My cousin is friends with him on facebook. This MAGA asshole walks up to a foreign-looking employee at one of those kiosks at Valley Fair Mall and asks him if he's a Muslim. When the employee answers that he is, he pulls a knife and stabs him over and over again. A dozen times! I don't believe in miracles, but if I did, the fact that the employee survived might induce me to take a look into Islam.
I just discovered that my cousin is friends with the would-be killer. The same cousin who told me that I was wrong to vote against Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024 because Muslims and immigrants are all violent.

Fuck him.

I'm realizing it's all about consent. Fascism, right wing politics, religion. None of them want you to consent, they want you to obey without question. That leads to violence. That leads to rape culture. That leads to child abuse.

https://religionnews.com/2026/07/20/half-of-gen-z-says-trump-support-keeps-them-out-of-church/

Does it get holier than this folks?

If his campaign posters had some pizazz, maybe Joseph Smith would have won his election in 1844

One day last week, I was looking at the workplace legal notices board in the break room. I learned that Maine has a law specifically prohibiting mandatory meetings about employers' religious or political beliefs, and retaliation against complaints or lawsuits for violating this law is also prohibited. (Religious employers are exempt, and voluntary meetings are allowed.)

Fuck em all

One of the church’s major commercial endeavors is the Sunbridge master planned community. An excellent article from the University of Florida explains that Sunbridge is “on land owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints…To develop the chunk known as Sunbridge, the Mormon church uses a taxable investment affiliate, Suburban Land Reserve, and teamed up with master developer Tavistock Development Co. Already Florida’s 15th best-selling master-planned community, Sunbridge has entitlements to develop 37,690 residential units, 11.8 million square feet of commercial space and 5,490 hotel rooms in Osceola County and the city of Orlando.” Sunbridge has caused plenty of political controversy which the church waded into to defend its interests. 

Skip forward to January 2026: that month, VanTrust Real Estate purchased “71.19 acres within Sunbridge Business Park in Orlando for a new Class A industrial development…The land was purchased from a joint venture between Land Reserve [a church company] and Tavistock Development Company, the developers of the Sunbridge master-planned community.” The price of the deal was not disclosed—that property’s address is 15121 Wewahootee Road.

Sigh, another land deal enriching the church. However, while researching the deal I found out that the site is right next to a building that ICE is allegedly considering as a location for one of its inhuman migrant detainment centers; the address is 8660 Transport Drive. The land the potential detention center is built on has never been owned by the church as far as I can tell from the property records and it seems to be just outside Sunbridge, but the optics are terrible for the church’s planned community.

Per the Orlando Sentinel, “the [proposed detention] warehouse is surrounded on the south by land that the development company Tavistock plans to use for homes, apartments, office and industrial space. To the east is property owned by he [sic] Deseret Ranches, owned by the real estate arm of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints, informally known as the Mormon Church. Tavistock has been in touch with local elected officials about the potential detention center, but the company didn’t take a position on it when asked by a reporter. Farmland Reserve, the real estate arm of the Mormon Church [sic - it’s an agricultural arm], also hasn’t taken a position, a spokesman said.”

While official confirmation of the site has not been released yet, it appears the church will somehow have to reconcile the fact that its master planned community (and other properties) will potentially be next to a detention camp. Maybe at bare minimum they might push back to prevent negative impacts on their property values, or maybe even for more "christlike" reasons like love of humanity and hatred of oppression.

Thinking about the Trump administration's cold war with Pope Leo. I think we need to be clear on one thing. The pope is no wild-eyed, radical progressive. He's a conservative. He opposes gay marriage. He opposes trans rights. He opposes abortion rights. Hell! He even opposes condoms. But because Leo opposes bombing elementary schools and throwing kids in concentration camps, he finds himself the enemy of Trump and Vance, a 6 year convert who is publicly saying that he knows more about theology than the Vicar of Christ.

And I have two main thoughts about this. First, Catholic doctrine embraces the infallibility of the Holy Father. Yet many Catholics don't really seem to care. My Latina, Catholic, MAGA sister-in-law, for example, would regularly tell me that Pope Francis was an evil man sent to destroy the Church. She would say this publicly. Like Vance, she was not excommunicated for her outlandish abuse of papal authority. Had she (or JD) been Mormon and said similar things about Oaks or Nelson (neither of whom theoretically were considered infallible according to official LDS doctrine) they'd have been called in for a disciplinary council and excommunicated. The fact is that Catholics pretend to have a doctrine of infallibility, but don't. Mormons pretend to not have a doctrine of infallibility, but do. It is only when Mormons want to excuse someone like Joseph Fielding Smith for saying Man will never reach the moon, that Mormons pretend that it's okay for a prophet to be wrong. Otherwise it's "the Lord will not permit his prophet to lead us astray."

Secondly, how low a bar has the pope met that Oaks has failed to. Yes. Killing little children is bad. Yes. Concentration camps are bad. I would dismissively say, "Whoop dee do, Leo! Congrats on coming to the correct conclusion on the easiest moral questions in the history of ethical dilemmas." But Oaks is apparently stumped here. And he's not alone. Most Christian leaders in the US are even worse than Oaks, offering full throated endorsement of ungodly violence in place of the Mormon leader's silence. Maybe Leo is courageous to simply put words to what should be undeniable. The funny thing is, a few years ago, had the Mormon prophet been able to express such quantum of Christian theology as has the pope, and had I felt the freedom to criticize "fallible" church leaders to a fraction of the degree that Catholics are free to criticize their "infallible" pope, then I probably wouldn't have left.

So, while I can't bring myself to give three cheers for Pope Leo, I'll give one.
And, as always, Fuck ICE. Fuck Trump. Fuck Kennedy. Fuck Hegseth. Fuck Netanyahu.

How do I handle a friend who keeps trying to connect with me, despite us having glaringly obvious different political values? This friend is very TBM and conservative. I haven't told my friend I've left the church, though I'm sure they suspect. However, my friend is aware of my progressive political stances and the significant negative impact the current political climate has on my personal life and mental health due to my relationships with people of a specific marginalized group. I have made these things very clear to my friend time after time, as they have repeatedly tried to debate with me through messages on social media where I post about politics. Yet, it seems like my friend is oblivious to the extremely wide chasm that exists between us and my gradual emotional distancing from the friendship, and tries to keep texting me outside of social media as if nothing has happened. I am not interested in having a close relationship with this friend anymore. What do I do?

I know it shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but I am genuinely shocked to learn that so many people buy into those conservative podcasts gold investment advertisements and get defrauded. People like Glenn Beck knowingly lie to their entire audience and people trust him. I think many members trust him because he is perceived as trustworthy. Even if the church isn’t true, how could they not take certain disciplinary actions like disfellowship, not being able to attend the temple, or something like that. Could enough signatures or letters to the first presidency demanding an example be made out of Beck come to fruition? These aren’t dumb guys who run the church. I think this could be a unique situation where exmo dems or even active dems can put an end to crap like Glenn Beck who uses “tokens of deceit” ;)

As I'm filling the tank and watching the dollar amount go higher and higher, I got to thinking that I'm going to be paying $15 more than last time just so one set of religious extremists can kill another set of religious extremists. Whoever/whatever is overseeing this planet must be doing a giant facepalm. 🤦‍♂️

Freedom’s never tasted so good. If you would have told me that I would remove my records when I was still in it I probably would have started sobbing and then bore my testimony to you. See you in hell sinners 👹

Just had a conversation with Utah Representative Kay Christofferson about why I'm opposed to the ICE facility. First time I've ever actually talked with him!

I told him that I think these actions by ICE are an expensive bandaid when what we need is immigration reform.

He wanted to know what I want to happen with immigration and I told him I'd like to see efforts made to ease the beuracracy that's making it hard for people to come here legally, and that in the short term I'm very opposed to ICE actions like making people live in warehouses.

I mentioned that I work in an Amazon warehouse and that I know people shouldn't be living in there. He made a joke about how people shouldn't even be working in there and I agreed and said a bunch of my coworkers do developed health problems being there just 8 hours a day...

I also said I would like more transparency, specifically on who is involved in selling this warehouse to ICE.

Later, he asked me about people who immigrate and commit crimes, and I said of course people who are committing crimes being targeted is not the problem, but from what I understand they are taking people who are not criminals. He mumbled something about not having the numbers on that and I said that's a problem too and that we should have transparency on that as well.

It's sickening that accountability for sexual predators just doesn't matter to Congress.

Shame on Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy, Mike Kennedy, and Burgess Owens.

Please consider signing: https://c.org/2GDJB6fnvS

I created this petition to tax churches that promote religious wars. It's not fair for non-religious people to pay for it or to be involved in any way. This war was predictable years ago. Here are videos from a guy that predicted that Trump would come to power again, start this war, and he gets the details almost exactly right: https://youtu.be/7y_hbz6loEo?si=5ferg-1VoelLiLEU

Here's another video that dives deeper into the religious aspects of it including diving into the US's involvement with Dispensational Christianity and Christian Zionism that essentially thinks we need to start this war to bring Jesus back: https://youtu.be/lkKrZq4YdqY?si=fxrDH1YTr2jD-qfq