Summer 1987
The Summer 1987 Issue of Dialogue explores diverse topics related to faith, sexuality, and relationships within the Mormon experience. Robert A. Rees provides a personal perspective on dialogue in faith, while R. Jan Stout examines psychobiological aspects of homosexuality. Steven C. Heath reflects on apostolic succession, and Garth N. Jones discusses the Church’s international mission. Research by Tim B. Heaton analyzes traits of the Mormon family, covering chastity, marriage, children, and social attitudes. Personal essays highlight themes of family, sisterhood, and spirituality, with poetry and fiction providing introspective narratives on community and belonging.
Engaging in dialogue is one of the first experiences we have as human beings. Even when our communication is only inarticulate gurgling, we are participating in some kind of communication. Entering into dialogue with another, whether human or divine, is one of the experiences we bring from the preexistence.
Dialogue 20.2 (Summer 1987): 31–43
Stout’s article is a reminder just how important psychology and psychologists were for mediating these early debates. It really was groundbreaking in LDS print media. He talks about how he believed and presented publicly theories on the cause and cure of homoseuxaity, following Freudian psychology in 1970. “16 years later, “he states, “I can state that what I presented was wrong and simplistic. The evolving change in my views came by examining new research, gaining more clinical experience, and looking for alternative explanations to clarify some of the mystery surrounding the development of human sexuality and specifically homosexuality.” Stout’s overview provides a guide to the updated psychological research from the 1970s and 80s that overturned earlier consensus on the pathologization of homosexuality and on whether it can be cured. He tackles the ethical and moral issues with forced celibacy, but leaves the question as a mystery of paradox of how to proceed on the topic, warning against “extremes” on all sides.
The recognition of Brigham Young as leader of the Church in August 1844 and the reorganization of the First Presidency under his direction in December 1847 have provided the basic pattern and precedent for apostolic…
Early in the 1950s, President David O. McKay took forthright steps to move the largely domestic church into the international world. Within months after assuming his presidency, he embarked on a series of world tours, much as Pope John Paul of today’s Catholic Church has done, visiting places and lands where the Church remained strong…
In some ways, our culture doesn’t teach us very much about intimacy. It teaches us about sex as if it were intimacy. Similarly, it doesn’t teach us very much about friendship. It teaches us about…
For Jews, the Bible is an animate being. Understanding it means understanding everything we have experienced. The sum of meaning in the Bible is the sum of life’s meaning. Judaism is over 2,000 years of…
From its inception, Mormonism has been characterized by a blend of traditional American culture mixed with unique, sometimes even radical, elements. The nineteenth-century Mormon family combined aspects of Puritan family morality with a unique theology…
I sit here by my gate, sniffing the stalk of sage in my hand, and wonder about the leaves drifting down on me. They float past my eyes and settle on my folded legs. Summer…
No Crusades Thanks for your hard work and dedication. I realize that the current atmosphere of conservatism and orthodoxy can sometimes be frustrating for those of us who need to ask questions for which there…
Since the early studies of the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, suicide has interested sociologists. But suicide, by its very nature, has resisted study, and the problem of studying it has not eased over the years.…
For a book of remembrance we have written among us, according to the pattern given by the finger of God; and it is given in our own language (Moses 6:46). Sometimes in my journey through MIA I…
I recently completed a short season of speaking at Mormon women’s conferences, largely related to Relief Society. I do not do this as a professional speaker. I don’t sell books, and (at the moment) I…
As I look back on more than sixty years in the Church, two changes stand out as being most significant: I have seen my church permit all worthy male members to hold the priesthood, and…
On the night of 16 November 1985, Halley’s Comet was said to be visible just to the right of the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades, in the eastern sky. That night, ten of us from the…
Cupped in your papery palm the rose
was like a wound, flowering.
Your wife nodded when we brought it.
Yes, Papa, yes is pretty. Then
she put it in a bowl to float
and wilt on water.
mused in several voices
to the tune of tinkling cymbals
It wasn’t like she didn’t blend right in.
In fact, based on the type of clothes she wore,
People always figured she was from Salt Lake.
Her skirts were long enough, that’s for sure.
New grain, you are comely;
Long, straight, supremely vernal.
Standing in Earth’s sun
Unashamed green,
You sway.
In his introduction to Mormon Polygamy: A History, Richard S. Van Wagoner correctly reminds us that even though “many Mormons are descendants of polygamists, most Church members are often no better informed on the critical…
When it comes to explaining economic matters, Americans have difficulty resisting conspiracy theories and are even more fascinated with their second cousin, the expose. Small wonder, then, that in a single week last July Fortune…
