Volume 54, No. 1

Spring 2021

The Spring 2021 Issue startles the viewer with it's powerful cover by Marlena Marie Wilding that Darron T. Smith then unpacks with his Art Note: The Mask We Must Wear in a Racist Society: Reflections of Black Suffering in the LDS Church Through Art. The Issue then beings with Alexandria Griffin's Queer Mormon Histories and the Politics of a Usable Past and is followed by M. David Huston's The Theological Trajectory of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” And if this isn't enough, there's an incredible Roundtable on White Supremacy in Mormonism and so many fascinating reviews and beautiful poetry. You won't want to miss it!

Articles

Queer Mormon Histories and the Politics of a Usable Past

Alexandria Griffin

Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 1–16
Essentially, the debate becomes whether it is appropriate to apply the adjectives “gay,” “homosexual,” “transgender,” or similar terms to persons who lived before these terms had any meaning. Yale historian John Boswell freely used the term “gay” for medieval and ancient subjects who expressed a preference for same-sex romantic and sexual relationships, while recognizing it was a label impossible for them to apply to themselves, “making the question anachronistic and to some extent unanswerable.”

The Theological Trajectory of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”

M. David Huston

Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 17–28
Huston argues that we should interpret that text in its historical context and glean from it new possibilities. Drawing on feminist interpretive strategies, Huston reads for the “theological trajectory,” rather than the plain meaning, to discern principles that might endure beyond a narrowly heterosexual nuclear family.

Variety of Perceptions of God Among Latter-day Saints

Taylor Kerby

Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2001): 29–68
Non-LGBT members of the Church tend to believe God is more involved and loving (non-judgmental) than LGBT members do.

Confession

Sylvette Wolfe

I’m not making excuses, Bishop, I’m really not. What I did, it’s inexcusable. Reprehensible. I broke sacred vows. I totally crossed the line, and I’m sorry for that. All that stuff. But the thing I honest-to-gosh don’t get is why my husband’s so hot and bothered about it unless it maybe bruised his big fat little ego. Yes, I told him. A week ago. At first he went all Incredible Hulk on me—eyes bulging, face bloating. From there it was the Grim Weeper: “How could you have done this to me? To us!” Meanwhile I’m wondering who’s this wonderful fairy tale us he’s talking about?

Excerpt from Eleusis: The Long and Winding Road, Translated and introduced by James Goldberg.

R. de la Lanza and James Goldberg

In 2014, R. de la Lanza spent his morning commute feverishly writing. All through the long bus ride from his home in the southern part of Mexico City to his work at a university in the famed Roma neighborhood, he poured out a story that had been forming in his head for five years, he says, “like clouds gathering for the storm.”

Assuming Power

Linda Hoffman Kimball

Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 53–57
Some feel that “smashing the patriarchy” is the ultimate goal of what they define as “feminism.” That is not my opinion. Each of us—female and male—have power given us to serve and lead, speak out and nurture, preach doctrine, and clean the bathrooms in the ward building.

Called Not to Serve

Neal David Silvester

My brain is slightly broken. The natural lows and highs of life are amplified by chemical imbalance into deep emotional troughs and crazed manic waves that can strike anytime and for any reason. I also experience what are called “mixed states,” where I feel both depression and mania simultaneously. My brain will be on fire, setting off a horse race of depressing ideas and emotions. The worst thoughts I’ve ever had about myself all gallop to get a nose ahead of the others.

Excommunication and Finding Wholeness

John Gustav-Wrathall

Dialogue 54.1 (Spring 2021): 69–79
Five years after my excommunication, I met and entered into a relationship with the man who is my husband to this day. We became a couple in 1991; we held a public commitment ceremony in 1995, a time when same-sex marriage was legal nowhere in the United States; we purchased a home together in 1996; and we legally married in California in 2008. Regardless of how or why I was excommunicated in 1986, current Church policy is such that if I were a member, my bishop would have grounds for excommunicating me now, and I cannot currently be reinstated into membership.

The Complementarity Principle

Lisa Poulson

In 2008, I turned forty-five, Wall Street collapsed, California voters banned gay marriage, and I lost my virginity. The financial system’s meltdown changed the air I breathed, in the same way fire distributes ash for…

Finding Rebecca: A Eulogy

Marie Blanchard

“How did your mama die?” I ask Grandma Essie, my dad’s mother. She looks down at the floor.
“She died of quinsy.”
Something doesn’t feel quite right to eight-year-old me.

Until You Come

J.S. Absher

Taipei, ’97. I walk past side-street
vendors selling lychee nuts and black
rice cakes, to an acre of bare dirt,
concrete pylons lifting a cloverleaf.

Praying on Gravel

J.S. Absher

Not yet March, already weeds
bring me to my knees
with trowel and bare fingers.

Grasshoppers in the Jar of the World

J.S. Absher

The jar is silent because it is full of praise.
The grasshoppers are loud because they, too,
are full of praise, clicking as they fly.

Matriarchal Blessing

Kyle Bond

I was an infant
and shouting clouds trundled and thundered,
atmospheric pressure strangled my stubborn ears refusing airflow.
The blue chair in the living room rocked,
my cries received the blessing of your priesthood.

Parousia

A. I. Christensen

She says she was eating or opening a window or just walking
dully along, and always had been, but tonight there might be
few angels. These things. Our dog
wagging across the foreground, the porch