As pretty much everyone already knows, today the Supreme Court declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional and ruled that the private sponsors of Proposition 8 in California didn’t have the legal right to step in and appeal the ruling by a federal court that Prop 8 was unconstitutional when…
Author: Holly
“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a sociopath’s dream”
Read this deeply bizarre cover story from Psychology Today. Entitled “Confessions of a Sociopath,” it tells the story of a female Mormon law professor with an undergraduate degree from BYU. Here’s the most relevant part about the church: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a sociopath’s dream….
He Puts Us in a Shark Suit
My last post asserted that God is a jerk. I think the evidence supports that assertions pretty well. But maybe he’s a jerk with a really great sense of humor? Maybe everything seems so ridiculous to us because it amuses him to watch us run around and be scared and…
Once You Figure Out God Is a Jerk
So, I heard some years ago that religious people tend to be happier and healthier. It didn’t especially jive with my experience, but hey, it’s what the scientific data say, right? Here’s an interesting piece from the NY Times, corroborating and explaining some of the benefits of “religious attendance” [or]…
Maybe Conservativism Is Hurting Religion After All….
Given that the “liberal churches are losing members because they’re liberal; conservative churches are growing because they’re conservative” argument is invoked every so often here at MSP, I thought people would be interested in this article from Religion Dispatches analyzing some of the problems with that claim. An excerpt: Hout…
Mormon Trolls, Gorgons and Orcs, and Being Tired of Good People
Currently the most posted story in my Facebook feed is this excellent NY Times op-ed from Ta-Nehisi Coates, entitled “The Good, Racist People.” Coates uses the recent frisking of Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker as an opportunity to analyze the racism of “good” people: In modern America we believe racism to…
The Tree-Hating Insane Inorganic Alien Trying to Destroy the Earth
Several years ago, at the recommendation of a friend, I read Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief by John Lamb Lash. It was a very, um, interesting book. Actually I guess outlandish might be a better term, but it certainly held my attention. …
LDS Knickers in Knots Over LDS Sisters in Pants
A Facebook group called All Enlisted (as in “we are all enlisted until the conflict is o’er”) states on its about page that It is intended to be a place of action where active LDS men and women can engage in acts of peaceful resistance to gender inequality in the…
Unrighteous Dominion and Coca-Cola
A link with the headline BYU caffeine movementfizzles has been appearing in my Facebook feed. Apparently there was a facebook page calling for caffeinated versions of sodas to be sold at BYU, but its creator shut it down because it generated “heated opinions on both sides” as well as “general…
Additions to the Post-Mo Lexicon
A couple of conversations I’ve been in lately have yielded terms I think people on this blog will find useful. the first was coined a month or so ago by Chino Blanco and defined by me: Joe-ha-dist n. An excessively ardent and bellicose defender of Joseph Smith: Joehadists rarely have…