So the big topic of the week was the SLC Gay Pride Parade, which happened last Sunday. The big news-line was a group of 300 active LDS members that chose to skip church and march in the parade. Outerblogness this week was full of accounts of the parade, as well as photos. There was also a fun poem about Jesus in drag.
As you can imagine, this has left a lot of people with mixed feelings. For some, this has helped heal, for others, there were reservations concerning the motivations of LDS Inc. Some people attended the Parade, others did not. As Alan pointed out in a guest post earlier this week, there was no mention of political causes such as marriage equality. Although some members are in support of marriage equality, although not always for the reasons you would think. All of this controversy has led to a discussion of what it takes to create safe online zones in Mormon blogs.
In a similar vein, my Facebook feed this week portrayed a viral story of a mixed-orientation marriage that works. (Most of my childhood friends are still TBM and have followed the advice of promoting the Church using social media) But as others point out, this approach is a risky one and could end up hurting more than it helps.
In other news, there was discussion of the military mom breast-feeding controversy, musings on what Mormons want, voter controversy in California, the advantages of community, acceptance of the fact that children may not choose the same path as you, and conflicts in church rules that prevent members from doing the right thing, as well as a discussion about the age at which people started questioning. There was also a post about the empowerment of buying a car at a woman-owned dealership. Here is a fun activity to do with your Mormon mom!
In fiction news, there is a serialized fiction story of Pioneer Trek. And Donnas book The Girls of Fourth Ward is now on e-book; this post-mormon girl read the book Friday night and found it to be a firm tongue-in-cheek satire.
And a big shout-out to chanson, who works harder than any of us realize.
Thanks for the great column, PM girl. Also thanks for the shout out!
Thanks for doing this PMG!!
We just got back from from a (practically Internet-free) weekend in Paris, so I have to get some sleep before catching up on all the Internet adventures I missed. 😉
Were you twitching due to Internet withdrawal? Or just happily eating pastries, coffee, and wine?
Well, there were definitely some discussions I wanted to be participating in, but I ended up being so busy for the whole weekend that I didn’t have time to miss the Internet!
After a full day of work, and then four hours on the train (Friday evening), we arrived at our hotel room tired and ready for bed — but as we were walking through the door to our room, my husband mishandled the suitcase and tore or pulled a tendon in his hand! (It turned out that there was already a problem with the tendon, and it chose just that moment to snap.) So he had to go to the hospital that night, and on Saturday he had surgery and spent the whole day in the hospital!
So I spent the day Saturday touring Paris with the kids (they insisted on going to the toy store all morning, then we had some other shopping to do, plus we bought some stuff to cheer up my poor sweetie in the hospital and visited him there). On Sunday, they finally let him out, and we had a few hours to wander around Paris as a family before getting back on the train to Switzerland.
The last bit was fun, but it was a pretty hectic weekend!! Not exactly what we were hoping for. 😉
Believe me, I was glad to know that at least SiOB was in good hands! Good link choices, BTW — another friend emailed me about that MOM story that went viral in the TBM social networking.