It was really enjoyable to work my way through this. This is the first response I’ve done with these new church essays since I had read enough to be able to notice things that I recognized were missing, or implications that were being made that felt incomplete or inaccurate. As…
Category: LDS History
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Polygamapalooza Edition!
Wow!! The anonymous-yet-official mysterious oracle of the CoJC0L-dS has just officially admitted that Joseph Smith married multiple women, including teenagers and other men’s wives! And other interesting stuff about Mormon polygamy! This is big news because bringing up any of these fact (true and well-established as they are) has traditionally…
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…
LDS Doubt in the NY Times
Well, this should be interesting. The NY Times has a story published on the web yesterday discussing the ongoing brouhaha in Sweden involving members who have had a crisis of faith. There is a bullet-pointed list of major concerns: – Why does the church always portray Joseph Smith translating the…
General Authority Bullsh*t: A category on my Blog
From Benson’s crazy commie-hatin’ days, to Paul H. Dunn’s deep diving lies, to little discrepancies in Monson’s talks, this category of posts on my blog, “Exploring Mormonism” reveals how much these men speak as men. Hopefully the in-depth fact checking of some of the more influential leaders, conference talks, Ensign articles, and…
animated Mormon quotes – Brigham Young on race
In a caffeine addled state during a long drive I had an idea: Wouldn’t it help people who are interested in Mormonism to “see” what past Mormon leaders have said, rather than just read it? That thought lead to another: Well, you could animate historic Mormon figures to reenact the…
“The Rescue”
Many of you have probably already come across this Reuters special report about Mormonism’s membership troubles in this internet age, as reported by outgoing church historian Marlin Jensen. Apparently, President Monson’s signature campaign is called “the Rescue”: referring to rescuing the church’s membership from “rapidly declining,” as some reports have…
Grow where you are planted
As difficult as it may be for some to believe, this is a statement I can agree with. It is/was an LDS statement originally said by David O. McKay**. From my understanding, it was meant to encourage Mormons not to feel as if they had to “move back to Utah”….
The Book of Mormon: The Musical
God loves Mormons and He wants some More Trey Parker & Matt Stone discuss Mormonism at TAM5: “When you read the beginnings of Mormonism, when you read the Joseph Smith story, you’re just like ‘Wow … wow, really?’ The idea of anybody like Joseph Smith, who can get people to…
Mormon and Queer at the Crossroads
I’ve been active on this blog since chanson reviewed my gay, Mormon novel Ockham’s Razor last October. I will be presenting a paper about my novel at this year’s Sunstone Symposium titled “Two Paradigms for ‘Gay.’” (Half of my presentation will also concern Jonathan Langford’s novel No Going Back–also reviewed…