The LDS Church has publicly opposed efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in Hawaii, Alaska, and California; its Proclamation on the Family declares marriage to be between a man and a woman. Nevertheless, a strong moral case for LDS same-sex marriage exists and is articulated here with 26 supporting reasons. Brad Carmack
Event: Salt Lake Symposium 2011
Choose The Right—But Which Is Right? Mormons And Immigration
Given that immigration was a significant topic during Utah’s last legislative session and remains a pressing social issue in the Western US, SUNSTONE presents this panel discussion about immigration. The prominence of Mormons in utah gives immigration discussions a particular flavor here, with Mormons represented on different sides of the issue. Panelists will discuss how …
Why Do Women Fight Against Their Own Interests?
This presentation considers why, along with other underprivileged groups, Mormon women so often fight against their own interests. The answer emerges from sociological theory, which explains that society ends up shaping the very thoughts in our minds so that the world as it is seems natural and normal, the end result being that many of …
Prophet
This paper considers the experiences, ministry, prophetic work, and church groups started by three different but related twentieth-century prophets in lesser-known Latter Day Saint denominations. Otto Fetting, Thomas B. Nerren, and William A. Draves each claimed and produced messages reportedly given by a resurrected John the Baptist. None claimed to be “a prophet,” nor did …
Why We Stay
This perennially well-received session features the stories of those who chose to remain active, dedicatedLlatter-day Saints even in the face of difficult challenges to traditional faith. How have these members wrestled with their faith and emerged more determined than ever to remain in the latter-day Saint community? Kent G. Olson, Jody England Hansen, Michael J. …
Pillars Of My Faith
This is Sunstone’s perennially best-attended session. Hear speakers share the events and concepts that animate their religious lives—a little soul-baring, a little spiritual journey, a little intellectual testimony-bearing. This self-reflective night is about the things that matter most, including spirited congregational hymn-singing. Ardis E. Parshall, Camilla M. Smith
Pursuing Truth Through Fiction: The Assassination Of Governor Boggs, A Historical Novel
On 6 May 1842, an unknown assailant shot Lilburn Boggs, former governor of Missouri and author of the infamous extermination order against the Mormons. Though given up for dead and widely reported killed, Boggs survived. The crime was never solved. Twenty-five years after the fact, seeking closure if not justice, his family hired a Pinkerton …
Banquet: Treasures Of Earth On Heaven: The Impact Of Mormonism’s Missing, Repudiated, Rebuilt, And Museum-Sequestered Artifacts
A supremely important artifact to early Christians was the cross; slivers of it were cherished as the most valuable of relics. Over time, the cross has been repudiated by latter-day Saints, who instead mark their most sacred buildings with a statue of Moroni. Arguably the most important artifact of Mormonism, the object on which its …
Circumscribing Meaning: Mediating Religious Experience
The LDS Church often patrols or limits the proliferation of meaning by using paratexts, “verbal frames,” or “symbolic packages.” in “The loss of the Creature,” Walker Percy discusses the way this “general surrender of the horizon to those experts within whose competence a particular segment of the horizon is thought to lie” amounts to a …
Practicing Stewardship In A Consumer Culture
As our testimony of the gospel gives meaning and motivation to our relations with other people, so too our sense of divinely appointed stewardship informs all of our interactions with the material world, both manufactured and naturally created. We must strive to live as responsible stewards, making prudent use of resources, cultivating abundance in our …