Sunday in Outer Blogness: Rest in Peace Anne Frank Edition!

Baptism for the dead has hit the news in a big way! With all of the criticism in the news about posthumously baptizing holocaust victims (including Anne Frank, again), the Hindus got wind of the practice (and they don’t like it either). (On a related note, overuse of the “N-word” is also disrespectful.) I think Stephen Colbert’s proxy circumsizing dead Mormons was even funnier than Bill Maher’s proxy-un-baptism of Mitt’s FiL. And in a bout of interesting timing, the feminist Mormon housewives have just launched an action plan to prevent teen girls from being treated as ritually unclean (because of some unmentionables) during the baptism-for-the-dead procedure.

Meanwhile, as if women weren’t taking enough crap already, BKP put his foot in it again, and DefyGravity plans a solution after identifying the key problem:

I was irate after reading this talk. But I realized that most of my anger was at my inability to state that I disagreed to anyone who might be able to do something. I have no way of getting in touch with Bro. Packer nor any other church leader. I felt voiceless and powerless and that makes me more angry then what he said does.

Quinn defends correlation, but I think the culture of trying to control what can be said is one of Mormonism’s biggest problems. For example, here we see Mitt embracing Mormonism’s least endearing practice.

It was a big week for maps! Marriage equality is growing, and the CoJCoL-dS is having trouble with retention. (As usual, the people defending marriage from equality have the most negative view of marriage.)

In personal stories, have a look at Oxymormon Girl’s reasons reasons for leaving the church at her own (relaxed) pace. Monica discovered her journal survived their house fire. Winterbuzz describes how part-member families get treated. Aerin is thinking about aging. And allow me to abuse my power here to highlight a cool review:

ExMormon will resonate with anyone who has grown up in an LDS family, as well as satisfy and inform those who are curious about the Mormon experience.

Also it runs circles around anything on the shelves at Deseret Book.

Here are some great discussion topics! Are you participating in traditions like Lent, and — if you’re a non-believer — what do you teach your kids? What are you doing to pass it on? Is Otterson really the right person to be teaching the ills of affinity fraud? What is Mormonism as it truly is? What was Nephi thinking when gave both his books the same name? Can we please stop focusing political races on religion? Porn or erotica — need some tips? Can you do it in four states at once?

Thanks to readers for the first batch of nominations for the William Law X-Mormon of the year 2011!! Did I somehow miss putting Joanna Brooks on the list? (Remember: the “X” in this award doesn’t have to stand for “ex/former”, it can stand for any kind of exceptional type of Mormon!) We have a lot of fun with awards here, so I hope you won’t let our super-relaxed schedule dampen your enthusiasm!!

Speaking of relaxing, here’s this week’s reason why SiOB didn’t get done until early Monday morning: I got sucked into playing Minecraft all weekend with my 8-year-old son. Man, that game is addicting!! So, while I had several other real-life projects scheduled for this past weekend (that didn’t get done), you’ll be pleased to learn that I succeeded in building a cool tower and mining lots of iron. We’ve been talking about improving the loading speed here at Main Street Plaza by possibly renting a dedicated server — and maybe I can sneak in a little minecraft server on it for the Outer Blogness community to play together…. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Have a great week!