Like 750,000 other California Mormons, I sat amongst my fellow ward members in our local chapel today as our bishop read the Preserving Traditional Marriage and Strengthening Families memo over the pulpit. He followed that by reading a memo outlining the church’s views on political neutrality. He closed by asking each of us to ponder […]

I’ve been watching the reactions among the LDS blogging community, and I’m encouraged a little by the results of the Super Tuesday primaries. I certainly don’t wish Mitt Romney any ill will, nor have I really hoped he would lose. But the momentum took a turn for the worse, and he suspended his campaign today.
From […]

A new Sunstone magazine issue is in the mail, and we’re now working on a special issue about Mormonism and politics to go to press in three weeks. We’ve commissioned several pieces exhibiting a variety of approaches to this theme, and we are excited by what we received.
We’d very much like help with […]

Hey everyone, sorry I’ve not been on much. Especially, Eugene: I know we have two or three big conversations to finish (I’ll try to combine and restart all of them at once by the end of the week).
Dan let me run a Bounds & Conditions column piece in the most recent SUNSTONE issue […]

A fascinating discussion is taking place over at Mormon Mentality with regard to recent changes made to the BYU honor code on the subject of homosexuality. Most interesting to me is the news that a group of gay BYU students took an active part in initiating and approving the changes to the honor code. […]

“Dear God, sorry to disturb you, but, I feel that I should be heard loud and clear…”
–XTC
More than any other time in recent history, Americans seem to be elbowing and clamoring to be heard loud and clear by God. Currently, a new documentary called Jesus Camp is freaking out Secularists, and, as it turns […]

Do you ever find yourself in situations where you have to explain Sunstone to a non-Mormon in ten words or less? I usually tell them, “It’s a conference for liberal, intellectual Mormons.” Invariably they respond with tired witticisms like the following:
“What, all twelve of you?”
“Isn’t that an oxymor[m]on?”

On a chilly March morning in 2003 I was circling the track at Murray High School, listening to Steven Fales give a reading of his one-man play: Confessions of a Mormon Boy. (You may download an mp3 here.) I had just dropped off my two older children at dance class and had an hour to […]

In 1998, up here in Alaska, the Church donated half a million dollars to endorse an Alaska constitutional amendment that would effectively ban gay marriage.
Sometime during the whole ordeal, someone egged the stake center in Fairbanks. Everyone figured that it was in retaliation for the Church’s stance on the amendment. I still hear this incident […]