This post was written by MoHoHawaii. Timed for the annual gay pride celebrations, the LDS Church’s official magazine, the Ensign, has an anti-gay manifesto in its current issue. The article is written by Elder Bruce D. Porter a General Authority who was formerly a political science professor at BYU. The…
Here’s to the Hard Cases
When I was invited on to post at Main Street Plaza, I was asked to explain why it is I go to the trouble, as a committed member of the LDS Church, to debate with those who are hostile to the LDS Church in some way. This article is a…
MSP contributes to a BusinessWeek article
I issued a call for volunteers to speak with a reporter a while back about a story she was working on. Several MSP readers and regulars stepped up and spoke with the reporter. The article is now complete and just went live on BusinessWeek’s website: God’s MBAs: Why Mormon Missions…
Link bomb #8
Originally published at the USU SHAFT site. A history of the LDS garment. Another interesting history is the evolution of the LDS prayer circle. What a religious debate on Facebook would look like in the Mayan pre-Columbian America. Sincere devoutness is sometimes indistinguishable from good satire. Case in point: this…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Late and Lite Edition!
Hey folks! We had some sort of European holiday here, causing a long weekend, prompting a family visit to some other randomly-chosen-picturesque-European city — and I thought I’d be back in time to do SiOB on Sunday itself, but it didn’t happen. I saved up links all week, though, so…
Preparing the Way for Change
The other day, I was having a discussion with a new straight friend, Darren. He is an active Mormon, a husband and father, who within the past year has discovered that two of his closest friends in the world, other members of the Church whom he has known for years,…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Living in a Society Edition!
I love this video — it’s great to see that sometimes random strangers will stick up for someone who is being mistreated. Sadly, some states are still voting to keep legal protections away from some families. And, sadly, some LGBs want to jettison the T from LGBT, and let the…
In defense of religious ‘brainwashing’
Originally published at the USU SHAFT site. Ive enjoyed several of the videos produced by The Thinking Atheist. This video, however, should make them reconsider their (already rather smarmy) name. In the video, several atheists relate their Christian upbringing, which they now not-so-fondly remember as brainwashing. Dawkins has sometimes gone…
Jimmy Creech: A Prophetic Voice for LGBTQ Equality
In May 1984, a closeted gay man in a small town in southeastern North Carolina went to see the pastor of his United Methodist congregation. The man Adam was upset and announced that he was leaving the church. When the pastor asked why, Adam replied that he could no longer…
“We do not need more members who question every detail.”
Spending too much time on Facebook, as usual, and a friend shared this link from the page LDS General Conference, a quote from M. Russell Ballard from October 1995 General Conference: We do not need more members who question every detail; we need members who have felt with their hearts,…