Here’s a long CNN article on the growing Mormon influence in the Beltway. Pretty much an all-purpose article on the intersection of “Mormon” and “politics” from the time of Joseph Smith to now.

Here’s a section that seems interesting to discuss:

Mormon experts say the church’s support for a relatively strict separation of church and state is born of the U.S. government’s refusal to help Mormons in the face of early persecution.

And after being accused of setting up a rival government around the turn of the last century, the church is loath to be seen giving marching orders to LDS politicians.

The church did, however, play a leading role in passing Prop 8, California’s gay marriage ban, in 2008. Church officials called it a moral cause, not a political one.

Plenty of critics disagree. But neither Mormon bishops nor church officials are known to lead the kind of church-based legislative lobbying efforts that Catholic bishops or evangelical leaders do.

I would argue that since the 1980s, when Mormons started entering the government en masse — that while the lobbying isn’t born from the LDS hierarchy — it’s still “church-based” given how Mormon culture functions. The top tiers of LDS hierarchy are considered directly connected to God. Basically, the hierarchy doesn’t have to give orders because…

The members will go to the hierarchy instead. This other article talks about Romney’s frequent travels to Salt Lake when in Massachusetts, making sure he was still in good standing with the Church after having to talk about such things as “equality” for gays in order to get elected.

From the latter article:

Gordon Hinckley, the president and prophet with decades of ties to the Romney family (he and Mitt’s father, George, went to high school together), reportedly found the frequency and “dithering,” as Scott put it, “a little tiresome.”

heh.

Today is one of the most significant and dreaded holidays on the Mormon liturgical calendar: Mother’s Day! Wheatmeister posted a poll about the best gift for Mother’s Day (but neglected to include women’s health care as an option).

If anyone here doesn’t know what a Mormon Mothers Day service is like, read Steph’s experience or have a look at what’s on the program at the Abbottsville Fourth Ward!! (Followed up by how the Mothers Day should end.) Or see this amusing comic:

And if you think that image is not a fair characterization, read this post by a faithful, active Mormon woman. I’ll give you a teaser:

When we arrived, he asked my husband to come in and speak with him first. So I assumed that my husband was getting the calling.

To my surprise, after I was ushered into the room, the bishop’s counselor extended a calling to me. He explained that it was church policy to obtain the husband’s permission before his wife even found out about the calling.

When my husband remarked dubiously that this is the first time he’d ever encountered such a policy, the counselor said (somewhat defensively) that they had been instructed to do it that way by the stake president. According to him, it’s part of an ongoing effort to “help the brethren step up to their responsibility to preside in their homes.”

[...]

I was sitting in the pew after Sacrament Meeting, and a brother in the ward came up to our row. He said hello to me, and then promptly turned to my husband, to ask if it was all right if I substituted in his primary class next week.

Wow. Scenes from a bizarro parallel universe that I’m very glad I don’t live in myself. On the other end of the spectrum, Hawkgrrl wrote a great talk on how to honor mothers, and I like this (non-LDS-related) mother-daughter project.

After Mother’s Day, the biggest topic this week was public interpersonal disputes. Ralph Hancock has made some new ripples. Simon Southerton responds to FAIR’s response to his work. And apparently the Maxwell Institute was going to go after John Dehlin (and maybe thought better of it…? Either way, the debate is a must-read for fans of flame-roasted popcorn…). Speaking of John Dehlin, he’s looking for your stories of leaving the faith for a new podcast series.

The world is still talking about Mitt and his Mormonism. The latest story was Mitt’s past as a bully — people are debating whether it’s unfair to judge Mitt-the-adult for stuff he did as a kid in High School. Mr. Molly wrote a good analysis of the CoJCoL-dS’s recent video on political neutrality.

I also have some links about Obama’s statement in support of gay marriage, but I’ll put them in the comments of Alan’s post.

In church news, everyone’s favorite stake president takes on the Big Bang. Scott Carrier’s new book Prisoner of Zion looks interesting!! Does the church need to repent? We have a bit of a point-counterpoint on converting people to and from Mormonism. The Book of Mormon: finally in Hebrew (against the orders of the CoJCoL-dS). Daymon found family search rife with errors. And in funnies of the exmo reddit, let’s play play a game of “what’s wrong with this picture?”

In exmo community, Sulli is making and discussing a transition that is very familiar around these parts:

Many of those former bloggers would fade away. They would disappear, posting less and less until they had all but quit blogging completely. Some blogs just disappeared. There one day and deleted the next with no explanation. Others would post “good-bye” posts where they would explain that they had moved on and were choosing not to blog anymore. I always wished that they had kept blogging. I wanted to see what happened after someone got over everything and was able to move on. What happened after Truman walked through the door at the edge of the world with the exit sign next to it? I always felt that what happened after getting over it all might be more important than what brought them to that point of moving on in the first place…

For you, I will post a small sample of the former-Mormon blogs who have written about other subjects entirely this past week: teaching kids about cultural differences, sticking to a budget, quitting a bad job, contemplating cairns, writing, plus a few exmos discussing related topics like Humanist morals and Glenn Beck.

It’s true that people in this community tend to move on and typically go through long periods of not thinking about Mormonism at all. On the other hand, we have a constant stream of new people. I added six new sites to Outer Blogness just this week — look at this one, or meet Gabe (who also posted his story on Atheist Underworld). And not everyone fades away — there are plenty of exmo bloggers I’ve known for years. At Sunstone this Summer, I’ll finally meet (in person) runtu, who was a charter member of Outer Blogness from its beginning back in January 2006. So, Andrew, stop worrying!!

OK, exmos sing it with me!

Make new friends, but keep the old — one is silver and the other gold

Actually, that reminds me of a little problem I wanted to mention: Since Chino moved, he has not had time to keep the headlines, TV, and Radio features of this site updated. I keep meaning to keep them updated myself, but I’ve found that — given my IRL responsibilities — I have just about enough time to keep up with Outer Blogness (and this column in particular), but following the news, videos, and podcasts in real time so that I can keep our news feeds timely is somehow one thing too many. Note: I still have a bunch of emails to write (after I’m done with this column) regarding plans for Sunstone, and I’m really going to eventually get around to the server upgrade that I kept promising a while ago (though that may end up waiting until after Sunstone). Anyway, if there’s anyone out there who keeps up on the LDS-interest news who’d be willing to help keep the media feeds here at MSP updated, I would really, really, really appreciate it. To get you started, here’s a video about polygamy in Bountiful, and a hilarious Colbert video about America’s favorite right-wing painter!!! (Colbert is so naughty…)

Have a great Sunday, and don’t forget to call your mom!!

That’s all it would take for Mormon missionaries to knock on every door in the US.

Don’t ask me why, but the question popped into my head one day: How long would it take for Mormon missionaries to knock on every door in the US?  I finally sat down and did some “back of the napkin” estimates and came up with the following numbers:

Total Households in 2010 = 114,235,996

Total Households minus Mormon households = 112,735,996 (subtracted 1.5 million households)

Missionaries = 20,000

Households Knocked per Day = 10

Days to Knock Every Household = 1,127

Years to Knock Every Household (including p-days) = 3.602

I have no idea why or how this information would be useful, but I thought it was interesting.  Here’s the spreadsheet I used to make the calculations in case anyone wants to fiddle with the numbers.

While many are wondering whether Obama has given Romney a “gift” by alienating some of the Democratic base (namely, conservative religious people of color), this opinion article at the Huffington Post is pretty convincing to me that the whole thing was a grand chessmaster move by the Obama campaign. They’ve already done the math, figuring that supporting same-sex marriage is not only the right thing to do, but will help energize the base. It’s not the nail in the coffin the right makes it out to be, particularly among conservative religious people of color who will probably just agree to disagree on this one topic.

Senator Harry Reid has also come out in support of [civil] gay marriage.  I wonder whether more and more Mormons will do the same.

Basically, this post is to open a thread for thoughts on recent events…

There was a lot of discussion this past week about “lying for the Lord” — see this video for a good overview of the issue.

Specific complaints include feeling pressured to “bear testimony” when you’re not sure, or to use the word “know” when talking about stuff you don’t really know:

Many times as a youth and as a missionary at the MTC and in the field, I was told to say “I know” instead of “I believe” despite how I felt inside. I view this as an invitation to lie. “I believe” was viewed as weak because it expresses some uncertainty.

This encourages members to mislead others on how they actually feel and creates the false impression that other members are much more faithful than yourself when in reality they may feel the same as you.

Despite commandments favoring honesty, sometimes leaders directly state that promoting the faith is more important. Then there’s failure to notice obvious contradictions plus the usual spin from the newsroom and the amusing fact that some people still take the CoJCoL-dS’s self-reported population figures seriously.

To provide some contrast, Jon Stewart — a political comedian often found mocking Fox News — won the praise of the faithful (and stirred some controversy) by demonstrating that he’s perfectly willing to mock the less-religious when they go after Mitt’s Mormonism in absurd ways.

In the department of constructive self-criticism, atheists take one of their number to task for simple-minded racism, and work on the sexism. The Mormonism are taking on Mormon racism as well (since it seems to have spread to political space).

Prairie Nymph told a great story this week, about the Holy Ghost Train — and about skepticism opening up imagination and curiosity:

One of the girls was disappointed there was no supernatural explanation and said it wouldn’t be as much fun to see anymore. The other was delighted- not that there was no supernatural explanation, but that the real reason was so fascinating: ”If I had heard there’s this really neat phenomenon with light waves, I’d be more inclined to want to see it than a ghost train,” she said.

And it looks like Dave agrees.

In personal stories, Neznem has been telling the story of growing up as a gay Mormon and coming to terms with it, and Johnny Townsend tells of his homophobic gay Mormon uncle.

According to Mormonism, everyone should have one gender and stick to it. Ruthie Renfro demonstrates LDS gender-appropriate goals.

Now, let’s wrap up with a little fun, including Mormon movie night, Runtu’s concise dictionary of Mormonism, and my favorite exmo reddit headline of this past week:

This is why I love Formons. From a TBM-run survey on why believers fall away: “when asked to describe what would bring them back, more than ½ of those respondents included an impossible or intentionally clever comment”.

I’ll be doing my usual SiOB later today, but there was one incident that everyone is talking about that deserves separate attention. By chance, I read about it first on JG-W’s blog:

The worst part was not his referring to parts of the Bible as “bullshit” in front of an assembly full of high school students. The worst part was mocking those who got up to leave the auditorium as Christian pansy-asses, while those remaining in the auditorium laughed at them.

I’m glad to see that our culture is growing to understand that bullying isn’t some inevitable part of youth and childhood — but rather it’s something that kids can be taught not to do. (Check out this new book!) And I love Dan Savage’s work on this front.

Naturally, I think it’s important to make it clear that expecting kids not to bully other kids really is about this particular unacceptable behavior (bullying), and it’s not some sort of culture-war smokescreen that one culture-war team is using to attack the other. And I recall giving Dan Savage a similar criticism earlier…

However, the more I read about this particular incident, the less cut-and-dry it seems.

The only part of the speech that might reasonably be called “bullying” was when he called the students who walked out “pansy-assed”, encouraging the remaining kids to laugh (and some claim even that wasn’t bullying). Here’s Savage’s apology for that:

But gay people feel insulted by “love the sinner, hate the sin” because it is insulting. Likewise, my use of “pansy-assed” was insulting, it was name-calling, and it was wrong. And I apologize for saying it.

However, Savage’s remarks about the Bible seem to be what offended a lot of people. Personally, I think the fact that this wasn’t some ordinary school assembly — it was a journalism conference — makes a big difference:

The program listed the goal of the keynote this way: “Students will get ideas on how to cover the topic of bullying in their student media.” Keep in mind it’s virtually impossible to talk about anti-gay bullying without mentioning the Bible.

Plus — as many people pointed out — Savage’s criticisms of the Bible (and Bible-based hypocrisy) may well be right. Look at this post for references to the Bible commandments Savage mentioned that modern Christians ignore (plus the Bible’s “moral” guidance on slavery…). Christians pick and choose:

They hold to the homosexual passages because THEY WANT TO. Every Christian self selects the passages of scripture he or she wants to live by. let’s quit blaming the bible and start taking responsibility for our own positions. The anti-homosexual position does not belong to a deity…. it belongs to you.

Also, a pastor made the news for recommending that if a boy is effeminate, his father should beat him, and some saw the connection with this incident.

Indeed, even the Savage’s most questionable comment (“It’s funny, as someone who’s on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible, how pansy-assed some people react when you push back”) may be right. Does that make it reasonable in context?

Opinions???

It turns out, porn sites are less likely to infect your computer with a virus or spy ware than are religious websites.  Why, you ask?  Because porn sites actually care about users coming back to their site because they are trying to make money.  Thus, they don’t want their users getting viruses from their site.  Religious sites, on the other hand, don’t care as much about their readers.  Or, well, maybe those running religious websites just don’t know what they are doing.  Either way, the next time you’re caught surfing porn sites, tell the person who caught you that you’re just trying to avoid getting a virus!

The closer Mitt gets to the Oval Office, the more the heat turns up on Mormonism, to the point where even Mormons are worried about it potentially accelerating the rate of disaffection. (Some of the most unlikely people are leaving these days.) The church itself has started acting a little funny. They keep producing questionable infographics. (It was quite the week for infographics — this version is hilarious!!) On the other hand, there are still plenty of Mormons who would be more than happy to see Mitt win.

Mitt would be better off listening to the Bloggernacle. Some of the church’s dirty laundry (like the race problem) will get aired, regardless of the PR department’s efforts. And part of the disaffection is due to simply not having a place for people who are different (and the place for half of the same people isn’t that great). That and the boring meetings.

Mitt hopes his wife will help with his problems with women and likeability issues. (Note: with the war on women heating up in the US, I hope to be seeing reports of the nationwide rallies soon.) He wants to make government small enough to fit in your bedroom. Meanwhile, issues like the problems with teaching serving testing instead of vice-versa and a real look at the problems with lack of healthcare don’t seem to get enough airtime.

For Mo current events, I think some of the best commentary has been Chino’s headlines for the exmo reddit: “Why are Democrats anti-Mormon?” is the latest wrong question of this silly season. The question that deserves an answer is “Why are Mormons anti-Democrat?”, We’re building a new exmo world for wired LDS youth, but I won’t dismiss folks like JB. I missed hearing advice like hers back when I was 19. Mormon or not, when you’re young and precocious (or simply big-hearted and awkward), it’s nice to hear a grown-up preach courage to pioneer spirits., “The group noted that gay representatives have been meeting for three years with LDS public-affairs officials, but never church authorities.” Welcome to the show, Soulforce. Next time, simply park your rig overnight at BYU with gay-friendly bumper stickers and keep the cameras rolling., and Deseret News finally posts a relevant headline: If we’re so happy, why are we suicidal? (spoiler on that last one: no, Deseret News doesn’t think the church itself might be making its members suicidal). Any comments on what happened to Denise Grahm? See also Kuri’s GoodReads.

In personal stories, Miguel visited Temple Square, and Seth attended Phoenix Pride. SoSaysMe has been contemplating forgiveness, LittleMissAttitude has been time-travelling and Foxy has been sparring on Facebook. Angela has been continuing her Journey Through Mormonism series and Lynnette has been chronicling her feminist history.

In theology, there was quite the discussion on the efficacy of prayer. What does it prove about the church and about the individual person? This study might shed some light on the question. And what are prophets good for? Also this piece on LDS ideas on human origins is interesting, but contains one statement that I’d be curious to see the reference for (specifically, who in the said there were people before Adam and Eve?):

In response to DNA issues, the Mormon Church subtly announced that ancient people from the Middle East mixed with humans whose ancestors migrated to America before the creation of Adam and Eve.

In books, check out Ingrid Ricks’s new book, as well as new reviews of Heaven Up Here and a review of Why I Stay.

I had such grand plans to get so much done this weekend!!! (Many of them were undone by partying all afternoon/evening Saturday with a cool exmo friend, others by the usual culprit.) Anyway, I was hoping to watch all of the mo-related videos that showed up in my RSS reader, and pick one for the sidebar here. So, I’ll pass the task along to you — have a look and tell me which one you like best:

And there were some Mormon culture videos that I’m not sure I can embed: Daymon found and reviewed this rare treasure from 1960′s correlation, and Polygamy Chic found this video on polygamist fashion.

To all a great week!!

The gay/Mormon intersection has been in the news a lot recently.  There’s the gay BYU students and LDS parents of gay kids who’ve made “It Gets Better” videos.  There’s talk of bishops apologizing and standing up for gay members in their wards.  Yesterday, a group of gay Mormons met with Mormon officials (no higher leadership, though) and, among other things, asked the Church to denounce Evergreen for still advocating reparative therapy.  I doubt that’ll happen, since Evergreen is the only gay Mormon organization LDS leadership has actually participated in.  The gay/Mormon intersection has been reaching commentary at the national level probably in part because of Romney’s presumptive nomination.

As Joanna Brooks has reported, some gay Mormons are interested in going back to church as they hear reports of bishops becoming more understanding.

[B]ishops tell LGBT members, ‘I am not a gatekeeper for the Lord. My job is to bring people to Christ, and I want you here.’

It’s conceivable that single gay Mormons (in their 20s, 30s, 40s) are returning to church in greater numbers.  This “invitation” was already put forward in a 2007 Ensign article when apostle Jeffrey Holland said, “You’re gay.  And?”

But non-celibate gay Mormons…wouldn’t they would face immediate disciplinary councils and be excommunicated?  What would happen if I, for example, went to back to church and let my local bishop know I’m still on the official roster?  After a few questions, wouldn’t he be required to begin the excommunication process?

Me:  “You said you want me here, and the first thing you do is excommunicate me?!  Rude.”

Currently, non-celibate never-been-Mormon gays are “welcome” to attend, assuming they’re okay with remaining unbaptized, which I doubt there are many people out there with that mindset.

There’s also a rising generation of young gay Mormons in their teens who do not “struggle” with their sexuality because their church and families environments are less homophobic than they might’ve been a decade ago.  I know a gay guy who said church was the only place he felt that no one judged him, except the expectation to “fight the good fight” was eventually overwhelming and he had to leave.  Mormonism will struggle more and more with finding a place for young people as they reach dating and settling-down age.

There’s talk of greater understanding, but the true understanding won’t come until the doctrinal issues are tackled.

Mitt Romney‘s impending Republican nomination gives the faithful the opportunity to demonstrate the advantages of Mormonism. But it’s important to teach the controversy, so critics of the CoJCoL-dS are finally getting a moment too!!! And it’s about time, considering how talented and hot former Mormons are. Plus the folks of Outer Blogness have really stepped up to the plate to tell us what Mormonism is like (see 10 Things You Don’t Know about Mormonism), so I hope the world is interested!

In doctrinal info, Runtu is preparing a concise dictionary of Mormonism, Swiftblue explains the council in heaven, Roger Hansen explains some unique (and, unfortunately, de-empahsized) Mormon beliefs about heaven, and Molly has posted the clearest flow-chart I’ve ever seen of the Plan of Salvation. Oh, yeah, and don’t miss this series on Mormon masturbation tips!

On the positive side, the church apparently did a beautiful job on that multi-billion dollar mall they built:

Yes, Utah can be beautiful, but does that tell us anything about the local faith? Speaking of faith, kids say the darndest things:

Teacher: Yeah, but you can’t see the wires or the electricity, can you?

9 Year Old Kids: We could if we opened up the wall and looked.

Teacher: Be reverent. It’s like faith, OK? Just remember that.

Of course, sometimes our personal stories of how Mormonism affected us are more powerful than philosophical arguments. Andrew S explains some of the dynamics of Mormon Stories Communities. And it turns out that the Mormon Stories organization is expanding to include Gay Mormon Stories so others can learn what it’s like to be gay and Mormon — take this story for example.

Similarly, if you need some explanation of Mormon women’s experiences, imagine sitting through this Sunday School lesson:

My hand shot up, and the teacher called on me. “I prefer what they say in the temple, because the word ‘as’ has more than one meaning, and when we’re told to hearken to our husbands as he hearkens to The Lord, I take that to mean I’m only under covenant to follow my husband when he follows God.”

“So you’re his judge,” my Sunday school teacher said. Well, now he’d twisted my words around to make my interpretation sound unfair.

“No, I don’t think ‘judge’ is the right label. Let’s say a woman has a husband who hits her. I think it’s safe to say he’s not harkening unto The Lord and that the wife is no longer under any obligation to be submissive to her husband.”

“So you’re his judge,” the teacher repeated.

I knew a losing battle when I saw one. “It’s the responsibility of every self-respecting woman to judge her husband,” I quipped.

A few people laughed, and the woman behind me poked me in the shoulder and gave me two thumbs up. I allowed myself to feel optimistic about where the lesson was going.

That was probably my first mistake.

For the next twenty minutes I listened to the teacher explain how a man is more likely to treat his wife with respect and love when he understands that the temple covenants essentially make him a God to his wife.

On the other hand, sometimes we like to talk about other stuff. After all, we have to get a job and take care of those cute little kids. Then, there’s a bit of a class war going on, and it can be difficult to follow the money. Plus there are cool conferences to attend and emasculating godless Communist philosophies to expose. Not to mention art appreciation!!

Now, I’m looking looking at this fun little blog that I so enjoy, and I’ve noticed that this makes three SiOB’s in a row without any other posts in between them. (And the media sidebars here haven’t been updated lately, and, looking at my clock, I see that I kinda missed “Sunday” again.) This is not a sign that this place has been abandoned in favor of playing Minecraft and posting the videos of it on youtube. It’s also that organizing stuff for the Sunstone Symposium this Summer has cut into my Internet time as well — not that it’s difficult or loads of work or anything, yet it’s weirdly stressful. (BTW — I hope to see you all there!!!)

Fortunately, the stressful part is essentially done, so I can hopefully update the blog a little better. That said, the whole point of Main Street Plaza is to be a community blog. So don’t be shy about contacting me (chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com) to post something here — for example with a little commentary on a news item, or cross-post or tie-in with some ideas you’re posting on your own blog. And have a great week!!