i hate writing bios esp only 20 words:

Anthony Easton still believes the rectum's the grave.
Anthony Easton was saved at a Pentecostal tent revival in their early 20s.
Anthony Easton digs pina coladas. 
Anthony Easton is a capricorn and seeks a taurus.
Anthony Easton seeks to live up to the moral severity of Edith Sitwell's turban.
Anthony Easton's' mother never let him grew up to be a cowboy.
Anthony Easton is feeling like Kathleen Hannae oversold the radical potential of plesure.
Anthony Easton would like to "shake it for the squirrels" as required by Luke Bryan.
Anthony Easton knows more about Ryman from the late 1980s than you.
Anthony Easton's mystical visions are all about the problems of negation.
Anthony Easton realizes the greatest art of the 20th century might be Dolly Parton's wigs.
Anthony Easton never under estimates the power of the tracking shot.
Anthony Easton writes about things, but really wants to produce.
Anthony Easton finds the joke about the starlet who slept with the writer more amusing if one believes Fitzgerald wrote it.
Anthony Easton's favourite colours are electric magenta and damson.
Anthony Easton believes in the restorative power of cold chicken.
Anthony Easton spends a lot of time figuring out the origin of the queer archive, and thinks it might be Joe Brainard's I Remember Poem.
Anthony Easton thinks their prayers go up to heaven like the insence smoke in a thurifer.
Anthony Easton thinks--fabulous outfit, but honey your purse is on fire.

hung out with graham and thuslay's wee one, market,park, lunch, playground, home. lots of good talk.

The Touch  of a Mother’s Skin:  Some Notes on the Gendered Taxonomy of Mormon Blessings.

Anthony Easton

anthony.easton@gmail.com

Concordia University.

Intended  for the “Skin” call module

There has been recent discussion in LDS church  circles about which rituals women can perform, and which they are forbidden to. The Church’s historic compromise between congregational and magisterial models of power, means that not allowing women to be priests, does not forbid them from speaking in church, for example, but does forbid them from blessing the sacrament.

The concept of laying on of hands for healing, is one of the rites of the LDS church, where this tension between the lay and the priesthood is made the most explicit. For feminist scholars of religion, like Mary Toscano, the historical Mormon act of a Mother’s blessing, is as sacramental as any of the blessings that were traditionally performed by men. For (mostly) male critics of this position, there are blessings that can be only performed by men. These blessings are not only discreet work in the temples, or blessings for setting apart before people go on missions, or blessings to dedicate new children, or even to baptize, but also blessings to heal .

The question emerges--because male rites to lay on hands for the express purpose of healing, are wrapped up in a gender essentialized method, is there a masculine touch that heals differently than the feminine touch of a mother’s blessing?

Researching the history of the mother’s blessing, the shifting roles of motherhood in Latter Day Saint Context, and LDS connections between healing and vernacular religious practice, will provide a historiographical narrative, where the skin on skin contact for the purposes of healing tells of stories of how families are both integrated and exiled. This will be done by investigating both official church statements, from Brigham Young to the 1994 Proclamation of the Family; personal recollections from families, and also radical theological interventions, that seek to collapse the category of blessing.