ban mormons

quick TW before we begin for religious trauma, homophobia from church leaders and swearing.

Ugh......

So, I was raised Mormon; my family's been in the "religion" for generations. (Tracing back to the main man, Joseph Smith, himself) I'm also demifluid and most certainly not straight.

When I came out to my church leader, he...wasn't very happy. TL;DR, I'm banned from the religion's holy place, my job in the church ward and basically banned from church altogether. My mom was there during the whole shitshow and she agreed that I didn't have to go to church if I didn't want to.

Of course I didn't wanna go back!! Who would??? My family and I moved last week, meaning hooray, a ~new church congregation~ The people are...nice. I guess. They could always be worse, after all. But I've been hurt an ungodsly amount of times. I've begged my mom to not make me go to church, but she said "I should give it a try."

I've been trying for YEARS. Fucking years. When you're a kid, you're told you'll feel a "warm fuzzy feeling" when the "spirit" is near. I never felt that. I've never had a moment of "spiritual revelation", but believe me, I've fucking tried.

I have autism, so I've always been literal. If I can see something, I'll believe it. Baby Thorne always thought that one day when the world is ending, I'd feel it and have a huge "Oh my gods, heaven is real!" (Side note, the idea of the "Second Coming" always gave me so much anxiety as a kid. Like, from an early age you're told that the world is ending at some point in your life because it's "the eNd TiMeS!")

Anyway, I have an awesome therapist who's helping me with gender dysphoria and also good old ~religious trauma~ When you're growing up, you're told that church is the most wonderful place ever and you'll never be hurt. Ha ha ha.

no.

I was bullied at church by all the other kids from the ages of eleven to thirteen-fourteen. As you can imagine, that kind of fucks you up.

My therapist gave me a pass from church on the basis that "If I had a spiritual experience, I'd probably have a complete breakdown due to cognitive dissonance."

...but according to my mom, she knows better. I've begged my mom to stop forcing me to church, but no luck. I need to ask him (my therapist) if he'll tell my mom that I really truly shouldn't go to church.

So, long story short, does anyone know how to get excommunicated from the Mormon church? (Personally, I don't want to murder someone in order to get out of this shitty cult, but most other ideas are free game)

The rest of my family is in this church (cult, more like), so telling my siblings that I've lost my faith (never had it in the first place) is kind of out of the question.

man i totally would've have been a monster high kid if my parents hadn't labeled it as inappropriate, immodest, and "gory"

deseret book is more persistent than duolingo.

i ordered 2 books for a church research project on Black saints in the early Church and also in the Reorganization, on which the one book had a small section us and all had info from the our shared early church history, and it was an ebook too!

and i get physical mail from them once a month. i have no idea how to cancel.

herald house, the community of christ publishing house, contacts me much less, and i buy books from them all the time.

and oh their church book app reminds me to read my scriptures and the words of their prophets regularly if it's not in sleep mode.

i have to admire the effort behind it, ngl.

you know what... i was an obnoxious son of a bitch when i was a tween/young teen. but i was also kinda based with it!

*:･ﾟ✧ girl dinner ✧･ﾟ:*

todays reading material lol

i’m enjoying The Sluts by Dennis Cooper so far. it’s almost like a puzzle, slowly gathering more information on the main character through bits and pieces.

unrelated — the first episode script for my Bible Explained Badly series is almost done. i’ve been so excited to do this!! updates to come :)

mormons kys challenge !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i have to ask even though i'm afraid of the answer, but what's the homophobia handbook thing you mentioned???

The Miracle of Forgiveness

I literally didn't interact with ANYONE in the thrift store but still got the cashier telling me it's her favorite 🙃I needed it for research on what the attitude towards gay ppl in Utah was like pre-AIDS, so I wasn't expecting that to be great, but it also has some absolutely heinous things to say about all kinds of other """"sins"""" The Miracle of You're Ruined Forever Even If It Wasn't Your Fault

I don't wanna fucking live in Utah anymore

Honestly Utah, you should know him better by now!

Today I learned that neither Utah nor Nevada have a state lottery… but for completely different reasons! (Learn why under the cut.)

You have Utah, banning lotteries for…Mormon reasons.

And then there’s Nevada, being Nevada:

[Info from this article.]

.005 seconds after learning this I knew I had to make them into the Padme meme.

“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.” The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over. “Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.” In exchange for extra food and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. ... Everyone would be welcome at the Gray Pride march—everyone, that is, except the Blues. Srinivasan defines the Blue political tribe as the liberal voters he implies are responsible for the city’s problems. Blues will be banned from the Gray-controlled zones, said Balaji, unlike Republicans (“Reds”). “Reds should be welcomed there, and people should wear their tribal colors,” said Srinivasan, who compared his color-coded apartheid system to the Bloods vs. Crips gang rivalry. “No Blues should be welcomed there.” While the Blues would be excluded, they would not be forgotten. Srinivasan imagines public screenings of anti-Blue propaganda films: “In addition to celebrating Gray and celebrating Red, you should have movies shown about Blue abuses.… There should be lots of stories about what Blues are doing that is bad.” Balaji goes on—and on. The Grays will rename city streets after tech figures and erect public monuments to memorialize the alleged horrors of progressive Democratic governance. Corporate logos and signs will fill the skyline to signify Gray dominance of the city. “Ethnically cleanse,” he said at one point, summing up his idea for a city purged of Blues (this, he says, will prevent Blues from ethnically cleansing the Grays first). The idea, he said, is to do to San Francisco what Musk did to Twitter. “Elon, in sort of classic Gray fashion ... captures Twitter and then, at one stroke, wipes out millions of Blues’ status by wiping out the Blue Checks,” he said. “Another stroke … [he] renames Twitter as X, showing that he has true control, and it’s his vehicle, and that the old regime isn’t going to be restored.”

To be expected from libertarians that they're more tolerant of conservatives, cops, and fascists than progressives.

MOCCA Arts Festival

Announcing the 2023 MoCCA Arts Festival Featured Guests

The Society of Illustrators is proud to share a list of Featured Guests who will appear at the MoCCA Arts Festival, taking place April 1 - 2, 2023 from 11:00AM - 7:00PM on Saturday and 11:00AM - 6:00PM on Sunday. The Exhibitor Hall will be held at Met Pavilion, a spacious venue nestled in the heart of the Chelsea neighborhood, and is within walking distance to many great restaurants and attractions. Programming will be a few steps away at the SVA Flatiron Gallery, located at 133 West 21st Street. 

Maia Kobabe is the author of Gender Queer (Oni Press), a critically acclaimed Young Adult graphic memoir that has also been named a Stonewall Honor book. Gender Queer was also ranked by the American Library Association as the most frequently banned or challenged book in the United States in 2021. Kobabe will talk about eir work in a special spotlight session moderated by Michele Kirichanskaya and will also participate in a panel on comics and censorship hosted by PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman.

In her career, Colleen Doran has written and drawn the long-running creator-owned series A Distant Soil and has worked on titles including Wonder Woman, Amazing Spider-Man, and many others. Her body of work includes a series of collaborations with writer Neil Gaiman which are the subject of the exhibit “Colleen Doran Illustrates Neil Gaiman,” running from March 22nd to July 29th at the Society of Illustrators. She will appear in conversation with Gaiman to discuss their comics collaborations and her overall body of work in a special programming event moderated by exhibition curator Kim Munson.

Barbara Brandon-Croft became the first Black woman to write and draw a nationally syndicated comic strip when Where I’m Coming From debuted in American newspapers in 1991. Featuring a cast of nine women of color commenting insightfully on current events, her groundbreaking comic strip has now been anthologized in a book edition from Drawn and Quarterly. Brandon-Croft will talk about her trailblazing work in a special spotlight session. 

Other featured artists at this year’s festival will include:

Kim Deitch, a pioneering underground comix artist who began publishing comics in the East Village Other in 1967 and whose most recent graphic novel, Reincarnation Stories (Fantagraphics) was published to critical acclaim in 2019. 

Drew Friedman, whose most recent book of portraiture, Maverix and Lunatix (Fantagraphics), celebrates the artists of the underground comix generation

Miriam Katin, whose out-of-print graphic memoir of escaping the Holocaust as a child refugee accompanied by her mother, We Are On Our Own (Drawn & Quarterly), will be republished in a forthcoming paperback edition. 

Toma Vagner, the award-winning illustrator who designed this year’s MoCCA key image and has produced striking graphics for clients including Harry Styles, Google, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and The New Yorker. 

Noah Van Sciver, whose body of graphic novels includes Joseph Smith and the Mormons (Abrams ComicArts), Fante Bukowski (Fantagraphics Books), and the forthcoming comic book series Maple Terrace (Uncivilized Books). 

These and other Featured Artists will participate in programming and signings, schedules for which will be announced in the coming days and weeks. A full list of exhibiting artists can be found on the MoCCA Arts website. 

About the Museum of Illustration at the Society of Illustrators and the MoCCA Arts Festival

Founded in 1901, the Society of Illustrators and its Museum of Illustration together comprise America’s longest-standing nonprofit organization dedicated to the art of illustration. The mission of SI/MI is to promote the art and appreciation of illustration and its history and evolving nature through exhibitions and educational programs. 

The MoCCA Arts Festival is a 2-day multimedia event, Manhattan’s largest independent comics and cartoon festival, drawing over 7,000 attendees each year. With over 500 exhibiting artists displaying their work, award-winning honorees speaking about their careers and artistic processes and other featured artists conducting demos, lectures and panels, our Festival mission accelerates the advancement of the Society’s broader mission to serve as Manhattan’s singular cultural institution promoting all genres of illustration through exhibitions, programs and art education. 

The Society will continue to release additional information about the Fest in the near future. Tickets are available to purchase online as well as at the door.  The Society is following all state and city safety protocols. Protocols are subject to change, so be sure to check back for the latest information. As of now, face coverings are optional at Metropolitan Pavilion and the Exhibitor Hall. Proof of vaccines, boosters and masks are required to enter SVA buildings and programming. 

To learn more about the Fest, please visit the website.

For media inquiries please contact:

Kate Feirtag

Director of Communications and External Relations

A photograph by Charles Roscoe Savage of Mormon polygamists in the Utah Penitentiary, ca. 1889. First popularised in the early 19th century, prison stripes gradually fell out of fashion across the 20th century. New York banned stripes in 1899, citing an improvement in prisoner morale after switching to grey work-wear.

Public Domain Review

LDS LGBTQ Anniversaries for 2023

For 8 years I’ve been in charge of creating my stake’s calendar. In addition to stake meetings & activities, I include holidays and significant LDS anniversaries like when it was the 175th anniversary of the founding of Sunday School or 40 years ago priesthood and temple blessings were restored to members of African descent. 

This year there's only 1 significant anniversary I put on the calendar: Sept 21st will be 200 years since the angel Moroni first appeared to Joseph Smith.

For readers of this blog, here’s a few anniversaries this year that may be of interest:

75 years ago

April 1948 - Gay BYU students Kent Goodridge and Richard Snow met with church president George Albert Smith. They were in love and wanted to get a clarification of their ‘status.’ President Smith treated them with great kindness and told them to "live their lives as best they could" in their companionship. They had gambled making this appointment and worried they could be excommunicated on the spot, instead they left feeling loved and valued. 

Unfortunately, this live-and-let-live attitude didn’t last long as President Smith's successor, David O. McKay, felt homosexuals "should be excommunicated without any doubt, that the homosexual has no right to membership in the Church."

30 years ago

May 18, 1993 - Apostle Boyd K. Packer gave an address to the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve, and the Presiding Bishopric, in which he stated there are three great threats to the LDS Church: the gay/lesbian challenge, the feminist movement, and scholars 

September - The September Six are excommunicated for publishing scholarly work against or criticizing church doctrine or leadership. This was widely reported in national press and resulted in a chilling effect on academics challenging approved church narratives

25 years ago

October - Mormon-raised Russell Henderson and his friend Aaron McKinney tortured Matthew Shepard and left him for dead in Wyoming. The shocking crime made international news. The outrage over this crime eventually lead to the Matthew Shepard Act in 2009 which expanded the federal law’s definition of “hate crime” to include sexual orientation and gender identity. In 2018, Matthew's ashes were moved to the Washington National Cathedral

15 years ago

Chieko Okazaki, the first person of color to serve in an LDS Church general organization presidency, was first counselor in the General Relief Society President when she published a book in which she wrote “A family with a gay child is not a failed family. It's a family with a member who needs special love and understanding and who has love and understanding to give back.”

California’s Prop 8 - Church leadership heavily encouraged members donate time and money to pass Prop 8 which would ban same-sex marriage in California. About 1/2 of the money raised for its passage came from Mormons. The proposition passed and immediately there were protests at temples in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, and the church received a lot of negative exposure. Since then the church has preferred behind-the-scenes roles in its efforts to combat queer rights

10 years ago

Dec 20, 2013 - Same-sex marriages became legally recognized in Utah. Seth Anderson & Michael Ferguson, both former Mormons, are the first gay couple to get married in Utah 

5 years ago 

January 2018 - The documentary "Believer" featuring Imagine Dragon's lead singer Dan Reynolds premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Reynolds discussed the intersection of LGBTQ people in the Mormon community. Later in the year he appeared on The Ellen Degeneres Show and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and spoke of LGBTQ Mormons and suicides

January 2018 - Josh Weed, the most famous LDS gay man in a mixed-orientation marriage, announces that he & his wife will get a divorce. They apologize to everyone who ever had their story held up as an example that gay people can get married and stay in the Church.

February 2018 - Church-run Family Services states it no longer provides reparative therapy or sexual orientation change efforts

February 2018 - Richard Ostler starts a podcast called “Listen, Learn, and Love,” which has LGBTQ members/former members share their stories

March 2018 -  BYU sponsors its first LGBT campus event, a panel of four students--Kaitlynn Wright, Ben Schilaty, Sarah Langford and Gabriel Cano–answer student-submitted questions

As president of the LGBTQAI+ and Allies Club, Jill Stevenson worked with administration at Southern Virginia University, a predominantly-LDS liberal arts college, to get the university to officially recognize the club, and to allow same-gender dancing on campus

June 2018 - The Church’s Family Search website starts allowing same-sex marriages to be recorded

July 2018 - The Provo Freedom Festival allows LGBTQ groups to participate in the parade due to a contract it had signed with the city of Provo which included a non-discrimination clause.

Dec 2018 - Stacey Harkey, a cast member on BYUTV’s popular show Studio C, comes out as gay

In Mormonism when a Black person (who automatically has “the mark of Cain” to show that they are being punished for their father’s sins; part of that punishment is having dark skin) is considered unholy and will only be pure when they die, and when they die they will turn white and their curse will be lifted because they’re finally free from their sins (after they repent in spirit purgatory). And they were banned from the priesthood and marriage sealings (if you get married in the temple you and your spouse will be bound by the holy spirit to live with your forever family; if you have kids they will be baptized to ensure they are part of the Forever Family, and if you never ever stray from the Iron Rod throughout your life that is heavily controlled by a book written by a man who had literal child brides and was perpetuated and enforced by Brigham Young) who later spread to the prophets, you know, the guys who have a phone with god on speed dial and can talk directly to him and relay what he said to do and encourage enforce these commandments otherwise were either going to hell or spirit prison, then you should be fine.

I need you to understand I am not joking when I say something outlandish like that when it comes to the cult— if you know anything about LDS especially FLDS you’d understand why I’m not saying religion

Alma 3:6-9

6 And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a acurse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren

7 And their brethren sought to destroy them, therefore they were cursed; and the Lord God set a amark upon them

8) And this was done that their seed might be distinguished from the seed of their brethren, that thereby the Lord God might preserve his people, that they might not amix and believe in incorrect traditions which would prove their destruction.

9) And it came to pass that whosoever did mingle his seed with that of the Lamanites did bring the same curse upon his seed.

So if y’all are gonna search up this cult, don’t do it just based on the website that is meant to be welcoming to bring people in. You’re literally put on two year missions to talk about god and bring people to convert. You’re expected to be married young and have many children, the wife is the subordinate and submissive to the husband (which we had classes about) and the young women are set to babysit the leader’s children and learn how to be a mom, while the young men get to go outside and do things the ladies weren’t meant to do.

Research the dirty things that the church my name still unfortunately sits with, read the part of where disabled people are wrong and unholy, read the part where slavery is encouraged, read the fucking book of mormon that states blatantly how to be the perfect person who is ultimately confined to a set of rules that isn’t just “obey god and love one another”

“But just because you had a personal experience doesn’t mean all Mormons are bad” I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that the Mormon church was built, founded and run by horrible people and their beliefs that they wrote and still being followed by people now. The Mormon church isn’t the sole cause of these actions that are spread in religion, but as a collective? The church proves itself over and over that you’re meant to be obedient or else. You are never good enough for god, you have to prove it every day that you are worthy. There are different levels for heaven, three levels, depending on how good you are. It isn’t just a religion. The foundations of the LDS church were built surrounding these ideas and it needs to be talked about and not in the watered down way either.

"On the Great Alkali Plain" part 2, from Letters from Watson, arrived in my inbox this morning, bringing with it a predictable cloud of dust from approaching horses (since this isn't a George R.R. Martin novel, so we're not going to introduce characters just to kill them off immediately).

But what a caravan! When the head of it had reached the base of the mountains, the rear was not yet visible on the horizon. Right across the enormous plain stretched the straggling array, waggons and carts, men on horseback, and men on foot. Innumerable women who staggered along under burdens, and children who toddled beside the waggons or peeped out from under the white coverings.

Either we're running late on the Oregon Trail (since Doyle did not have social media to live-blog progress across the dusty waste) or the year 1847 is important, and these are Mormons.

“Shall I go forward and see, Brother Stangerson,” asked one of the band.

These have got to be Mormons.

“Nigh upon ten thousand,” said one of the young men; “we are the persecuted children of God—the chosen of the Angel Merona.”

Tell me you're a Mormon without telling me you're a Mormon.

“We are the Mormons,” answered his companions with one voice.

OMG, they're Mormons.

This makes the geographic names a little dicey -- the Mormon Trail ran through Wyoming, similar but not identical to today's I-80, so the Rio Grande River should be nowhere nearby -- but Doyle didn't have access to Google Maps, and it's not like his readers in the UK would go factcheck. Even with the Transcontinental Railroad completed back in 1869, most places in the Great American Desert were still remote in the 1880s, and California on the far end was still feeling the effects of isolation. Doyle also misspells the Angel Moroni and uses a masculine-ending name on a Sierra, so he's working from popular myth and the memory of things he's read. I wonder how many letters with corrections he received.

(At the time Doyle was writing, "Mormon" was the term used by the group themselves. Since about the 1980s, church leadership started urging the use of "Latter-Day Saints" instead. When I lived in Phoenix, that's near a big LDS population in Mesa, so I wince at using the older term. From here on out, if I'm quoting Doyle, I'll use "Mormon," but if I'm talking, I'll stick to LDS.)

The big reason the LDS wagon train is headed west is because they practiced polygamy at the time, and this was considered both illegal and immoral in larger U.S. society. (That's not a critique of polyamory today, when enthusiastic concept and clear rules are normalized.)

So far Doyle's account of the LDS party is generally positive -- they're organized, efficient, knowledgeable about their surroundings, prepared for danger, and responsible toward people needing rescue, if a bit holier-than-thou -- but I can't believe he's going to handle polygamy with anything other than distaste.

Polygamy is the thing LDS have been known for (to their chagrin after the mainstream LDS church banned it), so at the end of this section, Doyle's original audience is split into two groups:

Readers who have no real idea what a "Mormon" is and accept it as just one more crazy American thing, who now figure Lucy is rescued and wonder what goes wrong later to lead to murder; and

Readers who know about polygamy and are feeling dread for Lucy.