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Sunday in Outer Blogness: Family Edition!

chanson, June 13, 2010September 3, 2011

This past week, Outer Blogness-and-beyond has been full of reports from all sorts of families on all sorts of family situations!

To start with, we can hardly discuss Mormon families without hearing from the Polygamists! (Fascinating podcast — definitely worth a listen.) Eliza is no longer haunted by polygamy now that she no longer believes it might be imposed on her in the afterlife. The modern poly life, however, still has its challenges.

In other old-school Mormon doctrines, the Faithful Dissident wonders about the possibility of choosing your eternal family (rather than focusing solely on the biological family). Speaking of your extended biological family, Holly discusses some interesting genetic studies about Jewish populations. And Reina has good reason to be proud of the nation of her ancestors. But the Urban Koda, discussing marriage and apostasy, provided this week’s feel-good message:

I’m not with her because I’m obligated to her because of the kids, or other obligations, or that I’m worried what people might think if we were to split up.

I’m with her, because I genuinely love her, and I enjoy being with her.

It’s great when family love works that way. Nonetheless, even the happiest families have an element of challenge and compromise. Take the Christian Mom whose daughter has been caught pole-dancing. See the exmo-atheist dad flying his family to Scotland and proudly participating in his daughter’s (Catholic) baptism. And who can forget the hiding-the-booze drama when the Mormon parents come to town? (Tangential but interesting, check out Aerin’s post on Lolita and male feminists.)

Speaking of alternative families, pride came to Utah this week — check out the pics! This led to some constructive discussion of who’s pushing their views on whom. And about who killed traditional marriage. After all that, it may take some creativity to come out to your family.

Considering the challenges of being in a mixed-faith family, I was intrigued by this post. In a nutshell, a Mormon author was incensed that folks on facebook would call a former Mormon “brave.” Then (in a round-about-self-effacing-way) he implied that his own play was much braver than some bitter ol’ apostate. I think this is just a case of a believer who is honestly unfamiliar with what it’s like to come out as unbeliever to your faithful-LDS family — and it may be an opportunity to have a positive and constructive discussion with him about it.

Moving on from families to general Mormon topics, Jonathan did a bit of number crunching, and found that tithing to the CoJCoL-dS is not a terribly efficient way of giving humanitarian aid. El Guapo crunches some more numbers on membership. And the Demon of Kolob was not impressed by the behavior of some Mormons on a recent cruise. In Mormon funnies, Joseph Smith and Nikola Tesla are both portrayed with rays of power coming out of their hands. (Recall that Tesla got the patent for the first wireless communications, as I learned from Schoolhouse Rock, and Italian comic book, and blogging.)

Now, sadly, we have to move on to the bad news: the ecological disaster that keeps on giving. (Or disasters.) Who to blame? And what to do? I wish I knew the answer, especially for the last question…

Family Sunday in Outer Blogness

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Comments (14)

  1. the chaplain says:
    June 13, 2010 at 10:29 am

    Thanks for the shout out!

  2. chanson says:
    June 13, 2010 at 10:33 am

    No problem — it’s quite an interesting post! I almost want to say funny, but let’s just stick with “ironic”. 😉

  3. Pingback: Notices & News « An Apostate's Chapel
  4. Andrea says:
    June 13, 2010 at 1:37 pm

    I HAD to leave a comment on the “leaving the church is so cowardly and easy and everybody that does it is so mean and hateful” post. I tried to be nice.

  5. chanson says:
    June 13, 2010 at 9:06 pm

    Andrea — Great comment! I think you got the point across and succeeded in being nice.

  6. ElGuapo says:
    June 13, 2010 at 9:27 pm

    I couldn’t help snooping. The poster’s FB page is public and his only exmo friend is Richard Dutcher. Is Richard the cowardly exmo in the story? It’s strange that someone inside the church can’t see how frightening it might be to step outside the faith community, even if you no longer share their beliefs.

  7. belaja says:
    June 13, 2010 at 9:55 pm

    Andrea–thanks for making that comment over there.

  8. aerin says:
    June 14, 2010 at 8:48 am

    So it’s probably clear in my fMh post, but I highly recommend “Reading Lolita in Tehran” by Azar Nafisi to just about everyone.

    But I think the parallels of living in mormon life and in Iran are there. Particularly living as a mormon woman and figuring out what one’s boundaries are. Then, whether or not to leave a community, and what that means. What message that sends to those who remain. What a person will accept, and at what point a person will not accept certain situations.

    I do not take the freedom to read whatever I choose lightly, and this book highlights that for me as well.

  9. katyjane says:
    June 16, 2010 at 9:20 am

    Thanks for the shout out!

  10. chanson says:
    June 16, 2010 at 9:31 am

    Aerin — so true. I enjoyed the book as well, for the reasons you highlight.

    Katyjane — No problem; as one mom to another, it was a very amusing photo. 😉

  11. Jonathan says:
    June 16, 2010 at 4:00 pm

    Credit where credit is due: Rabbito_17 at reddit.com did the calculations before I did.

  12. Andrea says:
    June 17, 2010 at 3:34 am

    My comment was deleted, which was disappointing because I felt it was very respectful. But since I didn’t agree with him, he must have felt justified in deleting it. It’s unfortunate that he was unwilling to have a serious, respectful dialogue.

  13. chanson says:
    June 17, 2010 at 9:42 am

    Jonathan — Thanks!

    Andrea — Wow, that’s pathetic. It’s not bad enough that he has to write a post complimenting himself on how much braver he is than his exmo friend — he also has to prove his bravery by deleting respectful dissenting opinions.

  14. chanson says:
    June 17, 2010 at 9:45 am

    Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

    — Margaret Thatcher

    Same with being brave, apparently. 😉

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