Sunday in Outer Blogness: in-group-out-group edition!

Lucky for us exmos, we’re so sexy! So we don’t have to worry about whether we’re popular, do we? Well, it looks like everybody’s sometimes in and sometimes out…

Let’s take the Mormons, for example: Why try so hard to join a club that doesn’t want you? Even being part of an organization like the Boy Scouts (that likes Mormons usually, but discriminates on principle) can bite you on the butt. At least not all Mormons are pandering to the rest of the religious right.

It seems like a no-brainer that we don’t want our kids to be bullies or bullied. We want to comfort those who are hurting. But that whole live-and-let-live thing is just so tricky! You’re just being clear about who you are, and suddenly you’re apologizing for a skit or getting fired! Everybody knows that Facebook is within its rights to ban (anti-gay) hate speech, but it turns out they’re banning other political speech as well. (Then again, some of those “it goes both ways” analogies are absurd to the point of offensive.)

It can be hard to get along when our disagreements aren’t simple. People are still contemplating BKP’s question about “Why???” And it’s not just about discriminating against gay families (and excluding them from the eternities). There’s race. There’s chivalry that is (perhaps?) meant as nice but not welcome, along with other patriarchal customs like beating your wife (properly!), arranged marriages (with others of your group, only!) and which end with the man trading up. On the other hand, there are the matriarchs human and divine, along with ordinary women navigating this gendered world. Then there are the less serious (but no less heated!) debates: Are the Osmonds cool? Halloween harmless fun or Satanic danger? Sure the Mormons can baptize dead people, but where do the Catholics get off claiming cartoon characters??? And what does atheism even mean anyway? (For these sorts of infotainment questions, see the news.)

C’est la vie. At least the Exmormon Foundation Conference went well — check out these reviews! And all of you exmos out there — have a sexy week, as usual! 😉