Monday in Outer Blogness: Mormon Rancher edition!

Or maybe I should go with laddersdazed’s epithet: “Mormon Welfare Cowboy” — since this prophet who wants the taxpayers to feed his cattle was racist enough to complain about black people receiving aid from the government, while wondering aloud if they weren’t better off as slaves…

This was a big week for personal stories!! Joseph and his husband are building some memories. Mormon X broke up and is not graduating, but still is happy. Knotty and her husband are moving on to a new chapter in their lives. Natalie has a permanent criminal stalking injunction against one Joyce McKinney and she explained why.

Remember the #Becauseofhim hashtag that was promoted for Easter? The folks of the exmo subreddit listed some other things that were #becauseofhim.

In life journeys, there were several exit stories, plus a reverse: Dan now enjoys church again.

Family interfaith discussions can be positive, but aren’t always. Emma re-lived a hard lesson about Mormons and boundaries:

Yes! That did happen to me last night. How did you guess? I have spent a day and a half absolutely disgusted with my father. I’m learning in the real world it is considered rude to ask someone, “when are you getting married?”, “Why don’t you have kids”, and “Tell me about you sex life.” Not so in the Mormon community. These are all perfectly acceptable question of any person at any stage in their life. Mormons are always nosing around in each other’s business.

Ah, but is it just the Mormons? Kiley’s lesson suggests otherwise:

A voice cut through my thoughts with this declaration: “Gosh!” sickeningly cheerfully exclaimed and timed. “I don’t understand how anyone can see this and not believe in God!”

I thought Mormons were the only ones with advanced degrees in being annoyingly so obvious with their passive aggressive statements.

In Mormon fun, Casey reinterpreted Joseph Smith’s encounter with Moroni as a Facebook conversation, the Abbotsvill 4th is offering sensitivity training for priesthood holders, and the ex-Mormon Hymns are back with the new hit Doubt your Doubts!! And did anyone else notice the change from “Plan of Salvation” to “Plan of Happiness”?

For a more serious discussion of doubting your doubts, see Lance’s post, or Profet’s discussions on truthiness and on seeking vs. avoiding new ideas. (So, what’s the word on the CoJCoL-dS claiming trademark of the word “Mormon”? — the analysis is good, but the correction leaves the situation a little unclear.)

On the church-and-sex beat, Andrew S. explained why increasing acceptance of same-sex marriage is not a sign of moral decline. Coincidentally, Utah is still #1 in porn consumption, while little girls get church lessons on the importance of lip gloss and on preparing for marriage:

Ask a few children to stand and share why they would like to be married in the temple and what they can do now to prepare for that blessing.

Yes, please, children, share why, at the ripe old age of 5, you are thinking about the when’s, where’s, how’s and why’s of marriage. Please tell us, in your own, pre-elementary school words, how you can prepare now to be married. Should you stop picking your nose? Chewing your hair? Hitting your brother when he makes you mad? These are the types of things five-year-olds are working on. How will perfecting these make you a better wife?

On a related note, have you ever seen the musical “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”? This is kind of a tangent, but I remember when I was cute little Mormon girl in Junior High and invited two Christian girls to sleep over at my house. The film I’d chosen for the evening was “Grease” (which my mom was OK with, probably because some other Mormon relatives loved it). Anyway, the next day, my two Christian friends told me that I should have warned them well in advance that the film would be “Grease” so that they could have their moms pick them up and take them home before I put in the movie — and that I should have rented something wholesome like “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” instead. This was a major WTF moment for me (though I probably wouldn’t have said “WTF?” back then), because a more obvious solution would have been for them to say, “No, I don’t want to watch this film” when I suggested putting on the film instead of just watching it without giving the slightest hint that they didn’t want to. Anyway, it turns out that the wholesome, beloved-by-Christians alternative is all about the joys of forced marriage.

Now for scriptures! In this week’s Old Testament lesson, we learned why one should not treat the Old Testament as a source of moral guidance. OTOH, the OT is more vegetarian than you may realize. The Book of Mormon also illustrates God’s odd ethics.

In random stuff, Maya photographed some cute frogs! And Froggey made some coconut-lemon bars.

The kids of Around the World in 80 Diapers celebrated Sechesläuten — which, coincidentally, is the main reason SiOB is late this week. Sechesläuten is a holiday that exists only here in Zürich! Anyway, yesterday I was really on a roll building some new Lego buildings (for the kids, of course) and sorting all the Legos — and I just didn’t hit a good breaking point. I would have made a point to stop earlier to do SiOB, but I figured that I could just put it off until Monday (today) since I have the day off for Sechesläuten. (I saw the snowman this morning, but probably won’t attend the festivities because of the rain, plus I’m busy doing SiOB…)

So, I’m sorry this one is so late — to make it up, I’ll try to post some photos and/or a YouTube video of all my latest Lego creations. 😉

Thanks to everyone for posting such interesting stories and insightful articles this week!! Happy reading!