Mormon Bloggers

“The Lookout,” a Yahoo!News blog, reported today in a story by Liz Goodwin that “an immigrant rights advocate in Utah is trying to provoke the Mormon Church into taking a firmer stand against state-level immigration crackdowns by petitioning the Mexican government to suspend all Mormon missionary visas.” The report states that the advocate, Raul Lopez-Vargas, is circulating a petition, “which accuses the church of not caring about Mexican immigrants because they are mostly Catholic and won’t convert to Mormonism.” Lopez-Vargas reportedly wants the Church to sign the Utah Compact, which states that immigration policy is the domain of federal, not state, authorities. Tony Yapias is quoted as saying that “he suspects the delay in visas for missionaries in Brazil … may be related to the Mormon church’s silence on illegal immigration crackdowns in the United States.” The people behind the petition do not understand the LDS Church’s position at all. They... Read the rest of this entry »

“The Lookout,” a Yahoo!News blog, reported today in a story by Liz Goodwin that “an immigrant rights advocate in Utah is trying to provoke the Mormon Church into taking a firmer stand against state-level immigration crackdowns by petitioning the Mexican government to suspend all Mormon missionary visas.” The report states that the advocate, Raul Lopez-Vargas, is circulating a petition, “which accuses the church of not caring about Mexican immigrants because they are mostly Catholic and won’t convert to Mormonism.” Lopez-Vargas reportedly wants the Church to sign the Utah Compact, which states that immigration policy is the domain of federal, not state, authorities. Tony Yapias is quoted as saying that “he suspects the delay in visas for missionaries in Brazil … may be related to the Mormon church’s silence on illegal immigration crackdowns in the United States.” The people behind the petition do not understand the LDS Church’s position at all. They... Read the rest of this entry »

[Edited for some glaring grammatical mistakes, and begging for your understanding regarding the remaining ones.] I’ve been thinking–and of course reading–about the so-called shaken faith thing. What I’m about to say, is given without documentation, just some personal observation. Look forward to my presentation of some of the “hidden” Mormon history (usually “hidden” in the [...]  Read More →

Have you ever been told that we need to make English the official language of the United States? That bilingual nations are inherently problematic? Gather round, and listen to a story: Once upon a time there were two monolingual populations, the Frivvles and the Jibbers, living within a single nation. These groups mostly ignored each other; the only real problem arose when a member of one monolingual culture (the Frivvles) wanted to interact with members of another monolingual culture (the Jibbers) but couldn’t. In such a scenario, the solution seems very clear: any Frivvle that wants to interact with a Jibber will learn Jibberish, and any Jibber that wants to interact with a Frivvle will learn Frivvlesh. They should coexist peacefully, right?Ah, I can hear you objecting–what if one culture is more powerful than the other? What if a vast majority of this society speak Frivvlesh, leaving speakers of Jibberish to cluster together and either A) interact only with other... Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to digress more into this when writing the science/religion post, so I decided to do a post on it,  a short one. Because it doesn’t really require that much room to say, that I don’t see that Orthodoxy is such a big deal for Mormons at all. For some, but certainly when I [...]  Read More →

47 East South Temple Street What follows is yet another example of what is becoming commonplace in our loss as a nation of “fair and balanced” reporting in the mainstream media. You can validate this yourselves.  When you hear a new story about which you have particular and specific knowlege on any topic, you can benchmark what you know against what is reported.  Invariably you discover the only thing that makes it into the news story is the controversial piece designed to create a headline with little or no substance to back up the conclusions reached. Here’s another glaring example of this spreading phenomenon of irresponsible journalism: Context and Controversy Free Counter  Read More →

From Seth Adam Smith comes another inspirational video. Listen to Elder Neal A. Maxwell as he gives a remarkable talk about having hope during difficult times. To read the full talk, please click HERE.  Read More →

I couldn’t help noticing the results of yet another poll the other day.  The polling, one would think, would end with the end of campaigning for this election cycle, but not so. . . the sampling of human opinion seems perpetual and neverending.  President Boyd K. Packer In the ongoing ”great debate of 2010,” this poll asked Utahns how many believed gay and lesbian people could change their sexual orientation.  President Boyd K. Packer, consistent with “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” issued in 1995 by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve, asserts: “Fifteen years ago, with the world in turmoil, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles issued ‘The Family: A Proclamation to the World,’ the fifth proclamation in the history of the Church. It is a guide that members of the Church would do well to read and to follow. “It states in part: ‘We, the First... Read the rest of this entry »

So, it is time to write about it again. I actually read my previous Faith posts — some of which may be difficult to discern, because they don’t come right out and say, “this is about Faith!” Well, now, this one does declare that. This is part of my philosophical education, I guess. I need [...]  Read More →

Let me say first off that I have not participated in any political campaign for or against same-sex marriage in any legislation. Likely that is because it hasn’t really come up as an issue where I vote. I define “hobosexuality” as wandering from partner to partner. Something that is almost the norm to a very large group of the population. I also would like to plead for sane reasoning from all sides (remember the Lord inviting Job to “reason with” him?). By shouting past each other we can not come to any constructive results, but only create bad blood.  Read More →

Part religious pondering, part political polemic, this is an indictment of the Gospel of Wealth. Not party politics, though! But if you are interested, I take a bit crusty look at the culture that insinuates that if you’re poor or sick, it’s because you’ve earned it (see Mosiah 4:16-23).  Read More →

Just in the case that someone got the wrong impression from my first edition of this. I’m presenting things in a little bit different manner, but essentially I’m saying the same thing: There are times when we need to go against the social pressure if we wish to obey the commands of our conscience.  Read More →