Author: Nate Oman
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Macrocosm and Microcosm
Every so often, I have one of those horrifying little experiences that leads me to question my firmly held belief that most of Freud’s thought is utter nonsense.
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“Sir, I have come to ask for your daughter’s hand. Nice pajamas.”
Julie’s post on courting brings up an interesting question that I have, thankfully, only struggled with once: Should you ask a father’s “permission” prior to proposing marriage to his daughter?
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Of Fathers, Compost, and the Resurrection
Thanks to a pile of rotting garbage, I was truly happy and contented for the first time in quite a while this weekend.
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What Does God Smell Like?
I like smells. I sniff my wife when she is not looking. (It really annoys her.) I came home from work late tonight and went in to look at my sleeping son. I bent down and kissed his brow and drank in the wonderful smell of a clean and sleeping little boy. For me smell…
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A Very Cool New Blog
Those wacky Mormons at Harvard Law School (and some that used to be) have started a new blog Harv. L. Saints (for those who missed the geeky law joke in the title, Harv. L. Rev. is the traditional abbreviation of the Harvard Law Review, the greatest law journal of all time, since followed by many…
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A Legal Primer on Same Sex Marriage
As Kaimi has already pointed out, today the San Francisco County Superior Court declared that Proposition 22, which defines marriage exclusively as a union between a man and a woman, unconstitutional under the California Constitution. My point in this post is not to open up a debate about same sex marriage, but rather to explain…
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A Letter to a Righteous Gentile
The following is the (modified) text of a letter that I recently sent to a friend. I have no intention of revealing who he or she is or of posting his or her reply, but in the letter I ask some questions that might be of interest to the readers of this blog. I am…
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Mormon Doctrine and the Path of the Law
Margaret Toscano’s recent remarks at UVSC have garnered a few bloggernacle links and generated an interesting discussion at DMI. I missed her remarks, but I did read her paper from a couple of issues ago in Sunstone, and was invited to respond to it here in a long ago comment. My response — not surprisingly…
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A Powerful New Blog
She-who-must-be-obeyed (and some co-conspirators) have started a new blog (http://mommywars.blogspot.com) entitled The Mormon Mommy Wars. Here is the mission statement, from She-who-must-be-obeyed:
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The Church Has Already Written a Modern English Version of the Book of Mormon
The first installment of Phillip Barlow’s excellent 12 Questions raises the interesting question of whether the Church will ever produce a modern language edition of the Book of Mormon in English. The answer is that it already has.
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Mormons and the Law, an Email
Yesterday, my father, who is a currator at the Church Museum in Salt Lake City, asked me to respond to an email that he had recieved from a young man that he had met through his work who was investigating the Church. The young man had heard his LDS girl friend declare that Mormons believe…
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The Problems of the Great Apostasy
One the bed-rock doctrines of Mormonism (to the extent that we have any bed-rock doctrines) is that the church set up by Christ fell away from the true gospel, lost its priesthood authority, and slipped into apostasy. It seems to me that we have two fundamental problems with the doctrine of the Great Apostasy.
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More Nibley Memorials: Online Articles
As a Nibley memorial, BYU Studies has created a page with links to free down loads of Nibley’s BYU Studies articles. Sunstone has a similar page set up. Also, BYU has set up a kind of electronic guestbook for Nibley. They are inviting people to send in their messages of appreciation to hughnibley-at-byu.edu. My understanding…
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From the Archives: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Elder McConkie
I don’t think that I am alone among Mormons in having had very strong reactions to Elder Bruce R. McConkie. My sense is that his theological influence is on the wane, although I understand he continues to be very popular amongst some CES types. A while back, I blogged on my own process of making…
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Simony and Kidneys
I think that people ought to be able to sell their kidneys. Especially poor people.
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In Memory of the Metaphysical Elders
Lost in all of the buzz about the Bloggernacle Awards (I was tempted to make a big acceptance speech until I realized that I got only 21 of the votes cast for the category I won, meaning that the vast majority of the voting public was against me) was an interesting set of comments asking…
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A Snap Shot in Numbers
OK. I know that this will mark me as a total geek, but I recently came across a copy of Census of 1850, which is the first census with information on Utah. The numbers provide a fun snap shot of the Mormon commonwealth three years after its founding.
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12 Questions with Senator Robert F. Bennett
Our next installment of the 12 Questions series will be with Robert F. Bennett, the junior Senator from Utah. Senator Bennett, a Republican, was elected to the Senate in 1992. As Assitant Majority Whip, he is a member of the Republican leadership. Prior to his election, he was a business man, PR executive, lobbyist, and…
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LDS Law Students’ Conference: Updated Schedule
For those interested, here is the final schedule for the LDS Law Students’ Conference
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Contention and Argument
The Book of Mormon has a number of not so complimentary things to say about contention. Generally speaking, I have heard this interpreted as an admonition to be nice and change the subject if anything controversial comes up. My problem with this, of course, is that I am not especially nice, and I like controversy.
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The Evening When Mormons Could Once More Become Americans
I have been reading Kathleen Flake’s excellent book on the Reed Smoot hearings, and it has me thinking Smootish thoughts.
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LDS Law Students’ Conference This Week in NYC
For those in the New York City area this weekend, you have a chance to come and heckle Kaimi and I in person.
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Superheros and the Sacrament
This evening, my wife (aka She Who Must Be Obeyed) and I were having an interesting discussion about the topic of her forthcoming Relief Society lesson. I thought that I would improve the average quality of the posts here by passing on her thoughts and questions. She writes:
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Mormon Resistance to the Government
Consider two different Mormon reactions to state-sponsored repression: the anti-polygamy crusade and Mormons in East Germany.
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Finding God in Chess and the Appellate Brief
When my professional life is going well it consists of reading and writing appellate briefs. Fortunately, this is not nearly as pathetic as it sounds.
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From the Archives: Has Mormon History Taught Us Anything?
Times & Seasons has now been around for more than a year and in that time our readership has gone from a dozen or two visitors a day to somewhere between 1500 and 2000 visitors a day. Hence, there are some early posts that I suspect many readers never saw. Here is one post from…
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The Failure of Times & Seasons or the Danger of the Daily Me
With the launching of Millennial Star, it now looks as though there are two group blogs that have more or less spun off from Times and Seasons, one of which tries to position itself to the “left” of T&S and one of which tries to position itself to the “right” of T&S. Or so it…
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Seaweed, Fermented Cabbage & the Spirit of God
I find that in those dark times of the soul when I need peace and a nearness to God, I turn to seaweed and fermented cabbage.
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Joseph Smith, Justice Frankfurter and the Great Writ
It is time for the post that you have all been waiting for, the one of the place of Mormonism in habeas corpus jurisprudence.