Tag: relationships

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Forgiveness Doesn’t Require Submission: A Response to the General Conference Address on Abortion

TW: Abortion
READER POST: Over the General Conference pulpit this last weekend, a male religious leader once again spoke to women, telling us how to handle incredibly private and deeply personal choices, namely abortion.

He told stories of women who “sinned” by having abortions. He didn’t talk much of what their reasons might have been. He then shared a story of a married man who cheated on his wife, got his girlfriend pregnant, and didn’t want her to have the abortion she was considering. Instead, he convinced the girlfriend to give birth and his wife to raise the baby.

There are so many problems with this line of thinking that I don’t know where to start, so instead of trying to capture my reaction, I decided to rewrite his talk. If I, a woman, was inspired to give that same talk as Neal Andersen, this would be my version:

Continue reading “Forgiveness Doesn’t Require Submission: A Response to the General Conference Address on Abortion”
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What I Don’t Understand about Religious Women’s Support for Trump

TABITHA: I recently reread Pilar’s post about her reaction to the election results. It made me think about boundaries in friendships, particularly in the context of one friend voting for Donald Trump while the other could not comprehend remaining friends with someone who supported putting a sexual predator in the White House. Over the past decade, I have established my own boundaries regarding friends and family whose values lead them to enthusiastically support Trump. However, Pilar’s post prompted me to consider other aspects of his supporters, especially women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints community, that I find difficult to understand.

Continue reading “What I Don’t Understand about Religious Women’s Support for Trump”
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A Memory on the 5th Anniversary of the LDS Policy Shift on Marriages and Sealings

DINAH: I remember when, at age 12, I spent Young Women’s activities cutting wedding dresses out of magazines and making lists of all the qualities I wanted in the man who would someday “take me to the temple.” As a child of the 90’s, my girlhood was filled with movies and stories of Happily Ever After. The princess always find their prince – and the Mormon girl always finds her Returned Missionary. In the movies, the heroine’s adventure would end (or begin?) with her wearing a big, beautiful dress during her big, beautiful wedding which, of course, took place in a big beautiful castle. That would be me. Someday my castle would be the Temple of the Lord.

Continue reading “A Memory on the 5th Anniversary of the LDS Policy Shift on Marriages and Sealings”
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Her Shoes Told Me She Didn’t Belong at Church

LAURA: In late 2021, I started attending church again. It is not an LDS church, but another one in my Mountain West area. Covid had left me feeling isolated from the kind of rituals and corresponding social-spiritual connections that feed my soul, and, while I’m tentative about organized religion, I found that Sunday services at a low-demand congregation helped fill that need.

One Sunday soon after I began attending, I noticed something about the family sitting near me. The four of them looked a lot like the families in the ward I attended when I was growing up: mom, dad, and two young kids with a bag full of activities to occupy little hands. Like all of us, they wore their masks and were dressed for church, although, because this was not an LDS church, they were not in the “church clothes” of my youth. But neither was I.

Continue reading “Her Shoes Told Me She Didn’t Belong at Church”
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The Grace in My Mother’s Love

MIRIAM: One thing about losing my mom is that she was like air and water to me. She had always been there in my life and, despite being a mother of many children, she never let me down when I needed her.

There’s another layer to it, though. She did so much invisibly that her absence now has been that much more of a shock.

Mom had the obvious responsibilities, like the shopping, meals, and housework. But what she also gave us was curiousity about the world, empathy for others and ourselves, and a voice always ready to sing. At church, she was a teacher and hymn conductor, but also she could really see people with an uncanny ability to understand and love them.

I grew up with an LDS mother who was always the helper but never the owner of the work. She kept the house together but Dad had the final word. She made beautiful programs and lessons happen at church, but priesthood leaders had to approve it all, in one way or another.

I wish I could have seen my mom come into her own more, be herself more without a thought to others, speak her opinions more, seek her own happiness more.

Continue reading “The Grace in My Mother’s Love”
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Be Careful Who You Shun in the Name of the Lord

ATHENA: As General Conference weekend spins up, I find myself dreading the fallout even more than I usually do. This past year has been a rough one for people on the margins of Mormondom, and I am one of those people. I tried for a very long time to maintain a position in the center, to belong to the in-crowd, until I just couldn’t anymore. The LDS church was hurting me in very specific ways, and because of that, I grew to understand how much pain church membership was causing other people for whom I cared deeply. I guess you could say my empathy chip finally activated.

Continue reading “Be Careful Who You Shun in the Name of the Lord”
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My Trans Teen and the Sting of Being Active LDS

TW: Policy exclusion of transgender individuals

BRANDY: Several weeks before Christmas, I stood in my kitchen wrapping pralines. It’s tedious, monotonous, work, and the worst part of making the damn things. My mind was racing, stressing, about all the things I still had to do before bed, before tomorrow, before I left town for a few days, before Christmas. My husband walked into the kitchen and something in his expression made me ask what was going on. He said, “You have four sons.” And I felt the floor fall out from under my feet. Continue reading “My Trans Teen and the Sting of Being Active LDS”

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LDS Policy and My Political Journey

TABITHA:“As citizens we have the privilege and duty of electing office holders and influencing public policy. Participation in the political process affects our communities and nation today and in the future. We urge Latter-day Saints to be active citizens by registering, exercising their right to vote, and engaging in civic affairs.

We also urge you to spend the time needed to become informed about the issues and candidates you will be considering.” (First Presidency 2016 Letter)

In the United States, some version of this announcement is often read over the pulpit in LDS congregations shortly before Election Day. Since it’s election season (including the run up for presidential caucuses and primaries), I want to share a few of my experiences about how “becoming informed about issues and candidates” has lead me to positions that frequently put me in the minority of my family and church friends.

Immigration/Refugee Acceptance Continue reading “LDS Policy and My Political Journey”

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My Parents were Closeted, Nuanced Mormons (and you can be one, too)

ATHENA: I recently realized that I never heard either of my parents utter that familiar testimony-bearing expression, “I know the Church is true.” They were both raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by the children of Mormon pioneers. They raised me and my siblings in the Church. They never said they didn’t think the church was true, but they never said they did, either. Continue reading “My Parents were Closeted, Nuanced Mormons (and you can be one, too)”

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Generations Bound by Love and Sugar

READER POST: Across the grassy park, I see a cousin I haven’t seen for six years. I shout her name and run toward her. She looks up, shakes off a child who’s clinging to her hand, and we meet in a fierce embrace, laughing and crying. I feel safe–here–in the middle of my chaotic family reunion, where I am linked to everyone, including those I barely remember or have never met, linked just as surely as I hold onto this beloved cousin I’ve known since birth. Continue reading “Generations Bound by Love and Sugar”