Happy birthday to Mormonism’s favorite uncle, J. Golden Kimball!

To celebrate, here’s my favorite Uncle Golden story.

And here’s some more

Saw a thing recently about what religions vibes someone gets from different Muppets and they said that Scooter is definitely Mormon.

I'm not going to refute that, because, I mean... Look

I'll just ask you tumblrstake, How many Scooters have you met at the ward function?

How to celebrate Pride from withIN the closet

Hey queerstake, mostly non-Christian (shakily wobbles a hand with palm facing down) here, is it disrespectful to say "Mormon"? I know the Church officially prefers "(The Church of Jesus Christ of) Latter-day Saints", but Latter-day Saints/LDS is not always clear, though I'd prefer not always being clear to being disrespectful.

I also know Mormon is definitely not a slur, and my response to anyone that anyone who said it was would be "wow touch grass", but you know. Everyone should be called what they want.

Elder Kearon’s talk really summarizes why I’m still a believer, because our theology is so forgiving, so open, so universalist, so tender. The God of our theology is constantly giving us chances to come back, to come to Him, to learn, to improve. He doesn’t turn anyone away. He wants us back so much that he even has plans in place for us to grow and learn and join the right path after we die! We get so many chances to mess up and pick ourselves up and try again! It’s such a hopeful, welcoming message.

Ammon has been claimed by the gays.

Can aroace people have Teancum? I've always loved how emphasized the friendships in the war chapters are. Also he stabby

HAPPY PRIDE!!!

I'm gonna start crying about jesus christ. what a guy. man volunteered to feel every affliction that a person ever did. he speedran drowning, burning to death, getting stabbed, getting shot, getting abused, being hungover, stubbing your toe, sleep paralysis, being abandoned, getting divorced, being imprisoned, dying in lava in Minecraft and losing your whole inventory, and listening to sad Taylor Swift songs, all in a few hours, just so we could be happy. then he defeated death itself???? AND THEN ATE FISH WITH HIS BROS???? mad lad. Cain asked "am I my brother's keeper" and the whole Bible is answering "yes," or whatever

hey, tumblrstake! I've seen several posts on here about how we wished mormons had more cultural traditions/holidays, so I want to share with y'all my family's memorial day tradition.

every year, about 300+ of my extended family gather in the podunk town of oak city, utah to take over the town hall for the weekend and then serve free breakfast to the town on monday morning. it's called the "edward partridge memorial day breakfast" or 'MDB" for short.

edward partridge immigrated to the U.S. from great britain and was the first ordained bishop of the church. he is my great-great-great-great-great grandfather. edward partridge's grandson, aesel lyman, started the breakfast, declaring that the tradition would continue until edward partridge came and got breakfast himself. today marked the 52nd annual MDB, and this year, we fed 1069 people.

the customary breakfast is: sourdough pancakes (they're really freaking good and the batter is hand-stirred by an army of little kids), fried eggs, fried ham, oak city milk, and an orange juice called Tang. that same army of little kids get the honor of "running" food from the griddles in the town hall's back courtyard to the gym where we serve the breakfast, and of course most of the adults are given a job to do as well (cooking, serving, hospitality, utensil rolling, the most recent newlyweds get to rinse the empty batter buckets with a hose... you get the gist). members of the fam bring their plates straight to the griddles when we want to eat. we all wear special aprons. the atmosphere is always kind of electric :)

the night before, we have a thing called "the program" where we watch the same grandparent-originated skits and sing the same favorites-of-our-grandparents songs that we've been performing for decades.

some other traditions that have endured at the mdb: games of P-I-G (kind of like H-O-R-S-E), a couple hundred people playing bunco at the same time, blasting louis armstrong during the breakfast, a baseball game for the kids, red velvet cake, older kids teaching younger kids to throw mountains of playground-gravel down the slides (I was little when that started and it's been going on for over a decade now lol), and, of course, visiting the oak city cemetery and telling stories about our grandparents.

I'm really blessed that on memorial day I get to spiritually honor my five generations of grandparents buried in oak city instead of just making vague allusions of thanks to the military industrial complex. most white americans have been completely isolated from any kind of ancestral culture/specific traditions (because that's what racist assimilationism demands), so I find our weird and sometimes difficult annual reunion to be really special. whatever this is is mormon culture to me.

so, idk, hopefully this was inspiring and gave you a new way to think about memorial day. I hope that wherever I am in the world, I can continue this tradition with the friends and family I have around, serve a community with free food, and do it in honor of some modern pioneers and martyrs.

here's some photos of my dinosaur, jared, wearing my keffiyeh and hanging out in oak city over the weekend:

The Church's gravitation towards Evangelical ideology is the worst thing that's ever happened to it. At least in 1800's Missouri we died confident in our faith as my ancestors were hunted for sport; now it's rotting us inside out as the far right deceive the very elect into the kind of wickedness that makes floods happen.

some people would expect me to leave the church over the things i disagree with. nope, those guys are stuck with me. they aren't my problem, i'm their problem. yes, i disagree with leadership. no, i'm not leaving. they'll have to excommunicate me for heresy first 😘

have i ever made a pick a mormon name poll. if not i should

Don't you love when you have a mother's day sacrament meeting full of talks about how important women are and how much we respect women and not a single woman speaks except for the closing prayer?

I've recently started reading Judith Butler's new book "Who's Afraid of Gender?" where they discuss the various groups who leverage the fear of "gender" for their own means.

They never address Mormonism outright in the way it plays on the fears of gender and sexual minorities--mostly because they do not need to. The Vatican and other evangelical groups beat us to it, they wrote their proclamations on saving the family before we did, and used language shockingly similar to what we use.

Butler points out that "The Family" and its defense has become a smokescreen or scapegoat where religious institutions do not have to address real tangible issues (like the climate crisis or the perils of late stage capitalism) but instead can just say: "we were right--allowing the gays to marry and the transfolks to have rights IS causing the collapse of our societies!"

What is surprising to me, is how disappointed I am in our lack of originality. Did we really need to copy and paste this fear-based bigotry into our own church?

The truth is, of course it's unoriginal and of course it's man-made. The fear of the lgbtq+ community (and let's be honest most feminists too) is the threat we pose to the powers that be. Who gets the priesthood in a world where gender isn't set at birth? How does marriage work if one gender is "by devine design to preside over the home"? What if women realize it's better to be married to another woman than a man???? What if women really can do it all? What would become of the men????

And how do we convince them otherwise? They are anxious about a reality that does not exist but could threaten power, structure, and systems? And in truth LGBTQ+ concerns are not easily addressed without sizable redesigns, much of which would likely require divine intervention to get right.

And doesn't that all seem like too much work, when the majority of active members aren't really affected by systemic mistreatment of the LGBTQ+ community? Plus, so many have also bought into the phantasm (that's what Butler calls the fear of "gender"), that they are ready to defend "The Family" from it's various attackers (imaginary or real), and such redesigns could cause many unaffected to react negatively.

I feel stupid, mostly, for believing that our bigotry was somewhat unique. I foolishly thought that leaders were somehow interpreting spiritual promptings through a biases lens. But, it's so disappointly borrowed from congresses and committees benefitting from enforcing the same fear for the defense of the "Natural, Divine and so so delicate Family".

I do wish to believe that it could potentially change and get better. But we'd need a miracle--and apparently the miracle needs to be for not just us, but for the people we are borrowing the phantasm from.

uterus, i dont need you. go forth and find a beautiful trans woman who wants you.

sounds pretty based to me