ngled in the past.
I recall a Papal Bull of Urban II., in the 12th century, which
compelled priests to discard their wives, making of thousands of
women in England, wives who were not wed; of children, offspring
who had no recognized fathers. We of the National Woman Suffrage
Association have nothing to do with the religious rights of women
in Utah, except in so far as they intermingle with and touch
woman's political rights. But the Utah question, which now comes
up again, is not simply a religious question. The Government is
continuously striving to destroy the political rights of the
women of this Territory. Its Governor is a United States officer,
and in his last report to the Secretary of the Interior, he so
far transcended the duties of his office as to suggest the
disfranchisement of Utah women. Almost every session of Congress
sees some bill of similar import introduced.

The General Government did not confer this right, did not secure
even the exercise of it. The territorial Legislature, the same as
in Wyoming, secured to women the exercise of the right of
suffrage; the United States, according to its own theory, has no
authority to interfere with this right, because, according to
that theory, it has nothing at all to do with the suffrage
question. Yet it proposes to disfranchise those women as a
punishment for their religious belief; it proposes to make social
outcasts of them, as it has already done with the wives of some
of its black soldier voters.

Looking back through history we find no act of the Romish Church
more vile than that which compelled its priests to disown their
wives and legitimate children--none which so utterly demoralized
society, and destroyed its tens of thousands of women. And
although, as a body of reformers, I again say we do not touch
religion except where it, and politics together, infringe upon
the rights of women, I do not hesitate to say for myself
individually, that I have no faith in any form of religion, be it
what it may, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist, that receives
revelation only through some man; or farther than that, I will
say, I have no faith in any form of religion that does not place
man and woman on an exact equality of religious rights. Two forms
of religion of the present day whi