Politics

This is the first guest post from Justin.  He also blogs at LDS Anarchy. Interviewer: But did [Oscar] Wilde identify himself as gay? Stephen Fry: No, I don’t think he did. He talked about his nature — he was aware of what people’s natures were, to have sex with their own kind. He wasn’t an [...]

Last week, Stephen Marsh at Wheat and Tares posted about how arguments about Guns and Gays are similar.  Steve specifically said “people post disputed statistics for the harm caused by the parties they wish to regulate or deny. In both cases, those opposing regulation point to contrary statistics showing how good either guns or gay [...]

The headline is clear. Community of Christ will provide sacramental ordinances of marriage, commitment ceremonies, and ordination independent of sexual orientation in the USA. Specifically, after two days of discussion, the USA National Conference formally approved by a required 2/3rds majority the following recommendations to the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve: The 2013 USA [...]

I just watched a documentary called Jefferson’s Secret Bible.  (You can download it for free on iTunes or watch it at the Smithsonian website.)  The documentary discusses the restoration and some of the theology behind Thomas Jefferson’s rewriting on the Bible.  In his day, Jefferson was called an atheist by his detractors; he wasn’t really [...]

In many ways, the arguments against guns and the arguments against gays are very similar. In both cases, people who find an “ick” factor in something (be it guns or gay marriage) are against it. Those who fit in the group (either owning a gun or being gay) feel it is a personal matter others [...]

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 [...]

Pending the birth of Princess Kate’s baby, Lady Cosima Rose Alexandra Windsor is currently 24th in line for the British throne. Lady Cosima is the nearly three-year-old great granddaughter of a grandfather of the current queen. I didn’t know that, and I really wouldn’t care, but I did easily look it up, and I could do [...]

Last March, Jake wrote a post discussing the Strengthening Church Members Committee (SCMC), following the BBC documentary The Mormon Candidate.  The BBC programme was my first introduction to the existence of such a committee in the LDS church.  I don’t want to go over old ground with this post however, but rather widen the discussion. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Mystery guest number 1 was never a practicing Catholic. Mystery guest number 2 never believed in Temple rites. Now, there’s a good conspiracy theory. Sometimes a conspiracy theory turns out to be true. There is even a class of crime for which people go to jail that starts out “conspiracy to commit…”. But the conspiracy theories [...]

Marie Antoinette couldn’t get her head around the concept that peasants might resent a lack of bread. I mean, look at her bedroom! So, eventually, her head was forced to observe the resentment in a more detached manner. The Versailles life-style was unsustainable, even if the people living in Versailles thought they could stall the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Reverend Dr. Laurence C. Keene, Disciples of Christ, “When people ask questions about homosexuality, almost always they follow with, ‘and what does the Bible really say about it?’ The preceding quote comes from an interesting documentary on Netflix called For the Bible Tells Me So.  The documentary discusses traditional and liberal Christian beliefs about homosexuality in the scriptures. [...]

We are down to crunch time.  I can’t believe that our Congress is so dysfunctional.  There’s plenty of blame to go around.  Where should I start? Let’s start with everyone in the photograph!  D&C 38:27 “I say unto you, be aone; and if ye are not one ye are not mine.” Obviously, they’re not handling this [...]

Do you believe in destiny?  Manifest destiny? Discuss.

Well, not really. However, with recent reports that the US birthrate has fallen to a level not seen since 1920, one starts to speculate. As Pew’s research organization reports: “The U.S. birth rate dipped in 2011 to the lowest ever recorded, led by a plunge in births to immigrant women since the onset of the [...]

Yin and Yang are powerful concepts stemming from Chinese philosophy, and religiously from Taoism. I was recently reading a book that leveraged the concepts of Yin and Yang to explain why liberals and conservatives (in America) are both needed. The point is brought out that opposites are interconnected, interdependent, and their harmonization is critical to [...]

In my last post on natural law, I focused on how changing minor “precepts” might make tremendous impacts on our theological understandings. I used cosmological models from general relativity to illustrate the point. Today, I want to look at things a little less, well, cosmically,  and review how changing scientific “precepts” over the last few [...]