My Early College Years
March 29, 2018My mother and I moved to Mesa during my senior year of high school so that she could finish her teaching certificate at Arizona State University. I didn’t like Mesa or the high school, and…
DiaBLOGue
Indian Summer
March 29, 2018If, when September rolls over in the gutter,
picks himself up and stumbles off
in search of a restroom, coffee and eggs,
you pull back the drapes and slide open the window,
he will disregard the screen and make himself your guest.
“In a Dark Time the Eye Begins to See”: Personal Reflections on Homosexuality among the Mormons at the Beginning of a New Millennium
March 29, 2018Dialogue 33.3 (Fall 2000): 137–151
Rees’s Fall 2000 artice is titled “”In a Dark Time the Eye Begins to See”: Personal Reflections on Homosexuality among the Mormons at the Beginning of a New Millennium.” A straight man and local LDS leader, Rees shares his own experience counseling with LGBTQ members and their struggles, from “gay bashing” violence, most famously the murder of Matthew Shephard, to prejudice and more. Rees talks about his own changed perspective on this issue that started when he was a singles ward bishop in LA in the 1980s and shares what he had learned along the way. Rees calls for a number of steps and changes as a body of the church to improve these conditions.
Gay and Lesbian Mormons: Interviews with James Kent, Former Executive Director of Affirmation, and with Aaron Cloward, Founder and Coordinator of Gay LDS Youth
March 29, 2018Dialogue 33.3 (Fall 2000): 123–136
Hugo Oliaz intervews two important figures in LDS LGBTQ organzing, a former diretor of Affirmation and the founder of Gay LDS Youth, a group that briefly flourished in the early 2000s. A great resource for learning more about LDS LGBTQ organizing in this period.
Pah Tempe
March 29, 2018After another day hiking the desert,
I lock the door of my car,
and turn toward the hot springs
in the cool night.
Curios
March 29, 2018
Parched
March 29, 2018Measured teaspoons of salt.
Sifted flour, dustbowl flour.
It gulps and swallows water.
I feel it splinter off my hands,
The Truth, the Partial Truth, Something Like the Truth, So Help Me God
March 29, 2018In October of 1993 Dallin H. Oaks, an apostle for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and Steve Benson, editorial cartoonist for the Arizona Republic and eldest grandson of former LDS president Ezra Taft Benson, had an argument in a public place. Their dispute centered on the role played by Apostle Boyd K. Packer in the September excommunication of Paul James Toscano. According to both men, this had been a subject of discussion between them during two “confidential” meetings.
In Riverdale
March 29, 2018We returned to our beginnings
in August, with its crayola green
trees and grass, blue sky,
and yellow light so certainly imposed
Philosophical Christian Apology Meets “Rational” Mormon Theology
March 29, 2018As Joseph Smith matured in his prophetic calling, he came to regard what he saw as the rational appeal of his developing theology as one of its chief virtues. Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, this attitude continued to animate authoritative interpretations and defenses of Mormon doctrine offered by leading Mormon churchmen and intellectuals.