 66)

LDS Apostle Erastus Snow preached the following on Sunday, October 4, 1857:

Do the women, when they pray, remember their husbands? . . . Do you uphold your husband before God as your lord? “What!—my husband to be my lord?”

I ask, Can you get into the celestial kingdom without him? Have any of you been there? You will remember that you never got into the celestial kingdom [during the temple ceremony] without the aid of your husband. If you did, it was because your husband was away, and some one had to act proxy for him. No woman will get into the celestial kingdom, except her husband receives her, if she is worthy to have a husband; and if not, somebody will receive her as a servant. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, p. 291)

Your statement was:

Quote

 

Of course a woman in the LDS church still go through their husband first to get to God as long as their husband is righeous.  Or he is the head like God is the head of the church. 

 

Your quotes do not show what you said.  None of them say a woman "goes through her husband to get to God" at all and nothing close.

What you said implies that a woman cannot pray or approach God in any way without her husband's permission and authority.  That is not the case.

What the quotes say- primarily the second one from 1857 may I add, discuss EXALTATION and yes COUPLES alone can be exalted

It says:

“the man is not without the woman” any more than the woman is without the man,  in the Lord."

Based on that, one might just as well say that "a man in the LDS church still go through their wife  first to get to God" using your logic  

Regarding the Penrose quote, I fail to see any problems.  Yes it is not phrased with the caution now required for political correctness in these issues but the content is devoid of anything incorrect.  Yes the man presides in the home, and that is pure LDS doctrine and part of the Proclamation.

If one has serious problems with the Proclamation, one should not be in the church because it espouses doctrine with which one does not agree.

A woman makes "covenants" to follow her husband IN SO FAR as he follows God.  How could any one disagree with that?  I would follow my wife INSOFAR as she follows God forever- because the head is then still God.   The minute the man does NOT follow God, the covenant is broken and the woman need not follow his counsel any further.

I would follow a taking donkey as long as everything the donkey said was perfectly in line with the will of God and I knew so by my testimony.  I cannot imagine what is wrong with following someone who is never wrong.

But of course no husband is perfect- therefore, the woman follows her own conscience.  Always.   They are equals before the Lord, and if the husband acts incorrectly, "Amen to the priesthood of that man".   Done.  No authority.

And that was made in 1897

One has to go back to 1857 to find something SOUNDING more "sexist" and yes of course it is incorrect doctrine.  It was an apostle's statement in 1857 and is no longer a teaching of the church that an unmarried woman becomes a "servant" 

What is said before that is, like the 1897 quote, framed in language which is unacceptable today, is still technically correct and says the same thing the Penrose says and the same argument applies there.

BUT notice he is talking about the TEMPLE CEREMONY of sealing, not the actual celestial Kingdom

Quote

You will remember that you never got into the celestial kingdom [during the temple ceremony] without the aid of your husband. If you did, it was because your husband was away, and some one had to act proxy for him. 

That is perfectly accurate.  If one has to be sealed by proxy, by definition the husband is not available for whatever reason

The servant part?

As far as I know that was never doctrine, but it certainly is not doctrine today.

I hope you take this in the spirit in which it is intended, I know you do not know much about temple rites and so my attempt is to teach you as best as I can without revealing too much.

 

 

 

 

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Raymond Ellis said:

Why did Satan beguile Eve instead of Adam? We have to realise the whole thing is a metaphor for something else. I believe Eve was the first to fall for the worship of power in work or sex or in both. She was probably beguiled to want to experience things more intensely and wanted to be excited not just joyful and at peace in the garden of Eden -- these feelings were inculcated into Eve from Satan's spiritual (or psychic) power, meaning Eve was probably not beguiled by words, or not by words alone. Once Adam and Eve tasted excitement their eyes were opened to a knowledge of good and evil: pseudo good and pseudo evil. Because their worship of power (intensity and excitement) meant they had formed a 'covenant with death and agreement with Sheol' (Sheol the spirits of Satan): Isaiah 28:15.

In the covenant with Sheol, some of the spirits of Satan's soul were taken out and formed a co-dependency with some of the 7 (10) spirits of the soul of a righteous person. We see the devil has seven heads and ten horns in Revelation 12:3, then he transforms into a beast out of the sea, having ten crowns on his horns instead of his heads, then the final transformation is into a false prophet that makes an image to the beast: the image consists of four of the spirits of the beast, with the false prophet one of the four. So the full covenant with Sheol is four of the spirits from God in an agreement with 4 of the spirits of Satan. These four spirits are mentioned in Zechariah 1 or 2, and Isaiah 66:17: Idol (false prophet), mouse, swine, and abomination or might.

In Adam and Eve's case they were not totally beguiled by the worship of excitement because they lived some 900 years of age, it took a while for people to be totally beguiled by feelings of intensity and excitement, so the full fall of the world from Eden to desolation took a few generations. People began to be so evil because of their worship of power that God had to destroy them in the Flood. The only moral of the worship of power is that is you are strong enough or powerful enough to get something then you are justified -- which leads to robbery and murder, and all kinds of sins such as pride.

Paul in Corinthians wrote 'it is good for a man not to touch a woman'. Even today women are beguiled by feelings of power, lust, and excitement, and teach their men to feel the same. The New Testament warns against lust over ten times. Lust is unnaturally high intensity of feeling in work (such as sport) or in sex. 1Thessalonians 4: 1-8 speaks about making love in sanctity and honour and not in lust -- it must be possible to do or the author wouldn't have been inspired by God to write it.

Why was Eve beguiled first and not Adam? That's a hard question to answer. Paul writes: men are the glory of God and a woman is the glory of a man. The world will only be a better place when women voluntarily decide to worship their husbands. The gate is wide and the road broad which leads to destruction: it is the wide gate and broad way of the worship of power; the gate is small or precise and the way narrow and difficult that leads to Salvation.

 

 

Holy cow dude you are not married are you?

Women worship their husbands?

Lest anyone take this as real LDS doctrine, let me just say, uh..... it's not.

Edited April 5, 2018 by mfbukowski

[katherine the great]

3 hours ago, Raymond Ellis said:

 

 The world will only be a better place when women voluntarily decide to worship their husbands.

 

Ahahahaha!   Thanks for the best laugh of the day!

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

 

Your quotes do not show what you said.  None of them say a woman "goes through her husband to get to God" at all and nothing close

 

 

Isn't God only in the Celestial Kingdom? That's what I've been taught. I guess I can be a servant, forgot about that one. I know I do a poor job of explaining myself though. I should have said a woman cannot live with God unless her husband gets her there. From the quote from Penrose:  "Every man who overcomes all things and is thereby entitled to inherit all things, receives power to bring up his wife to join him in the possession and enjoyment thereof."

Edited April 5, 2018 by Tacenda

[theplains]

On 02/04/2018 at 6:55 PM, CV75 said:

Where does it say that is a punishment? https://www.lds.org/ensign/1994/02/i-have-a-question/can-you-give-some-insight-on-genesis-3-16?lang=eng

Well, it doesn't sound like something positive.  There was a change in the relationship between Adam
and Eve after the fall as denoted by what God said to Eve.  Now we need to figure out the relationship
between Adam and Eve in the context of before God said "and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and
he shall rule over thee."

Thanks,
Jim

[theplains]

8 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

First of all I see the garden story as largely allegorical, but that is an excellent question because of course supposedly the fall was necessary to get "agency" so how could they have agency to choose before they had agency? 

I think the answer is that they had agency as a child has agency without understanding the consequences because they had no experience of such things. 

Do you believe Adam and Eve had the freedom to choose whether or not to eat from the forbidden tree? 
Is this considered agency?  When God said be fruitful and multiply to them, do you believe they lacked
understanding of how to have sexual relations?

Jim

[theplains]

4 hours ago, carbon dioxide said:

If Satan did not do this, he would have been out of a job.  Even if Satan knew the mind of God, he probably would not been able to help himself for too long. 

It all boils down to whether you believe God really wanted them to disobey Him.

Jim

[Calm]

26 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I should have said a woman cannot live with God unless her husband gets her there. 

If a man can only be exalted with his wife, saying a man cannot live with God unless his wife gets him there is equally true, is it not?

[Tacenda]

5 minutes ago, Calm said:

If a man can only be exalted with his wife, saying a man cannot live with God unless his wife gets him there is equally true, is it not?

Sure, I guess. Or maybe not. I don't think the woman would be in the lead. She's relying on the righteousness of her husband or a proxy. 

Edited April 5, 2018 by Tacenda

[mfbukowski]

52 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Isn't God only in the Celestial Kingdom? That's what I've been taught. I guess I can be a servant, forgot about that one. I know I do a poor job of explaining myself though. I should have said a woman cannot live with God unless her husband gets her there. From the quote from Penrose:  "Every man who overcomes all things and is thereby entitled to inherit all things, receives power to bring up his wife to join him in the possession and enjoyment thereof."

Please re-read what I said.

One can only achieve the highest portion of the celestial kingdom if one is sealed in the temple.  BOTH are required- the COUPLE must be sealed, so the man can say the same thing about his wife.  ONLY WITH HER can HE achieve the celestial kingdom

Do you understand that?  Insofar as Penrose was teaching something else, he was mistaken.  The wife must be equally able to "overcome all things"

That is straight out of the bible

Yes it says "him" because that was the English convention to use the male form to indicate all of humanity.   I cannot help that- it is part of the language to say "mankind" as opposed to "man and woman kind"

Rev 3:21

Quote

 

To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

 

The Contemporary English Version says it this way:

Quote

21Everyone who wins the victory will sit with me on my throne, just as I won the victory and sat with my Father on his throne.

And that translation makes it clear that it applies to EVERYONE, not just males

One can "live with God"in their lives every day right here on earth through prayer etc.  

But the LDS belief is that one must be sealed in the temple for the COUPLE to achieve exaltation- not alone but together AS EQUALS.

[mfbukowski]

59 minutes ago, theplains said:

Do you believe Adam and Eve had the freedom to choose whether or not to eat from the forbidden tree? 
Is this considered agency?  When God said be fruitful and multiply to them, do you believe they lacked
understanding of how to have sexual relations?

Jim

I believe I answered those questions, except the last.

I will repeat my previous post and embolden the parts which answer those questions so I do not have to re-type it all.

Quote

 

First of all I see the garden story as largely allegorical, but that is an excellent question because of course supposedly the fall was necessary to get "agency" so how could they have agency to choose before they had agency?  

I think the answer is that they had agency as a child has agency without understanding the consequences because they had no experience of such things.  Like a child told not to take cookies out of the cookie jar, they certainly must have had "agency" in some sense because the very fact that God gave the commandment indicates that they must have had a choice NOT to obey- or else there would be no need for the commandment in the first place!

So that is where the allegorical part comes in.   At some point the words as usual get in the way and should not be taken too seriously.  After all our language is confounded.

So yes they certainly could choose without comprehension of all that entailed, like the child taking the cookie, or eating a detergent pod or swallowing a bottle of pills.

But until they actually experienced the consequences of wrong choices, I think it is fair to say they really had no comprehension of how "evil" evil could be- leading to death.  Even though God told them they would surely die, they still did not even really understand what that meant.

I think it is only through experiencing SOME level of evil that one can know what it even is- the pain of conscience, the pain of actual consequences, the pain at not being able to correct past sins etc all cannot be known without direct experience.

I think THAT is the reason for the story, which to me can be taken literally or not.   I have no problem thinking it could have happened exactly as written or not- and since we will never know for sure, we just take the story as God's word and take from it the lessons we need in our lives.

Sin might seem to be "fun" but when the consequences hit, it becomes clear that it was not fun at all.  Without experiencing the consequences I think we would never understand that and in a sense not really have a " rational choice" to make a decision.

Without the ability to understand a decision can we be said to truly have "agency" in making the decision?  Again, we are like a small child taking pills thinking they are candy.  I don't know that you can call that "making a choice"

So yes, A&E got to pick whether or not to eat the fruit, but I don't know that was a complete "decision"

And so for the LDS we have Eve asking "Is there no other way?" when Satan tells her that she must partake to know good from evil.   She really doesn't know what she is getting into, but she knows that is the path that leads to both good and evil, whatever that is, and perhaps by inspiration chooses to go down that path.

I hope that helps some.

 

Regarding the last of your questions, I don't think the knowledge  of how to have sex was the problem, it is just that the interest was not there.

I see it much as puberty- and I think that is why it is mostly allegorical because we all go through a similar "fall from innocence"

As a child we might understand the mechanics of sex as I am sure  thousands of generations of children had observed animals mating without having sexual feelings themselves until puberty at which time sex becomes "interesting"

I presume that change can be seen as part of the effects of the "fall", but as I said, I take most of that story allegorically though one can never be sure that that is the only "correct" interpretation.

[CV75]

7 hours ago, theplains said:

Well, it doesn't sound like something positive.  There was a change in the relationship between Adam
and Eve after the fall as denoted by what God said to Eve.  Now we need to figure out the relationship
between Adam and Eve in the context of before God said "and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and
he shall rule over thee."

Thanks,
Jim

The article addresses the issue of "it" not being a punishment not sounding positive to you. What does the article say about what you think we need to figure out?

[Stargazer]

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

The servant part?

As far as I know that was never doctrine, but it certainly is not doctrine today.

I found it extraordinarily perplexing that someone would narrow that down to an unmarried woman being a servant, as if women were somehow being singled out as servants.  What about unmarried men?  Unmarried men get to be masters?  

The Doctrine and Covenants makes very clear that the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom is reserved for those who are married for all eternity.  The two lower degrees are as high as unmarried men OR women can go.  

As for being a servant, guess what, we are ALL servants of God!  He is our ETERNAL father, and our ETERNAL master, and that master-servant relationship never ends.  

[mfbukowski]

46 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

I found it extraordinarily perplexing that someone would narrow that down to an unmarried woman being a servant, as if women were somehow being singled out as servants.  What about unmarried men?  Unmarried men get to be masters?  

The Doctrine and Covenants makes very clear that the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom is reserved for those who are married for all eternity.  The two lower degrees are as high as unmarried men OR women can go.  

As for being a servant, guess what, we are ALL servants of God!  He is our ETERNAL father, and our ETERNAL master, and that master-servant relationship never ends.  

Excellent point and I even missed it. It's the exact same principle that only those who are sealed in the temple can achieve the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom. Those who are not sealed the temple will not receive the highest level regardless of if there are male or female. Good catch.

[FrankCurtis]

If Eve went through all that for the forbidden fruit, imagine what she would do for a Klondike bar

[RevTestament]

On 3/28/2018 at 2:03 PM, theplains said:

Moses 4:6 says, "And Satan put it into the heart of the serpent, (for he had drawn away many after him,) and he
sought also to beguile Eve, for he knew not the mind of God, wherefore he sought to destroy the world."

Does this mean God wanted Eve to eat from the forbidden tree and if he [Satan] knew the mind of God, then
he would not have tempted Eve?

Why do you believe Satan sought to beguile Eve instead of Adam?

Thanks,
Jim

Ultimately, Eve is representative of the Church - being created from and as essentially an appendage from Adam, who is a representative of God. Adam fell, that man might be, much as Yeshua went beneath all for our sakes. Further, I literally believe that before Yeshua became perfect and came to this earth, Yeshua was once an Adam, and interestingly Paul calls Yeshua a second Adam. Gen 3:22 affirms that to know evil and overcome it is a necessary part of being God. Thus, it is necessary to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If not, there would be no reason for our probation on this earth. This earth is a time of trial, where God my try our hearts, and know who will follow Him and who will not - who will live godly and who will not.

[pogi]

On 4/4/2018 at 10:50 PM, theplains said:

Do you believe Adam and Eve had the freedom to choose whether or not to eat from the forbidden tree? 

They had the freedom to do whatever they wanted, but they had not yet tasted of the knowledge of good and evil and therefore lacked moral agency.  Their choices were not based in morality.

[juliann]

On 4/4/2018 at 10:46 PM, mfbukowski said:

 

One can only achieve the highest portion of the celestial kingdom if one is sealed in the temple.  BOTH are required- the COUPLE must be sealed, so the man can say the same thing about his wife.  ONLY WITH HER can HE achieve the celestial kingdom

 

Then why are women covenanting to be a priestess to their man instead of God? Come on, there is truth to all positions but it isn't cool to just avoid the proof that not all is equal in the CK, if you take your covenants seriously. And just because we "need" another person to gain entry does NOT mean those persons are equal, that is a totally separate question. I don't often agree with Tacenda but she is bringing up a very valid point and it is kind of jaw dropping to see temple ritual being dismissed out of hand. 

[JLHPROF]

5 minutes ago, juliann said:

Then why are women covenanting to be a priestess to their man instead of God? Come on, there is truth to all positions but it isn't cool to just avoid the proof that not all is equal in the CK, if you take your covenants seriously. And just because we "need" another person to gain entry does NOT mean those persons are equal, that is a totally separate question. I don't often agree with Tacenda but she is bringing up a very valid point and it is kind of jaw dropping to see temple ritual being dismissed out of hand. 

I like your intellectual honesty on this.

Everyone is brought into the Celestial Kingdom by the priesthood that presides over them.  That is a gospel principle.
Everyone requires someone else to bring them in.

[juliann]

On 4/5/2018 at 2:19 PM, Stargazer said:

I found it extraordinarily perplexing that someone would narrow that down to an unmarried woman being a servant, as if women were somehow being singled out as servants.  What about unmarried men?  Unmarried men get to be masters?  

 

Oh for heaven's sake. What she said is still true, unmarried women will be servants. Everything doesn't have to be about the menz all the time. 

[juliann]

1 minute ago, JLHPROF said:

I like your intellectual honesty on this.

Everyone is brought into the Celestial Kingdom by the priesthood that presides over them.  That is a gospel principle.
Everyone requires someone else to bring them in.

Actually, women require a man to even get out of the grave let alone the CK.  <cough>  

It is very interesting seeing men who still can't admit the inequity in so many patriarchal beliefs now refusing to face them head on...or even acknowledge they exist.  It used to be that we would have them thrown in our faces nonstop. I guess that is progress of some sort? Unfortunately, they won't die out as the old "not doctrinal" beliefs as long as they remain in the temple and scripture that is still used. 

[mfbukowski]

2 minutes ago, juliann said:

Then why are women covenanting to be a priestess to their man instead of God? Come on, there is truth to all positions but it isn't cool to just avoid the proof that not all is equal in the CK, if you take your covenants seriously. And just because we "need" another person to gain entry does NOT mean those persons are equal, that is a totally separate question. I don't often agree with Tacenda but she is bringing up a very valid point and it is kind of jaw dropping to see temple ritual being dismissed out of hand. 

And so Jesus is dominated by the Father on that logic because He "needs" the Father to gain entrance to his kingdom, right?  And so then Christ is not "equal" to the Father?

"The Holy Order after the Son of God" creates a "need" that the Son has for the Father and so we all too need someone and that is bad?

Three persons in the Godhead, one presides but they are not "equal"?  So there is the equivalent of sexism in the Godhead itself because the other two "need" each other?  Sorry but that whole notion is just weird.  No woman is an island.

Well then so be it.

Either you understand the concept of "presiding" and authority or you don't.  I don't know how one can remain LDS and take that position. 

On the other hand perhaps you are saying that "Yes, women are not equal and it is supposed to be and that's not a problem" but I doubt that.  That interpretation also fits the words you used.

Or on the other hand you might be saying "No, women are not equal to men in the temple covenants and so that makes them invalid and not of God"

I have read it three times and I still do not understand what you are saying.

It helps to give context.