**Remember to nominate candidates for the X-Mormon of the year.** Raise your hand if anyone’s ever said this to you: “Mormons are just so nice!” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it, and very often it’s true. Outright deznat sneering may be on the rise, but it…
Category: Testimony
Symbolic beliefs can counter cognitive dissonance, but at a cost
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Exclusion policy, meet the latest strength of youth
November 5th was the anniversary of the Exclusion Policy, the 2015 declaration that same-sex couples who married would be excommunicated as apostates and their children barred from blessings, baptism, and other rituals until they turned 18 and condemned their parents’ lifestyle. Googling that today, the bulk of articles on the…
Mormon Alumni Association
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A Seer Stone for Halloween
A magic rock, a spooky house, and ghosts conjured up from the Latter-day Saints’ colorful past. My new mystery novel, Seer Stone, might be just be the perfect read this Halloween. Not to mention a fun Christmas gift, or even just a vehicle for confronting one’s own demons. Mormon or…
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Will Capitalism Reign During the Millennium?
I can’t wait for the Millennium when we all work six days a week, twelve or fourteen or even sixteen hours a day. I can’t wait for that serene society, when Satan has been bound and we can send our six-year-old children to work in the mines or shuck oysters…
Main Street Plaza
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Blog Updates
You may have noticed that we’ve brought back our old masthead and switched to a new theme. We’d like to update the sidebar links as well — Do you have any ideas of links we should add?
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Why I’d Pick the Madonna Inn over Temple Marriage
Halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a set of buildings celebrate over-the-top kitsch. Alex and Phyllis Madonna opened their eponymous hotel in 1958. The architecture avoids straight lines. Pepto Bismol pink bathes the common rooms; gilded, oversized cherubs perch over bannisters. The hotel’s signature pink cloud cocktail features strawberry-flavored…
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A broader way to be active in church
Growing up Mormon, I was always taught to be a good example. Now I’m trying to teach myself to find exemplars. Last month, I walked into the Episcopal Church of St. John’s the Evangelist in the San Francisco’s Mission district. I was attending a service, but not a worship service….
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I’m a gay Mormon, and I am Brenda
Coming out as gay to Latter-day Saints is always emotionally exhausting for me. I came out slowly, first to myself at 19 and then fully to others at 24. Before I was fully out, in 2016, I had to balance my coming out between the LDS Church’s stated positions on…
Revising Eternity: 27 Latter-day Men Reflect on Modern Relationships
Revising Eternity: 27 Latter-day Saint Men Reflect on Modern RelationshipsEdited by Holly Welker272 pp. University of Illinois Press, $19.95 “I always knew that ‘good Mormon boys’ did three things: they went on missions, graduated from BYU, and married in the temple,” writes Scott Blanding, a gay man who came of…
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Under the Banner of Heaven is a Fascinating Examination of Ex-Mormon Issues
Under the Banner of Heaven, the new true crime series on Hulu, delves deep into the story of Brenda Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a Mormon woman who was murdered along with her baby in 1984 in a Utah suburb. The case is portrayed through fictional detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield), and…