Adultery and Church Discipline, is it Sexist?

Perhaps the discrepancy is simply an unfortunate and inaccurate perception.

Assuming the premise is not simply misconception, however, from what I understand, whether or not a person is excommunicated for a serious transgression of God’s laws often has a lot to do with whether or not they are repentant for the sin. Perhaps due to lingering cultural mores, men are less repentant of their affairs than women are.

Excommunication isn’t merely punishment, where excommunication is the automatic sentence for a ‘gospel felony” with lesser discipline the penalty for ‘gospel misdemeanors’; it’s supposed to aid the sinner in returning to the fold. An endowed member or a Melchizedek priesthood holder has done more than break one of the Ten Commandments. Having broken more covenants, and more serious covenants, sometimes the discipline is greater. And sometimes one partner may be more predatory or more deceptive than another. Without knowing the intimate details that may have come out in an investigation, you can’t know why there may be a difference in discipline. Considering only gender is too simplistic for meaningful answers to your questions.

A friend of mine had the misfortune of marrying a woman with what turned out to be severe emotional problems. The last staw of their marriage involved a huge scene, in which she rammed the family car into the house repeatedly (among other things). The police were involved, etc. Upon hearing about what had happened, the bishop rushed to their home, where he promptly confronted my friend in an accusatory tone, demanding to know what my friend had done to cause this event.

I suspect the same reasoning takes place with women committing adultery. Rather than blaming the woman, authorities tend to assume the man “drove her to it.”

Ardis Parshall,
Are you suggesting that a Melchezidek Priesthood holder has made additional covenants, and thus is held to a higher standard than non priesthood holders (read: women)?

I guess I don’t know how doctrinally sound this is, but it makes me uncomfortable to consider that the penalties for sin are higher for ordained men than for women.

There *are* more serious penalties for people who have made covenants than for those who have not made such covenants. This has NO reference to women *as a class* but to the particular covenants the individuals have made or not made.

The discipline of Aaronic priesthood holders, unendowed women, and men without priesthood, can be handled by the bishop in most cases; the discipline of Melchizedek priesthood holders, and endowed women, go to the stake level, in cases of serious sin.

Again, it has nothing to do with women as women, but with the covenants they have made and perhaps broken.

I think so much of this comes down to personal contrition and a local leader’s approach, which may or may not be sexist.

On a related not the mraynes’ comment, I knew a young woman at BYU whose RM boyfriend got her pregnant. She was disfellowshipped and kicked out of BYU. I don’t know whether the boyfriend was disfellowshipped, but he was not kicked out of BYU, and within a year had married someone else in the temple. There’s a side of me that wishes I could say, “Oh, the miracle of forgiveness!” But, I’m suspicious.

I agree with Janna- It really is in the hands of the local leaders. That doesn’t mean that the structure of the system ( where a man is always the one to decide whether or not to pursue discipline) might lead to widespread inequities, but I could see that going either way, and may ultimately even out.

I do think that the world we live in is more tolerant of male cheaters, and I would think that harsher/more public discipline for men might be an effort to counter this cultural tolerance.

I must say that the sample size of your data easily gives rise to misperception of a difference in discipline. My sample size is not much larger, so I can’t really say.

I am alarmed at the idea that someone thinks that a woman would be dependent on a man for salvation or exaltation, I do not think that is correct. If one’s spouse is not worthy, but they are worthy, they will not be denied blessings. It has been speculated that they will instead have the opportunity to be sealed to somoene else, like how those who never had a chance to marry are given a similar opportunity. It should be noted that the spouse who was worthy could probably only remain so if they did everything they could to help that spouse to repent, be a good example etc.
The notion that men have more responsibility somehow, and are therefore held more strictly accountable seems somewhat plausible, but ultimately is not scriptural (though it may be true for all I know).
It would be interesting to put together some data that is at leeast somewhat reliable for perhaps 100+ cases of adultry in the church and see if any biases start to emerge, but where could one get such data?

Oops. I was only quoting “the cheating spouse is never 100% of the problem” from the beginning of the original post. Do you mean that the non-cheating spouse is ALWAYS part of the problem? Am I the only one who doesn’t believe that?

Wow, thanks for all of the comments.
As has been pointed out, my sample size is very small and I could be using sexism as a scapegoat.
That is why I posted, hoping that I would find people who have had similar or different experiences.
I’m not only interested in how the church disciplines in these situations, but in how we, as outsiders, view the offenders.
As far as the salvation/exaltation comments, it does seem that husbands and wives are dependent on each other, to some extent for exaltation, although salvation is personal.
Like Singlespeed, I was confused by Ardis Parshall’s comments about men making covenants that women have not. To me, the covenants are the same, except men have the priesthood. If this is the only difference, it is a big one, as the priesthood is the power and authority to act in God’s name. Women, as presided over by their husbands, don’t hold the priesthood in the same way, so perhaps this is part of the difference in accountability for adultery. I’m really not sure. However, all of the women in my experience had been sealed in the temple to their spouses, and were not excommunicated, so differences in covenants would not be the factor.
Ben said, “I don’t think I mind if the practice is a bit favoritist for women.” I’m curious about why.
I wonder if since church disciplinary courts are made up of men, who potentially hold the same opinion as Ben, could be the reason for the bias.
mraynes, I have also heard that some bishops are harder on the girl than the boy pre-mission. My experience there is even more limited and anecdotal.
Thanks to everyone who pointed out that local leaders determine the individual cases. This is of course both true, and good. I do wish that there could be women present for a woman’s church court. I guess I’m surprised that more people haven’t had evidence to agree or disagree with my, albeit small, sample size. Caroline, it is interesting that your experience matches mine. Perhaps others have seen the opposite.
You articulated what I was trying to get at so well,
“Men almost always have a higher ecclesiastical status in this church than women do. So when a man cheats, he’s considered more responsible. He’s not just a member cheating, he’s a priest cheating.”
This seems like a problem to me, does it seem like that to anyone else?

Part of the difference in outcome, if there is one beyond the anecdotal evidence offered in the post, may have to do with where the disciplinary council is held. If there is the possibility of excommunication, Melchizedek priesthood holders are automatically referred to the stake president and high council. Aaronic priesthood holders and sisters go before a council of the bishop and his counselors or two other ward high priests.

My experience having served in both types of councils, is that ward-level councils produce a more lenient outcome. This is primarily because the bishop feels he can watch over the sinner and care for him or her on a personal basis, and that there will be a reciprocation of that compassion on the part of the sinner.

Stake councils, on the other hand, can be more removed from the situation and may consequently produce a more severe result. The premise of the council, though, is the the brother is at risk of being excommunicated. Some stake presidents may also take their personal ministry to a higher level than others. For example, I’ve seen cases where a stake president hasn’t met with the brother before the council is held, and other cases where the president has talked with the brother several times. In all cases, I have only seen excommunications occur, not based on the seriousness of the sin, but based on a brother’s unwillingness to confess, repent, and repair the damage. This has been very rare in my experience.

“You can please some of the people some of the time…”

If it were the other way around, with women getting harsher punishments, you’d still be complaining that it was sexism.

Sounds kind of “darned if you do and darned if you don’t” to me.

But then, I suppose any situation where the sole determinant in the case seems to be gender — no matter who seems to be getting the worst part of the deal — would be defined as sexism.

I don’t usually have much patience for the kind of questions you guys ask here (nothing personal — we just have very different views on things) but I think I can see your point on this one.

Naismith,

The explanation you gave about the high priest group versus the high priest quorum makes sense. My only question is, why are Elders, who also hold the Melchizedek Priesthood, referred to a stake court when there is an Elder’s Quorum in every ward?

Jessawhy — Regarding whether both spouses always contribute to infidelity. I don’t think you can say “nobody’s perfect” to get off the hook here. I mean, would you say that both spouses are responsible for spousal abuse? How about a pornography problem? I suppose you could always say that the victimized spouse could have spoken more kindly or dressed sexier or sought counsel more vigorously or whatever. In those cases, would you say “nobody’s perfect and each partner contributes to the failure of any marriage”? To me, it’s the same with infidelity…except in those bad cases where one spouse wickedly provokes the other spouse. Maybe we agree and I don’t realize it. Help!

anonymous,
I have also wondered, since this thread started, if this was an appropriate topic. I’m afraid it really isn’t. I’m sorry for that.

You mentioned God’s “spokespeople” but, I think you meant, “spokesmen.”
This is really what I have a hard time with. Since women aren’t authorized to represent God, we can’t judge other women in scenarios like adultery. That seems like a problem to me. But, I hope you are right that God is guiding each church leader to give each offending spouse the exact right punishment. I hope that’s how it is.
I don’t know, though. I just hope that I don’t have to go through it firsthand.
You are absolutely right that we need to teach more about loving and forgiving in these situations, and helping prevent them in the first place. Any ideas on how to do this?
Thanks for your comments.

Wow.. quite the discussion.

My two cents comes from my own strugglings.

I read somewhere that the Prophet stated (Spencer Kimball?) “Every [separation] in any relationship is due to SELFISHNESS within the relationship”.

He never says anything about whose selfishness or where the blame lies.

I think every instance in cases of infidelity, there are no GENERAL circumstances. The natural consequences MIGHT be ‘generalized’, but for the most part, you can’t (in fairness) say that all Church discipline is harder on one sex or the other. Circumstances are different for each situation.

All in all, INFIDELITY IS DESTRUCTIVE!

I agree with the commenter who said, “Let’s leave the judgements to Christ”.

What denomination is this based on? I’m just curious. Although in foursquare I’ve seen the same things. A worship leader is booted off stage for bringing in a new woman while his separated wife struggles elsewhere, but a separated wife who falls into adultery is promoted to stay with the new lover. Weird.

I know this is an old post. I run a blog on discipline. This may be specific to your experience. In general discipline is more common for:
women than men
the poor than the rich
the young than the old
Which is to say discipline generally happens to people less able to defend themselves or hit back.