Sister’s Visions
December 10, 2021Her eyelids were closing. It must have been the stillness in the room that made her realize. The two young elders advanced their slides across the laptop screen and it felt late. She nodded slowly.…
DiaBLOGue
Lucky Wounds
December 10, 2021Old George sat on an upturned half-barrel cleaning his gun. It only ever shot blanks these days, but that didn’t matter much. A fellow outlaw’d once told him the state of your gun’s the state…
The Casting Out of Spirits
December 10, 2021I don’t know why they’ve asked someone else to play the organ. I’ve been playing the organ in this ward for forty-eight years. When I first learned to play, I had to pump the air…
Fear, Faith, and Other F-Words
December 10, 2021Podcast version of this piece. I’m sitting in the bishop’s office. My dress is slightly damp, but I can’t determine whether the moisture is a result of the snowstorm or sweat beading beneath the cotton.…
After a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology: A Ten-Year Retrospective
December 10, 2021Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 111–137
Ten years ago, my article “Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology” was published in Dialogue. I did not know what to expect when it made its way into the world, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece and has been accessed tens of thousands of times. The public discussion about my ideas was both critical and appreciative. In the wake of the article, my own research and thinking have also developed.
Queer Bodies, Queer Technologies, and Queer Policies
December 10, 2021Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 99–109
Reproductive gender essentialism claims exclude trans persons for their gender identity. However, these same arguments, when taken seriously, also exclude infertile and intersex women too. Such a strict definition of “man” or “woman” does not simply exclude trans folks but also any body not fulfilling its biological utility. After all, biological potential and utility is the basis of a biological sex assignment
Getting the Cosmology Right
December 10, 2021Sporadically over the past few years I have been writing a personal document titled “What I Believe.” The reason for this is twofold. First, as I have learned more, my beliefs have shifted. This is…
Cunning and Disorderly: Early Nineteenth-Century Witch Trials of Joseph Smith
December 10, 2021Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 35–70
When we assess Joseph Smith’s early trials as if the word “pretended” indicated deliberate deception on Joseph’s part, we miss the larger picture.
Joseph Smith, Thomas Paine, and Matthew 27:51b–53
December 10, 2021Dialogue 54.4 (Winter 2021): 1–33
Despite its alleged antiquity, jutting back centuries before the Common Era, and its predominant setting in the Americas, the Book of Mormon contains several Matthean and Lukan additions to Mark made in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean.