memberqueer-mormon

[memberqueer-mormon]

[memberqueer-mormon]

lovely mural by the coffee shop this morning

[memberqueer-mormon]

THE FIRST BATCH OF NEW HYMNS IS LIVE!!!!!!!!!!

[memberqueer-mormon]

Ammon has been claimed by the gays.

Can aroace people have Teancum? I've always loved how emphasized the friendships in the war chapters are. Also he stabby

#yoinking him #he is ours now

[memberqueer-mormon]

I'm gonna start crying about jesus christ. what a guy. man volunteered to feel every affliction that a person ever did. he speedran drowning, burning to death, getting stabbed, getting shot, getting abused, being hungover, stubbing your toe, sleep paralysis, being abandoned, getting divorced, being imprisoned, dying in lava in Minecraft and losing your whole inventory, and listening to sad Taylor Swift songs, all in a few hours, just so we could be happy. then he defeated death itself???? AND THEN ATE FISH WITH HIS BROS???? mad lad. Cain asked "am I my brother's keeper" and the whole Bible is answering "yes," or whatever

[memberqueer-mormon]

You know that trope where the author is like the Small Appalachian Town Church is actually worshipping something Far More Ancient Than Christ? The implication being that Christ isn't real but this old Eldritch thing is real.

Like, who cares if some little holler town has a Real God. The Christians ran Europe for like a thousand years. I feel like your Eldritch Horror has to be scarier than the idea of the Borgias.

[memberqueer-mormon]

My Mormonism is colored by my queerness, but so too is my queerness colored by my Mormonism. I cannot be one without the other.

[memberqueer-mormon]

hey, tumblrstake! I've seen several posts on here about how we wished mormons had more cultural traditions/holidays, so I want to share with y'all my family's memorial day tradition.

every year, about 300+ of my extended family gather in the podunk town of oak city, utah to take over the town hall for the weekend and then serve free breakfast to the town on monday morning. it's called the "edward partridge memorial day breakfast" or 'MDB" for short.

edward partridge immigrated to the U.S. from great britain and was the first ordained bishop of the church. he is my great-great-great-great-great grandfather. edward partridge's grandson, aesel lyman, started the breakfast, declaring that the tradition would continue until edward partridge came and got breakfast himself. today marked the 52nd annual MDB, and this year, we fed 1069 people.

the customary breakfast is: sourdough pancakes (they're really freaking good and the batter is hand-stirred by an army of little kids), fried eggs, fried ham, oak city milk, and an orange juice called Tang. that same army of little kids get the honor of "running" food from the griddles in the town hall's back courtyard to the gym where we serve the breakfast, and of course most of the adults are given a job to do as well (cooking, serving, hospitality, utensil rolling, the most recent newlyweds get to rinse the empty batter buckets with a hose... you get the gist). members of the fam bring their plates straight to the griddles when we want to eat. we all wear special aprons. the atmosphere is always kind of electric :)

the night before, we have a thing called "the program" where we watch the same grandparent-originated skits and sing the same favorites-of-our-grandparents songs that we've been performing for decades.

some other traditions that have endured at the mdb: games of P-I-G (kind of like H-O-R-S-E), a couple hundred people playing bunco at the same time, blasting louis armstrong during the breakfast, a baseball game for the kids, red velvet cake, older kids teaching younger kids to throw mountains of playground-gravel down the slides (I was little when that started and it's been going on for over a decade now lol), and, of course, visiting the oak city cemetery and telling stories about our grandparents.

I'm really blessed that on memorial day I get to spiritually honor my five generations of grandparents buried in oak city instead of just making vague allusions of thanks to the military industrial complex. most white americans have been completely isolated from any kind of ancestral culture/specific traditions (because that's what racist assimilationism demands), so I find our weird and sometimes difficult annual reunion to be really special. whatever this is is mormon culture to me.

so, idk, hopefully this was inspiring and gave you a new way to think about memorial day. I hope that wherever I am in the world, I can continue this tradition with the friends and family I have around, serve a community with free food, and do it in honor of some modern pioneers and martyrs.

here's some photos of my dinosaur, jared, wearing my keffiyeh and hanging out in oak city over the weekend:

[memberqueer-mormon]

today in church one of the priests referred to trans people as "those who are growing into the gender they were called to be" and i'm kind of enjoying the idea of like....divinely ordained top surgery

[memberqueer-mormon]

FOR THE LAST TIME

👏 APOSTASY is the rejection of a faith after having professed it;

👏 HERESY is selective belief in only some of the tenets of a faith one professes, or belief in tenets contrary to those of a faith one professes;

👏 BLASPHEMY is derogation of the honour due to God.

[memberqueer-mormon]

If gender is eternal, like the family proc says, than it exists beyond the scope of physical reproduction. Otherwise it would be useless in the times in our lives when we are not able to reproduce. Gender would be irrelevant for the young, the old, the singles, the infertile, those who intend to marry and are currently keeping the law of chastity, etc.

If gender is eternal then we had it in the pre-existance and it is a part of our spirit, not our body. Our bodies don't always match our spirits, as any bald man will likely agree. Gender cannot be determined merely by physical metrics.

If gender is eternal, then it is like other eternal things. We know it's not eternally bad like eternal misery, eternal damnation, eternal stagnation. Eternally bad things are static and unchanging. Gender is eternally good, like eternal growth, eternal happiness, eternal progress. All eternally good things are in a state of growth, change, and expansion.

Therefore our current understandings of gender are most likely inaccurate in the long term and based on temporary mortal circumstances that will soon pass.

Unlike those who are, ironically, most likely to quote the Family Proclamation, I choose to actually take it seriously when it says "Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."

[memberqueer-mormon]

Religious Queer culture is feeling like you have to hide part of your identity no matter who you’re talking to

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[memberqueer-mormon]

“my child is fine” your child has been lifted up in the pride of their heart, yea even unto the wearing of costly apparel

[memberqueer-mormon]

Hey queerstake, mostly non-Christian (shakily wobbles a hand with palm facing down) here, is it disrespectful to say "Mormon"? I know the Church officially prefers "(The Church of Jesus Christ of) Latter-day Saints", but Latter-day Saints/LDS is not always clear, though I'd prefer not always being clear to being disrespectful.

I also know Mormon is definitely not a slur, and my response to anyone that anyone who said it was would be "wow touch grass", but you know. Everyone should be called what they want.

[memberqueer-mormon]

we should be far more concerned that our theology is loving than if it is logical, pragmatic, or even "correct."

[memberqueer-mormon]

It makes me think of whichever Pauline epistle tbh, where he talks about how we're all different parts of the body of Christ. We are all different, and were all made different, and so yeah, we're going to interact with God and the gospel differently. We're going to look at things differently, and that's important!

The differences themselves aren't things that we can make go away (and honestly? we shouldn't try erase our differences). When we're talking about being one in Christ I personally see it as more of a command to be kind and loving and accepting of differences. Because that's ultimately more unifying than trying to fit a cookie-cutter mold of how we "should" be, according to one interpretation of the gospel.

Maybe the queerstake can give their input on this because a thing that happened in my Sunday School class kinda ruffled me the wrong way. Someone in the class (not the teacher, thankfully) commented something along the lines of "People seem to say 'I'm a child of God but I'm also [this other thing], so I'm going to filter the gospel through [this other thing]' but really, those things are supposed to be swallowed up in Christ. And I've seen so many people fall away from the gospel because of it."It was like the guy was implying that people "fall away from the church" because of this mindset and that prioritizing anything about ourselves other than being a child of God means we won't, or maybe even can't, stay on the path to God.

But like... Aren't we also all diverse individuals? Don't we all have such different life experiences? How can we do anything other than filter the things we learn, even gospel topics, through those life experiences? And yes, it's part of progressing to try and see things from God's point of view and see things from a higher perspective, but like... We can't truly erase those differences about ourselves even while being on the path of Christ, right?

#also having different spiritual gifts and the like but I'm not really able to super. word that well rn xD #but similar where we don't erase our different strengths #it's not Productive

[memberqueer-mormon]

Distance from the church does not inherently equal distance from God