#mormones

[unblogparaloschicos]

Cine: Latter Days (2003)

El título de la película alude a la "Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días", organización religiosa cuyos miembros son conocidos como "mormones". Cuatro jóvenes arriban a Los Angeles con la misión explícita de comunicar su fe, todos ellos llevando el título de "Elder" (son chicos de entre dieciocho y veinticinco años): Elder Aaron Davis (Steve Sandboss), Elder Paul Ryder (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Elder Harmon (Rob McElhenney) y Elder Gilford (Dave Power). El grupo se hospeda en un complejo habitacional y descubre que su vecino es Christian (Wes Ramsey), un joven abierta, orgullosa y (también hay que decirlo) promiscuamente gay que trabaja de mesero en Lila´s, un restaurante propiedad de Lila Montagne (la ganadora del Globo de Oro e ícono cinematográfico Jacqueline Bisset).

El inevitable choque de pensamientos y creencias genera una grieta entre los cinco, pero es Aaron quien, luego de un pequeño accidente en el patio, ayuda al díscolo Christian con su herida e inicia un acercamiento que lo aterra porque teme convertirse en una deshonra para su familia y su comunidad, además de ser excomulgado. Pero el amor puede ser más fuerte que el temor, ¿o no?

Una vez más, los prejuicios (los de Aaron y los de sus compañeros, pero también los de Christian) se convierten en una amenaza a la interacción e incluso a la vida humana. La historia de C. Jay Cox, autor y director del filme, tiene muchos puntos en contacto con la de Aaron, aunque su obra no es estrictamente biográfica: proveniente de una familia mormona, luego asumió su homosexualidad tras su paso por Los Angeles. Así, logró una película considerada de culto en la riquísima y variopinta historia de la cinematografía LGBTQ: cálida, divertida e incluso tensa debido a los efectos de la decisión de sus protagonistas, a los que se suma Mary Kay Place como la atribulada madre de Aaron, Rebekah Johnson como Julie, gran amiga de Christian, Khary Payton, en el rol de Andrew, un compañero de trabajo (también gay) de éste, y Erik Palladino, que interpreta a Keith, a quien Christian ayuda debido a que enfrenta el sida en su estado final.

[fuckyeahreligionpigeon]

[spurgie-cousin]

This is such a good, succinct way of describing the illusion of choice many fundamentalist women and men have when it comes to life paths.

[inbabylontheywept]

I was walking out of the Walmart today, and a car passed me, and I got this incredibly vivid impression. It wasn't really in words, but if I had to put it into words, the two key points would be

a). I needed to watch that car and

b). That I needed to be careful, because the driver of the car was a massive bitch.

It kind of took me by surprise, because I really had no reason to be beefing with that car, and I also hadn't really had an impression like that since I was religious, which was in my teen years. Right? It'd been a decade since I had a little voice whisper in my ear, and I'd basically written it off as nonsense.

Anyway, I watched the car, because The Spirits or whatever were very insistent that I did. Car drove fine, went into the parking spot, inched forward, and right when it should've just stopped, the driver gunned it for some reason and it ran into the curb and cracked its bumper.

So, the driver got out, and she went to the front of the car to check that yes, she had cracked her bumper, and then she turned to look at me. The parking lot wasn't empty, but we were the only two people standing in that row, and I'd probably been staring at her for tenish seconds now.

She demanded very angrily to know why I hadn't warned her of the curb. And I could have said I didn't know you were about to gun it or is it my job to help every stranger park, or even could you have even heard me, inside your car?

And all of those would have been fine, but I was really, really busy digesting that I had somehow communed with Mormon Jesus again for the first time in fifteen years, and that the communion had mostly been there to let me watch someone park badly (?), so what I responded with was:

"Because it was foretold."

And I can't tell which would be funnier, if she went silent because there's not much to be said to that, or if she went silent because in Utah, she might actually believe me, but we parted ways without more words.

I'm still kind of digesting this myself, actually.

[heartnosekid]

weirdolini on ig

[gibbearish]

kids who werent raised christian being like "lol baptising children is whack if they tried to do that to me i would start doing things to make it look like i was possessed" no you would not. you would bask in the pride and approval coming from the adults around you and you would quietly wait your turn because you were told from birth that sinning sends you to hell and baptism is The Promise that youre dedicating your life to jesus that youve had hyped up for years and watched other people be fawned over as they cry happy tears about it and you do NOT want to fuck up your One Big True Promise To Love Jesus Forever So You Don't Get Tortured For Eternity when you are literally 8 years old. im begging yall to remember its a thousand times easier to see the church's bullshit for what it is when you're not actively in the church. eight year old you is not thinking about trying to fight back against an oppressive religious group indoctrinating children because You Are The Children Being Indoctrinated. stop acting like you would've magically known better if it were you.

[anotherpapercut]

genuinely it will never stop baffling me how people will wear twilight shirts and talk about team Edward vs team Jacob and then the same people will be like "I'm not basing my personality off of a piece of media (harry potter) made by a transphobe 😌" like good that's great! so you can excuse racism but you draw the line at transphobia? good to know

[lizardho]

I was like 11-12 years old when I figured out at a boring-ass church activity that you could put rocks into little plastic spoons and then pelt people who annoyed me with them. I did this for the rest of the activity, and at Sunday dinner the next night was bragging about my victory (cornering the mean kid who picked on my youngest brother and pelting him with rocks). One of my cousins was like “no way, that sounds SO fun! Let’s do that RIGHT NOW!” So we grabbed spoons and went and got pebbles from the back yard and launched them at each other.

The problem was my grandma sold her soul for the world’s most resilient plastic spoons so we could launch those fuckers HARD. I gave out welts like candy on Halloween, and I got them back in kind.

So we resorted to taking cover and giggling until we got whacked, then yelping, then returning fire.

My cousin hid in my grandpa’s little fishing boat. It was a good boat, but simple and honestly underused. We didn’t know the little windows on it, meant to keep the wind out of my grandpa’s face while he drove, were cracking. However, they were definitely cracking. Eventually it became obvious and we realized we had been being dumb.

This was NOT the first time in my life I’d been dumb roughhousing and broken something, and I had developed a reputation in my family as being “suicidally honest” so I was the one to deliver the bad news. My grandpa let out a pretty good chuckle and said it was OK, tousled my hair, and asked my grandma to bring me cake. I am not kidding. I learned later he hated his boat and only bought it for his kids’ sakes, since he thought everyone needed to know how to fish. At the time though I was just bewildered and pleased at my good fortune. FINALLY, at long last, being honest and telling the truth about breaking something expensive was getting me cake. I knew if I kept trying it would eventually serve me, and now so had CAKE. I was pleased as could be.

My dad, on the other hand, was livid. He LOVED that boat. He spent several weeks each summer recovering from breaking ribs in that boat every year for about 7 years prior to this incident. He had great memories and memories that boat. So he told my Grandma NO cake for me AND that I’d be coming by this weekend to fix stuff around the house and pay for the broken window with my babysitting/lawn mowing money.

Obviously I was devastated, but that felt more in-line with the way things normally went when I broke something expensive so I just figured it was OK. My grandpa gave my grandma a look and sadly said “Ok, have her here on Saturday to help me with some yard work.”

That Saturday my dad woke me up at 6:00 sharp and drove me, sleepy and bewildered, to my grandpa’s house. He was mumbling under his breath the whole time but he thought he was teaching me consequences for my actions so he was ultimately OK with it.

We get to my grandpa’s house at 6:15. My grandpa is outside with a ladder hanging Christmas lights. The lawn is freshly mowed, the trees and garden are weeded and well-tended to, the carnations in the front yard look immaculate, and my grandpa has this giddy mischievous look on his face. He tells me he was so excited that I was coming over that he couldn’t sleep, so he did all the yard work himself. He asked me to help him put up Christmas lights and decorate the Christmas tree, which I did, then said that because I was such a good helper I could have some pancakes for breakfast. I was sent home with the slice of cake I had been denied the week before, wrapped to keep it as fresh as possible.

The whole way home my dad looked a little miffed, but told me that he was glad I had been honest and was proud of me for helping grandpa. I know he wanted me to Learn a Lesson™️the cowboy way, like he had as a kid, but didn’t have much room to complain since I’d still been Put To Work.

I think that was a lesson for both of us, although I’m not totally sure what it was supposed to show me. I think it was my grandpa’s way of showing my dad that discipline without tenderness doesn’t count as much. He died last year and I miss him terribly, as does my dad. I hope that my story of victory, drama, punishment, and ultimately a secret second victory is meaningful to someone else out there, but if not it still means a lot to me ❤️

[llithiaskyla]

guys alex hirsch was never slick

[eve-was-framed]

I wish the conversation around Ballerina Farm had far less “umm that’s just white feminism sweetie, it isn’t a big deal and other women have it worse so why are we even talking about this?” and more “if even a wealthy, young and attractive white woman is being treated this badly, then think about how horrible things must be for less privileged women”

[sunfishsiestalah]

don't talk to me i'm in my whatsapp aunty era

[shiftythrifting]

something me and my gf found while looking around our local thrift store

[astal-art]

Been rethinking about my cringe musicals days….

[inbabylontheywept]

so i left the mormon church as a teenager (15ish? 16?), but stayed in attendance until i was 20. i was pretty up front about the whole deciding-it-wasnt-true process with my bishop, who frankly took it really well, but it wasnt like i pulled all 150 ward members aside and had a heart to heart with them. anyway, i didnt believe, so at 19 i didnt go on a mission, and while some people in the ward were totally fine with that, others werent. and there was one woman in her late 50s who pulled me aside one day to interrogate me why i hadnt gone on a mission.

"the duty of every young man" she said.

and the thing is, im autistic. and a lot of people assume that when youre autistic, your social skills just arent very good. but thats not exactly true. your Be Polite skills are kind of eh, and they tend to stay that way, but as a sort of survival mechanism your Be Rude skills become amazing simply because you get put in tons of situations where your choices are to Function or Be Polite. and no one can choose Be Polite forever. the world demands function, it merely encourages politeness.

anyway, it can really catch neurotypicals by surprise, because hey, heres this kind of awkward, graceless guy, who stumbles over his words a lot and is very apologetic. hes probably a huge pushover. but i'm only like that when we're playing The Polite Game, because i am frankly kind of bad at it. but when its time to play The Rude Game, i go fucking ham and asking about the not-going-on-a-mission thing is Super Rude. so i said:

"sister hadlock... they wont let me go because i lit-er-ally cannot stop sucking dicks. i dont know why, its just so, so hard."

*dramatic pause*

"also - its very difficult to stop."

anyway, it almost killed her. i think she'd expected to just kind of steamroll me for the entire conversation, but the answer crushed her soul. instead of continuing her interrogation she made a noise like a horse drowning in a bog and left.

to add insult to injury, she went to the bishop after that, thinking he'd chew me out for being an ass, but instead he chewed her out for not minding her own business. then she went to my parents after that, who basically went "yeah, babylon was pretty rude. but youre also pretty rude. what are you, mad that he's better at it than you?"

i really loved that ward.

[froody]

I also read the account of a girl in Nebraska who married when she was about 17 and was living on a farm with her husband in the 1840s when he was bitten by a rabid dog. She was then trapped on the isolated homestead, heavily pregnant, alone with her violently rabies maddened dying husband. She could not escape for help until his strength failed him and he died. She had a son (survived to adulthood) and then joined a Mormon wagon train passing through, remarried a Mormon man (not as a plural wife, thank god), had five more children, divorced her husband and died in California in her 90s. I truly think her life story is the premise for a damn good revisionist western horror story.

[fuckyeahreligionpigeon]

This is just a reminder of how Christianity became so popular today.*

During the reign of Charlemagne, women were impaled on sharpened poles put in the vagina.

Slowly, over days, the pole would travel the length of the body through the organs, causing tremendous pain, simply because a woman was found collecting herbs in the forest. She was labelled a witch.

Their screams could be heard for days as an example to those who would not accept the foreign faith. Christianity became so popular because of sheer terror of what would happen if it wasn't accepted