M. Russell Ballard begins a talk (given at BYU August 20, 2013) reprinted in the September 2014 Ensign and titled ‘Men and Women in Priesthood Power” with this In what I say, please keep in mind and think straight about the basic doctrines of Christ…. Let me suggest five key…
Category: Family
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Response edition
The big news this week is that Kate Kelly has appealed her excommunication. In her appeal, Kate wrote: I am, and have always been, a faithful Mormon. My only “sin†elucidated by you has been speaking my mind and pushing for gender equality in the Church. Far from being wrong,…
Disjointed conversations
My parents are wonderful and very conservative, orthodox members of the church. They feel a need to bear their testimonies to me and let me know they believe. I understand totally that this comes from what they hear at church. They feel responsible for and so sad about my change…
Letting go
A very significant relationship in my life has recently come to a close. This relationship has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It impacted every aspect of my upbringing and guided me in all the major decisions of my life up to this…
Congratulations to 2013 X-Mormons of the Year: J. Seth Anderson and Michael Ferguson!!!
It’s an inspiring and exciting story! Couples in California right around Proposition 8 learned that if you don’t get married in the window of time when it’s legal, you might have a long wait before your next opportunity. Failure to block same-sex-marriages legally was apparently an error on the part…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Family Christmas Survival Edition!
Those Christmas family gatherings can bring priceless joy, but can sometimes also involve treading in dangerous waters. Some have boundary problems deciding what to say (for example the first comment here is fascinating, but perhaps wouldn’t be helpful in some family Christmas Eves…), and some have still-open wounds. And even…
Risky Rescue
I don’t read The Ensign, but I do read Zelophehad’s Daughters. It was “To the Rescue,” an entry on ZD from last week, that clued me in to an essay by Thomas Monson from the October Ensign called “Our Responsibility to Rescue.” You can pretty much figure out the whole…
The “We Won’t Tolerate Imperfection” Club
Facebook is all agog about The Not Even Once Club, a new children’s book by Wendy Watson Nelson, whose credentials include a PhD in family therapy and gerontology and 25 years as a professor of marriage and family therapy, plus being married to a general authority. Here’s the official plot…
Great Big Polygamy Timeline
The Timeline For a very long time, I’ve always wanted to know exactly who was doing who and for how many jelly beans (Sorry, old joke between old friends). I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a timeline of EVERYTHING polygamy related?” This is a composition of everything I…
Because They Couldn’t Very Well Say “Sorry We Insisted You Waste All that Time and Money”
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…