Renewed interest in Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (e.g., Indiana, Arkansas) has arisen because everyone knows the US Supreme Court will okay gay marriage for the country in a few months. Conservative religious people and entities want to be in a comfortable position when this uncomfortable reality hits — they want…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Easter Conference Drama Edition!
What’s the best way to spend a long holiday weekend? If you said “watching General Conference“, you may be Mormon! Normally the most boring activity known to man (the faithful give tips on making your kids watch and staying awake), this conference was livened up by five people who decided…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Y Be Free edition!
The challenge to BYU’s accreditation has hit the presses!! Let’s see what happens! Theoretically it’s OK to be gay at BYU, but not everybody got the memo. In the meantime, FreeBYU has started posting profiles. And what is the CoCJoL-dS up to these days? I mean, besides conference. Not what…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: New directions edition!
This week’s biggest topic was Elder Christofferson’s talk about how it’s now (sort of?) OK for faithful Mormons to support gay marriage. See this great analysis: Oops, he does go ahead and mention that by short term he really means “all of mortal life†– and then he doesn’t bother…
LDS Church becoming more and more Orwellian on gay issues
The Presbyterian Church voted today to alter its stance on marriage: Marriage involves a unique commitment between two people, traditionally a man and a woman, to love and support each other for the rest of their lives. This is the kind of definition that attempts to blend the old with…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: The Empire Keeps Striking Back Edition!
Another blogger has been threatened with excommunication! Kirk Van Allen criticized D&C 132 and was told by local leaders to delete or modify the post, or else! (Don’t miss FAIR’s 31-page rebuttal!) In addition to that story, Nearing Kolob has been doing some really interesting investigation into the changes in…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Sucked into the vortex edition!
Remember the fun we had last week with creative apologetics? Well, this week we learned that it’s only fun and games until someone actually tries to follow the footnotes and gets sucked into the vortex! It started on a fascinating note as Runtu provided an detailed and specific analysis of…
Family and Death in Mormon Britain: Carys Bray’s “A Song for Issy Bradley”
A little girl lies dying in her bed as her family bustles about their individual activities. Once it’s too late, all of the other members of the family are left with reasons to blame themselves — any one of them could have made slightly different choices and prevented the child’s…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Don’t Apologize Edition!
This past week we were treated to what is possibly the most delicious new apologetic argument since the tapir! Take it away, Meg Stout: It all boils down to the one admission from Emily, where she responded “Yes sir.†when asked if she had engaged in carnal intercourse with Joseph…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Taking sides edition!
So, nothing dramatic happened in the Mormonspace in the past week, but the community became more polarized in the wake of John Dehlin’s excommunication. Runtu found Elder Holland’s discourse surprisingly defensive — and David T found it disingenuous — whereas Geoff B found it reassuring. Oh, and a stream of…