25 years ago today - Mar 7, 1992.

Lynne Kanavel Whitesides, Margaret Merrill Toscano, and Martha Dickey Esplin present "A Three-Part Invention: Finding Our Bodies, Hearts, and Voices: A Response to Gordon B. Hinckley," at Sunstone West in Burbank, California, and at the Mormon Women's Forum meeting on 4 April 1992 in Salt Lake City. "In last fall's General Women's Meeting," they say, "President Hinckley warned women against praying to our Mother in Heaven. We will speak of patriarchy's attempt to silence the prayers and voices of women. Our supreme act of rebellion will be to speak with our own voices." All three women subsequently are called into meetings with their stake presidents and bishops. The meetings are usually cordial ones ("He was gracious and kind. It was a meeting filled with love," says one.) At least two cases involve more than one interview.

One of the women, who had not attended church since December, had earlier expressed feelings of alienation to her home teacher and had thought that the visit was a pastoral one until her bishop says he has been instructed to hold the interview by Loren C. Dunn, area president. Involuntarily, she laughs and then says, "You'll have to excuse me. I thought you called me in because you cared about me." The tone of the meeting thereafter becomes warm and supportive, she reports.

In another case, the bishop wants the woman to put her doctrinal beliefs in writing so that he, with a letter of "endorsement," can make it part of her file. When she refuses on the grounds that her beliefs have evolved over time and no doubt will again, he drafts such a letter and asks her to review and sign it. Again she refuses.

[Source: Anderson, Lavina Fielding, "The LDS Intellectual Community and Church Leadership: A Contemporary Chronology," Dialogue, Vol.26, No.1]