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Sister’s Visions

Her 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.…

Fear, Faith, and Other F-Words

Podcast 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.…

Thoughts on the Sacrament During a Pandemic

Podcast version of this Personal Essay. The sacrament feels like a medical procedure these days. It’s passed by men, not boys. I wondered about that requirement until I looked around the chapel at our scanty,…

The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Utah

In this essay, I discuss this history, present evidence that Latter-day Saint men sold abortion pills in the late nineteenth century, and argue that it is likely some Latter-day Saint women took them in an…

Bode and Iris

Sweater

Mere Tears and Torrents, Signs and Seals: The Sweet Semantic Everything of Troubled Love Matthew James Babcock. Four Tales of Troubled Love

Review: A Private Revelation William Victor Smith. Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation

Roundtable: When Did You Become Black?

After taking a genelogy DNA test, Houston finds some African ancestory. “Where to begin in answering all those questions? But at the most basic level, I simply liked that I was from Africa.

From the Pulpit: My Mother’s Eclipse

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Sister’s Visions

Her 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.…

Fear, Faith, and Other F-Words

Podcast 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.…

Thoughts on the Sacrament During a Pandemic

Podcast version of this Personal Essay. The sacrament feels like a medical procedure these days. It’s passed by men, not boys. I wondered about that requirement until I looked around the chapel at our scanty,…

The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Utah

In this essay, I discuss this history, present evidence that Latter-day Saint men sold abortion pills in the late nineteenth century, and argue that it is likely some Latter-day Saint women took them in an…

Bode and Iris

Sweater

Mere Tears and Torrents, Signs and Seals: The Sweet Semantic Everything of Troubled Love Matthew James Babcock. Four Tales of Troubled Love

Review: A Private Revelation William Victor Smith. Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation

Roundtable: When Did You Become Black?

After taking a genelogy DNA test, Houston finds some African ancestory. “Where to begin in answering all those questions? But at the most basic level, I simply liked that I was from Africa.

From the Pulpit: My Mother’s Eclipse

Light Departure

City of Saints

The Shyster

Come to Zion

AMEN

Personal Voices: Still Making Sense of Suffering: Ruminations on Thirty-Five Years with Multiple Sclerosis

Personal Voices: I Am Not Your Trigger

Personal Voices: Spare the Rod

The Intimacy of Fatherhood

Fiction: The Home Teacher

Fiction: What Happened Sunday Morning

Personal Voices: Eyes to See

I. Seeing Not . . . because they seeing not . . . Matthew 13:13 My first pair of glasses had green plastic rims and Coke-bottle thick, anti-glare-coated lenses, which reflected green light. In every…

Personal Voices: The Unending Conversation

The Missing Mrs.

Look at Me — I Am Your Son

This-Worldly and Other-Worldly Sex: A Response

Three Philosophies of Sex, Plus One

The Death of a Son

The Divorced Latter-day Saint

Why Latter-day Saint Girls Marry Outside the Church

Why Latter-day Saint Girls Marry Outside the Church

Expectations and Fulfillment: Changing Roles in Marriage

Free Agency and Conformity in Family Life

Church Influence Upon the Family

Technological Change and Erosion of the Patriarchal Family

The Mormon Family in the Modern World: Introduction

Grandpa’s Place

Ode to Irrigation

Poor Mother

Greg

Living with Alzheimer’s Disease: A Wife’s Perspective

The Nursing Home

Mary Ann

And Baby Makes Two: Choosing Single Motherhood

Promise to Grandma

“In Jeopardy Every Hour”

Religion and Suicide: A Records-Linkage Study

Four Characteristics of the Mormon Family

To Watch a Daughter Die

Three Poems for My Mother

Grandpa’s Coffee

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: East Meets West

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: Through a Stained-Glass Window

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: “To Celebrate the Marriage Feast Which Has No End”

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: Introductory Remarks

Heart of the Fathers

Confessions of a Utah Gambler

Rhythms

Why Am I Here?

For Meg — With Doubt and Faith

Hallelujah?

Fatherless Child

A Jew Among Mormons

Demographics of the Contemporary Mormon Family

Who We Are, Where We Come From

Blessing the Dog

If I Hate My Mother, Can I Love the Heavenly Mother?

A series of questions began to occur to me: If I hate my mother, can I love the Heavenly Mother? If I hate my mother, can I love myself? If I hate God, can I…

“One Flesh”: A Historical Overview of Latter-day Saint Sexuality and Psychology

Sparrow Hunter

On Meditation

Brother Melrose

Measures of Music

Elijah’s Calling: 1840-41 (From This Could Be the Dawning of That Day)

There is Always Someplace Else (From There is Always Someplace Else)

Down on Batlle’s Farm

Gay and Lesbian Mormons: Interviews.

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…

The Truth, the Partial Truth, Something Like the Truth, So Help Me God

Philosophical Christian Apology Meets “Rational” Mormon Theology

On “Defense of Marriage” A Reply to Quinn

In a reply to Quinn’s article in the same issue, Armand Mauss questioned whether the church was motivated by homophobia or a more benevolent force.

Prelude to the National “”Defense of Marriage”” Campaign: Civil Discrimination Against Feared or Despised Minorities

This is an early 50+ page article documenting LDS political activity in the 1990s on same-sex marriage, culminating in Prop 22. Quinn’s explanation was that homophobia provided the best explanation for LDS prejudice against same-sex…

David O. McKay and Blacks: Building the Foundation for the 1978 Revelation

A Voice from the Land of Zion: Elder Erastus Snow in Denmark 1850 to 1852

The Danish Genesis of Virginia Sorensen’s Lotte’s Locket

Eggertsen Men: Male Family Influences in Virginia Sorensen’s Kingdom Come and the Evening and the Morning

History, Memory and Imagination in Virginia Eggertsen Sorensen’s Kingdom Come

Keepsakes

Grandpa and the Petrified Oysters

Our Big Fat Temple Weddings: Who’s In, Who’s Out, and How We Get Together

Belonging

Mind, Body, and the Boundary Waters

Grandpa’s Visit

Cemetery Life

Scenes from the Movie

Plinka, Plinka, Plinka

What You Don’t Know

The Homecoming

Toward a “”Marriage Group”” of Contemporary Mormon Short Stories

Thanksgiving

Brown

Miracle

Atta Boy

Homecomings

White Shell

Heloise and Abelard

En Route: A Journey of the Spirit

Sister Love

Follow Me, Boys

Frau Ruster and the Cure for Cognitive Dissonance

Depression and the Brethren of the Priesthood

Seeds of Faith in City Soil: Growing Up Mormon in New York City

The Blessing

Entertaining Angels Unaware

The Beings I Love Are Creatures

A Visit for Tregan

Gentle Persuasions

Buildings

May Many Phoenixes Rise

A Deep Reverence in My Heart; Part of Our Family

Looked like a Church, Sounded like a Church; How Beautiful Our Waters of Mormon

Move Back in a Heartbeat

The Bonds Endure; Freudian Analysis of Lehi’s Dream

Tribute to a Building; Giving Church a Try

Not Different from My Home

Equally Warm, Whether Empty or Full

Not the Building

An Anchor for Me

Matzoh for Sacrament

Ten Fictions about My Father

Hurt or Make Afraid

Fish Stories

That the Glory of God Might Be Manifest

Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology

From Editor Taylor Petrey: “Toward a Post-heterosexual Mormon Theology”  was actually the first major article I ever published. I did not know what to expect, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece, accessed…

Bones Heal Faster: Spousal Abuse in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Katy, My Sister

Sister’s Visions

Her 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.…

Fear, Faith, and Other F-Words

Podcast 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.…

Thoughts on the Sacrament During a Pandemic

Podcast version of this Personal Essay. The sacrament feels like a medical procedure these days. It’s passed by men, not boys. I wondered about that requirement until I looked around the chapel at our scanty,…

The Other Crime: Abortion and Contraception in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Utah

In this essay, I discuss this history, present evidence that Latter-day Saint men sold abortion pills in the late nineteenth century, and argue that it is likely some Latter-day Saint women took them in an…

Bode and Iris

Sweater

Mere Tears and Torrents, Signs and Seals: The Sweet Semantic Everything of Troubled Love Matthew James Babcock. Four Tales of Troubled Love

Review: A Private Revelation William Victor Smith. Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation

Roundtable: When Did You Become Black?

After taking a genelogy DNA test, Houston finds some African ancestory. “Where to begin in answering all those questions? But at the most basic level, I simply liked that I was from Africa.

From the Pulpit: My Mother’s Eclipse

Light Departure

City of Saints

The Shyster

Come to Zion

AMEN

Personal Voices: Still Making Sense of Suffering: Ruminations on Thirty-Five Years with Multiple Sclerosis

Personal Voices: I Am Not Your Trigger

Personal Voices: Spare the Rod

The Intimacy of Fatherhood

Fiction: The Home Teacher

Fiction: What Happened Sunday Morning

Personal Voices: Eyes to See

I. Seeing Not . . . because they seeing not . . . Matthew 13:13 My first pair of glasses had green plastic rims and Coke-bottle thick, anti-glare-coated lenses, which reflected green light. In every…

Personal Voices: The Unending Conversation

The Missing Mrs.

Look at Me — I Am Your Son

This-Worldly and Other-Worldly Sex: A Response

Three Philosophies of Sex, Plus One

The Death of a Son

The Divorced Latter-day Saint

Why Latter-day Saint Girls Marry Outside the Church

Why Latter-day Saint Girls Marry Outside the Church

Expectations and Fulfillment: Changing Roles in Marriage

Free Agency and Conformity in Family Life

Church Influence Upon the Family

Technological Change and Erosion of the Patriarchal Family

The Mormon Family in the Modern World: Introduction

Grandpa’s Place

Ode to Irrigation

Poor Mother

Greg

Living with Alzheimer’s Disease: A Wife’s Perspective

The Nursing Home

Mary Ann

And Baby Makes Two: Choosing Single Motherhood

Promise to Grandma

“In Jeopardy Every Hour”

Religion and Suicide: A Records-Linkage Study

Four Characteristics of the Mormon Family

To Watch a Daughter Die

Three Poems for My Mother

Grandpa’s Coffee

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: East Meets West

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: Through a Stained-Glass Window

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: “To Celebrate the Marriage Feast Which Has No End”

I Married a Mormon and Lived to Tell This Tale: Introductory Remarks

Heart of the Fathers

Confessions of a Utah Gambler

Rhythms

Why Am I Here?

For Meg — With Doubt and Faith

Hallelujah?

Fatherless Child

A Jew Among Mormons

Demographics of the Contemporary Mormon Family

Who We Are, Where We Come From

Blessing the Dog

If I Hate My Mother, Can I Love the Heavenly Mother?

A series of questions began to occur to me: If I hate my mother, can I love the Heavenly Mother? If I hate my mother, can I love myself? If I hate God, can I…

“One Flesh”: A Historical Overview of Latter-day Saint Sexuality and Psychology

Sparrow Hunter

On Meditation

Brother Melrose

Measures of Music

Elijah’s Calling: 1840-41 (From This Could Be the Dawning of That Day)

There is Always Someplace Else (From There is Always Someplace Else)

Down on Batlle’s Farm

Gay and Lesbian Mormons: Interviews.

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…

The Truth, the Partial Truth, Something Like the Truth, So Help Me God

Philosophical Christian Apology Meets “Rational” Mormon Theology

On “Defense of Marriage” A Reply to Quinn

In a reply to Quinn’s article in the same issue, Armand Mauss questioned whether the church was motivated by homophobia or a more benevolent force.

Prelude to the National “”Defense of Marriage”” Campaign: Civil Discrimination Against Feared or Despised Minorities

This is an early 50+ page article documenting LDS political activity in the 1990s on same-sex marriage, culminating in Prop 22. Quinn’s explanation was that homophobia provided the best explanation for LDS prejudice against same-sex…

David O. McKay and Blacks: Building the Foundation for the 1978 Revelation

A Voice from the Land of Zion: Elder Erastus Snow in Denmark 1850 to 1852

The Danish Genesis of Virginia Sorensen’s Lotte’s Locket

Eggertsen Men: Male Family Influences in Virginia Sorensen’s Kingdom Come and the Evening and the Morning

History, Memory and Imagination in Virginia Eggertsen Sorensen’s Kingdom Come

Keepsakes

Grandpa and the Petrified Oysters

Our Big Fat Temple Weddings: Who’s In, Who’s Out, and How We Get Together

Belonging

Mind, Body, and the Boundary Waters

Grandpa’s Visit

Cemetery Life

Scenes from the Movie

Plinka, Plinka, Plinka

What You Don’t Know

The Homecoming

Toward a “”Marriage Group”” of Contemporary Mormon Short Stories

Thanksgiving

Brown

Miracle

Atta Boy

Homecomings

White Shell

Heloise and Abelard

En Route: A Journey of the Spirit

Sister Love

Follow Me, Boys

Frau Ruster and the Cure for Cognitive Dissonance

Depression and the Brethren of the Priesthood

Seeds of Faith in City Soil: Growing Up Mormon in New York City

The Blessing

Entertaining Angels Unaware

The Beings I Love Are Creatures

A Visit for Tregan

Gentle Persuasions

Buildings

May Many Phoenixes Rise

A Deep Reverence in My Heart; Part of Our Family

Looked like a Church, Sounded like a Church; How Beautiful Our Waters of Mormon

Move Back in a Heartbeat

The Bonds Endure; Freudian Analysis of Lehi’s Dream

Tribute to a Building; Giving Church a Try

Not Different from My Home

Equally Warm, Whether Empty or Full

Not the Building

An Anchor for Me

Matzoh for Sacrament

Ten Fictions about My Father

Hurt or Make Afraid

Fish Stories

That the Glory of God Might Be Manifest

Toward a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology

From Editor Taylor Petrey: “Toward a Post-heterosexual Mormon Theology”  was actually the first major article I ever published. I did not know what to expect, but it ended up being a widely discussed piece, accessed…

Bones Heal Faster: Spousal Abuse in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Katy, My Sister