Gay Mormon Man Excommunicated Twice For Homosexuality Hello, my name is Robin Lee Johnson (real name in case you are wondering) and I am an ex-Mormon with over 50 years of experience with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I knew that I had “Same-Sex-Attraction†since I…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Last Gasp of 2012 Edition!!
If you had anything you wanted to be sure to do in 2012, you don’t have much time left!! It’s time for tithing settlement, and the year-end reflections have already begun! Mormons Building Bridges have been recognized as making an impact in 2012, as have many Mormon politicians who’ve been…
Opening the Brodie nominations and closing the X-Mormon of the Year Nominations!
We’ve got some great nominations for X-Mormon of the Year — you can continue to add nominations until we begin voting on Wednesday, January 2. And now it’s that time of year again to start collecting the nominations for the Brodie Awards!!! This is the fourth year of the Brodie…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Holiday Pantsuit Edition!
It’s Donna again, giving Chanson another well-deserved break from her weekly column. As always, I’m humbled but also very excited to be here, as I just learned that one of our own, the amazing writer, Johnny Townsend, has earned some high praise from Kirkus Book Reviews. His collection of short…
A Secular Mormon Christmas!
When I was in eighth grade, I wrote an essay for school about how much I love Christmas. I focused specifically on all of the fun projects I loved to do with my family — like making cookies and gingerbread houses and decorations and home-made advent calendars. I also used…
Christmas Eve Service
Some years ago, I attended a Christmas Eve service with my grandmother. She converted to Mormonism as an adult, and was raised in a more traditional/ritual religion (Ukrainian Orthodox). It’s a religion where they make a big deal out of Christmas Eve. She liked attending services of other churches on…
Rituals & Celebrations
I have a complicated relationship with holidays, one that predates my abandonment of religious belief. I have a hard time understanding rituals; I need to understand the logic underlying the holidays. The link between Christmas trees, gifts, and the birth of Jesus always seemed too tenuous for credibility. In graduate…
Anything but a Harry Potter Christmas!
A few nights ago, my husband and I were putting our children’s Christmas gifts into separate piles, trying to make sure each of them had the same number of items. When we’d finished dividing up the gifts, I looked at the three or four items each child had and declared…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Pants on the Ground edition!
Chanson asked me to fill in siob this week. This week was going to be all about the pants, when a terrible tragedy happened Friday. I haven’t been watching or reading the news – my children are close to the ages of the children involved. It hits a little close…
Collecting nominations for X-Mormon of the Year 2012!!!
It’s that time of year again! Time to find which X-Mormon had the biggest impact in 2012! We have at least two really strong candidates this year: First off, Kyrsten Sinema, who was just elected to the United States House of Representatives. She is an ex-Mormon, and I think she…