My friend and fellow SHAFTer Jack was recently interviewed for the “I am an ex-Mormon” video series. In his interview, he discusses his experiences as a bisexual woman in the LDS Church and his life now as a transgender individual.
Jack, you’re an incredibly courageous person. Thanks for sharing your inspiring story! I regret not having gotten to know you better while at USU.
The USU SHAFT blog has been active now for two years; the first post was published August 13th, 2009. I want to thank all of you who have followed us from the beginning, and welcome those who have just recently stumbled upon our blog.
Despite my being less prolific as of late, the site still enjoyed increased traffic this year. And, like last year, we also won several Brodies (the Oscars of the Mormon/ex-Mormon blogosphere) for 2010: “Best News Reporting”, “Best LDS Church Watch”, and “Best Science Piece”. SHAFT has won a total of five Brodies, more than any other website.
Originally published at The Student Review by Hunter Schwarz and shared here with permission.
The first issue of the revamped Student Review will create buzz across campus when it is published in September, but it will hardly be the first time that sort of excitement was felt at Brigham Young University over an independent student paper.
BYU’s first newspaper was created before it was even a university. In 1891, students at Brigham Young Academy, as it was called at the time, read the BYA Student, a paper “managed exclusively by the students.” The paper lasted five months.
In 1897, the White and Blue published its first issue, running such controversial stories as words grandmothers would be shocked to hear their college-aged granddaughters say (Some of the phrases were “dog gone,” “rubber neck” and “hot time”).
I have generally celebrated the success of “The Book of Mormon” musical. I enjoy irreverent satire, and the musical’s creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have finely calibrated their satiric sights for over a decade with “South Park.”
That said, the musical did get several things wrong about Mormonism, especially where its history and theology are concerned. The musical was guilty of the fashionable claim that Joseph Smith never let anyone see or handle the gold plates, instead (quickly and conveniently) returning them to the angel Moroni. The implication, of course, is that Joseph Smith never had the gold plates; a point Stone and Parker also belabored in the South Park episode “All About Mormons.”
The story of Mormonism’s origins and the gold plates is vastly more nuanced, however. In this post, I’ll argue that Joseph Smith actually had gold plates (or a passable substitute). Contrary to popular belief outside of Mormonism, Smith did reveal the gold plates to a number people—namely the 11 witnesses, but a few others as well.
With the advent of the internet, you have a near infinite wealth of information at your fingertips. It is now even possible to get an Ivy League education for free online! A lot of schools are starting to upload their courses to sites like YouTube.
My favorite online course has been a series of lectures on morality by Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel. The first installment explores the “moral side of murder” and introduces utilitarianism. Other episodes discuss the role of government, gay marriage, economic justice, and countless other issues through the lens of various moral paradigms.
GQ magazine ranks Salt Lake City and Provo among the worst-dressed cities in the country. Our fashion sense aside, Utahns are still counted among the best looking people. Maybe it’s all that plastic surgery.
Harrison Ames argues that the frequent use of corrective words and phrases like “rather” and “in other words” in the Book of Mormon is more consistent with dictation than inspired translation.
A preview of this year’s Sunstone conference, August 3-6 in Ogden.
New rule: When you lose your religion, you must blog about it. In keeping with this rule, ex-Mormon Tyler Young has posted his essay “Why I Left” as a public Google doc.
Introducing the new Scientific American blog network, home to dozens of science-oriented blogs.
How Google is changing your brain and impairing your memory.
If non-Mormons in Utah were their own state, polls show that it’d be the bluest state in the union. And given that Mormons are the most conservative religious group in the country, that makes Utah the most polarized state.
The New York Times covers the Hill Cumorah Pageant, the Mormon spectacle you won’t see on Broadway.
BYU law professor Frederick Gedicks gives a lecture on the LDS Church’s demographic trajectory, noting that the church’s growth in the last decade has been stagnant and that nearly as many people are leaving the church as converting to it.
You Are Not So Smart reminds us that we’re bad at assessing and understanding our own feelings.
LDS scholar Grant Hardy lists 10 things everyone should know about the Book of Mormon.
5 myths atheists believe about religion. And by way of rebuttal: 5 faulty arguments religious people use against atheists.
How gay marriage became thinkable for a generation of young Americans.
Dalai Lama: “I am a Marxist, but not a Leninist.”
A Fox News anchor declares on air that Romney is “not a Christian”—a claim that went totally unchallenged by her fellow co-hosts.
Do atheists belong in the interfaith movement? This is a question of particular interest to SHAFT, as we occasionally get invited to participate in interfaith discussion panels.
Business Week on why Mormon missions produce business and civic leaders.
A University of Chicago study found that a person’s morality changes with age in large part due to evolving brain circuity.
Mormons aren’t known for their sense of humor, but this clip from “Latter-Day Night Live” is a pretty funny parody of church talk cliches. This Mormon cover of Cee-Lo Green’s “Fuck You” (retitled “For the Strength of You”) is not so funny, however.
An unscientific online survey of ex-Mormons yields some interesting results.
164 years ago yesterday (Pioneer Day), Mormon pioneers settled what is now Utah in order to freely practice their religion and nontraditional marriage. How appropriate it is then that yesterday was also the first day that gay marriage is legal in New York, the birthplace of Mormonism.
Bill McKeever of Mormon Research Ministries explains his techniques for witnessing to Mormons.
ABC 4, a Utah news station, found it newsworthy that Jon Huntsman said “bullshit” in a casual interview with Esquire.
Dr. Richard Carrier debated Christian apologist JP Holding on the textual reliability of the New Testament.
A majority of medical students surveyed believe that doctors should be allowed to object to any procedure that conflicts with their personal, moral, or religious beliefs.
Ron Howard and Dustin Lance Black are working on a new project: a film adaptation of Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven.” And Ricky Gervais is coming out with a new show about an atheist that dies and goes to heaven.
Austrian man and “Pastafarian” wins the right to wear a pasta strainer in his license photo.
Apologist Josh McDowell tells Christian youth that the internet is the greatest threat to their faith.
Common Sense Atheism on why and how to debate charitably.
I apologize for not being my normal prolific self lately. Maybe I need a brief stint in prison; it seems to remedy writer’s block.
When news of the bombing and massacre in Norway broke, many people suspected the culprit to be a Muslim extremist. Yet it turns out that the killer Anders Breivik may instead be a Christian fundamentalist. Sam Harris argues that European nationalism and racism is more to blame, however.
Uganda made news last year with its consideration of a bill that’d make homosexuality a capital offense punishable by death. Africa’s LGBT community has new cause for concern, as Ghana moves to arrest all gays and lesbians in that country.
KSL investigates the case of the missing ‘t’ in Utah’s peculiar pronunciation. I never thought I had much of an accent myself, but when I went to New York for a secular leadership conference, my nickname was “country boy.”
Mormon.org is a site where Mormons can create profiles with which to share their faith. The LDS Church monitors the site closely, so I am surprised that this unorthodox/uncorrelated profile is still up.
There is a longstanding divide between Israel’s secular Jews and the right-wing rabbinical community. That divide has widened recently as hundreds of conservative rabbis endorse a book, the King’s Torah, that justifies the killing of non-Jews.
An atheist confronts President Obama at a townhall last week over his position on federal subsidies to religious organizations.
Prominent atheists share their reasons for nonbelief with the New Statesman.
The Catholic Church makes a $50 million dollar bid for a large crystal Cathedral, which I think looks like something out of “The Wizard of Oz.”
Bible scholar Bart Ehrman discusses his new book Forged and writes in the Huffington Post the top things that didn’t make it into the Bible.
Woody Allen interviews famed televangelist Billy Graham, and they actually seem to enjoy each other’s company.
“Nightline” does a special on exorcism in America.
Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all? Philosophers Leibniz and Heidegger find this to be the most fundamental question. But perhaps the question is ill-posed.
Atheist writer Austin Cline explains the principle of Occam’s Razor.
Opponents of gay marriage have often raised the specter that it will inevitably lead to the legalization of polygamy. This has been an effective tactic because while homosexuality has enjoyed growing social acceptance, polygamy remains unpopular.
Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer explained in a 2006 Washington Post editorial how the legalization of polygamy follows logically from gay marriage:
After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one’s autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement — the number restriction (two and only two) — is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.
The relative success of gay marriage, it seems, has already inspired new efforts to legalize polygamy. Last week, George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley filed a legal challenge to Utah’s anti-polygamy statutes on behalf of his plaintiffs, Kody Brown and his four wives. The Browns are the subject of the hit reality show “Sister Wives.”