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Yesterday after the Supreme Court announced its landmark decisions on DOMA and Prop 8, LDS Church spokesman, Michael Otterson issued an official statement that again demonstrated the church's disregard for its own history as well as its penchant for the usual self-righteousness : "Regardless of the court decision, the Church remains irrevocably committed to strengthening traditional marriage between a man and a woman, which for thousands of years has proven to be the best environment for nurturing children. Notably, the court decision does not change the definition of marriage in nearly three-fourths of the states." Then this morning, in an article that argued that the Mormon Church has had a change of heart over the issue of gay marriage, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted openly gay local LDS Church "leader," Mitch Mayne: "It's safe to say that the Mormon Church won't be involved (in legislation against gay marriage) as far as in any public poli...

Our internet was down for three days last week, causing a calamity that in my former life might have been akin to "losing the Holy Ghost." I don't pretend that losing the internet has anywhere near the hyperbolic significance of losing the Holy Ghost. (Perish the thought!) However, its brief absence from my life did afford me a similar opportunity to pause and actually think. This is my 200th post on Ward Gossip, a little blog that I started in late 2009 as a writing exercise to help me kickstart my novel, The Girls From Fourth Ward . I'd read that J. K. Rowling had written backstory on all of her characters, including the minor ones. While I'm obviously not J.K. Rowling, she's the one who gave me the idea to flesh out my minor characters here, in the form of emails from the Abbottsville Fourth Ward "until they delete from their mailing list." (You've got to have a gimmick--I've since changed the tagline to "and other musings.") I c...

We must support one another in the arts! Here is my take on a new book by my fellow ex-Mormon, Micah McAllister.  (This review was originally published here on Main Street Plaza.) Since I began writing about my former life within Mormonism, countless true believers have asked me: So Donna, if the LDS Church is “false,” why are there so many websites, blogs, bulletin boards, and groups out there to help people who leave the Church? After all, Satan doesn’t need those tools for people who quit other (presumably untrue) religions. Now, thanks to Micah McAllister, the true believers may cite yet another implement in Satan’s toolbox: a guidebook to leaving the LDS Church. Exit Strategy: A Guide to Leaving Mormonism with your Dignity and Integrity Intact ,  is a handy and efficient volume that addresses all of the questions surrounding the experience, including the one posed above. Perhaps the most compelling thing about this concise and highly readable work is that McAllister...