What I would like to hear

So BYU religion professor Randy Bott made what I consider some of the most boneheaded comments I have ever heard regarding race, and of course, he made them in the Washington Post.

Because most of his comments are behind the paywall, I'll paste a section here:

Bott compares blacks with a young child prematurely asking for the keys to her father’s car, and explains that similarly until 1978, the Lord determined that blacks were not yet ready for the priesthood.
“What is discrimination?” Bott asks. “I think that is keeping something from somebody that would be a benefit for them, right? But what if it wouldn’t have been a benefit to them?” Bott says that the denial of the priesthood to blacks on Earth — although not in the afterlife — protected them from the lowest rungs of hell reserved for people who abuse their priesthood powers. “You couldn’t fall off the top of the ladder, because you weren’t on the top of the ladder. So, in reality the blacks not having the priesthood was the greatest blessing God could give them.”

No. Just no.

Deborah at Exponent II has already found Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's discussion and repudiation of this idea from the PBS piece on the Mormons.  Kristine at By Common Consent pointed audiences to scholarly work done on the topic. Dr. Armand Mauss also weighed in on the issue.

And as wonderful as all of that instant feedback and repudiation of the hateful comments made by Brother Bott, it left me wanting.

I want an official repudiation from the Brethren, something along these lines.

The ban on blacks holding the priesthood was never based on revelation but was instead based on the political and social understandings of race of the 19th century. Unfortunately, these attitudes were given the weight of doctrine and much misinterpretation of scripture was made in an attempt to justify this ban. It is the position of the church that the revelation in 1978 authorizing the ordination of blacks to the priesthood was necessary to correct the mistakes of men. There is absolutely no doctrinal or theological support for the idea that race has any correlation with worthiness, either in the premortal, mortal, or postmortal existence. To teach such an idea is to violate the commandment to love one another.

Now, I know it won't happen for lots of reasons, namely opening up the idea of prophetic fallibility and its potential application to the issue of gay marriage, but I have to say, I would so love to hear one of the 15 say that.

Maybe in General Conference.

UPDATE: Official church response. More gently worded than what I wrote, but then, I don't have the responsibility of speaking for the entire church so I can say whatever I want.

UPDATE TWO: One more link.