Sunday in Outer Blogness: Onward into 2017 edition!

We are smack dab in the middle of awards season here at Main Street Plaza! If you have not yet voted for X-Mormon of the year 2016, this week is your last chance — do it here! Also, I’ve just cleaned up the categories and added my own nominations for the Brodie Awards here. You have another week or two to add your nominations — to give a little extra boost of recognition for the best LDS-interest content published or posted in 2016!!

Also note that Wheat & Tares have started their parallel (perhaps slightly-more-faithful-leaning) awards and Ziff has posted his yearly roundup of funny Bloggernacle comments!

So 2017 has begun, for better or for worse, and with it come new reasons to doubt! Also, Dan Pearce has done a new batch of wrong numbers, Joseph Broom is continuing his human journey, a Utah artist has done a series of portraits of Joseph Smith’s wives, and Dad’s Primal Scream described a scary new development in his family:

Rumor has it that one of the step-sisters is about to get married to her fiance who is gay. Well, he was once gay, or once did something slightly gay, or only has a tiny ounce of gay in him at the moment, or he’s been cured.

All I really know is that my kids have heard the whispering of his cured homosexuality and that the marriage is proceeding. My ex-wife who was so greatly hurt in our divorce and my subsequent coming out is standing on the sidelines while her step-daughter makes the same horrible mistake.

In Mormon culture, here’s a piece on unfundamentalist parenting, the non-issue of explaining to kids about transgender people, and the echoing effects of polygamy:

If I’m raw and honest, polygamy has ruined marriage and motherhood for me. If I’m honest, I’m not sure I’m cut out for the kind of plan of happiness god has for his daughters. If I’m honest, I finally understand why I always felt enslaved to the children I wasn’t ever sure I wanted but was expected to be the only purpose of my life. I finally get it though. I get why I feel pressured to be okay with a marriage of friendship instead of romance. I get why I feel “needy” wanting my husband’s attention. Why my goals and dreams are expected to take a back seat to his career. Why I felt so guilty whenever I wanted to say no. Why my body has never belonged to me and I’m supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to sacrifice.

A Mormon blogger warned others about “The Alarming Truth Behind Anti-Mormonism” — which prompted some responses.

In church-related discussions, we have an analysis of the content of the CoJCoL-dS’s tweets, the church’s Republican problem, the Chad Hardy defense, learning wrong things from the church about women and others, and the conflict between “milk before meat” and honesty:

Now it is possible that Joseph and others lied about polygamy from the pulpit because they felt they had some higher moral principle in mind when they lied. Unfortunately the only obvious candidates to me are to gain more converts (dishonestly by fraud, basically) or to save their own collective asses from the consequences of their actions, neither of which strikes me as a particularly noble moral principle to be prioritizing above honesty.

In history, here’s a list of sacred items that the CoJCoL-dS has lost and some research on Fanny Alger.

In fun, myinlawsaremormon just discovered Mark Twain’s thoughts on the Book of Mormon, and Janet Chamberlin released her debut album! (satire)

And, since we can’t really count on God to save us from our current predicament, we’re going to have to do it ourselves. Even if it’s hard, we can do it.