My sympathy to the bishops who have to deal with the anxieties of members who watched the Frontline documentary The Mormons. But lets face it, it’s going to get a lot worse during the presidential campaign. However painful, Helen Whitney’s work is affording Mormons a soft landing.
The Conservative Logic of Gay Marriage
If you feel queezy about homosexuality, my sympathy. We have all been raised in a culture that identifies homosexuality as a defect if not a sin. It would be dishonest if we were to pretend that we can escape our socialization but we can rely on reason for reflection. On…
May I have this dance?
I couldn’t believe I was finally old enough to attend my first church dance! I had waited months for this! I’d turned twelve in May, and the first dance after that happened to be a stake Halloween dance. I decided I’d go as a gypsy that year. My mom helped…
ex-Mormon vs. post-Mormon vs. DAMU
What’s in a name? 😉 Back when I wrote my handy guide to different types of Mormons I claimed that ex-Mormon and post-Mormon are just two words for the same thing. Since then, many people have told me that there’s a real difference between the two, namely that an ex-Mormon…
The Many Meandering Paths Away from Faith
When people leave Mormonism, where do they go? What paths do they take? Purely on the basis of anecdotal evidence, this is what some of them do:
Heart-shaped Cookies (Youth Conference continues)
We stepped out of the building and found a low brick wall that we could sit on with no one around. “Well?” I asked. “I’ve brought a little present that I was thinking we could give to Y and Z. I baked them a batch of delicious heart-shaped cookies.” Read…
Stinker
My mother is 77 (let’s say it all together..) “bless her heart”. She has severe senile dementia, congestive heart failure and is a breast cancer survivor. She is, in a nutshell, A Survivor. She has also reverted back to that state of a child where she’s lost certain social proprieties…
Authority, Power and Seeing Red
I went to an LDS ward meeting yesterday. Sacrament meeting. I went to support a friend who was singing; she is inactive, but they keep asking her to come sing. I don’t blame them, she’s got a killer voice. Before I left home, I asked my daughter “Do I look…
Love One Another
After moving to Utah, I made my living as a photographer. During that time, I was given a glimpse into the lives of many different types of people. Many of which, were Mormons. I’m going to post a story every now and then about my experiences. Living in Zion is…
Strong Like Water
by Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner The same week Karmine discovers her husband is having an affair with a man, she takes her mother to a doctor, who finds a tiny patch of cancer on the tip of the old woman’s nose. Abby, Karmine’s seventy-five-year-old mother, cannot be convinced she has…