Joseph_Hillstrom [he/him]

The PSL has a chapter in SLC, and the protests they led during the racial justice uprisings last year were really great. Check them out. There’s also a DSA chapter but they don’t seem super active.

Individually I think most Mormons have their hearts in the right place, but they support an organization that is systemically evil. Can we send them to gulag in the afterlife before deciding their final fate?

I think the church will bend before it breaks. A lot of ex-Mormons want to believe that internet use and growing LGBTQ+ support among young people will end the church, but I think they’ll adapt with some new “revelations” that accept gay people, similar to the black membership thing from the 1970s.

Mormons have a pretty tightly knit mutual aid network. Any time someone needed to move, or build a fence, or do anything like that, you could reliably count on like half the neighborhood to turn out to help. This generosity doesn’t extend to non-Mormons. It definitely affected my politics. I think if Mormons genuinely practiced what they preached without all the Prosperity Doctrine bullshit, they’d be communists.

Also Trax and Frontrunner are ok if you live within a 5-10 minute walk from a station, otherwise you have to drive to a parking lot to wait for a train, which sucks. They don’t run very frequently outside of business hours though. I lived for a long time without a car in Salt Lake though, so it’s serviceable.

I’d say it was about 70% Mormon to 30% non-Mormon, but I grew up in a relatively “diverse” part of Utah. :shrug-outta-hecks:

The ones who are familiar with it pretend it doesn’t exist.

https://youtu.be/C9JgZ45ENl4

When I was growing up I genuinely felt like the only “closeted” ex-Mormon in my community. It was very alienating. I tried reaching out quietly to a few friends and family about it at the time, but they all freaked and started lecturing me about apostates. I think it’s becoming easier and easier to leave the church via knowledge and communities on the internet, though. Membership growth is falling, which I think is telling given the huge families they typically have.

As for non-chuds, there are some Mormons whose hearts are in the right place. There’s a small movement of Mormons in Utah who attend Pride and advocate for LGBTQ+ acceptance. They’re usually quashed by the church pretty quickly though, sometimes they’re excommunicated for their efforts.

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Yeah, I live in Salt Lake City. I grew up here. Utah as a whole is overwhelmingly Mormon, and the state is unironically run by them (like 90% of state legislators are Mormon).

Salt Lake City and Park City are relatively less Mormon than the rest of the state, but it still seems hard for non-Mormons to get along here. Mormons are very cliquish and won’t mingle with non-Mormons socially. Non-Mormon kids probably have it the worst at school since they’re excluded a lot.

There’s not really a punk scene. Maybe there was before my time, but I think the movie is mostly fabricated for the funny juxtaposition.