A Community for Anyone Interested in Mormonism.
Just in time for Pride Month, a General Authority emeritus has published an article in The Church News declaiming the social safety nets because governments must ensure wickedness never was happiness. Well, not in so many words, but it has all the unloving, racist, outdated implications you’d expect. Tad Callister says that same-sex marriage is […]
Continue ReadingNo, I have to admit, I was actually surprised when I heard that the CoJCoL-dS excommunicated Natasha Helfer. And then I was immediately surprised that I was surprised. She fits the triple-criteria-set that is a guaranteed path to excommunication: She has a large following, She publicly corrects the wrong statements of church leaders in a […]
Continue Reading“Why are you so mean all the time?” I asked one of the religious conservatives in my life, this one Mormon. “When am I ever mean?” This particular family member had just posted on social media urging everyone to be Christlike. Immediately afterward, he posted his view that the very concept of institutional racism was […]
Continue ReadingIn the Spring of 2003, I was working as the minister’s assistant at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. One particular morning that Spring, in the Reverend Daniel Kanter’s office, I was alternating between sipping my coffee and offering up my opinion, both pleasures I never enjoyed while Mormon. Seven years had passed since I’d […]
Continue ReadingMain Street Plaza has hosted the Brodie Awards and William Law X-Mormon of the Year for a full ten years. It all started in 2009 when exmos were explicitly excluded from the Bloggernacle’s “Niblets” — a set of awards that fizzled out a few years later. Check the sidebar for links to all of the […]
Continue Readingby Johnny Townsend Many Mormons in Utah see Mitt Romney as a traitor, a lefty radical, because he won’t support Trump’s most egregious acts of oppression. Mormons need to start separating their religious convictions from the Republican party line. “Valeria” was one my favorite missionaries when I served in the Italy Rome Mission. She was […]
Continue Readingby Johnny Townsend Mormons have a long, troubled history of racism, well documented in Joanna Brooks’ Mormonism and White Supremacy. Feeble attempts at addressing the problem consisted mostly of changing the wording in a few Book of Mormon passages from “white and delightsome” to “pure and delightsome.” Numerous systemic problems must be addressed for the […]
Continue Readingby Johnny Townsend The religious right is ramping up for a modern-day crusade. That’s not a metaphor. Racially motivated killings are in the news every day. Homophobic and transphobic murders are committed regularly. Poor men and women are forced to work in conditions that will kill a significant portion of them. When the first few […]
Continue Readingby Farraday Apologists, we have to face facts. The Mormon Church is a dead parrot. Everything the critics say is basically true. Your excuses do not work. But what can you do? Your family is in the church, so you can’t leave. And you are an idealist: you really want the church to be true. […]
Continue Readingby Johnny Townsend I work in an adult video store, a job that’s given me unexpected insight into the motivations of good, religious people willing to continue accelerating global warming no matter how much personal suffering they experience as a result. Granted, I have other experiences—four years at a Baptist high school, two years as […]
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