While taking in nominations, I was surprised by how accomplished and undersung X-Mormons are. Fortunately the Mormon Alumni Association is here to remedy the situation with a brand-new yearly award for the X-Mormon who has made the biggest impact!!! And we will make every effort to send the winner a T-shirt (with the official William Law award graphic).

Here are the illustrious nominees:

Chad Hardy: In 2009 he created a second controversial calendar: Hot Mormon Muffins. He has also been engaged in an important legal battle with BYU when they refused to give him his BYU transcripts after excommunicating him over his previous calendar (Men on a Mission).

Brecken Chinn Swartz: She founded HandReach.org, which helps children who are burn victims in the developing world. She’s is also the co-founder of the LDS Safe Space Coalition, a gay and straight alliance for Mormons. (Until her family left the church, her husband was the bishop of the Beltsville, MD ward.)

Reed Cowan: His film 8: The Mormon Proposition premiered at Sundance, see here and here.

Brian Keith Dalton a.k.a. Mr. Diety: With the help of His team, He produced the show’s hilarious third season.

Heather Armstrong a.k.a. Dooce: She was named one of 2009’s 30 most influential women in media and published her second book: It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita.

Steve Benson: In 1993, Steve Benson won a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning. It would be cool if we could retroactively give him the “1993 William Law X-Mormon of the Year” award. As it is, the 232 cartoons he drew for the AZ Republic in 2009 put him in the running for this year as well.

Dustin Lance Black: He won an academy award for writing the screenplay of Milk, and gave this memorable speech at the Academy Awards ceremony. He also narrated 8: The Mormon Proposition.

Walter Kirn: A well-known novelist, literary critic, and essayist, Kirn’s 2009 achievements include the book Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever, as well as seeing his book Up in the Air produced as a film.

Christine Johnson: In addition to being a Utah state representative (and ex-Mormon lesbian), Rep. Christine Johnson has taken on the role of surrogate mother, carrying a child for a gay male couple.

Note that Barack Obama’s mother S. Ann Dunham was also nominated (since she has been proxy baptized). Unfortunately, we have to disqualify her from the nominations because we don’t have word from spirit paradise/prison to confirm that she has rejected her proxy baptism and/or apostatized since being dead-dunked.

You have one week to vote here: