The official 181st Annual GC Thread

[EuropeanFootballMale]

My educated guess is that the are more concerned about keeping them active. The church has placed the family on such a high pedestal that everything revolves around the family. This often times makes single adults (especially those over 30) feel like they don't have a place in the church. It's no secret that if a person is not married by 30 they have a much higher inactivity rate than those married before 30.

Being one of those, I can vouch for this. Going to church pretty much sucks most of the time.

[smokymountainrain]

Being one of those, I can vouch for this. Going to church pretty much sucks most of the time.

And this has what to do with being single?


I keed, I keed. I get what you're saying.

[LA Ute]

Jim Faulconer on the General Conference experience:

LDS General Conference from the Inside

Pretty interesting piece. Excerpt:

General Conference is sometimes a target for Mormon intellectuals and cynics (nouns that need not go together, but sometimes do). The odd cadences used by many LDS authorities when they speak; women speakers who use the voice they would use for small children; the repetition of Utah and Southeastern Idaho farming or ranching stories, most from the early 20th century; well-worn stories about Mormon pioneers, particularly the Willie and Martin handcart companies; the ties of the male speakers; the pearls of the female speakers; the white shirts everywhere; the choir singing more and more children's songs rather than hymns; the recitation of bad poetry; the bland religious art illustrations—all of these are targets (relatively easy ones), sometimes laughed at in gentle self-mockery, sometimes in bitterness or cynicism.

I'm a believer: as odd as it may seem in the early 21st century, I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and that Thomas S. Monson is now God's prophet on the earth. I'm a Mormon through and through. However being a believer hasn't prevented me from laughing at or occasionally being irritated by some of these things. I understand the intellectuals and the cynics because I'm sometimes one of them.

But I like Conference anyway.

[oxcoug]

While wasting a good Saturday night when I shld be out romancing marriagable LDS girls I had a phone conv with a marriagable LDS girl about the full frontal assault on unmarried LDS men in GC....

A couple thoughts from that conv:
*She said that she thought the approach is counterproductive for a few reasons - one, she said that she hates sitting there listening to the brethren tell everyone how wonderful and beautiful marriage is because it's salt in the wound for the unmarried like her - the paeans to marriage she argued, seed as much resentment and desperation as they do hope. She wondered where the concession is from SLC that it's at least POSSIBLE to live a fulfilled life w/o being married - because if it's not possible then there are a whole bunch of people who should just swallow some rat poison. FTR, this is a genuine hottie who isn't (yet, at least) in the "bitter and unmarried" column, just the "unmarried" one.

*We agreed that this mini-blitz on the unmarried men is likely to be at least partly a consequence of one factor: the unmarried women write lots of pleading/plaintive letters to the Brethren, while the unmarried men write zero. I had never heard this before but I guess it shouldn't surprise me - she said it's not uncommon among the Molly-ish unmarried women to write letters to SLC recounting their dating woes. While I have no data, I'd expect that it's only on once in a purple-blue moon that a dude salves his soul after a breakup by writing a letter to an Apostle. The presumptive imbalance bt dude letters and lady letters means that the Brethren hear all kinds of grievances about guys who can't commit and rarely if ever hear the guys' perspective....

Just thoughts. Either way, I'd already figured out that all the comments don't apply to me personally.