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A Community for Anyone Interested in Mormonism.

Sunday in Outer Blogness: Unhappy anniversary edition!

chanson, November 6, 2016

One year ago yesterday, the members of the CoJCoL-dS learned that their church had launched a new policy of excluding the children of same-sex couples from the church’s principal ordinances. This one event broke many people’s hope that the CoJCoL-dS would one day do right by its LGBTQ members, and dramatically changed their feelings about the church — and caused a world of hurt.

So this whole week, the Mormon blogosphere has seen an outpouring of feelings about this unhappy anniversary.

Among the reminiscences, we have a fascinating first-hand account from “the first person to put the baby blessing and baptism portions of the November 5 policy in a publicly-accessible space online”. Of course the central point to remember from his story is the following:

The identity of “the leaker” should’ve been obvious to everyone from Day One. The “leaker” was …. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In the internet age, when you send an email to thousands of recipients, YOU’VE LEAKED YOUR OWN DOCUMENT. It is therefore absurd to fret about the singular source of a public dissemination, as if there couldn’t be 99 separate sources.

Exactly. When it first appeared, it didn’t occur to me to worry about the psychology of “the leaker” because — if thousands of people have access to this information — their roll-out was the equivalent of handing it directly to the press. Better, in fact, because their attempt at keeping this critical information secret gave the story a more enticing hook.

Needless to say, this event inspired many people to finally leave the CoJCoL-dS.

In other news, the US election isn’t over yet. The Mormons got some praise from an unlikely source for the integrity I recently praised.

And life goes on! In other topics we have the horror that is modesty education, how the CoJCoL-dS values single women (or not), gendered behavior expectations, the life of Oliver Cowdery, God as a bully, and proof that Trump is Hebrew!

Not-Mormon-related exactly, but can we talk about the situation for Native Americans defending their water supply and land they own while a notorious band of white criminals got no punishment for their siege of public land…?

I guess this time I can’t really wish you all happy reading — and this week promises to be a nail-biting one! — but in case you didn’t notice it, you may be interested in checking out ProfXM’s new post on City Creek ads embracing “the world”.

Homosexuality Sunday in Outer Blogness

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Comments (2)

  1. James says:
    November 13, 2016 at 7:58 pm

    I think you might be a little bit off in your analysis of what happened. People were tired of the oligopoly rule and voted for change. I think they were tired of all the wars Hilary and her neocon friends supported. I wonder how many Bernie voters were angry at being disenfranchised by the Clinton campaign and MSM shenanigans that stole the nomination for her as well.

    Nevertheless we need to pay real close attention to what Trump and the republicans will try to do. They have all three branches and that may mean we are in for a lot of silly legislation aimed at right wing evangelicals and mormons. However, if Trump ends the War in Syria by stopping the covert support of ISIS, the craziness might be a little more tolerable.

  2. Suzanne Neilsen says:
    November 13, 2016 at 11:06 pm

    This is why democracy does not work. Because billionaires aren’t oligarchs. And the votes of black people and minorities aren’t suppressed, but rather are stolen from deserving white saviors.
    And good thing the popular vote doesn’t matter, cuz ISiS. And now that right wing evangelicals control all three branches of government, they are going to pass silly laws aimed at themselves. That’s why they’re out there protesting, cuz they’re scared shitless they may have to say “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. At least we can rest easy about perverts not in the bathroom now they’re in the Whitehouse.
    It makes the crazyness tolerable knowing I can flush in peace.

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