Sunday in Outer Blogness: Surprise, Surprise Edition!

At first I tried not to gather up all the posts about the rapture — partially because it’s too easy to make fun of these folks (and point out the similarities with respectable religion), but also because we’re talking about people who were conned and ripped-off. But I eventually gave in. I hope you all had fun at your rapture parties and pranks!

OK, enough of that. We had quite a lot of personal stories this week!! There’s even a new exmo memoir anthology, which I’ll be reading and reviewing for you here. WhatTheFetch? had that familiar experience of getting unfriended by Mormon friends and family. Emily wonders how to describe her Mormon connection when making new (Mormon) friends. La climbed up to the “Y”. Chris describes his first temple experience. Bill attended and photographed a ceremony honoring a woman who up to the State of Alaska to fight for the traditional fishing rights of the Alaska Native people. Daniel attended a faith fair. DadsPrimalScream posted a set of random confessions. Will came up with an interesting analogy for his Mormon experience.

This is a few months old, but (in honor of our MoMOM theme), here’s a sweet tale of a Mormon woman moving on from her MOM (and unexpectedly finding a comforting mentor). Ain’t No Mo No Mo is also working through a Mormon divorce. And So Says Me is moving on from a doozy:

I spent countless hours on lds.org. I read EVERY article I could find on abuse, marriage, relationships, depression, addictions. And there was so little that gave me hope. Most made me feel more hopeless. They all talked about how abuse was wrong, but… what was the victim of abuse supposed to do? Go to the temple, pray, read the scriptures, and love her spouse no matter what. If you’ve done all of those things, then what??

Probably the biggest theme this week was sex and gender, for example who has the best sex? And when it comes to sex-guilt, the boy scouts rival the Mormons on misinformation about masturbation. And there was more discussion of funny women and being feminine.

As a sub-topic, who is looking at and judging women’s bodies (what is modesty?). Also note: some idiot decided to do a “scientific” study ranking women’s beauty by race, and then had the gall to suggest that black women should thank him for “starting” a dialogue that black women were already having (and follow all of their discussion links on that one — they’re great!).

On that note, Loren wrote a no-holds-barred piece on racism and basketball fans!

Now, for other discussion topics! Amy asks What was your worst calling? Or most ill-advised ward activity? How do you talk to believers? Non-Christians still can’t decide whether Jesus’ teachings were essentially good or bad. X-Mormon of the year asks about vaccines. And how about that Orson Scott Card fiction? Saturday’s Warrior — still unwatchable after all these years?

Happy reading, have a great Sunday, and try not to get raptured! 😀