My Thoughts on the Polygamy Essay

One of my college roommates commented on this article in her Facebook news feed yesterday, and so it showed up in my news feed.  It's from yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune, and it's written by a Mormon female psychologist named Kristy Money who has worked in prisons to rehabilitate sex offenders.  I originally didn't want to write my thoughts about the Church's polygamy essay that I linked in my previous post, but there is a part of her article that helped put into words the anger I've been feeling about Joseph Smith and polygamy, so I want to share that part of her article and open up about my thoughts and feelings regarding the Church's practice of polygamy.

(the old link became unavailable, so I found another copy of it from Nov. 19.)  Here it is:
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2014/11/19/op-ed-lds-church-should-make-clear-smith-was-wrong-to-take-14-year-old-wife/

This is what she said that resonates with me:

"I've worked in a prison rehabilitating sex offenders.  I'm well-versed in victim grooming patterns.  These include establishing a relationship of trust (often with age/other authority), convincing victims that their proposal isn't wrong, and afterward ensuring that victims remain silent."

And that is EXACTLY what Joseph Smith did!  And THIS is what infuriates me about the entire polygamy topic.

Relationship of Trust
Joseph Smith was in a position of authority—he was the leader of the Church, the mouthpiece of God, and his followers trusted him.  They believed him when he said he had revelations from God and visits from angels.  He was also a charismatic person, and people naturally followed him and wanted to be near him and to believe what he said.

Convincing victims that his proposal wasn't wrong
Here is the quote from the church's essay,

"When God commands a difficult task, He sometimes sends additional messengers to encourage His people to obey.  Consistent with this pattern, Joseph told associates [the families of the girls he wanted to take as plural wives] that an angel appeared to him three times between 1834 and 1842 and commanded him to proceed with plural marriage when he hesitated to move forward.  During the third and final appearance, the angel came with a drawn sword, threatening Joseph with destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the commandment fully."

An angel came with a drawn sword and threatened Joseph with destruction unless he took plural wives!  That is complete and utter crap!!  Joseph manipulated the members of the Church by using their belief that angels had come down to him in the past and given him instruction (i.e. the angel Moroni who directed him to the golden plates where the Book of Mormon originated) to convince them that this was another instance of heavenly messenger instruction.  And the ones who believed him became his victims.

Ensuring that victims remain silent
From the essay regarding the early plural marriages in Nauvoo:

"Participants in these early plural marriages pledged to keep their involvement confidential... Nevertheless, rumors spread.  A few men unscrupulously used these rumors to seduce women to join them in an unauthorized practice sometimes referred to as 'spiritual wifery'.  When this was discovered, the men were cut off from the Church.  [The key word here was "unauthorized"; it was a perfectly acceptable practice to the leaders of the Church as long as they were authorized by Joseph to do it.  The Church has labeled these men as unscrupulous, but the practice was the same].  The rumors prompted members and leaders to issue carefully worded denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy but were silent about what Joseph Smith and others saw as divinely 'celestial' plural marriage.  The statements emphasized that the Church practiced no marital law other than monogamy while implicitly leaving open the possibility that individuals, under direction of God's living prophet, might do so."

The leaders of the Church lied to their members.  Members heard rumors and wondered, "What's going on here?  Are our leaders really practicing polygamy?" and the leaders of the Church flat-out lied to them and told them no.  But they were sneaky about it.  They said that the official doctrine of the Church was monogamy, and that's why so many people think polygamy started in Utah under Brigham Young, because that's the first time the leader of the Church came forward and publicly announced that it was a practice commanded by God.  Joseph and his buddies practiced it quietly and he told the girls and their families to keep quiet about it, which many of them did.

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The question is: are the plural wives and fellow leaders of the Church considered victims?  And my answer is yes, many of them were victims.  I'm sure there were some women who were more than happy to have sex with the charismatic leader of their church and community.  But look at what the Church's essay says regarding some of their reactions to the news of this "revelation from God":

Helen Mar Kimball (the 14-year-old): it was one of the "severest" trials of her life.
Heber C. Kimball: "I never felt more sorrowful.  I wept days... I had a good wife.  I was satisfied."
Brigham Young: "it was the first time in my life I had desired the grave."
Lucy Walker: "Every feeling of my soul revolted against it."
Zina Huntington Jacobs: "I made a greater sacrifice than to give my life, for I never anticipated again to be looked upon as an honorable woman."

To me, that absolutely says victim.  These people knew in their hearts and souls that Joseph's proposal was wrong.  But the article goes on to describe how these people came to terms with this "commandment" that was revealed to them: they prayed about it.  And after days of weeping and praying, they all received personal revelation that this was a correct principle and that Joseph was right, and they moved forward with polygamy free of conscience.

But here's the thing about prayer: if you pray hard enough and pour out your heart long enough, you'll feel okay with anything.  Your brain will eventually come up with a rationale to help you deal with what's been put in front of you, and religious people will interpret that as an answer from God (I'm speaking from personal experience here—that's how I was able to be okay with the early Church's practice of polygamy for so many years).  These people believed Joseph was a prophet who spoke for God.  They wanted to believe that he wouldn't ask of them something that was wrong.  And sure enough, after much prayer, each one of them became okay with his proposal.

Those girls who didn't become victims were the ones whose parents saw through Joseph's lies and they left the Church because of it.  I have absolute respect for those people because they saw Joseph for what he was: a sexual predator who was using his position as the leader of the Church to sexually prey on the girls and women of his church.

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Many people, including some of my family members, want to know why I have such strong feelings about this topic and why I'm making such a big deal about it.  "It happened more than 170 years ago and right now polygamy isn't part of the Church; why are you so hung up on this?"

This is why: 1) it questions the validity of Joseph Smith as a prophet of God, and 2) it calls into question the validity of all of the Doctrine and Covenant revelations, which the Church is founded on.

1) Every four years when the Church studies the Doctrine and Covenants and Church history in church meetings, this scripture inevitably gets talked about, and I've heard it many times, "Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it." (Doctrine and Covenants 135:3).  The Church puts Joseph Smith right below Jesus Christ in order of importance to the salvation of men!  The Church glorifies Joseph Smith, it reverences him, and the leaders will forever sustain his revelations as from God Himself.  But if people were to admit that Joseph made up the revelation on plural marriage to justify his pursuits to have sex with a bunch of women, then they would have to admit that the commandment wasn't really from God, despite the 37 times in that revelation that the speaker specifically refers to himself as the Lord (that in itself is a little telling—it comes across as the speaker trying really hard to convince the reader that he is who he says he is).  And if that commandment wasn't really from God, then how many other commandments were also not from God?  If they aren't God's commandments, then Joseph Smith was not a prophet of God and he was, instead, a conman.

2) The entire Doctrine and Covenants is now questionable, and that's the book of scripture that most of the LDS church is founded on.  The way the Church is organized, the duties that the different leaders have, they're all spelled out in the Doctrine and Covenants as revelations directly from God to Joseph Smith.  The very nature of God and the three Kingdoms of Glory (the Church's version of the afterlife) are spelled out in the Doctrine and Covenants.  The Book of Mormon is the face of the Church—it's what missionaries hand out to people they want to convert to the Church, and Church leaders frequently encourage members to gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon.  But I've never heard leaders tell members to gain a testimony of the Doctrine and Covenants.  The Pearl of Great Price, sure, but not the Doctrine and Covenants, and that, more than any other book of LDS scripture, represents the LDS church.  The only reason that the Church can claim it is God's true church is because of the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants.  But if Joseph Smith made up the revelation about plural marriage, then it's quite likely that he made up much more than that, and that would mean the LDS church is not God's church-- it was Joseph Smith's church.

These are my reasons for feeling so much anger toward the early Church's practice of polygamy.  I firmly believe that Joseph Smith used his power and authority as the leader of the Church to sexually prey on the girls and women of his congregation, and I'm furious that it worked so effectively.  Kristy Money's article regarding the Church's essay has a different point to make; it wasn't to paint Joseph Smith as a sexual predator.  But her description of the "victim grooming pattern" describes exactly what Joseph Smith did and the Church's own essay gives the evidence, and it's a much MUCH bigger deal than members would like to admit.

The Church's Honest Essay about Polygamy

One of my ex-Mormon friends posted this link on her Facebook wall the other day.  It's from the LDS church website, and it talks honestly about polygamy in the early days of the church.

Here's the link:  https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng

Growing up in the church here in America I heard most of these things in bits and pieces throughout my life, while some of them I hadn't heard before until I read the Emma Smith book last year.  I don't want to write my thoughts or feelings about this article because reading it brings up a lot of anger that I've had for a long time regarding this subject, and writing about it will make me even angrier.  But I wanted to share it here for anyone who wants to read official Church articles about it and they won't have to go searching for it.

I'm actually glad the Church put out this article.  I'm glad they're being honest by including the pieces of information that makes the Church and Joseph look bad.  They're showing both sides of the story, and I appreciate that.

The Cosmos

It's been over a month since I left the huge source of negativity that was the ex-Mormon Facebook group, and I've continued to feel better.  But a couple of weeks ago it hit me that while I do feel better, I don't have anything I can read that gives me a deep sense of comfort the way that people in religion do.

I started searching for a book that was the agnostic's equivalent of the Bible, something that's universally uplifting and encouraging without being based on a particular religion.  I wrote a Facebook post about it, and my sister suggested that if I'm looking for something uplifting then perhaps I shouldn't exclude religion.  Almost no one on my Facebook friends list knows about this blog and so they don't know what I've gone through.  Most of them probably don't even know I left the Church.  So in response to what my sister wrote, I briefly explained where I am with religion:

"No one really knows for sure where we came from before we were born, or why we're here, or what happens to us after we die. All religions have their beliefs, but no one actually knows. The Mormon church claims that "all churches have some light and knowledge and truth, but we have the whole truth"; I left the Mormon religion a year ago, and shortly afterward I came to the conclusion that NO ONE knows these things for sure until they die.

Over the past month or so I've been thinking long and hard about if I could believe in any religion, and right now I can't, because I'd be willingly choosing to follow a religion which doesn't know big-picture stuff for sure-- and yet claims that they do-- and I'm not ready for that.

I've been reading a lot of classic books lately, and while I enjoy reading them, they remind me of the struggles that are part of human nature, and they make me sad. I need something I can read which will uplift me and help me see the good in the world but that isn't filled with religious guesses. Christians can turn to the Bible for comfort and for answers; Mormons have their Book of Mormon; Muslims have the Quran; but as an agnostic I have nothing like that, and that's what I'm searching for."

One of my friends suggested the book Cosmos and its accompanying television series by Carl Sagan, and in looking at the synopsis they both looked fascinating, so I bought them both.  I've started reading the book, and Mc and I are watching the TV series together.

I'm loving them so far!  It shows us what we know from our scientific exploration of this world and of the cosmos.  It's incredible to see where we fit in our own galaxy alone—we're on the far edge of one of the spiral arms—and where our galaxy fits in with the surrounding galaxies and the expanses of space.

I love this part of science.  Cosmos is showing me what IS, what we KNOW and what we have SEEN through our telescopes on Earth and the ones we've sent out into space (albeit from the 1980's).  All religion can do is make promises of a "happily ever after" if we do what scriptures and preachers tell us that some invisible man in the sky wants us to do.  In watching the beginning of the TV series and reading the first few chapters of the book, I feel like I've been under a religious cloud all my life, only seeing far enough out of our atmosphere to see the sun, moon, and some of the brightest stars.  But my eyes are opening to so much of what's outside our little world, and I'm left in amazement.

I haven't read a whole lot of other-world fiction, but there are a couple of books that I read a few years ago that gave me a hint of this grander view of ourselves.  One of them was Red Mars which took place on recently-colonized Mars.  The other was Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the entire 5-book trilogy)  ;)  where the main characters were on Earth for only a chapter or two and then the Earth was gone and the readers were introduced to new species and places along with the main character.  You were left with the feeling that Earth was very small and insignificant (described only as "mostly harmless" in the Guide) compared to all that's out there.  That's how I feel now from watching and reading Cosmos, but I like it.

And yet it also makes me sad that I won't live to see the time when the human race makes space travel a regular occurrence for average people, when we meet an extraterrestrial race, and when we perhaps find and even settle on a new world that can support our body's needs.  And I hope that we as a race don't kill ourselves off before that happens!

I Left the Facebook Group

This past weekend I decided to quietly leave the ex-Mormon Facebook group that I had joined a couple of months ago.

Getting rid of negativity in one's life is essential for peace and happiness, and this Facebook group has been a huge source of negativity in my life for the 6 or 7 weeks I was in it.  Some people need a group like this for support, for comfort, and for a feeling of being with others who have similar experiences.  But this group was bringing me down instead of making me feel better.  Lots of the things people post are sarcastic, but others share stories that are full of pain and anger, and it's very hard for me to read things like that over and over again.  I've given some encouraging words here and there, but ultimately there's nothing I can do, and I'm unhappy in the meantime.  I even found myself often having negative feelings toward Mc because he is a member of the Church; I didn't feel that way before I joined the Facebook group, and I didn't like that I was feeling this way toward him.

The bottom line is: I left the Church for my own reasons, and that's enough for me.  All of these blog posts have been my issues with the Church, not others' issues.  I've found myself checking Facebook multiple times a day, going to this Facebook group to see what people were saying, to learn things that others knew about the Church that I've never heard before.  But now I've found that I am mentally worn out from finding out more and more information from the Facebook group.  The more I find out about the negative things of the Church, the more unhappy and discontent I am with... well, with life in general.

I never intended the Facebook group to be a part of my healing process, and for the month-and-a-half that I was in it, it never became part of my healing process.  It was nice seeing almost 2,000 other people who believe what I do now, but I don't have a connection with most of them (I've only actually met 3 or 4 people who are also in the group) and I was being saturated with information that wasn't helping me to leave the Church behind me, which is ultimately what I want to do.

Like I said: some people need a group like this for support, and to each their own; I truly hope they're getting what they need from it.  Right now I want to go to my Facebook homepage and not see 20+ notifications every time I login from a group which is mostly negative and which will constantly remind me of the unhappiness I experienced while in the Church.  I want to keep my Facebook account for staying in touch with family and friends, and that's what it is once again.

Already I feel so much negativity gone from my mind and out of my life, and I needed it; I feel much better.  Almost like magic, the negative feelings I was feeling toward Mc are gone, and I'm so very happy about that.

Control

I talked about control in my last post; this is a heavy topic and it's also an important topic for me because now that I'm out of the Church I feel more than ever that the Church is all about controlling its members.  This will be a long post and I will cover a few different things.

Controlling Policies

Here is a short list of what the Church tells it's members regularly:

• What movies they can't watch (nothing rated R, and PG-13s are iffy) 
• What beverages they can't drink (nothing alcoholic to drink or in food, no coffee, no tea (herbal is okay))
• What lengths and styles of clothing they can't wear (nothing form-fitting, above the knees, sleeveless, or cleavage-showing)
• What information they can't read or listen to (nothing sexual, nothing that speaks ill of the Church)
• What is sexually allowed before and during marriage (nothing before marriage, and only certain sex acts within marriage; more on the within-marriage thing later in this post)
• What women should do with their lives (their "divinely appointed role" is as a mother and a homemaker, and women are pressured to stay home to raise their children and not enter the workforce unless absolutely necessary or until all of their kids are grown and gone)
• What activities they can't do on Sunday (no shopping, no non-spiritual television, no video games, nothing entertaining)
• How much money they're supposed to "voluntarily" give to the church (10% of your increase in tithing, and a "generous" fast offering equal to (or more than) the amount of money you would have spent on the two meals you skipped while fasting) 
• Who you shouldn't marry (LDS members are told to only marry other LDS believers (that's from the Eternal Marriage Student Manual; here's the reference: https://www.lds.org/manual/eternal-marriage-student-manual/mate-selection?lang=eng )) 
• Which organizations you can't associate with (one of the temple recommend interview questions is, "Do you support, affiliate with, or agree with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?" and you have to answer No if you want to pass the interview).

In high school I had a boyfriend who wasn't a member of the Church, and a couple of times he told me, "You need to think for yourself," and I told him, "I am thinking for myself."  It wasn't until I was making the decision to leave the Church last year that I realized he was right: I wasn't thinking for myself, I was letting the leaders of the Church think for me and I was just choosing to obey them.

Deciding whether or not to obey is NOT the same as thinking for yourself and using your own judgment!

I'll illustrate my point with the example of R-rated movies.  Members aren't free to decide for themselves whether an R-rated movie is good or bad and whether or not they're going to watch it; Church leaders tell them that any movie rated R is bad, period!, and the only thing members can decide for themselves is whether or not they will obey the leaders by not watching R-rated movies.  The leaders of the Church decide what is right and wrong, and the only choice members have is whether or not to obey; it's the mentality of, "We're the Lord's chosen leaders and he tells us what's best for members of his church, so don't think for yourself, just obey us because we speak for the Lord."  This is where that quote from Dieter F. Uchtdorf comes in, the one I mentioned in a previous post from the March 2014 Ensign (which was taken from a General Conference talk of his in Oct. 2013), "Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters—my dear friends—please, first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith."  Don't trust your own intelligence or gut feelings or intuition, just listen to and obey what we've been telling you.


Indoctrination

The Church gets to the members while they're young and checks up on their indoctrination all through their teen years.  From the time the kids are 18 months old and put in Nursery (glorified babysitting at Church), they're taught lessons in Church about the Church's doctrine (https://www.lds.org/manual/behold-your-little-ones-nursery-manual?lang=eng ).  Kids in Primary ages 3-12 years old are indoctrinated through songs that going to the temple should be a goal of theirs, that they should go on a mission, and that they should follow the prophet ("Follow the prophet, follow the prophet, follow the prophet, don't go astray.  Follow the prophet, follow the prophet, follow the prophet, he knows the way.").

Then on top of three hours of church every Sunday, once the kids enter 9th grade they're expected to go to Seminary, which is an hour of religious study every weekday before or during school.  In Utah they get release time from school, so they leave school, go to Seminary for an hour and then come back to school.  Most everywhere else Seminary is held before school, starting at 6 AM, which is what I had to do for four years.  So I was woken up too early in the morning—between 4:30 and 5:00—lost precious sleep, and I was expected to sit in class for an hour of religious study before my secular school starts while trying to just stay awake.  And much of the time in Seminary each year is spent on making the kids memorize 25 passages of scripture that the Church has decided are key for its religion (not necessarily in this order, but 25 from the Old Testament one year, then 25 from the New Testament the next, then the Book of Mormon, then Doctrine & Covenants and whitewashed Church history the final year).

And then there are the annual bishop interviews.  These interviews are held once a year for every child from the time they are 12 years old to the time they are 16 years old, and they're held twice a year for the 16- and 17-year-olds.  This is from the Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 1, 2010 edition (used by Stake Presidencies and Bishoprics only), and it's under the section "Guidelines for Interviewing Youth":

"Matters for discussion include the growth of the young person's testimony of Heavenly Father, the mission and Atonement of Jesus Christ, and the restored gospel.  The importance of sustaining the President of the Church and other general and local Church leaders should also be discussed.

Another matter for discussion is the importance of obeying the commandments, particularly:

1. Praying regularly in private and with the family, studying the scriptures, honoring parents, and paying a full tithing.

2. Being modest in dress and action, refraining from any kind of sexual activity, and refraining from viewing, reading, or listening to pornographic material.

3. Obeying the Word of Wisdom and refraining from using illegal drugs and misusing other substances.

4. Refraining from using the name of the Lord in vain and from using vulgar expressions and other degrading language.

5. Attending priesthood and sacrament meetings, participating in other Church meetings and activities, and fulfilling assignments given by quorum leaders or Young Women class presidency members." (7.1.7).

These are personal things, and the Church makes it the bishop's business to ask these things of 12-year-olds!  And 16- and 17-year-olds are brought into these interviews every 6 months!  The teenage years are impressionable years when boys and girls are discovering who they are, they start thinking for themselves and questioning what they've been taught, and it's during these years that the Church seeks to control the youth, to check up on them and to keep them in the Church so they won't leave or "fall into sin".

Four days ago in my ex-Mormon Facebook group, one of the ladies asked the group what analogies we were taught as youth in the Church about our chastity and our virginity.  Most of the people who replied were taught the same analogies: the licked cupcake, the chewed gum, and the dirty rose.
Licked cupcake: your virginity is like icing on a cupcake—once the icing is licked off by someone, no one else is going to want to eat the rest of the cupcake.
Chewed gum:  your chastity is like a piece of gum—once it's been chewed up by someone, no one else wants to chew it.
Dirty rose: no one wants a flower close to the freeway—it's ugly and dirty from the traffic it's seen; everyone wants the flower up on the hill that's clean and surrounded by fresh air.

I don't recall being taught any of those analogies (might be mostly a Utah thing), but I do remember being taught that our chastity is the most precious thing we have in this world, and it would be better for us to die trying to defend it than to live having lost it.  I've been thinking about this for a few days, and today I found where I learned that from: it's from the book The Miracle of Forgiveness written by Spencer W. Kimball.  It's not a book put out by the Church so it's not official Church doctrine, but it was highly praised by leaders of the Church at the time it was written, and even just 10 years ago it was praised as a "masterly work" by Richard G. Scott in the Ensign (reference here: https://www.lds.org/ensign/2004/11/peace-of-conscience-and-peace-of-mind?lang=eng).  It's extremely common for bishops to give a copy of the book to any teenager who has committed sins (which inevitably get discovered through those bishop interviews, like my bishop did with me), so what is written in here is highly supported by the Church.  I will show you the direct quotes from it:

"President David O. McKay has pleaded: your virtue is worth more than your life.  Please, young folk, preserve your virtue even if you lose your lives." (p. 63)

"Also far-reaching is the effect of loss of chastity.  Once given or taken or stolen it can never be regained.  Even in a forced contact such as rape or incest, the injured one is greatly outraged.  If she has not cooperated and contributed to the foul deed, she is of course in a more favorable position.  There is no condemnation where there is no voluntary participation.  It is better to die in defending one's virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle." (p. 196)

I am FURIOUS that I used to believe that!!  I was shaking with anger as I reread that after so many years, and I can't believe this is STILL being taught to the young people of the Church!

I know this isn't unique to Mormonism; there are many cultures around the world where a woman will be shamed and even killed if it's found out that she lost her virginity before marriage.  That's why so many people can get away with rape, because they know the woman won't tell because then she would be punished and disgraced or even killed.  It makes me sick.

And unfortunately this kind of thing is taught in the Church as well.  I wasn't the only one in the Facebook group who was taught that it's better to die defending your virtue than to live having lost it; in fact, every young man or woman who has been given The Miracle of Forgiveness to read has been taught this.
(Update: I found out recently that current copies of this book have those passages conveniently removed.  Kids in the Church aren't being taught that now, thank goodness!  Doesn't change the fact that so many of us were taught that).
One of the men commented in the post that as a young man he was taught that taking a young woman's virginity was a sin next to murder in Heavenly Father's eyes.  One woman said her friend's father didn't come to her friend's wedding because "she had taken away his right to give away a virgin".  Another woman said that her father told her constantly that he'd rather bury a clean daughter than live with a dirty one.  Some of the women who replied to this Facebook post shared stories of being molested and raped by family members and they never told anyone because they believed these analogies they'd been taught: that they were now worth nothing and would never be desirable to anyone because they had lost their virginity; that no one would believe them anyway because they must have been a willing participant since they are alive and hadn't died fighting the guy off.

It broke my heart to read some of the stories that these people shared, and stories like these happen because girls and boys are being indoctrinated to believe that a girl is only worth marrying if she still has her virginity intact before she's married.  If she isn't a virgin then she's a licked cupcake, a chewed piece of gum, a dirty rose by the highway; and even if she had been raped, the fact that she's still alive means she voluntarily participated and therefore is under condemnation.


Sex Within Marriage

As if the way the Church controls its youth's sexuality wasn't bad enough, a couple of days ago I found out that the Church even has a say in what you can do sexually as a married couple! (specifically regarding oral sex).  I'm furious about this, too!  There aren't many topics about the Church that will get me this angry, but attempts at controlling the members' sexuality is one of them.

On January 5, 1982 a letter was sent out from the First Presidency to all Stake, District, and Mission Presidents, Bishops, and Branch Presidents to be shared with members at their discretion.  I will quote the entire section here regarding sex within marriage, and I'm linking the blog post of a Stake President who put the photocopy of the letter at the end of his post (I'll attach the letter to the end of my blog post as well so it'll be here in case the guy takes it off of his post.  I'm sorry the quality is almost unreadable; you can read it better from his blog). http://stakepresident.blogspot.com/2011/05/oral-abstinence-key-to-happy-fulfilling.html
The First Presidency letter reads:

"Married persons should understand that if in their marital relations they are guilty of unnatural, impure, or unholy practices, they should not enter the temple unless and until they repent and discontinue any such practices.  Husbands and wives who are aware of these requirements can determine by themselves their standing before the Lord.  All of this should be conveyed without having priesthood leaders focus upon intimate matters which are a part of husband and wife relationships.  Skillful interviewing and counseling can occur without discussion of clinical details by placing firm responsibility on individual members of the Church to put their lives in order before exercising the privilege of entering a house of the Lord.  The First Presidency has interpreted oral sex as constituting an unnatural, impure, or unholy practice.  If a person is engaged in a practice which troubles him enough to ask about it, he should discontinue it."

Now, the bishop isn't supposed to initiate a conversation about what's going on in the married couple's sex life, but if one or both of the people in the marriage come to the bishop with questions about what's okay and what isn't, then he's supposed to counsel them against oral sex, and he can hold the temple recommend over their heads until they comply.  What a married couple decides to do in their own private sex life is absolutaly none of the Church's business!!  No always means no, and if one person in the marriage doesn't want to do something sexual, then it isn't to be done.  But if both people in the marriage want to do something, they have every right to do it!  But not according to Spencer W. Kimball; he said,

"If it is unnatural, you just don't do it.  That is all, and all the family life should be kept clean and worthy and on a very high plain.  There are some people who have said that behind the bedroom doors anything goes.  That is not true and the Lord would not condone it."  (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p. 311-312).

I understand the Church's point of view: the "powers of procreation" are a God-given gift and by choosing to use them within marriage we are aligning our will with God's and in a way we're uniting ourselves with God.  So sex should be a spiritual and sacred experience, and oral sex and other "unnatural and unholy" things are sex for its own sake, for pleasure and for fun.  The Church admits that sex is for procreation and for strengthening the bond between husband and wife, and yet the leaders always refer to sex as "procreative powers" when they want to justify why you shouldn't have anything to do with it outside of marriage.  If you take a look at the Ensign article I talked about in my "self-abuse" blog post (here's the article: https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/03/the-lords-standard-of-morality?lang=eng ), check out how often sex is referred to as "procreative powers" and see how that term is used to influence their arguments rather than simply using the term "sex".  It's an interesting literary exercise.  ;)

I understand how the Church views sex, and I disagree with many of those views, and I wholeheartedly disagree with their methods.  Sex is so much a basic part of who we are as human beings, as creatures on the Earth.  Yet I'm convinced that it's out of fear of it that we are taught to suppress it.  I just finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray (the uncensored edition), and something the author said through Dorian made me smile, because I came to the same conclusions on my own not too long ago:

"The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stronger than ourselves, and that we are conscious of sharing with the less highly organized forms of existence.  But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic.  As he looked back upon Man moving through History, he was haunted by a feeling of loss.  So much had been surrendered!  And to such little purpose!  There had been mad wilful rejections, monstrous forms of self-torture and self-denial, whose origin was fear, and whose result was a degradation infinitely more terrible than that fancied degradation from which, in their ignorance, they had sought to escape..." (Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray: an Annotated, Uncensored Edition. Ed. Nicholas Frankel. Caimbridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2011. Print. p.192)

He said more eloquently what I've been thinking about for weeks: that the Church's obsession with controlling sexuality comes from a fear of sexuality.  Fear of feeling out of control sometimes and not knowing what to do about it.  Fear of seeing parts of a woman's body that might cause a man to have sexual thoughts and feelings.  Fear of God's wrath for what Jesus taught: "whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart," (Matthew 5:28).  Fear that accepting our sexual selves would put us on the same level as animals; that it's self-restraint for a "higher purpose" that morally puts us above the rest of the creatures on Earth.  They see the harm that can come from sexual abuse but they don't seek to understand sex in a healthy way.  So what does the Church do about it?  Try as they might, they can't control our thoughts, so they teach everyone the necessity of self-thought-control ad nauseam, and then they try to control what girls and women wear, what sexual things they do with their husbands in bed, etc.  I can't tell you how much I HATE how effective they've been at warping sexuality in the minds of the members and how they seek to control and repress such a basic and fundamental part of who we are as human beings.


The Temple

I'm switching gears here a little bit to talk about one more thing that's very controlling in the Church: the temple ceremony.  (As a heads-up: the articles I've linked in this section reveal detailed words and actions from the temple ceremony prior to 1990 which have since been removed from the ceremony.  The articles are truthful and these things were undeniably part of the ceremonies, but if you don't want to know the details about them for sacred purposes or whatever, then don't click the links.)

Ask any member why they aren't allowed to talk about the temple ceremonies, and they'll tell you that it's because it's sacred; it's not secret, it's just very sacred.  But here's what they don't tell people: before 1990, the temple endowment ceremony included something called "penalties" where the person was required to promise, on penalty of death, that they would not reveal what's been talked about in the temple, and then they would pantomime three ways they could die: their throat slit from ear to ear, their abdomen slit and their bowels removed, and their heart ripped out of their chest.

I had never heard of this until about a month ago in the ex-Mormon Facebook group.  I grew up in the Church and I went through the temple for the first time in 2009 so I didn't personally experience these things, and no one had ever said anything about it.  I did some research and found a Wikipedia article which detailed what was said and done with these penalties, which matches what the folks in the Facebook group were talking about from their own experiences: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_%28Mormonism%29.  I also found a YouTube video from a guy in the Facebook group who shows what the penalties looked like, as well as talking about a survey that was handed out to ~3,400 members a few years before 1990 regarding their feelings about the temple experience:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCXFyVvr9Jk  Enough people in the survey must've said they hated the penalties, because those were taken out of the ceremony.

I found an interesting article yesterday from a Christian website which talked about the changes made to the temple ceremony in April 1990; there were a few other things besides the penalties that were removed; and again, I'd never heard of these other things either before yesterday.  (Update: the link no longer works, so I have removed it.)
They gave more details than I did about the many changes made in 1990, but there was an interesting thing they said that I'd never thought of before regarding the secrecy of the temple; I'll quote it here:

This oath of secrecy to such gruesome death penalties is not compatible to Biblical Christianity.  Nowhere in the New Testament do we see Jesus commanding His disciples to keep His teachings secret.  In fact, the opposite is true: 

"Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I never taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret I have said nothing." (John 18:20)

"What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops." (Matthew 10:27).

I had never thought of this before.  Jesus was very open about his teachings and it never occurred to me that he didn't want his teachings to be secret, and yet the Mormon temple ceremonies are kept secret.

(One more update: I found another website that lists the changes made to the endowment ceremony throughout its history, and this link does work.  ;)  http://www.ldsendowment.org/timeline.html )

Here is why the temple ceremonies are probably secret (other than the belief that they're sacred and therefore should never be talked about outside the temple):

I bought a book last year about the Freemasons because I had heard years ago that the temple Endowment ceremony is similar to the Freemason ceremony, and I wanted to verify it.  This book talks about the history of the Freemasons, and there is one page in the whole book on Freemasons and Mormonism:

Freemasonry influence in the Endowment Ceremony of the Mormon Church has also been cited.  Historian Bill McKeever notes that although the Doctrine and Covenants 124:41 of the Church of Latter Day Saints says that temple ordinances were kept hidden from "before the foundations of the earth," they are "suspiciously close to those used in Freemasonry.  Signs, grips, oaths, and tokens used in Mormonism are so similar that one can't escape the suspicion" that founder Joseph Smith "borrowed" these Masonic practices, especially since he became a Mason in March 15, 1842.

Historian Reed C. Durham Jr. insists that Smith did in fact use the Masonic ceremony as a springboard for the Mormon ceremony.  He writes, "There is absolutely no question in my mind that the Mormon ceremony which came to be known as the Endowment, introduced by Joseph Smith to Mormon Masons initially, just a little over one month after he became a Mason, had an immediate inspiration from Masonry."

It has been noted that the outside structure of the Salt Lake City Temple contains many designs peculiar to Masonry.  These include the all-seeing eye, the inverted five-pointed star (known as the Eastern Star), and the clasped hands or grip.  All of these were part of Freemasonry long before Smith incorporated them.  Markings in the "Garments of the Holy Priesthood," worn by temple Mormons, also bear resemblance to the compass, square, and level of Freemasonry. (Jeffers, H. Paul. Freemasons: Inside the World's Oldest Secret Society. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp., 2005. p.173)

I've heard Mormons say, "Well, Freemasonry dates back to the Temple of Solomon, so the Lord was just revealing to Joseph Smith what he revealed to the people in Solomon's Temple; this is all from God."  But the thing is, Freemasonry came about from the stone masons who built the temple and the events surrounding that time, and religion had nothing to do with it (and still doesn't-- Freemasonry isn't a religion); so the claim that the endowment ceremony was similar to the ceremony done in Solomon's Temple is wrong.  Joseph Smith essentially took the Freemason tokens and symbols and used them as part of the endowment ceremony; the Wikipedia article and the Concerned Christians article I linked show the similarities between them.  While Freemasonry and Mormonism's endowment ceremony have different objectives, structure, and content, I firmly believe that Joseph Smith had been thinking for a while about the endowment ceremony that he had promised would be coming soon; he was looking for something greatly symbolic and ritualistic to put in the endowment ceremony, something that would make it feel more "official"—for lack of a better term—and when he was initiated into Freemasonry he saw in their initiation ritual what he was looking for and what he could use in the endowment ceremony.  It's one more way that the Church has sought to control its members, first of all by not telling members beforehand what to expect in the temple, and then once they're there, making them promise never to reveal what's been said and done there.  Members still promise in the current temple ceremony never to reveal temple signs and tokens and such, but they no longer have to pantomime their own deaths (thanks to the results of that survey).


The Church can do anything it wants by claiming that it's God's will.  Since the members believe that the president of the Church is a prophet, seer, and revelator and the mouthpiece for God regarding His church, then anything the prophets say as Church doctrine is believed to be from God.  They can make changes and deletions from a temple ceremony that's "the same forever and ever" because members in a survey said they hated those parts, and the Church can claim, "It's God's House, it's his ceremony, and he can change it if he wants to."  They can control sexuality and claim it's because the Lord delights in chastity and virtue (case in point: the title of the sexuality Ensign article I linked is "The Lord's Standard of Morality").  They can conduct probing interviews with the teenagers of the Church because it's God's will.  They can control aspects of everyday lives by telling members what things they can't drink, what clothes they can't wear, and what they can't watch on television, and those are "The Lord's" standards and the members are expected to obey.  Convince the members that everything is God's will, and the Church can get away with anything.

Tithing

A couple of months ago I had a long serious talk with Mc and told him that for the sake of unity within our marriage and so that the Church wouldn't drive a wedge between us, I would only talk to him about Church issues I have that will impact our family.  Tithing is one of them because it directly affects our finances.

The Church requires all members to give 10% of their increase to the Church.  When talking about a paycheck, the Church doesn't specify if the 10% is before or after taxes, but it's kind-of an unwritten rule that it's 10% of your gross income (before taxes).

In my talk with Mc, I reminded him of what I had read a few months earlier in the Our Heritage book put out by the Church in 1996: that the Church got itself out of debt to the US government caused by its practice of polygamy by making the people pay tithing.  I'll quote it here for the sake of reference.

"During President Snow's administration, the Church faced serious financial difficulties that had been brought about by the federal government's legislation against plural marriage [discussed in an earlier section on page 97].  President Snow pondered and prayed for guidance about how to free the Church from its debilitating debt.  Following the April 1899 general conference, he felt inspired to visit St. George, Utah.  While speaking at a meeting there he paused for some time, and when he continued, he declared that he had received a revelation.  The people of the Church had neglected the law of tithing, and the Lord had told him that if Church members more faithfully paid a full tithing, blessings would be showered upon them.  The prophet preached the importance of tithing to congregations throughout Utah.  The Saints obeyed his counsel, and that year they paid twice as much tithing as the previous year.  By 1907, the Church possessed sufficient funds to pay all its creditors and become debt-free." (Our Heritage, p. 103).

Members of the church would look at that and say it was an answer from God.  I know this is cynical, but I look at it and say President Snow already had the idea to have the members get the Church out of debt by having them pay tithing, and that pause in the middle of the meeting was him deciding how best to word it so it would sound convincing, and then he claimed it was a "revelation from God".

I explained to Mc that the Church loves to quote this scripture from Malachi 3:10 regarding tithing: "and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."  But neither the scriptures nor the Church say what exactly that blessing is.  The scripture is purposely vague so that anything good that happens in a person's life can be attributed to the blessing they were promised for paying tithing; it's the attitude of, "Well, it's up to the Lord how He wants to bless me, and I guess this is how He's chosen to do it."  In this conversation with Mc I told him that he should take more credit for his success than he does.  He has always had good jobs, not because he always pays tithing but because he was smart about his education, he got a degree in a marketable field, and he's made smart career choices since graduating.  Tithing has nothing to do with that, and I told him that he's shortchanging himself when he attributes his career successes to paying tithing.  I think he understood my point, though I doubt he completely agrees with me.

I told Mc that I didn't want him giving away our money to the Church; I don't believe it's a commandment from God at all, I think it's the Church using ancient scripture to justify taking members' money.  They say, "Give us your money because God wants it, and trust us, we're doing good things with it.  And look!: it counts as a charitable donation, so you can write it off on your taxes!"  Members might not be as okay with giving them 10% of their increase if it wasn't tax deductible, if they knew they'd never see any of it again.  At least the government comes right out and says, "We're taking your money and there's nothing you can do about it, unless you want to go to jail for tax evasion."

I went on to tell Mc that the Church uses tithing to hold members in a spiritual jail.  Being worthy to have a temple recommend is one of the constant and highest goals for LDS members, and one of the requirements for getting a temple recommend is to pay a full tithing.  You could be one of the best, most saintly people who ever lived and you could pass all those other recommend interview questions with flying colors, but if you're not paying 10% of your increase to the Church, you can't get a temple recommend, and you can't go to the temple.  It isn't just about worthiness and purity, it's about the money.
(by the way, I understand the church's rationale for that: "Tithing is a commandment of God just like all His other commandments; if you're not paying tithing, you're not striving to obey all of His commandments.  It's not about the money, it's about tithing as a commandment."  Uh huh, sure it is.  Believe that if it makes you feel better.)

I asked Mc, "Do you in all honesty believe that paying tithing to the Church is a commandment?  From God?"  And he said yes.  I was angry at that point because I knew he would keep paying tithing even if I didn't want him to.  I gave up and ended the conversation.

After thinking about it for an hour or two longer, I went to Mc again and asked him if we could compromise with this tithing issue: give the Church not 10% of the gross but rather 10% of our net income, because the money that gets taken out of his paycheck for taxes never increases the amount of money in our bank account—it's money that the government takes out before we ever get it.  He thought about it and he agreed to do that.  I'm still a little upset that Mc is giving so much of our money to the Church, but at the same time I respect that he's doing what he thinks and feels and believes is right.  I'm doing the same, and even though my thoughts and feelings on tithing are very different from his, I'm appreciate that he respected me enough to agree to my compromise.  He can still say with honesty that he gives 10% of our increase to the Lord so he can pass that temple recommend interview, and I'm happier that this is less money the church is taking away from our family.

I've thought more about this tithing issue since that conversation a couple of months ago, and I'm convinced more and more that a lot of what the Church does is about the money.  In the December 2012 Ensign there's an article about tithing that really bothers me.  Here is the article: https://www.lds.org/ensign/2012/12/sacred-transformations?lang=eng  and here is the specific quote from there:  "If paying tithing means that you can't pay for water or electricity, pay tithing.  If paying tithing means you can't pay your rent, pay tithing.  Even if paying tithing means that you don't have enough money to feed your family, pay tithing.  The Lord will not abandon you."

Now while this was said by a bishop in El Salvador to a new member, this story was published in the Ensign—an official church magazine—and what is said in that magazine is approved by and represents the Church.  This means that the Church's policy is that you should give them 10% of your increase even if it means your children go hungry, even if it means you get fined or even evicted from where you live because you can't pay rent.  In the temple you promise that you will "consecrate yourselves, your time, talents, and everything with which the Lord has blessed you or with which he may bless you to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the building up of the kingdom of God on the earth and for the establishment of Zion."  And in countless Church lessons I've had about tithing over the years, one of the favorite sayings is, "It's really all the Lord's money, everything you have is because of Him, and He's only asking you for 10% of it back."  If the Church can convince you that everything you have or will have is because of God, then it can demand 10% of your increase (or everything if it wants) and if you've gone through the temple then you've promised you'll give it to the Church and so you have to do it.  They spin it as a "test of your faith" for the members, and they assure the members that "The Lord will not abandon you."  And it IS a test of their faith, because common sense and instinct tell people that the Church is taking their money at the expense of the member's family, that what they're telling and counseling is wrong.  To live this kind of "commandment" to this extent, they HAVE to believe it's from God, they HAVE to believe they will be blessed for it, because it naturally feels wrong.  But then of course you get into the whole "the natural man is an enemy to God" scripture (Mosiah 3:19) and then you've got all kinds of justifications for ignoring your gut feelings and your intuition and your common sense.  There are a lot of mind games going on within the Church and it sickens me.

One more example of why I think it's all about the money.  I've been reading the Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 1 over the past week while looking for the answer to that membership number question I had, and I came across a section about baptism for transsexuals.  Here's what it says,

"A person who is considering an elective transsexual operation may not be baptized or confirmed.  Baptism and confirmation of a person who has already undergone an elective transsexual operation requires the approval of the First Presidency.  The mission president may request this approval if he has interviewed the person, found him or her to be otherwise worthy, and can recommend baptism.  However, such persons may not receive the priesthood or a temple recommend." (Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 1; 2010 edition; 16.3.16).

I don't know the Church's doctrinal excuses for the need for approval from the First Presidency for a transsexual to be baptized or why those who are considering it can't be baptized at all, but I do know at least one reason why transsexuals can't have the priesthood or a temple recommend.  As the Church is now, only men can have the priesthood, and with a transsexual person either they weren't a man to begin with or they no longer identify as a man (allowing women to hold the priesthood would solve that problem).  ;)  And during the temple ceremonies, the men and women are separated—the women sit on the left side of the room and the men sit on the right side—and men and women are blessed with and promised different things.  With a transsexual person, there's no sure way for the Church to know what side the person should sit on or which blessings he or she should get.  It's too messy for the Church and it's easier for them to just say no to both the priesthood and the temple.

So while a transsexual person can still get baptized (maybe), they are denied the other essential "saving ordinances" of the temple that are required to get into the Celestial Kingdom.  Knowing this, the Church still allows them to be baptized, and I believe it's so the Church can collect tithing money from them.  It's an extremely cynical view, but that's the way I see it.  Why allow someone to begin the salvation process by baptizing them while refusing them the other saving ordinances?  Why start them on a journey they can't finish?  I say it's for their tithing money.

You know what?  I think I know the excuse that the Church has for why it will possibly allow a transsexual to get baptized.  Their rationale is, "When the person dies and is resurrected, their body will be returned to its natural, God-assigned form, and then they can get the blessings that are promised to his or her sex.  Until then, we'll just start the ordinances that aren't sex-based, like baptism."  They could just as easily save the baptismal ordinance for when the person dies just like they'll have to do for the other ordinances, so in reality I think it's about the tithing, but this is probably the excuse that they'll use.

Like I mentioned above, the Church plays a lot of mind games.  When it comes to things like sexuality and tithing, there are a lot of scriptural justifications for the Church controlling its members, and the members try to make sense of themselves and the Mormon gospel and the world through scriptures, through religion classes, and through Church leaders' talks in General Conference and the Ensign.  Members have become so blind that they can't see the plain simple truth of things: the Church is taking their money; the Church has a misunderstanding and a fear of sexuality and so it seeks to control its members from the time they are 12 until they are dead with regard to any sexual activity and even their thoughts.

I understand the way Church members see these issues because I used to see things that way, too.  But members won't see things from my current point of view because they are so entrenched in their current beliefs.  Their beliefs make them feel comfortable and safe, and looking at things from an outside point of view can be jarring, and they're not ready for it.  I figure if anyone in my family has made it to this point in my blog, then perhaps they are ready to see things from another point of view.  Or perhaps they're just checking to make sure I'm not divulging temple secrets; I dunno.  But either way, I am glad I've broken free of the Church's controlling influence, because I see things clearly now and I see things for what they are.  It makes me sad sometimes, but leaving is worth it.

Self-Abuse

What does self-abuse mean?  When you first hear the term, it sounds like when someone inflicts pain on themselves, like cutting.  No, I haven't done anything like that—this is how the Church is now referring to masturbation.

That's right, the LDS church is now calling masturbation "self-abuse"!

Here's the reference: https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/03/the-lords-standard-of-morality?lang=eng

Now, let me briefly explain something about the Ensign.  Anything with the Church logo on it:

THE CHURCH OF

JESUS CHRIST

OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

is approved by the Church and it represents the Church.  The Ensign is one of the official adult magazines that the Church prints and distributes every month, and everything that is said in the magazine has gone through an editing process and has been approved by the leaders of the Church.  Therefore, the contents of the article I just linked are officially approved by the Church.

Back in March, I decided to read the March 2014 Ensign from cover to cover, to read it from an outsider's point of view (and the articles sure sound different when you read them that way).  When I got to this article, I was annoyed by what they were saying.  But then the short self-abuse section made me FURIOUS when I read it, because labeling masturbation as "self-abuse" does two things:

1. It greatly exaggerates the seriousness of masturbation
2. It greatly decreases the seriousness of the word "abuse"

Abuse, whether physical or emotional or mental or sexual, is a very serious thing and should not be taken lightly.  To apply the word abuse to something like masturbation is completely overboard and BEYOND ridiculous!  Masturbation is NOT on the same level as any kind of abuse!  I know what they're trying to do: they say masturbation is "tampering or playing with this sacred power of creation," and therefore it's a sin and it makes you unclean and impure, and they're trying to increase the effectiveness of their counsel against masturbating by labeling it as something more serious.  But calling it self-abuse is taking it way too far!

By the way, this relabeling tactic will only be effective in English-speaking countries.  I told Mc about what they wrote and he pointed out that "self-abuse" won't translate correctly into other languages.  In Spanish, for example, there is no word for "self".  The only possible translation would be "I have sex with me," and that made me laugh because that's not even close to a good translation.  Mc and I were curious to see how they translated that term into the Spanish-translated Liahona magazine, so I looked it up and they call it what it is: masturbation.  This is an example of how the Church is an American religion which gears its influence toward American members.

The overall feeling of the article is that there is an obsession with purity and what's "proper", and almost a paranoia of anything "impure"; the self-abuse thing is just one example.  Here are a few more examples.

Article says: "any conscious thoughts or voluntary actions that stimulate or result in the expression of the procreative power outside the marriage relationship are disapproved by the Lord."
Translation: "Don't allow yourself to get turned on by anything other than your spouse."

Article says: "[Pornography] is a poisonous, venomous, unforgiving snake that will strike the moment you take your first look and will continue to strike with a full portion of venom with each look thereafter.  If you are afflicted with this malady, you need to do all within your power to overcome it."
Translation: "We are terrified of our own sexuality and so we have to shun it with all the energy we have inside of us, because we really don't know what else to do about it.  No one taught us how to handle this in a healthy way."
**side note: this is why the Church will never thrive in Japan.  Japan is a very sexually liberal country, and many sexual things that are considered "pornography" to other countries and to the Mormon religion are considered normal and even art in Japan.  Again, Mormonism is an American religion with traditional American values.**
(by the way, Japan has a lot of members on record because of heavy missionary efforts in the 1970's, but the majority of the country's members are inactive.  A friend of mine in college went on his mission to Japan in the late 1990's and he said he and the other missionaries spent nearly their entire mission trying to find and reactivate inactive members).

Article says: "Our dress affects not only our thoughts and actions but also the thoughts and actions of others.  Accordingly, Paul the Apostle counseled 'women [to] adorn themselves in modest apparel' (1 Timothy 2:9).  The dress of a woman has a powerful impact on the minds and passions of men.  If it is too low or too high or too tight, it may prompt improper thoughts, even in the mind of a young man who is striving to be pure.  Men and women can look sharp and be fashionable, yet they can also be modest.  Women particularly can dress modestly and in the process contribute to their own self-respect and to the moral purity of men.  In the end, most women get the type of man they dress for."
Translation: "Women are responsible for men's thoughts regarding sex.  If a man has sexual thoughts about a woman, it's her fault for how she's dressed.  Men would be more morally pure if it wasn't for women choosing to dress in a way that shows skin or curves.  Oh, and we'll throw in the 'self-respect' thing to make women okay with this."
By the way, that quote from the article was the entire contents of that "immodest dress" section.  I quoted the entire thing to show that it mentioned nothing about how men dress; it's all on the women.  They say nothing about how seeing a man with his shirt off can get a woman all hot and bothered... probably because these are men writing this, and how would they know what gets us turned on?  ;)  Heaven forbid they admit that women have sex drives, too!  It's easier for them to only focus on men's passions and desires and women's "responsibility" toward those things.

Article says: "If we so desire, we can drive out every evil thought and immediately replace it with an uplifting song or poem or scripture.  Just as darkness flees at the presence of light, so evil flees at the presence of good."
Translation: "Sexual thoughts and feelings are inherently evil.  They somehow miraculously turn good only if they are thoughts of or feelings inspired by your spouse.  Anything else is evil."

I can't stand the Church's drive to control sexuality, I really can't.  I always felt that control when I was growing up, but at the time I didn't recognize it for what it was.  After breaking free of the Church's controlling influence and seeing that control for what it is, I realize just how prevalent and unhealthy it is.  I feel awful for those members who, like I did, are going through depression because they just can't seem to control these "evil" thoughts and feelings that they get.  This unhealthy obsession with suppressing and denying sexuality is one of the reasons why I will never return to the Church.

If you haven't read this article yet (I linked it in one of my previous posts) I highly recommend you do so.  http://bycommonconsent.com/2013/06/18/men-sex-and-modesty/  It's a Mormon male's insightful point of view regarding the sex and modesty issue that the Church has taken up, and it'll help put this Ensign article into perspective.

There were other tidbits of "encouragement" in this March issue, like when Dieter F. Uchtdorf said, "please, first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith," but I'll save my comments on that for another post.

Do I Still Count as a Member?

In my quest to verify the information from my previous post about whether or not my records still count toward that total membership statistic, as well as whether or not people are counted in that total until they're 110 years old, I searched long and hard on the internet.  Here is what I was able to find.

The Church started announcing its growth statistics in General Conference in 1971 (with data from 1970), and in looking at the data some people became suspicious of the membership total when there was an unexplained spike in the numbers in 1990.  This article has quite a few charts showing the growth rates: http://roundelmike.com/2013/05/lds-church-growth-statistics-anomalies-since-1970/

People have looked at those stats and gone, "Whoa, what's with that spike?!  They must have changed the way they do their counting."  Some theorize that they started including excommunicated members and those who had their records removed, and that they started including everyone who was ever a member between 8 years old and 110 years old.  Unfortunately, further searching on the internet to verify those theories yielded results from ex-Mormon sites but none of them give any official references by the Church on this, the people on these sites just mention it like it's common knowledge and a fact.  But I need to know the facts, I'm not content to just accept and spread rumors.  So I kept looking, and I found some more useful information.

I found a rule on lds.org for temple work called the "110 Year Rule" which says,

"Before you perform ordinances for a deceased person born within the last 110 years, obtain permission from the closest living relative. Relatives may not want the ordinances performed or may want to perform the ordinances themselves. The closest living relatives are, in this order: a spouse, then children, then parents, then siblings."

(Update: the link where I found this quote no longer brings up the article, so I've removed the link.  However, I found this explanation in the Introduction to Family History student manual, 7.4.3: "In all other cases of missing persons, the temple ordinances may not be performed until after 110 years have passed from the time of a person’s birth (an assumption that if the person was missing but alive, he or she would have died within 110 years)."  And here is the link for that: https://www.lds.org/manual/introduction-to-family-history-student-manual/chapter-7?lang=eng )

I took a brief detour to find out why 110 is a mile-marker, and I found this explanation from someone who works at FamilySearch,

"These policies help to ensure that living people are not accidentally submitted and also that the closest living relatives have the first opportunity to perform proxy work.  They also help to ensure that the feelings of others are considered and relationships are not damaged by the work we do."  (reference: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/LDS-WARD-CONSULTANT/2009-06/1245112145 ).

That's far different from what I heard, that members are kept on record until they would be 110 years old and thus (possibly) added to the total membership number each year, and that excommunicated members and those who had their records removed count as well.  I kept looking.

There is something called "address unknown" files, and here is an article talking all about it: http://cumorah.com/index.php?target=view_other_articles&story_id=590&cat_id=35
I will summarize here with quotes from the article's first paragraph:

"The address unknown file consists of the membership records of individuals whose whereabouts and activity status are unknown to church leaders... The Church retains unaccounted members on the address unknown file until age 110 unless proof of death can be obtained.  As a result the address unknown file likely contains thousands of members who have died considering life expectancy in most countries with significant LDS populations is less than 80 years."

These things together help me understand the 110 number, and it sounds like that only applies to members whose whereabouts and activity status are unknown.  Now, the article above also says that a lot of effort is going into finding out where these people are and whether or not they're alive, and I can appreciate their desire for accuracy.  But I still don't know for sure if excommunicated members or those who had their records removed are still counted in the total figure.  I still haven't found anything official to explain that membership growth spike in 1990, and I'll probably never know because the Church's internal audit department isn't required to make their methods public—the guy you hear giving the statistics in General Conference is an external auditor, and they know only a small portion of the information that the internal auditors do (Mc used to be an external auditor and he explained to me how it works).

Mc has asked me a few times why the Church would do that, why they would inflate their numbers.  They don't get any tax benefits from larger numbers, they're not getting any monetary benefit from it.  My response remains what I stated in my last post: they want their numbers to look large to convince the members that this is The True Church.  The Church is all about controlling its members (I'll cover this is an upcoming post), and this is a way to justify how they're doing things, because if the Church is fulfilling prophesy and if people continue to join the Church despite all the negative things said about it, then all those people who have spoken against the Church are wrong because "we're still here and growing!"

Here is a General Conference talk from President Gordon B. Hinckley from 2007, illustrating exactly what I'm talking about:  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2007/10/the-stone-cut-out-of-the-mountain?lang=eng

That says it all.  That is what the Church wants their members to believe.  And to do that, it will count everyone in their Address Unknown file until the people would be 110 years old.  It's leaders will spout off statistics of how many stakes are around the world to show that Mormonism is a global religion that anyone can follow regardless of their country and their culture, and thus validating the extensive missionary program (one of their favorite sayings in recent years is, "There are more members outside the United States than inside the United States.").  And the leaders will use those growth statistics as "proof" that the people who say the Church is a fraud are wrong (because how could so many millions of people be so gullible into joining a church that isn't true?).

I'm going to give the Church the benefit of the doubt and say that because I formally left the Church then I am not counted in that total membership number; if I had just stopped attending, then I would still count.  I have no solid proof either way and I probably never will because those answers reside within the internal audit department, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt.  And if I find out for sure, I will write about it and give the sources.

Why Making it Official Mattered, Until Today

Lots of people who have left the Church choose not to officially request that their names be removed—they're fine just never going to church again and living life out of the Church.  I was not content to do that.

After reading the New York Times article about Hans Mattsson, something clicked inside of me and I thought, "I don't want to be associated with this church anymore."  I felt sure that the Church was a controlling institution that was built on and maintained by lies, and I was done and I wanted out.  In my mind, as long as I was still listed as an active member, then my name was still associated with that church, my membership still added to their numbers, and it was still a part of my life.

I looked up how to leave the Church and I found a website called Mormon No More (linked here: http://www.mormonnomore.com/ ) which showed me the steps I would need to take and what I could expect from Member Records, my bishop, and the letter that they would send me.  They also informed me of my legal rights: that I don't have to invite anyone from the bishopric inside my house if they come over to talk about my leaving, that they cannot excommunicate me for leaving if I've done nothing that under their rules merits excommunication, and that as soon as Member Records receives my letter of resignation, I'm out, regardless of how long it takes for the rest of the process to go through.

I also learned from this website that the Church never gets rid of my records—it keeps them, but makes a note that I've resigned.  What sending your letter of resignation does is remove your name from off of the active rolls of the Church, meaning that my name won't appear in ward directories, on Visiting Teaching rosters, etc.  And I was okay with that.

But I read something today that made me really angry: my records still count toward their total membership numbers even though I've left the Church!  I'm doing more research to see if this is true, and I'll write an update in the next post on what I find out.  But here's what I heard today:

Every April in the Church's General Conference they report on the statistics of the Church, and among those statistics is the total membership.  In 2014's April conference, they reported that as of December 31, 2013 the total number of members was 15,082,028.  But here's what they DON'T report:

• The Church counts members until they are 110 years old.
• Members who have their membership removed or who are excommunicated still count toward that total.
• Inactive members or those who have joined other churches still count toward that total.

So does this mean that because I was a member, I will be counted as a member until I'm 110 years old?!  I'm pissed off because of the deceitfulness of the Church.  They're inflating their numbers!  If they were to report the number of people who are faithfully active members (which the statistics report leads members to believe that the total represents), there are only about 5 million. (If you are interested in the statistics, here is an article filled with membership statistics by the Salt Lake Tribune from earlier this year: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifestyle/57369318-80/church-percent-lds-growth.html.csp?page=1 ).

Some people might wonder why they would lie about their numbers.  It's to deceive the members into thinking that the Church is bigger and stronger than it actually is.  It's to convince them that the "truth of the gospel" is making the Church grow in huge numbers and therefore the Church must be true, so members should continue to conform and obey.  The Church knows how many people have officially left the Church, but they'll never release those numbers.  They don't want faithful members to think that there's anything wrong with the Church that would make so many people want to leave.  The Church will only focus on those "less active" members who need to be fellowshipped back into the Church.  Or when they do acknowledge that people have left the Church, they either:

1. label them as apostates
2. say the person was lying the whole time they were members and never really believed
3. claim that the person must not have really understood the gospel (because if they did they would see how true it is)
4. assume the person wanted to live a sinful life and the gospel was "too difficult to follow", or
5. they will chalk it up to the person being offended, as if the reason they left the Church was because they were too sensitive to something that happened or was said.

Some people have left for those reasons, but that certainly doesn't apply to all who have left, and yet these reason are what members want to believe.  They don't want to believe that anything is wrong with the Church or the gospel they hold dear or that the reasons have anything to do with the gospel itself.

So up until today I was glad that I was officially out of the Church, despite how hard it's been afterward.  But now I'm pretty upset.  I still feel a sense of personal satisfaction that I actually went through the resignation process, and if I had to do it all over again even knowing that I'd still be considered a member as far as their official numbers are concerned, I would.  It's enough to know that at least I'm also counted among the never-will-be-publicly-released numbers of those who have officially resigned, and that I won't appear on any of the ward or stake directories.

And I have a grim satisfaction in knowing that the membership total they release each year is a lie.

Social Reasons for Leaving

In this post I won't talk about the annoying quirks of [mostly Utah] Mormon social culture like eating green jello with carrot shavings or saying phrases like "Oh my heck."  Those are just silly and certainly not worth leaving the Church over.  You'll see what social things I mean in this post.

1) Dress code and modesty standards skew views of sex and our understanding of sexuality.
A little over a year ago one of my sisters-in-law linked this article on Facebook, which I HIGHLY recommend reading, called "Men, Sex, and Modesty":  http://bycommonconsent.com/2013/06/18/men-sex-and-modesty/  Modesty is another one of the reasons I strongly wanted to leave the Church.  This article is written by a male member of the Church, and it talks about how girls and women are viewed in the Church regarding modesty.  This guy says it so much better than I could paraphrase it, so I'll just say that his article opened my eyes to just how ridiculously controlling the Church is regarding dress standards and how judgmental and mistrusting those teachings had made me and others.  Because the Church says that sex is something to be shared between a man and a woman lawfully wedded as husband and wife, then having sexual thoughts or feelings induces so much guilt in us and we feel so unclean because of it.  In essence we're taught to suppress and deny our sexuality until it can be expressed within marriage, and other women are always seen as a threat to a wife's "sex-crazed" husband who will "commit adultery in his heart" from seeing a woman's bare shoulders.  Ridiculous.

2) "Every member a missionary" lessons in church.
One of the Church's favorite phrases is "every member a missionary", meaning that every member has a responsibility to teach people in their daily lives about the Church.  In these lessons at church, we were taught "tactics" for how to bring up the Church in casual conversation, how to start conversations about the Church, how to befriend people so that they will want to know more about the Church.  They're basically lessons on how to sell the Church to people that we know.  I always hated those lessons because none of those tactics were genuine, and it makes all members seem like they have an agenda when talking to people about the Church.

3)  Lessons in church history are always told from a "victim" point of view.
Growing up and into adulthood I never knew why the early members of the church were always persecuted.  Lessons never explained why, they just said, "they were persecuted for their beliefs," and I hate that I never inquired further, I just took their word for it.  But at the same time, I had a hard time believing that entire states full of people would hate a small-but-growing religion for their beliefs in God, an afterlife, putting family first, etc., because what other beliefs could they be talking about?  After reading the Emma Hale Smith: A Mormon Enigma book I realized why the early members were persecuted, and it was for valid reasons (polygamy being a huge one).

4) An outdated and unnecessary dress code enforced at BYU, specifically regarding men's facial hair.
Back in the 1960's when the hippie movement was going on, long hair and beards were seen as a sign of rebellion, drugs, sex, etc., and the Church wanted to separate themselves from that image (squeaky clean!).  So they made a rule that young men at BYU couldn't have facial hair other than a "neatly trimmed mustache" (which today is called a pedophile mustache, btw, and nobody wears those anymore except students at LDS colleges who are trying to rebel but within allowed limits).  And although the hippie movement is long gone, that rule is still actively in place.  You have to have a special permit to grow out a beard, like if you're in a theater production for example (Mc did that).  Some guys honestly look much better with a neatly trimmed beard or goatee, but at BYU they'll be seen as rebels and they'll likely be met with discipline of some sort if they don't shave it off.   It's an attempt to appear clean and pure to everyone who sees them.

5) At church meetings, people spout off the "correct" answers without really thinking.
There is a set amount of material expected to be covered in every lesson on Sundays, and too often the teachers ask questions that have a "right" answer and then they move on.  Ever since college I've been frustrated at the lack of critical thinking that goes on in meetings.  Most members are sitting there bored or asleep, and the ones that are awake and paying attention usually like to give off the "right" answers.  There have been times where people have made very thought-filled and insightful comments, but those happen seldomly.  That's something that frustrated me for a long time: I couldn't just sit there in meetings and absorb the information, I couldn't stop thinking critically and talking to Mc about something that just didn't sound right or that bothered me.  Often I got the feeling that Mc wished I would stop picking things apart and that I could just be content in meetings; in that sense I always felt like I was disappointing him, like I wasn't the faithful believing member that he wished I would be (but then again he proposed to me and married me knowing full well that I didn't want to get married in the temple yet, so in a way he's always known this side of me and he's accepted me despite it).  I still had a love/hate relationship with my critical thinking during that time.

6) Anti-Science attitude.
It's an eternal battle between religion and science.  Religion teaches faith and obedience, science seeks knowledge and proof.  Religion says "be content not knowing for sure and trust what we say", while science says, "I have to find out for sure, I have to know and understand."  In one Institute class in particular, I remember the teacher said that if you believe in evolution, you don't believe in the gospel.  He quoted from the LDS Old Testament Student Manual under the section covering Genesis 1-2 (here's the link: https://www.lds.org/manual/old-testament-student-manual-genesis-2-samuel/genesis-1-2-the-creation?lang=eng&query=evolution ).  The quote is about 3/4 of the way down the page, but here's what it says if you just want to read that part; it was said by George Albert Smith, eighth president of the LDS church:

"I say most emphatically, you cannot believe in [Darwin's] theory of the origin of man, and at the same time accept the plan of salvation as set forth by the Lord our God.  You must choose the one and reject the other, for they are in direct conflict and there is a gulf separating them which is so great that it cannot be bridged, no matter how much one may try to do so..."

The manual went on to quote heavily from one scientist who expounds on his theory as to why Darwin's theory of the evolution of man is incorrect, which I can guarantee you is NOT what most of the scientific community supports.  The lack of diversity in sources supporting the LDS viewpoint—and the total absence of evidence supporting Darwin—is cause for concern, especially in a college student manual.

This same Institute teacher spoke of science like it was disdainful, like science-minded people were all heathens.  Too often scientists are portrayed as atheists, as lacking all faith.  Members of the Church have questions about things that we just don't have the answers to.  Sometimes the responder will be honest and say, "We don't know," but all too often the response is, "It's all in the Lord's hands and it's on his timetable," or some cop-out reasoning like, "that's not important to your salvation; don't worry about it."  I hate that response!  The mentality is, "Don't think for yourself or look too deeply into things.  Let us do the thinking for you and you just obey and have faith."

7) Anything written or said negatively about the Church is "anti-Mormon propaganda" and shouldn't be read or listened to.
The Church likes to say it is the only true church on the face of the earth, that it has all the truth.  Yet we're told that we shouldn't read or listen to anything that speaks against the Church, that all that stuff is anti-Mormon propaganda orchestrated by Satan who's trying to destroy the Church by spreading lies about it.  That's why for almost my entire life I never looked at the Church from an outside point of view; I always tried to figure things out with the information the church had available.  People are blinded to the truth when they are told that the only information about the Church that's true will come from the Church itself.  I can't believe I bought that lie for so many years.  The tipping point for me in leaving the church was an article I read about a man named Hans Mattsson, one of the high ranking leaders in Europe.  This is the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/us/some-mormons-search-the-web-and-find-doubt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0   This was the last straw for me, the thing that made me say, "The Church is so controlling, so paranoid about its image and its conflicting history, and it's blinding its members to the outside point of view."  This was the final straw (though not the biggest) and the thing that sealed my decision to officially leave the Church.

These three posts together are all of my reasons that went into my officially leaving the Church.  The ones that influenced that decision the most were Mc's father's records being reinstated, reading the Emma Smith book, the article on Men, Sex, and Modesty, and the article about Hans Mattsson.  Many, many people have left the Church of their own accord, and they all have their own reasons.  These are mine.  In the next few posts I'll go into some things that have occurred since I left the Church.