Hey Twilight Fans!

Please, please, please, for the love of homemade macaroni with real cheddar cheese, please explain to me why you love this series so much.

Because this synopsis of Breaking Dawn and this comparison of Edward's behavior to an abusive relationship signs checklist do not help your case.

I watched Twilight last night. On YouTube. And I do not understand the appeal of Edward's character *at* *all*. I was OK with his character until his conversation with Bella in the hallway when he tells her flat-out that no one would believe her version of what happened with the van. Holy crap. Any fascination I had for the character completely died in that moment.

I actually really liked the Jacob character (even though I *know* he forcibly kisses her in one of the later books). Given the choice between the two, at least it appears that Jacob genuinely cares about Bella (although the reason why escapes me. I think she's an awful human being, even for being an angsty teenager).

And yes, when they make the film version of Breaking Dawn, I think they should keep it as true to the novel as the synopsis. Because at least that film would be hilarious.

The Mormon Proposition

Here is my pro-gay-rights rant for the day. Every time I hear about Proposition 8, I get upset. Even though the vote was over a year ago.

I'm not gay, but I do have gay friends. And the gay people I know are some of the nicest people I know, period.

I honestly don't care who people marry, as long as it doesn't involve abuse of any kind. Want to marry someone of your same sex? Fine by me. Want to marry 2 or 3 or 10 other people? Go right ahead, as long as everyone else involved is genuinely happy with the arrangement. Why limit the crapshoot that is marriage to just straight, theoretically monogamous people?

I really want all marriages in this country to be reduced to civil unions performed at the courthouse for everybody. Then if you are religious you can have your white wedding at the church with your pastor/priest/bishop/flying spaghetti monster presiding. It's not taking away from anyone's marriage, just separating the concepts of marriage recognized by the state and marriage recognized by your flavor of deity worship.

I don't even care what religion you are. I know a lot of atheists, a lot of Catholics, more than a few Mormons. I know some Hindu and Buddhist people too. You want to go practice your religion in any way you see fit, go right ahead. But don't hurt other people in the process. If you believe magic underwear will save you, wear it. Wear two pairs, on top of each other, if you think it will help God recognize you as one of the Chosen Ones. If you believe you need to face Mecca every morning and pray, do it. Get audited too, if you need it. Don't celebrate birthdays either if you believe that will keep you from reaching Paradise. Go right on thinking there are monsters in the bathtub if that helps you out spiritually.

Just don't hurt other people. Not physically, not mentally, not emotionally, and certainly not sexually. Just don't do it. It is in complete and absolute conflict with 'civilized' life. If your religion does things to harm other people or interfere negatively in other people's lives, your religion deserves to lose its tax-exempt status, or get rightfully smeared in documentaries or the media. That just seems fair and karmic to me.

My dad taught me to treat other people the way I would want to be treated. I've gotten shit on quite a bit because of that well-ingrained philosophy. But I still believe there is a grain of truth in it.

If I found myself in a position of being emotionally and financially ready, and in a relationship with a man who I liked enough to get married to, and he liked me enough to get married to me, I'd like to feel free to get married if we so chose to do. Denying that same choice to homosexual people is hypocritical and selfish.

Watching those old geezers smile and say that it would be "better to be dead than be homosexual" gets the Aries in me all upset. What the hell people. I'd really like to know where they get off on saying something like that.

I get really pissed off when people say sexuality is a choice. It's not. It's a continuum. To think that it's a binary decision where you just say, "Oh, I must be [blank] today" is stupid.

And to be persecuted for something you cannot change about yourself, that just sucks. You think homosexuals and bisexuals WANT to be treated poorly by their societies? Who in their right mind would CHOOSE that?

OK. I'm done for today.

Sacrificing Democracy In The Name Of Religion

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Goes On Trial

This has been in the news for a few days. Do religious zealots get any stupider?

I first read about Suu Kyi when I was in college, and thought she was a pretty brave woman (or at least in some way knew what she was doing) to undergo house arrest in the name of democracy and freedom, even after she had been given the option to leave Burma.

I hope something good comes out of all of this.

Sister Missionaries

The time had come. It only took them around 6 1/2 years to find me. Or rediscover me, or whatever.

A long time ago, I had plans. If they ever visited me, I would mess with them. I would show them and their religion the wrath (or mirth) of the once-initiated. I would make them rue the day they decided to darken my door.

I have a feeling someone ratted me out. Whether it was a relative, or a friend, or a somewhat nosy neighbor, I don't know.

It was a perfect Sunday afternoon. My sweetheart and I had just returned to my apartment after eating lunch and shopping at an India Sweets. The heaviness of the meal made my eyes droopy, and I opened the blinds in my bedroom to let warm sunlight in while I dozed on my bed. My boyfriend was more content to play games or surf the internet or do whatever it is that boys do with their girlfriends' laptops when the girlfriends aren't watching.

I heard the knock. It was odd, considering my only visitors are my boyfriend and my neighbor, and my neighbor was out of town. My sweetheart came into the bedroom, uncomfortable to answer the door at a home that was not his own.

I checked the peephole before I opened the door. I saw two young girls, with big black badges that said, "We are the bringers of Christ! We will give you the Word Of God and you will listen to our message!!!" They must be desperate if they are sending such sweet things into the mission field to tract.

Oh Christ. My wit escaped me.

I opened the door, and to my surprise there were not only two but three young girls huddled in the narrow hallway. Sister Chica and Sister Sweet Spirit, and some other random woman who seemed vaguely familiar to me. They introduced themselves, and said something. . . introductory. I seemed to have missed all that.

"Actually, I'm a former mormon."

"Oh really?!? (they have those?)" the girls squealed. "Why did you leave?"

I muttered something about doctrinal and cultural issues, but I could have gone on and on. Proposition 8. Mountain Meadows. Joe Smith and his peepstone in the hat, or his multiple marriages to already-married and young (14, was it?) women. How about the fact that, if I had drunk their kool-aid, I would probably be married with at least two children, with no education and no career.

I could have brought up problems with book of mormon archeology, or book of abraham nonsense. I could have brought up their weird temple (i.e. masonic) rituals and dead-dunking practices.

But no. I let them go. They are young, and earnest. Most importantly they would not have understood.

The random member, who was not badged, asked me what my name was again. Oh, they are good at social engineering, those Mormons. I gave them my first name even though I could have said that I never told them my name to begin with.

Sister Sweet Spirit asked repeatedly if there was anything they could do for me, and made sure I had a book of mormon (I lied, as my copy of the book of mormon is at my parents' house, and the only reason I haven't burned it yet is because my grandmother gave it to me and wrote something kind inside the book). Sister Sweet Spirit earnestly bore her testimony, which went something like this:

"I know blah blah is true blah blah Book of Mormon blah blah Jesus blah blah truth blah blah blah" and went on for at least 3 minutes. I don't actually remember anything that she said, because I zoned out after the first "I know blah blah is true".

They will most probably come around again. I've thought about looking up their mission president and asking nicely not to have them bother me. I'm not interested in ever going back to that religion. My lifestyle and point-of-view is completely unharmonious with a Molly Mormon lifestyle. It would kill my spirit to give up my individuality for their religious ideal, and that is completely unacceptable to me. However, any contact initiated by me will only encourage them. I only spend half my weekends at my apartment, and most of the time I am not at home.

After they left, my boyfriend was surprised that I was not mean to them, or "messed" with them. He had a beer that he did not even want to drink cracked open, ready to shock demure LDS sisters into never coming this way again. Sitting on the couch, almost shaking, I said,

"I need a drink."

I Love Colbert

Carolyn Jessop on her Escape from FLDS

I found this link to a video clip of Carolyn Jessop describing FLDS lifestyle and her experiences with that culture/lifestyle.

I think it's something to keep in mind when one thinks about the 400+ children in Texas custody right now.

More Eldorado Compound News

Facts about the Polygamous Sect FLDS
Authorities Find Bed in Compound Temple
Officials Say Bed in Polygamous Compound Used for Child Sex
State Organizing Resources To Aid Children, Women Who Left Eldorado Compound

I remember seeing polygamists at Wal-Mart when I visit my parents . . . sometimes my dad would go up to them and say something nasty about abusing the welfare system (although I've never personally seen him do this). They would always give me dirty looks. The women and young girls would wander around together with a shopping cart, and the men and boys would roam around together in the automotive or sporting goods section. They would all drive off in brand new Suburbans and pick up trucks.

There is so much going on there that is wrong, and I hope Texas has the resources to straighten it out, at least in their state. I hope the women and children get the counseling they so desperately need, and I hope their transition to a better life isn't too painful for them.

I hope this is a wake-up call for Utah and Arizona, but I don't think anything is going to happen with Hildale/Colorado City anytime soon.

Trouble in Yearning for Zion

Abuse Probed at Polygamist Compound
Polygamy Grows Despite Shocking Arrests

If you are an adult and you want to do something way out of the mainstream with other consenting adults, that's cool by me as long as what you're doing isn't physically, mentally, emotionally, or sexually harming other people (or animals).

I don't think all is fine in Texas, or anywhere else FLDS compounds are located. These people are raised to blindly obey what their church leaders tell them to do, and the women (some of them are barely adolescent girls) are traded around among the older men.

I've read some opinions where people are upset that children are being taken away from their parents. If you don't think those children are abused in some way, there's something wrong with you. They don't have any formal education and have been taught to fear modern society.

If you think it's OK to force a woman to marry someone against her will there's something wrong with you. If you think it's OK to force a woman to marry another man because her current husband broke some religious law there's something wrong with you.

I hope they find the girl who called the authorities, and I hope they send a lot of people to jail over this one.

Changing Faith

Associated Press: Survey: US Religious Landscape in Flux

I was born into no religious affiliation. When I was very young some Mormon (LDS) missionaries visited my mom and she thought it would be good if I went to church once a week.

When I was in college I decided that my personal spiritual views were not in alignment with LDS spirituality and left that church. I could wax poetic on how leaving the LDS religion is not quite the same as just not going anymore.

Later in college I went back to church, and eventually converted to Catholicism. I was a very ardent believer and I felt that there were good things in that religion.

Somewhere between college and my professional life I saw things in Catholicism that I did not agree with. Some doctrinal things, but mostly I did not like the lack of respect Catholicism (and by extension, most die-hard Catholics) has for other religions, and that bothered me deeply. So include me in those ex-Catholics.

I read somewhere recently something that Steven Weinberg said, "with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion."

Maybe that's why so many people in the United States are migrating to non-denominational churches, because they're getting sick of the whole, "Religion Flavor A is the only way to salvation, Religion Flavor B is misguided (or, in the case of A = Catholicism and B = Buddhism, Flavor B isn't even a religion, it's a way of life!)" attitude that permeates being attached to a particular religion. If you're non-denominational, it takes a lot of that close-mindedness out and you can say, "this spiritual mindset works for me, but I realize that it may not work for everyone and that's OK" and not feel like you're going against what some priest/pastor/bishop/holy guru has said.

Every once in a great while I feel the urge to go to Mass - I still feel there are great truths in the human condition to be found there, and I believe that the music is moving to me and that there is something beautiful and vital to human existence there. But I know that I don't fit there anymore because my view of the world and what it means to be a good Catholic are in disagreement. And I'd like to think I'm a person of integrity and that I could not, in good conscience, force myself to adhere to a religion that I could not agree with 100%.

Mormons Are People Too

I am at times very critical of people who are LDS. I don't think LDS members are bad people, or that they're evil. Most of my extended family is LDS, with various levels of devotion.

Sometimes I forget about all of that when I talk about the religion, because there are so many things I don't like about what that religion does to the people who don't fit in with them. In my subjective experience, that religion does bad things for people and bad things for society.

For the devout, their subjective experience is very different from my own. They fit in and it works for them. I think that's a good thing generally. Maybe in the bigger picture, it's not a good thing because I think (because of my subjective experiences) that particular flavor of religion is really good at breaking people and causing a lot of dysfunction.

I read something interesting online today about talking with Scientologists. I think there's a lot of universal truth there that can apply to talking with mormons.

One of my dearest friends is LDS. She's smart - earning her master's degree in nursing while working at the same time. She loves her family and wants to be close to them. A while back I mentioned that I was living with my boyfriend (we're not living together anymore, but I digress). She said something in reference to cohabitation, something like, "I couldn't do something illegal." (Illegal was the key word I remember her using) I thought that was a misguided statement, even though I didn't tell her so.

We don't talk about religion. I think it would break the friendship if we did. But I like being her friend and I definitely do think we get something positive out of being friends with one another.

I've had many discussions with a fellow I knew in high school, a returned missionary. Reality check - trying to have a rational conversation about religion with an otherwise-intelligent adherant of said religion is highly unproductive. You can show them blatent black-and-white proof of a religion's brokenness and it's like dust on a Pledge-protected tabletop.

I still think it's fair game to go after modest dresses called "Lolita", though. That's just ridiculous, and I've never read the book.

And here are some well-put-together truths you can read.

I think on some level I need to just accept that I had a substandard education and environment in my adolescence, and be OK with that. Last night I was at my book club (we had read an essay on existentialism) and I had absolutely zero to contribute, mostly because:

1) I know very, very little about philosophy
2) I know even less about existentialism
3) I thought the essay was difficult to read

On the drive home, my boyfriend asked me if I took philosophy in high school, and was shocked to find out that, not only did I not take philosophy in high school, but that it was never offered.

Guess what - I didn't have to read Camus (The Stranger was another book club selection) in high school either. I had never even heard of Camus until last year. So now I can even say that, despite their claims of valuing education, school boards in the hearts of Utah don't require reading something as basic and enjoyable as Camus in high school. Apparently, keeping the literacy level for Utah adults around grade 8 or so is OK and even welcomed.

No Mormon For President

Yes, Romney needs to answer questions about his religion

I think this article sums it up quite nicely. I personally don't want the guy giving the green light to a missile silo in North Dakota or Montana to say that he was going off of what 'the spirit' told him. That doesn't make me feel good!

Another major problem with hiring a mormon for president is that the religion:
-doesn't promote tolerance of other belief-systems and ideas/critical thinking in general
-encourages a theocratic-style of government

Faith-based thinking also, I believe, runs a little too close to being ruled by fear. Fear is the whole reason we're going to lose the war on terror. There's a major difference between doing something smart (locking pilots in planes from the cockpit side) and doing something retarded (confiscating all liquids over 2 ounces) concerning safety.

I'm against voting for someone whose core beliefs include forcing everyone to believe what you believe and ignore everything else. I'm against voting for a man (or woman, for that matter) who believes and treats the opposite sex as lesser than their own.

Terrorists propagate on fear. They are masters at exploiting the media and capitalizing on what the mob is going to do. Yes, of course, we should do things that will keep us safe from terrorism. No one should have to live in a state where they fear getting blown up walking across the street, or raped and killed because they fell in love with someone else.

Depression in Utah - Revisited

Eight Hour Lunch - The Church of the Depressed

I hit up Eight Hour Lunch every now and then; Doug is hilarous (but doesn't pull punches). He's gone to a podcast format, which I was uncomfortable listening to at first but now I really enjoy it.

This particular post was an interview with the author of Emerging From The Ashes and research concerning depression and being Mormon (she has a list of literature regarding this here).

Wow. This is possibly the best discussion on the subject that I've listened/read to date.

The Importance of Ideology in Religion

Ideology Matters
This Houston Chronicle article is fantastic. To summarize, what are the most toxic ideas in religion?

-Violence in the name of God
"If you disagree with me, I will kill you" is hardly an attitude that promotes respect or intelligent debate.
-Follow Our Rules or Else
This can be thought of as the promise of, "as long as you're a member, follow our rules, and contribute financially you can have a direct experience of God." This is personality stunting and leads to all sorts of repression.
-My Religion is Right
No one religion has a corner on "rightness". What works for me may or may not work for you. You can be both loyal to your own religion and also accepting of other religions.
-Converting Others to Your Religion
The idea that missionary work is embedded in power is correct. It's also a loaded message because it means, "we think we're correct and by extension of the idea we think your ideas are wrong and that you should change".
-A Tribal View of God
This can be best described as "our God is the only true God and our religion is the only true religion." This hardly promotes open-mindedness.

One of the reasons I'm not a "good Catholic" anymore is because I really hated the attitude of "we have THE corner on religion" and the wide-spread belief of "Buddhism isn't a religion, it's just a way of life". It's not really something I think was meant to be taught but ideas that are widespread today. Many of these ideas are why LDS/Mormonism didn't work for me either. Besides, who really wants to wear funny underwear or exclude loved ones from a 'wedding'? I also really like coffee, tea, and wine. All the simple pleasures of life. I don't drink to excess, by the way.

I know some things I write on here could be considered critical of the LDS Church. To clarify, I'm critical of all religions that think it's OK to restrict personal freedoms, that think it's OK to say that one group of people are more special than another group merely because of race, sex, sexual preference, or personal aspirations. I'm critical of religions that strongly insist on enforcing gender roles, because I think choosing a lifestyle/occupation is vastly different than only having one lifestyle/occupation to choose from. The LDS Church is one religion I'm familiar with that has these problems, so I comment on them.

I don't think mormons are necessarily bad people, but I think their religion is a bad influence on society in general. I also think that well-intentioned mormons do stupid things because of their religion. It doesn't mean that I don't respect their choice of religion, or think that they are bad people.

Oaths and Religious Freedom

"Anything But Straight - A Religious Test"

Does forcing a Muslim to take is oath of office using a bible make sense to anyone?

On the one hand, it makes sense to use only one book as the standard.

On the other hand, if the bible has no meaning for the person taking the oath, what is to morally stop him/her from breaking the oath (other than the ethics involved)? Wouldn't it make more sense to use a moral/religious text that has value for the person taking the oath? Because isn't the oath, the promise a man or woman makes to God (or other diety, or belief system) an individual bond? If I was supposed to make an oath, and I had to take it on a Book of Mormon, the oath wouldn't have any value to me. I don't care if I anger the mormon god by breaking the oath, because the Book of Mormon and the mormon god don't have value to me.

Carnival of the Veil - Week 25

It's almost six months old!

Carnival of the Veil - Week 25

Church & State

Church & State, like beer & tequila, should never, ever mix.

Romney camp consulted with Mormon leaders

I guess the big fear that most people have regarding political candidates who belong to organized, hierarchical religions is the idea that the candidate's leadership would be tainted by the leader of their religion. Wasn't that the fear when Kennedy ran for president? That the pope would use Kennedy to promote the Catholic faith?

My big fear is not necessarily a mormon becoming president, but the repercussions in Utah of a mormon becoming president. An already warped and wacky place will become even more warped and wacky when they have an LDS president to gloat about.

On Being Ex-Mormon & Relationships

Sometimes I feel out-of-touch with the ex-mormon community, because I was never as indoctrinated as most of those who post on the Recovery from Mormonism bulletin board or because I don't necessarily have something "mormon" to discuss.

We can never escape where we've been, or who we are or who we have been.

Most of the time, the fact that I am an ex-mormon doesn't show up in my daily life. I wake up (early!), miss taking a decent breakfast, commute to work, work, commute back home, and then do whatever it is I do that takes up the rest of the day. No one needs to be ex-mormon to do what I do every day. I hope that some day there are no more ex-mormons, because what that religion does to people is an ugly thing and I do believe it would be a good thing if someday there is no such thing as Temple Square in Salt Lake City; no theocracy in Utah and no more black-suited missionaries on the streets of the world. That world doesn't exist today, but I can hope.

Sometimes, however, the fact that I spent a critical part of my youth in Utah does appear, and I have to deal with the quirkiness of that. Most of this quirkiness deals with mormon gender roles and mormon stereotypes regarding women being dissonant with the type of person I am, the type of person my parents raised me to be. I've (possibly not single-handedly) ruined more than one relationship because of LDS-cultural expectations of women, and I've possibly alienated a lot of my LDS friends because of my opinions regarding their religion.

Please don't misunderstand me; I respect choice of religion and I respect my friends. I don't respect a religion. I don't tie the two together, which many LDS adherents seem to do.

Sometimes I have to bite my tongue when I'm with my LDS relatives when they say something like "polygamy isn't practiced today the way Joe Smith envisioned it to."

I alienate old LDS friends, too, when I say something that's culturally "not right" to them. For example, I've been chatting with an old high school friend online for the past week or so. He's recently married, and was expounding the joys of being married and telling me that I needed to get married. After getting more than slightly irritated, I said, "I'm young, I'm happy with my career and my life, why do I need to get married now rather than later?"

My friend said, "Kids". I responded, "Hmm. Kids? I only want two. Even if I got married at 30 (I'm 23 now - an old maid by LDS standards) I would have enough time."

To this my friend said nothing.

A related conversation with this same person revealed that his wife is expecting a child, and he was feeling insecure about his abilities as a father. When I asked for the due date, let's say it was about eight-and-a-half months from the wedding date. I said to my friend, "I know this is really absolutely none of my business, but the math doesn't seem right." He said, "I know, it's a honeymoon baby; we were planning to wait two years but plans change."

From this additional conversation and similar conversations with a couple other (female) LDS friends, it seems to me that birth-control/sexual education is non-existent in Utah (or at least in the school district I attended). The attitude seems to be, "we had sex, and oops! Now we're going to have a baby." It's like someone took the plus sign from 2+2=4. Hello?!? Did you *think* to use some B.C.? There's no logic or responsibility.

I definitely am not against marriage, I think marriage between the right people is a beautiful thing. I think little ones (kids) are wonderful. But I also think that I'm not ready to be a wife or a parent. I want to be the best mom I can be when I have kids, and I can't offer kids that right now. Why should I have kids if I can't give them the best person, the best mom that I can aspire to be?

News Like This Makes Me Really Happy

Now, hopefully they will convict him and put him away in general population for a long, long time. This guy is really, really sick and twisted in the worst way possible.

Warren Steed Jeffs: Carotid Artery Pulsating During Arrest
Woman Who Escaped Jeffs' Church Reacts To Arrest
Warren Jeffs Las Vegas Ties

Yeah. Life in the general population of a maximum security prison sounds good, doesn't it?

I know this news is a day late, but I had already used up my internet time when I found out about this at the gym. Nothing like some great news to get the blood flowing and the heart pumping.

Book Signing: His Favorite Wife

Today at Barnes & Noble (I should own stock in the store) there was a book signing for His Favorite Wife: Trapped In Polygamy, by Susan Ray Schmidt. Susan was warm, open, and very gracious. We started talking a little bit about polygamy, and I mentioned I was an ex-mormon. She seemed surprised and really opened up about the emotional abuses that face women who are LDS or live in mormon-related splinter groups.
Weirdly enough, she's lived in Cedar City, Utah (where I used to live) and part of her book takes place there.
I've skimmed through her book, and she isn't throwing a pity party or begging for attention. She told me that many people asked her why she wrote the book, which surprised me because you'd think it's a story that needs to be told.
I definitely don't try to focus on mormon issues here, but I do point them out when I feel compelled to. Polygamy, as mormon fundamentalist groups define it, is based on the core doctrines of the LDS religion. I don't care what any mainstream mormon says; "we don't practice it anymore", "they don't practice it the way Joe Smith would have", etc. That's all pure bull shit in the most concentrated form. Spritually practicing polygamy, as mainstream mormons do (just take a look at their rules concerning men and women regarding temple marriage) is just as screwed up as actual polygamy. If you don't practice something anymore, take it off the books. And Joseph Smith was a horny old goat. If you don't think polygamy back then was the same as polygamy now, you're deluding yourself.
As long as polygamy is around, women are going to be physically and emotionally abused. I pray that Utah will wake up to that someday and do something about it.

Carnival of the Veil - Week 13

I thought I'd try my hand at hosting the Carnival this week. (Is it week 13 already?) For my readers who aren't in the know, the Carnival of the Veil is a weekly list of ex-mormon blog posts. Most posts are mormon related, others are not. I may or may not agree with the content in said blogs; check them out at your own risk.

Matt writes about mormons and MLM schemes. Why do mormons get into projects like Amway, Quixtar, etc? I quote Matt's hypothetical ex-Mormon answer, and part of his solution the next time someone mentions the mormon-MLM connection:

Now, some ex-Mormons say that this is because Mormons are stupid. This must mean that either they, the ex-Mormon, is also stupid, or somehow when they became an ex-Mormon miraculously became non-stupid and magically intelligent. . . .Ask them when (or if!) THEY stopped being stupid. Or point out that Mormons are not necessarily stupid, but are kept in the Mormon poverty trap.

Joseph's Left One addresses the feelings most ex-mormons have regarding missionaries. He writes:

I wasn't sure which one I felt worse for: the one who clearly believed everything, or the one who obviously didn't want to be there. . . .Here they were, two young men who could have been anywhere in the world doing anything they chose.

Doug at Eight Hour Lunch shares some of his fictional work he's currently developing. He mentions:

If you enjoy it, please share it with your friends. For that matter, share it with your enemies. As they say, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Agreed. I actually like commenting on blogs, I just don't do enough of it. For those lurkers out there: Comment! Comment! You won't believe how helpful feedback is.

The Sinister Porpoise posts on the search for truth and the search for self.

The fact is, I did lose a couple things in my life when I left the Mormon church. . . . The first thing I think I've stated before. I lost the comforting feeling of having all the answers. The second I lost was the deep sense of community that existed.

Personally, I think what we gain from leaving that religion more than makes up for what we lost or felt we lost.

Gunner at Talking to God challenges mormon thought processes with an exercise concerning the terms "free agency" and "obedience". Here's his big morsel for thought:

Lack of obedience is not rebellion. Lack of obedience to an institute can be obedience to G-d.

Hmm.

Darque at Heart of Darqueness posts some links to video clips regarding the Book of Abraham. Someone please tell me where they got Scarlett's panties for that shot. The girl's got guts for wearing those.

Author Natalie R. Collins shares her views on a mormon's letter to the USA Today editor regarding Mel Gibson's recent anti-semetic drunken statement. She writes:

In Jeff Byrd’s world view, Mormons are as picked on as Jews. In fact, Jeff Byrd compares early Mormons to the millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Cynthia at Mormon2Catholic shares a surreal experience, and reflects on being an ex-mormon and the good things that exist outside mormon limits. This quote from her reminds me of the scene in American Beauty when Kevin Spacey argues with Annette Benning and says, "I didn't lose my job; it wasn't like, oops, where'd my job go? I QUIT!":

It's so confusing being an exMormon. I've been getting a lot of random out-of-the-blue comments about my blog from what I assume are God-Fearing active Mormons. Most of the comments are like, "If you'd just feel the spirit, you'd still be Mormon" and "why do you criticize the church, you don't know what you're talking about!" Things like that. What is the point of criticism like this? Do they think they're going to guilt me back into the church? "Oh my Gosh, I was lost, but then this person said I was making false assumptions about the church and all I need to do is pray and I'll come back. Why didn't I think of that?? I'll go pray right now!"

My submission for the week is the trouble a little skirt causes.

That's the Carnival for this week. I think next week's carnival is back at Gunner's Talking To God. If this taste of ex-mormon rants and ideas have piqued your interest, more ex-mormon blogs are listed at Recovery From Mormonism, The Mormon Curtain, and the Serenity Bloglist.