Last week a gay couple was physically restrained in handcuffs for an inappropriate public display of lewdness at the LDS Temple grounds by LDS security guards until Salt Lake City Police arrived and issued citations for criminal trespass. The grounds for handcuffing? A peck on the cheek.

We discuss the hypocrisy of LDS temple authorities in this week’s ANN.

[chuck]So it looks like July will be another Mormon month for us here at Irreligiosophy. This week we discuss two articles given by Mormon leaders about the evils of masturbation and how to avoid hairy palms and blindness. Hilarity ensues when these old geezers strain their vocabulary trying to come up with polite euphemisms for choking the chicken, use metaphors like “little factories” to explain the function of testicles and why we have wet dreams, and even suggest wearing tight clothes to bed to avoid rubbing one out in a “semi-sleep condition.” Who even knew you could sin in a semi-sleep condition!

We discuss the strangeness of a couple of doddering old men whose testosterone levels likely barely register giving advice to hormonally charged youth right here.

[chuck]Here we go again. Texas Governor Rick Perry is threatening to appoint a lady who despises the existence of public schools to chair the Texas State Board of Education. I thought he would be hard pressed to find someone less qualified than ousted dentist Don McLeroy, but you’ve got to hand it to the governor, he did it.

Also, we discuss the Turkish game show that offers atheists a chance to go to the holy site of their choice if they only give up rational thought and convert to one of the world’s major religions. Yes, you can add that to your long list of obvious contradictions theists are unable to comprehend.

[chuck]To celebrate our 25th episode, I redesigned our Irreligiosophy podcast logo. It encompasses the Egyptian Eye of Horus that’s also found here on our website (it’s our favicon, too!), but does so more prominently and the text is more legible, especially when scaled. I may even get around to designing a different one for our Atheist News Network one of these days.

Meanwhile, Leighton celebrated the same way he always does: he did nothing.

[chuck]Another entry delving into Mormonism! This time, we dissect a speech given by Boyd K. Packer in August of 1981 to church educators. It is a concise guide to Packer’s view of how historical research ought to be performed, both in general and most specifically for the history of Mormonism and its leaders. The speech highlights the dangers of scholarship to LDS faith (a refrain we’ve heard before from other religions), is remarkably oblivious to its own internal contradictions, and even makes an ugly call to refrain from disseminating things that are “true, but not useful.”

Leighton and I make our commentary on this bald appeal to lie by omission here.