We had a long discussion recently about an author’s personal background here. The discussion centered around whether or not an author’s personal background was fair game. Particularly if an author’s background appears to relate to their work (or illuminate parts of their work). ...
Over at A Motley Vision after the review of my novel, I was on the defensive for a while. My concern had been that I had been positioned as an “other,” although I was assured that I’m merely “on the fringe.” Obviously, any storytelling about homosexuality in the Church assumes a position in the sense ...
Recently I saw a (small maroon) book with a title like “What to say when: answers for latter day saints”. I’ve searched popular search engines, online book retailers, LDS church publisher websites to no avail. So I can’t post a link. But I thought it was an interesting idea/concept. It had gems of wisdom including ...
The Our Visions, Our Voices: A Mormon Women’s Literary Tour is over now. It has been discussed quite extensively throughout the bloggernacle, but I find myself still thinking about the experience. I thought I’d share those thoughts with you. I was just back from the OVOV tour when my husband and I were watching a ...
In “The Feminine Mystique”, Betty Friedan wrote about the “problem with no name”. Women (mostly middle class white women) had left the workforce after WWII to work full time at home. And yet some women found themselves unfulfilled and often depressed. Some had lost their identity by devoting their lives to their husbands and children. ...
Wherever people talk about Mormonism, you always hear about the fundamentalist Mormons: the polygamists. On the LDS-interest Internet there’s tons of discussion of modern-day polygamy – usually in a hand-wringing “what should be done about them” kind of way. Naturally, I was glad when I finally got the opportunity to meet some real-life fundamentalist Mormons, ...
I heard this story this morning- about an exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York: An exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York looks at some of the many ways people are re-imagining Jewish ritual. From “green energy” synagogues to a prayer shawl that doubles as an apron, many of the works are ...
The Women’s Research Institute of BYU (also known as the WRI) is being eliminated effective Jan., 2010. As is the usual fashion when the Church wants to announce something potentially controversial, the “press release” announcing this change was buried as an archive on BYU’s website. Most in the Bloggernacle only found out this information from ...
Back in the days when I paid attention to General Conference, I always attended the priesthood session with my wife’s father and brother. I enjoyed the tradition of returning to report some fantastic fictional revelation to my wife and her mother. I call this a tradition because I did it every time, but I was ...
I have a 6-year old daughter, and one issue that will start coming up soon is baptism. It’s not the actual baptism that bothers me; I basically see it as a rite of passage. I think eight years old is far too young to decide to join a religion, but if my daughter wants to ...
Illustrations by Sister Mary Lisa Do you remember the first time you ever watched Johnny Lingo? I imagine if you’re typical of most of us that were raised Mormon from childhood, the memory of that first viewing has been lost, mercifully, in the bazillions of subsequent times you were subjected to it. Or perhaps it ...
There were tons of amazing presentations at the Sunstone Symposium, but I think my favorite was Holly‘s analysis of Johnny Lingo. This one was controversial enough to have gotten covered by the Salt Lake Tribune in addition to inspiring many blog reactions: Journy Gal’s title alone (A Man’s Right to Determine a Woman’s Worth) sums ...
I was saddened last week to see this story about a New Zealand man who hit his daughter in the head with a lump of concrete when she refused to go to the mormon church with him. Now, I think this man is an abuser, and would be an abuser no matter which religion he ...
Our revulsion at the cruelty of the Supreme Leader’s henchmen is a powerful refutation of the postmodernist credo that anything goes. After the enlightenment discredited the authority of tradition and religion, the notion that reason or civilization could provide an ersatz God has also collapsed. The efforts of analytical philosophy could neither remove the ambiguity ...
Helen Andelin, author of Fascinating Womanhood recently passed away. My sympathy to her friends and family. I’m sure that she had a life and beliefs outside of her work. I do have definite opinions about her work, which I will discuss below. I definitely disagree with her work and its premise. The book was supposedly ...
So, I’m reading the news this morning, enjoying my bagel with strawberry cream cheese and hot chocolate when I catch this article about abortion in Brazil. Apparently a 9-year-old girl was raped by her stepfather, became pregnant by him, and was carrying twins. The doctors who performed the abortion said that if she didn’t have ...
Remember when you were upset last fall when one poll after another revealed that a substantial number of liberals applied a religious test to Mitt Romney? I tried to explain to you that people felt threatened by our involvement in racist and sexist discrimination. We resisted racial equality for 24 years after the United States ...
It’s kind of a strange family history claim to fame: My great-great-great-great aunt, Nancy Winchester, was one of Joseph Smith’s youngest teen brides. She was fourteen or fifteen years old in 1842(3?) when she married the prophet; he was in his late thirties and was killed a year or so later. I’ve wanted to write ...
http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_9197476 In the Salt Lake Tribune this morning, Peggy Fletcher Stack wrote an article highlighting the challenges the LDS church leadership faces in trying to adhere to theology like the Proclamation of the Family when advising a progressively diverse range of women. The dichotomy between the traditional mothering figure and the modern career-oriented female is ...
After the recent comments in chanson’s thread, I decided to copy this post from FLAK. I am interested in finding out what it is about the raid that people are so passionate about. I will state my theories below my proposal. And – as chanson did in one of her recent posts (on her blog;), ...
Did anyone else catch this line in the Salt Lake Tribune write up of conference, “as many as 80 percent of the single Mormon women between 18 and 30 are no longer active in the LDS Church”? I’d like to know where PeggyFletcher Stack got that number. Was anyone else aware of the fact that ...
I’ve been talking with a high school friend about the oppression of women in Mormonism on and off for about a year. I recently sent him this article by Ashley Sanders that appeared in a recent issue of Sunstone. I thought it was a good article, but he didn’t see the connections to Mormonism. In ...
There is a reason why retention approaches zero. There is a reason why people can study their way out of the Church. There is a reason why a large percentage of non-American return missionaries seem to leave Mormonism. There is a reason why the United States remains the only western democracy that does not grant ...
Some of you may already have seen this site and this link. I wanted to repost it for those who might not have seen it. What Women Know I thought this statement was particularly poignant. “We reverence the responsibility to choose how, when, and whether we become parents.” ...
Thanks to Saganist, Main Street Plaza can also provide you with a transcript of President Hinckley’s talk. Interestingly, this speech is based on an earlier one that Gordon Hinckley published in the Ensign in 1984 (PDF, scroll to p. 4). Among other things, he appears to be reminiscing about the controversy regarding the Equal Rights ...
I don’t watch a lot of t.v. When I do watch t.v., I don’t watch a lot of reality shows. In fact, the only one I watch with any regularity is The Biggest Loser on NBC. American Idol, Survivor, Big Brother–can’t stomach any of those. Lately, though, I’ve started watching snippets of Dancing with the ...
Apparently, LDS President Gordon Hinckley and Elder Boyd Packer have taken the occasion of the latest multicast stake conference on Sunday, October 21 to rally around Relief Society President Julie Beck whose conference address has been widely discussed on the ‘nacle and the Damu. While I admire Hinckley’s and Packer’s fortitude in defending a subordinate, ...
OK, I know I probably shouldn’t be posting my own personal complaint about the talk that has already been deconstructed all over the Bloggernacle. But all this debate over career vs. getting your whites whiter than white seems to have missed what (to me) was the most disturbing thing in the entire talk. ...
The following is a comment I made on the Mormon Matters thread about whether the church should or should not teach the things it has so far not taught openly to the members. ...
Sunday morning I walk through the chapel doors, greeted by Brother Jones who hands me a program. I find my usual pew and sit with my children and my dad who’s visiting. We hear a beautiful prelude hymn, “O My Father†being played by the organist. I open my Book of Mormon to prepare for ...