#Latter-Day Saint

[churchsideblog]

the state of my dashboard is very disorienting right now--i keep getting genconf posts and pokemon roleplay posts right next to each other and it's uh. whiplash.

[not-so-superheroine]

reorganized saint attending an LDS Ward tomorrow. what do I need to know?

hey y'all

most of my congregation will be out of state tomorrow so i was considering attending the local LDS ward instead. i haven't ever gone, and so let me know if there is anything I should know. I imagine it won't be that different than a Community of Christ meeting, as I have listened to Brighamite Saints who visit with us and they find our services familiar, but in a parallel universe sort of way. I am sure there are some differences. i know how to dress church-style modestly, and know to bring money for an offering, for example. But I will be attending alone and know that y'all have different types of wards, rather than being all together. i have scriptures but know mine are numbered and verified differently (and are sometimes in different books. the PoGP is in our Inspired Version of the Bible (the full JST) instead of a separate scripture book). I assume that won't be too big of a deal. Is there generally Sunday School? Should I try to go to a specific type of ward? Do you have anything to be avoided? Like some Christian sects don't like it when people wear red to church, for example.

[mindfulldsliving]

Dissenters: Portraying the Church as Wrong So They can be Right Without It

Dissenters often portray the Church as wrong to validate their own beliefs and practices outside of it. They may claim superior knowledge, righteousness, or experiences compared to the mainstream Church members. This superiority complex necessitates a nar

Brian C. Hales Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 10 (2014) This essay explores the reasons behind the estrangement of individuals from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), particularly focusing on dissenters who argue that the Church is not led by inspired leaders. A common justification for their departure is the “Samuel Principle,” which suggests that God…

[gettingsoaked]

Hello, everyone. This is my sideblog for posts related to Mormonism, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and related subjects. A bit about me for those who don't know me. My name is Matty. I am not LDS, but am writing a book about the Latter-day Saint movement and my interaction with it. On my other blogs I mostly post about music and politics, and made this one to avoid cluttering up my feed. This is not an anti-Mormon blog. There are, obviously, many aspects of the religion that I disagree with as a non-believer. But the goal is to be neutral, not polemical. Welcome!

[cutegirlmayra]

This made me cry TAT

[lizardho]

I came out to my dad as bisexual at 14 and I was PANICKED because I had a crush on a guy in my Boy Scout troop and thought I was Going To Hell Forever and he was so kind and understanding of my distress, but he had NO idea what bisexuality was. He just said “yeah but you like girls too? This is normal. Everyone is like this.” And I love my dad and trust him with my life to this day and the idea that the concept of bisexuality had not occurred to him had not occurred to me so I put it off.

By 16 though I had a crush on like THREE boys. Three entire boys in my Boy Scout troop. I felt like my sin was slowly advancing, until like an untreated cancer it had become metastatic. I remember bawling my L’il limp-wristed sissy eyes out in his big rumbly truck on the way home from a scout meeting and him telling me that it was OK, that he still loved me if I was gay, but that he knew I wasn’t gay because I still had crushes on women and that meant I was straight. I didn’t quite know how to explain that those felt *~*different*~* and that I felt like I was losing a fight to evil inside me but I again felt comforted by his reassurances and his genuine fatherly love.

At 18 I was like “hey I’m realizing all my friends are going on missions. I don’t wanna do that. Idk how to say that and I don’t have a ‘good enough’ reason to not wanna go.” So I just put it off. Again, my parents were extremely supportive of the information I gave them (I blamed it on perpetually forgetting to start the paperwork.) and one day my mom texted me that she had done the paperwork for me! And that all I needed was to get a physical! So I did that (it was awkward af tbh, my hernia check was done by a trainee doctor and she spent like 3 minutes fishing around my inguinal canals before her attending rescued me) and was sent to Mexico City where I learned that in addition to dipshit himbos with strong hands and scruffy guys with artistic hearts I was REALLY into chubby Latin men with strong personalities who bullied me a little when I lived in Mexico.

I remember my first companion got annoyed with me during an argument and said we were just gonna wrestle and whoever won the wrestling match won the argument (I stg I am dead serious this happened.) I was like…SWEATING when he tore off his tie and threw his white button-down shirt onto the ground (I won btw, don’t ask me how).

I remember one of my companions with this really intense, almost manic energy telling me that he was gonna make sure I was safe in a new area I didn’t know very well. He cooked breakfast for me and we’d go shopping together on P-Days and in the mornings before breakfast he’d jog around and do pull-ups with his shirt off and I’d do anything but look at him because my face would break out in a sweat so intense he’d think I was crying and come over to see if I was OK and somehow make it worse. He let me play D&D with myself in the evenings even though it was against mission rules because he knew how lonely and stressed I was.

I remember one of my companions was a big chubby man with a loud voice and a great sense of humor. He was kind and direct when addressing conflicts with me, and always bragged about how he knew the secrets of women’s minds and it felt like he really did since it almost always boiled down to “Treat Them Like People and Love Them a Lot. Don’t Stop Being A Person For Them. Also Eat Them Out Sloppy Style.” Our P-Day activities sometimes felt like dates, and it seemed like he was more attentive to my emotional state than I was since he was always the first to suggest we slow down our Divinely Mandated, God-Ordained, Super Sacred Work and Wonder to get a snack or check out a Pawn Shop (I love Pawn Shops).

I remember another companion who asked me to bully him every time he did something against his goal of losing weight. It was like he gave me Carte Blanche to take out my crush on him by being a nuisance and I LOVED that. I remember having a breakdown one day after we’d spent the afternoon frantically cleaning our disgusting-barely-habitable mission house to make it look less vile that it was (not our fault imo?) and I started bawling and he pulled me into a hug and he smelled good and he told me he knew it wasn’t just the house and that I was mad at him for being a Huge Dickhead for about a week (true) and that he would work on it. (He’s also a huge chaser but that’s a separate thing.)

I remember one of my companions waking up early (and our schedule is already built for sleep deprivation) to make me a “birthday cake” from knock-off Nutella and bread. He used matches for candles and woke me up, lit the ‘candles,’ pulled them out, then smashed it in my face and took a bunch of pictures while I was still madrugada and disoriented as fuck. He had the same sense of humor as one of my HS crushes and I could push his buttons pretty easily which was so fun.

I came home from my mission and started back at BYU where I became actively and aggressively suicidal. I had a stalker the year I moved up there and my dad’s solution to that was to get me a gun. I know he wouldn’t have bought me a gun if he could have read my mind, but I had a loaded pistol under my bed during a trifecta faith/sexuality/gender crisis and that was not helpful. I remember that the day I decided to kill myself I figured I’d call the BYU CAPS and see if I could get into therapy because it felt like what I was “supposed to do” so I could check my suicide boxes. My therapist was the guy who’d helped me pick a major the year before and was this drop-dead gorgeous Hawaiian man who cried when I told him how I’d been feeling.

A few weeks into therapy I met another stunning man with soft eyes and a scruffy illegal-at-BYU beard he kept pushing his luck with. He was funny, kind, patient, married, and wouldn’t give me the time of day if he knew I was crushing on him. We were in my history of psych class, which was inarguably the worst psych class I have ever had, and we studied together for every assignment and test and I realized that my feelings for him and for all the men I’d already mentioned were in direct conflict with my faith and relationship with God. My already agonizing spiritual conflict became even more wretched and as a result of this plus some other tightly-packed experiences with Mormonisms bullshit, I left the church.

After leaving the church I decided to move back to AZ and transfer to ASU. My mom helped me get a dog since I think it had started to dawn on my family that my mental health was barely getting me through the day, and she knew that we both loved dogs. Madi made my last year at BYU livable while I got my shit together and transferred. In that last year, I went on a date with quite possibly the only semi-openly-out trans person on BYU campus. It was not a great date imo, I was not doing well, but the person I spoke with was fun and fascinating and talked to me about Gender Dysphoria and it really cemented my need to go. To leave and never come back to that fucking school.

I started at ASU a month after my last semester at BYU and within a very short time frame it felt like I was coming back together, like a puzzle magically putting itself together in an environment that wasn’t slowly draining that puzzle’s will to live.

On the 4th of July, the year I started at ASU, I saw a transition timeline photo of a gorgeous happy beautiful happy radiant happy woman and her former Mormon missionary self and I realized the light that was on in her eyes was the light that was off in mine. I looked into transitioning for 3 days, sleeping about 10 hours total during that time. I started talking to other trans people on Reddit (one of whom is now my beautiful fiancée @cintailed) and after about a month of making preparations to be disowned and kicked out, something I was not sure would happen but was ready to go through to Turn On The Lights, I came out to my family and it was amazing. I started HRT a month after that. I secretly dated some dorky guys for about a year while I applied to grad schools. I got into a great grad school for me and my needs. I got FFS. I did my trainings and classes. Me and my fiancée moved in together after some LDR shenanigans. We’ve lived together now for 4 years of basically marital bliss. We have a cat named Grandmother Esmeralda Weatherwax who bites the hell out of my feet about three times a day. My bi-cycle continues to be part of my life but now it’s not as scary. Baby gays in my life have started to look to me for advice. Idk how this all happened so fast. When the years, months, weeks, days, and hours seems to crawl by so slowly now they are rushing past me so fast it’s almost bewildering. Whereas before I felt like I was living on borrowed time, past my ‘expiration date,’ now it feels like I can Fucking Breathe. I’m training myself to slow down now and it feels worth it to Live In The Moment.

Idk why I wrote this. Idk why these thoughts only seem to come up on Sundays when I’m supposed to be writing my dissertation. Idk why I’m crying rn or why I feel so happy. I’m gonna post this shit then get on with my dissertation I guess. Read more Terry Pratchett and give yourselves the time you need. Get a pet. Talk to someone. Re-examine the events that brought you here. Be gayer. Love y’all 💕

[josiahreckons]

Sabbath Speeches: Authenticity

This talk was delivered in a sacrament meeting in the Summer Hill Ward, in Palmerston North, New Zealand on the 10th of March 2024. ‘To thine own self be true’, is a line from Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. It is spoken by a man giving his son advice. The sentiment has become very popular. Be true to yourself, we say. Intuitively, it feels like a good thing. Sometimes it’s hard to even pin down who…

[gay-mormon-wizard]

I am a TRADITIONAL MORMON and I follow TRADITIONAL MORMON VALUES

I am a COMMUNIST

I believe in PRISON ABOLITION

when I see someone being HOMOSEXUAL or TRANSSEXUAL, I mind my OWN DAMN BUSINESS

I support ROBUST URBAN PLANNING

I think all young women should learn INTEGRATED PEST CONTROL

I like my women how I like my men: VOTING IN EVERY ELECTION and BECOMING DOCTORS

I believe people are INHERENTLY GOOD and need to be ENCOURAGED WITH COMPASSION, not CONTROLLED WITH AUTHORITARIANISM

I think HANDCARTS are the BEST WAY TO TRAVEL

I practice WITCHCRAFT, MAGIC, DIVINATION, and ASTROLOGY

FOLLOW MY BLOG FOR MORE TRADITIONAL MORMON BELIEFS

[heathersdesk]

There are a lot of adults going to church today who are going to be Pikachu-face surprised when they get to judgment and are handed a millstone to place around their necks because of how unsafe they've made this world for children.

[eve-ate-the-right-fruit]

Things that did NOT make me consider leaving the church:

coming out as queer

every time I find out another cool thing about Quakerism

Things that did make me consider leaving the church:

seeing 2 (TWO!) cybertrucks in the temple parking lot

[slaying-one-day-at-a-time]

Any LDS people on the Aro-Ace spectrum willing to share experiences?

Hello!

I am trying to write a research paper on the intersection of Asexuality and Aromanticism when it comes to being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

As an aspec person myself, and an active member, I'd be more than happy to hear any experiences from active and former members alike! I'd like to get as many voices as I can on this project, so I would greatly appreciate anyone willing to share.

[would-you-punt-them]

Joseph Smith

[unapologeticallylds]

today i blessed desserts WITHOUT asking that the sugary very much not nourishing fold will nourish and strengthen us. speech 100 prayer 100

[mindfulldsliving]

Steadfast Faith in Christ: Standing Tall and Moving Forward

In this critical time, we are called to elevate our faith and broaden our understanding of the grand mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Photo by Jordan Steranka on Unsplash Standing a little taller with steadfastness of faith in Christ requires a resolute commitment to His teachings and a deep trust in His divine will. As 1 Corinthians 16:13 encourages us, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” This verse calls us to be vigilant, firm, and courageous in our faith. It’s about embracing a strength that…

[secret-sageent]

Do you think Christ would say

“Send the immigrants away”

Do you think Christ would say

“Love your neighbour unless they are poor, brown, black or gay”

I don’t think Christ would preach

Hate in the streets

Arrests of the homeless

The downtrodden

The queer

Forcing them to live every day in fear

Yet here we are

Forgetting “love your neighbour”

Unless they are straight and white and able

I think Christ cries when He sees what we’ve done

When we see how we treat people’s friends, sisters, parents and sons

So I will cling to my faith

I will cling to my love

I will cling to my faith in a better heaven above

Because the Lord said love my children

And for Him I will try

To love and to care for those facing abuse

And so maybe, just maybe, my Lord won’t have to cry

[hoyas-big-head]

jacobscipio