By Karen Ocamb, News editor, Frontiers in LA Reposted (with permission) from Dirigo Blue and Daily Kos. “God has no grandchildren,” the evangelical ex-Marine father of my late friend Chip Howe said, explaining how he surrendered judgment and came to accept Chip’s homosexuality. Chip, a Lieutenant in the Navy during…
The Ethics of Speaking Up
Hi everyone, I’m honored to join the Main Street Plaza crew. My name is Mike, and I chose the nickname Saganist because Carl Sagan has been a big influence on my thinking. Just a bit of background on me: my religious history is long and complicated, but I joined the…
Oldies but Goodies: Testimony of a Dissident
A while back another blogger asked me to submit an essay about my Mormon experience. Probably, for good reasons he changed his mind and never published it. Since it is already written and might shed some light on my argument at Times and Seasons, I might as well publish it…
God and Being Gay
Cross-posted over at Virginia Beach Progressives and Our Own Online. This is somewhat a lengthy post on how my sexuality affected my faith in God. It’s also a brief account of my entering into and coming out of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From July 2004 to…
You might be a member of a cult if…
I don’t want to ghettoize this post by making it about Mormonism, but since that’s why we’re all here, it’s natural to gravitate to that. But this pertains to so much more than one group. I recently watched a video (not the best) that got me thinking about what it…
Mormons and Credit Cards
For all the criticizing we do of Mormonism, there are some positives that are worthy of mention. I occasionally run across them in my varied reading on the internet. I came across this story about the Mormon culture region having the lowest amount of credit card debt of any region…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: Back to School Edition!
It’s sad to see Summer vacation coming to a close, isn’t it? (For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, that is — I don’t know how the vacation schedule works down under…) In a highly controversial move, the president (of the US) has decided to open the school year…
Sunday in Outer Blogness: follow-up discussion edition!
I’m sorry if the title doesn’t sound too enticing, but the thing that stood out in this week’s batch of posts was the web of discussion in blogspace, where topics started on one blog were continued on another and/or people have started new discussions on things we’ve been talking about…
a service only atheists & blasphemers can provide
Leave it to atheists to consider the pets post-rapture. Apparently a group of atheists have put together a service for “heaven-bound” Christians to care for their “Eternal Earth-Bound Pets” should the rapture occur. Maybe we should contact the owners of the domain to see if they have made any money…
What’s in a Mormon identity?
I’m certain that this has been discussed over and over in numerous ways and in numerous formats on the internet…but…what do you think your identity is relating to Mormonism and what do you think that identity signifies? For example, we each know that there’s Further Light and Knowledge (FLAK), and…