Follow us @WheatnTweet!I considered myself unpopular at BYU. My hair was very short, kind of a punk rock ‘do with bleached bangs. I often wore tie-dyed jeans and a men’s thrift store blazer with a concert tee underneath. In Pennsylvania, I never had a shortage of guys who were interested in me, including lots I thought were [...]
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- But what have you done?Stephen
- The Statistics of Gun ControlMormon Heretic
- Jeffersonian ReligionMormon Heretic
- Choose Higher GroundBonnie
- Taxes, Spending, and CornMormon Heretic
- Brad Wilcox, ContinuousBonnie
- Hold Your PeaceBonnie
- Homosexuality, Feminism, and the IntelligentsiaBonnie
- Family is the Plan of SalvationBonnie
- Sex as a SacramentBonnie
About: hawkgrrrl
Profile: Hawkgrrrl has been blogging since March 2008 and has published over 140 opinion pieces at Mormon Matters. She is a married mother of three and a business executive. She enjoys oil painting, reading, theater, and international travel.
Posts by hawkgrrrl:
Author Archive
Mental Gymnastics
April 23, 2013
People refer to weak apologetics as mental gymnastics, being willing to cling to the improbable or outright absurd rather than cutting through the crap to the logical (yet possibly faith-shaking) solution. And yet, we are also told that truth is stranger than fiction and that with God nothing is impossible, which gives eternal hope to [...]
A Feminist Primer for Men
April 16, 2013
Feminism makes some men very nervous. They are afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing and being labelled a sexist. They may feel like outsiders, unclear of their own standing as these conversations unfold. Men and women alike may not be sure what feminism entails, but it can seem like a daunting list, one [...]
You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby! Mormon Edition
April 9, 2013
In January 2012, I did a blog post about topics women in the church were discussing. I identified 10 practices that some women saw as unnecessarily discriminate or that were in other ways causing women to question their value in the church. This was in response to a request Pres. Beck made of Mormon Mommy [...]
Who Determines Worthiness?
April 2, 2013
Who determines worthiness in the temple recommend interview? The bishop? The individual? The questions? Other methods of discernment? Can the bishop rightly withhold a temple recommend based on nothing more than a hunch or the Spirit even if probing reveals no wrong answers? I recently read a blog post written by a group of ex-Mormon [...]
The Untestimony Meeting
March 26, 2013
I was exposed to this idea on a couple different occasions: disaffected or disbelieving members share their experiences that led to their de-conversion in a group setting. It made me really uncomfortable, essentially for the same reasons that Testimony Meetings make me uncomfortable. Here are a few hallmarks of both testimony and untestimony bearing: Pressure [...]
Simple Answers to Complex Questions
March 19, 2013
Mormons are often accused of having simple answers to life’s questions, answers that don’t hold up to scrutiny or that don’t fit all scenarios. ”Correlation does not imply causation” (cum hoc non propter hoc, Latin meaning “with this, not because of this”) is a phrase used in statistical analysis to emphasize that correlation between two [...]
What is the Word of God?
March 12, 2013
When Joseph Smith was explaining our faith’s beliefs to John Wentworth, he wanted to point out that we believe in the Bible, but that he felt it had errors. After all, he was working on a new translation of it. He said: 8 We believe the aBible to be the bword of God as far as [...]
Love Bombs and Heart Attacks
March 5, 2013
When I was 15, I had a crush on a boy named Brian from the other ward that shared our building. His sister told me liked me, and he asked me to meet him (along with a bunch of kids from the other ward) at Rick’s Place, a dance club in nearby Lancaster. Before I [...]
Exposure Anxiety
February 26, 2013
North Korea wants to show its strength despite its small size by launching missiles to intimidate China. Napolean was said to suffer from “short man” inferiority complex, resulting in his military invasions all over Europe. Some sources say Hitler felt inferior because his absent father was a Jew, not Aryan. In the Wizard of Oz, the “wizard” [...]
Who Are the Anti-Mormons?
February 19, 2013
There are many on the internet publishing information about our faith, often not very flattering. Some of that information is faith-shaking. But where does it cross the line into being “anti-Mormon”? Some would say that anyone who says anything that is not uplifting or faith promoting is anti-Mormon, but that seems like a pretty low [...]
The Cult of Motherhood
February 12, 2013
I recently read an article in The Nation called “I’m Not Mother First.” I also just finished reading Betty Friedan’s well-known tome, The Feminine Mystique, a book that turns 50 years old this year. As I read the Feminine Mystique, there were several times when the cultural observations seemed anachronistic to me. I have sometimes [...]
Society, The World, and Being Not of It
February 5, 2013
Daniel faced a serious problem. Darius the king had been tricked by his princes into outlawing prayer. But Daniel felt beholden to pray to his God. The society in which he lived restricted his personal freedoms more than his religious society did. In fact, his religious community went underground due to the persecutions and restrictions of the [...]
The Maori Mormon Prophecies & Apostasy
January 29, 2013
I must admit, before my trip to New Zealand over the holidays I had never heard of the Mormon Maori prophecies. I knew that there are many Polynesian church members. I was aware that the most popular religion in the island of Molokai (the spiritual center of Hawaii) is Mormonism, and that there are many [...]
The Plan of Asherah
January 22, 2013
Quite some time ago I read Kevin Barney’s excellent article he wrote for Dialogue: “How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven Without Getting Excommunicated.” One of his references was a book by archaeologist, William Dever, called “Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel” which I just finished reading. The gist of the [...]
Too Big to Fail; Too Irresponsible to Succeed
January 15, 2013
Upton Sinclair famously said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Do our convictions necessarily follow our self-interest? To me, Sinclair’s caution is to always look at the monetary incentives associated with a course of action, not just the direct ones, but those [...]
Identity Politics: Good, Bad or Inevitable?
January 8, 2013
In the 2012 election, 78% of Mormons voted for Romney (fewer than the 80% who voted for Bush in 2004), but 93% of blacks voted for Obama (down from 95% in 2008). 71% of hispanics backed Obama. Whites voted for Romney more than Obama by 20% (more than the 12% disparity when McCain opposed Obama [...]
When Bad Visiting/Home Teachers Happen to Good People
January 1, 2013
Ask any member what they want from their home (or visiting) teacher, and you might get a variety of answers. Some would be happy if they would just show up. Others would be happy if they just quit showing up. I’ve read some stories in the ‘nacle that are far worse than any of the [...]
Best and Worst Holiday Gifts
December 25, 2012
Personally, I’m not a big fan of gifts. I neither like to give nor to receive. I feel inept at selecting gifts, and I feel awkward about receiving them. Gifts feel like an obligation, and also like we’re putting a value on a relationship. I was raised by parents who were not big on gifts either. [...]
Pantsformation
December 18, 2012
“I stood amazed at the furor I had unwittingly caused.” Amelia Bloomer When I first heard about the group All Enlisted organizing women to wear pants to church on Sunday, December 16, I was of two minds. On the one hand, who cares? Pants aren’t against the rules anyway, and I see lots of women wearing [...]