Corianton, Mormons, and Sex

If you attend the mainstream LDS church and you go to Gospel Doctrine for Sunday School, then you're probably in Alma right now, close to the Corianton chapters. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can read Alma chapters 39 through 42 online or just keep reading for a brief overview.

In chapter 39, Alma lays out some serious allegations against his son, Corianton. Alma says that Corianton fled his missionary work with a harlot named Isabel and... *gasp* had sex with her. Alma goes on to explain that sexual sin is the worst kind of sin (okay, unless you're killing or denying the Holy Ghost), then he goes into a huge lesson on the resurrection and plan of salvation, and that's the way we usually talk about Corianton. He's Alma's kid who couldn't keep it in his pants.

On a Hard Day

Today was a hard day.

Mother's Day is hard not because of my mother or my mother-in-law. They are both fun, strong, sweet women and I'm lucky to have them.

No, what makes today hard for me personally is the celebration of the status quo.

We Are Not Alone: Eliza R. Snow and Women's Shared Trauma

Today's guest post comes to you from Eliza N. She is an editor who lives and works in Salt Lake City. She grew up in the Midwest and misses the cornfields. When she's not working, reading, or watching Netflix, she enjoys running, playing volleyball, and hanging out with her dog.

Ed. Note: Trigger warning for discussion of rape.

I have some things to say.

Last week I attended the Church History Symposium co-hosted by the Church History Department and BYU's Religious Studies Center. I attended Dr. Andrea Radke-Moss's presentation that has been quite the talk over the weekend in the Mormon Studies world because of new information that she presented identifying Eliza R. Snow as a victim of rape in Missouri during the persecution of the Mormons there in 1838. Her write-up at the Juvenile Instructor as well as this one at By Common Consent by my friend Kristine A. give excellent overviews of Dr. Radke-Moss’s presentation and explanations of her sources and reasoning.

Since Thursday, there’s been plenty of pushback in the comment sections of pretty much every article and post that’s discussed the bombshell regarding the validity and credibility of Dr. Radke-Moss’s source, the validity of her conclusions, and whether or not this information should have been revealed. Dr. Radke-Moss handily rebuts this criticism in her JI post, but here are my thoughts about her presentation and some of the pushback I have seen.

You Have Two Big Strong Hands That (Surprise!) You Have Control Over

A friend of the blog since before she was born, today's contributor Madelyn is Brooke’s baby sister. Madelyn is in her second year of college and spends most of her time working and singing in her institute choir.

My great-great-grandmother, Bertha A. Kleinman, wrote the adorable children's song "I Have Two Little Hands." I grew up being fond of the sweet tune and clever words. This morning, my father, the great-grandson of Bertha A. Kleinman, sent this photo to me and my sister.

It is a shot of a slide shown in a seminary class. He expressed disgust with this desecration of the song, and I'm going to express my own feelings here. In case you can't read the image, the twisted version of our family's favorite primary song reads:

Toys are from Mars, Women are from Venus

The internet is buzzing about the newest Star Wars movie. Don't worry, I promise I won't reveal anything plot-wise in this post, so all I'll say is that I liked it and it fits solidly into the greater universe while introducing fascinating new characters.

One of these new characters is Rey. You've undoubtedly already seen her in the trailer and floating around a lot of the promotional materials, including this poster:

She even carries a big stick. Don't get on her bad side...

Rey is obviously the center of the film. The poster places her as the focal point, so you don't have to see the movie to know she is a big deal.

Some Thoughts On Shame

It's been a tumultuous couple of weeks in the world (especially if you live in Paris, Beirut, Japan, Mexico, or Baghdad, or if you are LDS) and after a couple of weeks of watching my Facebook News Feed, I have a some advice:

The Pit of Despair

The Princess Bride is easily one of the best movies of all time. This is not an opinion; this is fact. For any plebs who haven't seen it yet, it is a love story that makes Romeo & Juliet look like common street trash (I never liked that play anyway. Why didn't we read Much Ado About Nothing in high school instead?).

Oversimplified plot: Wesley, the hero of the story, must fight to save the love of his life, Buttercup, from her engagement to a snobby prince. More detail is necessary to state my point, but we're far past the statute of limitations on spoilers here, so...

After a daring rescue, Wesley and Buttercup face terrors together only to have Buttercup end up back in the clutches of Prince Humperdink. Buttercup makes the prince promise that Wesley will be returned safely to his ship, to which request Humperdink swears his life. Little does she know that Humperdink is not nearly as forgiving as she had assumed, and the prince's right hand man, Count Rugen, instead knocks Wesley out and takes him into the forest to his deranged laboratory: The Pit of Despair.

10 Ways to Feel Better About the LDS Church Being Terrible to Gay Families

Well, by now you're probably heard: The LDS Church really, really dislikes gay families. So much that they won't allow children who live with gay parents to be blessed or baptized. Sorry, joint-custody families, your kids are now officially ostracized on your behalf. Some people--both the faithful and the faithless--are arguing that this move is actually good for children, because it protects them from being indoctrinated and confused by either their gay family or the church.

This, of course, is hogwash: regardless of your opinion about the church, the fact that other "sinful" family behavior (bar polygamy) isn't similarly punished indicates that the goal here is boundary maintenance on the church's part, plain and simple. And trust me, the message has been received loud and clear--people I care about are genuinely hurting over this. So, to my friends who are struggling with the church's decision, I've come up with a short list of things you can do to feel better this weekend:

This guy got away with top tens every night for decades, so I don't feel bad about doing two in a week.

10 Lessons About History I Learned From Comments on Posts About the CES Letter.

Recently, a few bloggers who are smarter than I am have undertaken to write about the Letter to a CES Director, a document that collects and sums up dozens of thorny historical and theological questions facing Mormonism today.

I don't really care to weigh in on the CES letter in much detail, except to say that the problems it outlines are perfectly valid for discussion, and are, well, exactly as important as your perspective on Mormonism demands them to be.

Who am I to argue with Tim and Bradley?

Instead, I'm more interested in the comments posts like those tend to attract, particularly from the disaffected/ex-mormon side. While I don't think those comments are necessarily representative of exmormonism as a whole, I think I've spent enough time writing about my issues with certain faithful Mormons to shift gears and talk about...

Does The LDS Church Have Anything To Say About War?

As I write this post, the United Nations estimates that up to 300,000 people have died in the ongoing Syrian civil war. Around 12 million people have been forced to flee Syria as refugees, making it one of the worst such crises of our generation, although not remotely the only one. Also right now there's a U.S.-backed war in Yemen going on, and ongoing turmoil in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, all conflicts in which the United States has played a direct role.

Syrian Refugees

Last week, Mormons around the world gathered to hear their leaders speak the putative word of the Lord at the church's semiannual General Conference. On Sunday morning, as I half-watched one of the speakers while skimming various faithful and snarky #ldsconf tweets on Twitter, I scrolled past a headline about a few dozen deaths in Syria. Maybe it was ISIS, maybe Assad, maybe America or Russia, but it was nothing particularly unusual. But it struck me, because I realized that nobody at conference seemed particularly interested in discussing Syria. Or Libya. Or Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Sudan, Nigeria, Ukraine, or any other part of the world facing widespread violence and repression right now. From an LDS perspective, those conflicts might as well not exist except as destinations for humanitarian relief.

In response I tweeted this:

Pretty clear LDS church doesn't care about war & humanitarian crises as theological issues. Not criticizing, just observing #ldsconf.

— Casey Walrus (@mightycw) October 4, 2015