This morning, I got a message from an LDS friend about “Imagine a Happier You,” a new media campaign by LDS Church-owned Deseret Media Companies to help women ease their financial anxieties.
A cheery website offers articles, webinars, social networking forums, and promotional videos featuring Deseret Media executive (and former LDS Church official) Shari Dew with 1980s-style stock footage of apparently independent women jogging, counting money, and sitting at their kitchen tables with their children.
And all of this about 30 years after the LDS Church helped torpedo the Equal Rights Amendment through a concerted political organizing campaign similar to the Church’s involvement in California’s Proposition 8.
Ouch.
I have no quarrel with promoting financial literacy.
But you know what might have gone a long way towards putting women on more secure financial footing?
Equality under the law.
