This summer, when I posted on X about my lifelong conviction that the god of Mormonism is a moral monster, someone told me, very helpfully and completely accurately, that I would love God’s Monsters by Esther Hamori. God’s Monsters is the first work of religious scholarship that has made me…
Category: Violence
Obligatory Violence and the Book of Mormon
Like so many people, I have spent the past two days convulsed with grief and horror at the events in Charleston. Also shame: America’s latest accused mass murderer claimed he had to kill black people because they “rape our women,” and it’s as repugnant to me that anyone would murder…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Reflection Edition
Chanson asked me to fill in for SiOB this week – I think it’s been a quiet week. (Sort of like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon – it’s always a quiet week). But this week is quiet for many reasons – perhaps we’re all still reacting (or not reacting) to the…
A MESSAGE TO ALL HOMOPHOBIC PEOPLE AND A LETTER TO MY MOTHER
A MESSAGE TO ALL HOMOPHOBIC PEOPLE Another 17 year old boy named Jack Denton Reese committed suicide on April 22 in Mountain Green, Utah after being bullied for being feminine and/or gay, the day before his boyfriend Alex Smith spoke at a panel about the bullying Jack experienced. The panel…
Moral Nostalgia and the Movies
This post was inspired by A teenager speaks on new movie standards. In her recent discussion of the current state of movies, and particularly award winning movies, Camila B. states that she is concerned about “movies throughout the decades and the negative changes that I have noticed.” She then goes…
Inciting Violence – Glenn Beck and Fox News’s specialty
When I was in graduate school (2001-2007), my department regularly held symposia. Most of the symposia were members of our department or faculty at our university presenting their research. But occasionally we would bring in outside scholars to talk about their research. One of those scholars was Frances Fox Piven,…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Violent Rhetoric Edition!
Folks, sorry Sunday has come a little late this week! I’d like to claim that I was just so busy, but really it was a combination of massive Spring cleaning, plus a bit of getting sucked in by the call of the Legos, and then forgetting (until Sunday evening) that…
No more humoring violence-infatuated Mormons
Back in October 2008, I posted a public response to an email that a Mormon friend of mine received and then forwarded on to me for comment: Enough with the Emails from Mormon McVeigh Wannabes. An excerpt from my message to the Mormon author of that email rant: I’m very…
“If I see Harry Reid in the temple, I’m going to hit him.”
Hey, Mormons: Wilco Tango Foxtrot? (Comments are now closed at the original post, so please comment below) Serious kudos to The Millennial Star and John Fowles for taking on this topic in this M* guest post: Harry Reid fireside canceled because of politics IMHO, it’s a pitch-perfect response to this…
Book Club Discussion of “Under the Banner”
My book club recently read Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. Despite my interest in all things mormon, I did not recommend this book to my group. I had read it before, and found it frightening. The Lafferty murders were especially heinous (to my mind) and disturbing on…