Tropical Butterfly House
October 24, 2018As we enter, me and my girl,
the delicate proboscis of her finger
unfurls, hopeful, even expectant.
She is a perfect, peach-soft landing.
DiaBLOGue
The Mama Dragon Story Project
October 24, 2018Dialogue 49.2 (Summer 2016): 61–80
The photographs and essays featured in this issue of Dialogue come from Kimberly Anderson’s Mama Dragon Story Project: A Collection of Portraits and Essays from Mothers Who Love Their LGBT+ Children
In Our Lovely Oubliette: The Un/Intended Consequences of Boundary Making & Keeping from a Gay Mormon Perspective
October 24, 2018Dialogue 49.2 (Summer 2016): 51–60
“Of course, I didn’t really want to be a wife. But I was eight years old, and in my mind, if all I really wanted from the future was a husband, then that must mean that I wanted to be a wife.”
The Art of Queering Boundaries in LDS Communities
October 24, 2018Dialogue 49.2 (Summer 2016): 45–50
“I am the mother of a queer son. I am also an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as a professor at Brigham Young University, where I teach courses in literacy education, educational research methods, and multicultural education.”
Youth Suicide Rates and Mormon Religious Context: An Additional Empirical Analysis
October 24, 2018Dialogue 49.2 (Summer 2016): 25–44
Much has been discussed and written regarding whether or not the rate of LGBT youth suicides in the Mormon community has risen in the wake of the November 2015 handbook policy change that categorizes same-sex married couples as “apostates” and forbids baptism to children in same-sex married households.
The LGBTQ Mormon Crisis: Responding to the Empirical Research on Suicide
October 24, 2018Dialogue 49.2 (Summer 2016): 1–24
The November 2015 LDS handbook policy change that identified mem- bers who participate in same-sex marriages as “apostates” and forbade children in their households from receiving baby blessings or baptisms sparked ongoing attention to the topic of LGBTQ Mormon well-being, mental health, and suicides.
A Conversation Begins | Stephen H. Webb and Alonzo L. Gaskill, Catholic and Mormon: A Theological Conversation
October 24, 2018There has never been any official theological dialogue between the Roman Catholic and LDS Churches, but Stephen H. Webb and Alonzo L. Gaskill have opened an unofficial one in Catholic and Mormon: A Theological Conversation.…
Peck’s Peak | Steven L. Peck, Wandering Realities: The Mormonish Short Fiction of Steven L. Peck; Steven L. Peck, Evolving Faith: Wanderings of a Mormon Biologist
October 24, 2018If someone ever asks me what kinds of things Steven Peck writes, the best answer I can give goes like this: the BYU biology professor and raconteur writes primarily in the fields of evolutionary biology, speculative theology, literary fiction, computer modeling, poetry, existential horror, satire, personal essay, tsetse fly reproduction, young-adult literature, human ecology, science fiction, religious allegory, environmentalism, and devotional narrative. You know, that kind of thing.
Finding Mormon Theology Again | Terryl L. Givens, Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity
October 24, 2018Wrestling the Angel is the first volume in Terryl Givens’s latest project on the “foundations of Mormon thought and practice” (ix). The first of a two-volume work, this book deals with theology while the subsequent…
A Not-So-Innocent Abroad | Craig Harline, Way Below the Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled but Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Live Mormon Missionary
October 24, 2018Craig Harline’s mission memoir, Way Below the Angels: The Pretty Clearly Troubled but Not Even Close to Tragic Confessions of a Real Live Mormon Missionary, is a hilarious, heart-of-gold account of the highs and lows of the author’s experiences in the Belgium Antwerp Mission in the early 1970s. The story proceeds chronologically through the events of Harline’s mission call and training period in the old LTM, his arrival in Belgium and subsequent travails with uninterested Belgians, and his eventual return home as a slightly-older and probably-a-bit-wiser young man.