Inside the British Museum, there’s a tree made of guns and grenade launchers. It’s a sculpture by four artists from Mozambique in a country moving away from war and exploitation. Citizens could exchange something deadly for ploughs, bicycles, and sewing machines. Thousands of weapons were cut up and soldered into…
Author: @Monya_PostMo
Raised Mormon in the American South. Grateful to have left the Church, grateful for many things it taught me
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Gay Mormon Generations: Stuart Matis and David Archuleta
Twenty two years ago this month, Stuart Matis, a Latter-day Saint in his early 30s who was troubled by his attraction to men, pinned a note reading ‘do not resuscitate’ to his chest and shot himself on the steps of the Mormon stake center in Los Altos, California. Last month,…
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Centering the straight spouse and the route to self
On their wedding night, Kylie’s husband came out to her as bisexual. (He now identifies as gay.) Six months later, as they were moving into a new apartment, he confessed he’d been cheating on her with men. So they did what many devout Mormon couples would do and called their…
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what Mormons could learn about love from bell hooks
“A culture of domination is anti-love,” black feminist philosopher bell hooks wrote. Without love, she warned, those fighting one form of domination—imperialism, sexism, racism, classism—would find themselves in service to another. Too many Mormons go one further. They invoke love in the service of domination. Hooks died this month, and…
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Should I stay or should I go – and why?
Research project on why people leave the Church should also explore reconciliation My mind began whirling when Jana Reiss announced she and her research partner Benjamin Knoll were launching an in-depth project to see why Mormons leave and have left the Church. (See here for the Kickstarter announcement). It’s an…
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Dallin H. Oaks & LGBTQ compromise: Mormon apostle shucks accountability
“It’s a study of power.” That’s how Taylor Petrey sums up his fascinating book on sexuality and gender in modern Mormonism, and that’s the phrase that kept going through my head as I listened to six hours of Mormon Stories podcasts about Dallin H. Oaks’s November 12 talk at the…
Peculiar Pod-O-Rama (mid-Nov): wise newlyweds, and a November policy from You-Know-Who
Mormonland is packed with podcasts. Here’s a random sampling of my (too limited) listens over the last fortnight. Cole & Kent make the cutest, wisest couple ever Latter Gay Stories (1:21) Gay men who come out well into adulthood (and often after marriage to a woman) often talk about going…
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Peculiar Pod-o-rama: mixed- to matched-orientation marriage, and more
Image: “Roscoe Considers Recording a Podcast” by zoomar is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0 Halloween brings honest queries on whether homosexuality is caused by possession; scholars track gay Mormons’ journeys and mental health Mormonland is packed with podcasts. Here’s a random sampling of my listens over the last fortnight.* Human…
Performing Mormon womanhood
LuLaRoe, Judith Butler, the Family Proclamation, and our invisible Heavenly Mother In the 1990 book Gender Trouble, queer philosopher Judith Butler proposed that gender is not a fixed trait but one that must be constantly performed. Now she’s an academic superstar. But decades earlier, Mormons made a pretty penny perfecting…
Suicide ideation in non-straight Latter-day Saints: what hurts? What helps?
For National Suicide Prevention week, Main Street Plaza reviews a study of active and former Church members A team of researchers investigated whether active Latter-day Saints were different from inactive and former members in terms of how and how much they thought about suicide. Over 600 people identifying as sexual…