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…
LDS Knickers in Knots Over LDS Sisters in Pants
A Facebook group called All Enlisted (as in “we are all enlisted until the conflict is o’er”) states on its about page that It is intended to be a place of action where active LDS men and women can engage in acts of peaceful resistance to gender inequality in the…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Kristmas Kremlinology Edition!
The big news this past week is the new LDS website Mormons and gays. From what I gather, the most amazing part is that in the official church stance they admitted that some people are gay or lesbian (they even made reference to reality on this!) whereas before this site,…
mormonsandgays.org — a Sign of Movement toward Dialogue?
The Church recently launched a site titled Love One Another: A Discussion on Same-Sex Attraction (at the URL: www.mormonsandgays.org). Here is a useful link that centralizes many responses to the new site. John Gustav-Wrathall writes at D&S that “Now is the Time” for dialogue, because this new site demonstrates that…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Love the Winter Weather Edition!
OK, today’s title is not related to this week’s posts (except maybe these). I was just sipping my tea and gazing out my window at the beautiful snow-covered roofs and trees, and thought: time for a relaxing afternoon of reading blogs! Andrew Sullivan wrote an interesting thought experiment: What if…
Hurting Relationships: Sophia L. Stone’s “Mormon Diaries”
In 2005 (at my little sister’s bridal shower) my mother rebuked me for purchasing my own “trashy lingerie†for my honeymoon instead of using the beautiful and elegant nightgowns she’d given me for the occasion. “You didn’t know I knew about that, did you?†she asked with a resentful edge…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Let the Holidays Begin Edition!
Last week marked some interesting holidays, including the anniversaries of the publication of The Origin of Species and Dr. Who. Plus Hanukkah is coming up in a couple weeks. Many of us celebrated Thanksgiving. I find this holiday a bit problematic, but don’t let my Thanksgiving-grinchery rain on other peoples’…