Sunday in Outer Blogness: Another week, another SiOB edition, ;)

Sigh, this week has been pretty calm compared to last week. I guess there was this article about mishies not getting the healthcare they need, which gave some deserved publicity to the Sick RMs organization.

President Newsroom’s response made me sick. Just a couple weeks after the fiasco of handing all the new apostleships — the actual money/power roles — to three more white guys from Utah, nobody on the committee suggested that maybe it was a little too soon to start using their one black/brown mishie companionship in their ass-covering PR piece? If you’re promoting independent blog entries, why not this one?

As someone was introducing all of the panelists for “Race & Mormon Women,” [2] a thought struck me: I tirelessly advocate for more voices of women to be heard at church (in history, lesson manuals, even from the ward/GC pulpit) and yet not once have I ever heard a black Mormon woman quoted or used as an example.

Apologies to Jana Riess — who apparently wants to improve the church through an aspirational give-them-high-expectations-to-live-up-to or something — but, seriously, President Newsroom, can you demonstrate that you’re capable of acknowledging and addressing real problems for once instead of constantly searching for the nearest rug to sweep them under…? Maybe stop demonizing all criticism?

And once you’ve mastered that, you could move on to serious moral questions of our age.

Unless something has changed very dramatically very recently, the reality is that situation for mishies with special health needs is very similar to the situation for victims of abuse who turn to their LDS bishop: The authority figure you’re reporting to doesn’t necessarily have any training or expertise in your sort of problem, so maybe it will get handled competently, and maybe it won’t.

In church commentary, Richard R. Lyman wrote the Family Proclamation — or what it would have looked like in 1865. But things were different then, in the days of polygamy, weren’t they? All of this moral relativism is leading to a slippery slope…

In philosophy/theology, we have thoughts on Plato’s cave and milk before meat.

The political season in the US is underway, and it looks like there’s a contest over who can say the most horrifically ignorant thing — in this case Huckabee is advocating selling convicts as slaves:

Tracing the idiotic idea back to it’s origins,

…for he should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. – Exodus 22:3

Yup folks, there it is! Right smack dab in the “good(?) book” itself. One of the many passages with a good word to say about slavery. The very book that several Regressives (Huckabee, Cruz, Carson, Jindal, Santorum) think trump (no relation) the Constitution. (Let that sink in for a moment.)

And in the department of it’s-not-just-Mormonism, some new research just gave the ladies some good/bad news:

But on the plus side, we women who have suspected that we’ve been punished for being too “angry” when a man would be rewarded? We’re not paranoid. So there’s that. Of course, realizing you’re not paranoid is always a bit of a shit deal. Like, “yes, I’m not paranoid, but that means the government really is out to kill me. Great.”

Life and art intertwined this week as Chelsea Sidler-Lartey shared her triumphal tattoo. Leah has written a touching poem about home. Joanne Hanks’s book just hit 100 reader reviews! Froggie has some beautiful tadpoles! J G-W wrote some interesting insights about whether homosexuality was invented or discovered.

Happy reading!