A daguerreotype has been found that may well be an image of Joseph Smith. Joseph was 38 years old when he died; I suppose the photo looks like someone about that age, if they’d had a hard life. The man in the photo doesn’t look all that charismatic or appealing…
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Why I’d Pick the Madonna Inn over Temple Marriage
Halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a set of buildings celebrate over-the-top kitsch. Alex and Phyllis Madonna opened their eponymous hotel in 1958. The architecture avoids straight lines. Pepto Bismol pink bathes the common rooms; gilded, oversized cherubs perch over bannisters. The hotel’s signature pink cloud cocktail features strawberry-flavored…
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A broader way to be active in church
Growing up Mormon, I was always taught to be a good example. Now I’m trying to teach myself to find exemplars. Last month, I walked into the Episcopal Church of St. John’s the Evangelist in the San Francisco’s Mission district. I was attending a service, but not a worship service….
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I’m a gay Mormon, and I am Brenda
Coming out as gay to Latter-day Saints is always emotionally exhausting for me. I came out slowly, first to myself at 19 and then fully to others at 24. Before I was fully out, in 2016, I had to balance my coming out between the LDS Church’s stated positions on…
Revising Eternity: 27 Latter-day Men Reflect on Modern Relationships
Revising Eternity: 27 Latter-day Saint Men Reflect on Modern RelationshipsEdited by Holly Welker272 pp. University of Illinois Press, $19.95 “I always knew that ‘good Mormon boys’ did three things: they went on missions, graduated from BYU, and married in the temple,” writes Scott Blanding, a gay man who came of…
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Under the Banner of Heaven is a Fascinating Examination of Ex-Mormon Issues
Under the Banner of Heaven, the new true crime series on Hulu, delves deep into the story of Brenda Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a Mormon woman who was murdered along with her baby in 1984 in a Utah suburb. The case is portrayed through fictional detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield), and…
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The prophets say God’s love is conditional, but they can’t say ‘I’m sorry’
Kimberly Applewhite Teitter, a Black Latter-day Saint, says she doesn’t need anyone to apologize for policies that kept Black members from temple rituals or Black men from having authority to serve as leaders and baptize their own children. Her testimony is hers, and it doesn’t depend on anyone else, not…
When You’re Selling Nineteenth-Century Heteronormativity and Kids Today Aren’t Buying It
Remember back in 2021 when the COJCOLDS canceled the Saturday night gender-specific session of conference? Yeah, me neither, because I almost never pay attention to conference anymore. For some reason, though, in March the church announced the addition of a hastily arranged Saturday night Young Women’s session of General Conference…
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The Dangerous Myth of Big-Tent Mormonism
About a year after I excised Mormonism from my life, I received a Facebook invitation from someone I hadn’t thought about in all that time. It was for an event called “Sit With Me Sunday,” organized by a group of self-proclaimed LDS allies to LGBTQ people as an attempt to…
The Brethren Want Us to Shut Up About Heavenly Mother Already, Again
Discussions are proliferating among liberal Mormons on social media about recent efforts by the Brethren to let the Saints know that they better stop talking about Heavenly Mother, ASAP. Here’s a good early summation of what’s going on, from Twitter. In 1985, when I was a missionary, a relative sent…