These reasons aren't necessarily solid doctrine, but it's more the way the church does things.
1) We're not told what the temple covenants and rituals are before we enter.
The reason given to people is that what happens in the temple is too sacred to be talked about outside the temple. Before going through the temple for the first time, I poured over temple preparation manuals, trying to find church-approved material telling me what I could expect (I had heard years ago that someone wrote a book detailing the temple endowment ceremony, but they were sharing sacred things that were supposed to remain in the temple and so I shouldn't read it). But all I could find in the church manuals were countless sections where they say, "Now, keep in mind, it's all symbolic," but never anything that would actually tell me what was going to happen. I knew people wore strange outfits and that a lot of the rituals have Masonic roots, but that was it. But just like a businessman isn't expected to sign papers without reading the whole contract, I never liked that I was expected to just go to the temple and go through these rituals without knowing beforehand what they were and what I would be agreeing to do and what covenants I was going to be making with God.
2) Home and Visiting Teaching are to find out our business.
The bishop of the ward cannot visit every family to find out how they're doing. So each family has Home Teachers who are assigned to visit the families on their list once a month. They chit-chat and they share a "spiritual message", but the whole purpose of the visit is to find out how the family is doing. I read in a manual once that the Home Teachers are supposed to ask the families if they have daily scripture study and prayer, as if that's any of their business! Women get a second visit from their Visiting Teachers to find out how they are doing. They try to make it seem like they really care, but everyone in the room knows that the Home and Visiting Teachers wouldn't be over here unless they were fulfilling an assignment. They're supposed to report back to their supervisors afterward to tell them that they visited the family or woman and how they're doing. I used to try to be a good visiting teacher and I also used to be open to being visited, but deep down I often thought, "It's none of your business how I'm doing."
3) Before 1978, black men were not allowed to have the priesthood power.
Really, this should be under the "Doctrine" section, and you'll see why. When people ask why this was the case, the only answer that makes any sense to non-racist Mormons is, "It wasn't the Lord's time." If you want to read the reasons that church leaders gave before 1978, read this article: http://www.bible.ca/mor-blacks-racism.htm They are two articles written by Jerald and Sandra Tanner, and it's a compilation of things church leaders have said regarding black men holding the priesthood.
People in the church like to claim that 1978 was the time that the Lord decided that all men of color and nationality could hold the priesthood. But the real reason was that the Mormon church is an American religion, and in the 1970's the United States was experiencing its Civil Rights Movement. The church was pressured to have equal opportunity for black men, and they didn't want to appear racist, so they changed their policies.
*Addendum: back when I left the Church, this is what I thought the reason was. But actually, the Tanner's second article in that same link above describes the reasons that led to it: there were local Utah reasons and also issues down in Brazil with identifying people with even a drop of African blood to exclude them from attending the temple that was being built down there.**
4) Confessing sins to the bishop.
Many Mormons like to scoff at the Catholic church for many reasons, one of them being the idea of confession—that simply confessing your sins to a priest will clear you of them. But at least they believe that the priest can do that. Bishops in the Mormon church don't do that. So what's the point in confessing your sins to him? The church likes to paint confessions in a positive light: so that the sinner can change their ways and find their way back to Christ. But I feel that the real reason is so that the bishop can know who's on the wrong track, who might be making the Church look bad by their less-than-pure actions. The Church likes to present a squeaky-clean image to the world, and if people are sinning and possibly making the Church look bad, the bishop wants to know about it so that he can encourage them to stop doing whatever they're doing, or so if they don't repent and change then they can be on their way to a disciplinary counsel or even excommunicated. The Church doesn't want their image polluted or their congregations to decrease because of unbelievers or willful and persistent sinners in their midst.
5) Songs and lessons for children are indoctrination.
About 4 years ago I was a Sunday School teacher for some of the little kids in my ward. And ever since then I've felt that the songs children sing in Primary are indoctrinating. Songs with lyrics like, "I love to see the temple, I'm going there someday... I'll prepare myself while I am young; this is my sacred duty," and "I hope they call me on a mission when I have grown a foot or two. I hope by then I will be ready to teach and preach and work as missionaries do." From the time they're old enough to learn songs, they're told that going on missions to spread the church to other people and nations is what they're supposed to do, and that going to the temple should be their #1 goal. Teaching about God and Jesus, fine. But too many things felt like indoctrination to me and I didn't like it.
6) This last one is very personal, and it's also one of the main reasons I had out of all these reasons that pushed me toward officially leaving.
About 20 years ago or so Mc's father was excommunicated from the church, and 9 years ago his father died of cancer, and he hadn't rejoined the church. About a year and a half ago, one of Mc's older brothers wrote a letter to the First Presidency of the LDS church on behalf of himself and most of his siblings, asking for his father's membership records to be reinstated. He forwarded the email to Mc first to see what he thought of it and to see if Mc wanted his name added to the letter, which he didn't. I never met their father, I never heard his side of the story, and all I knew of him and that whole situation was what Mc had told me over the years. I took an objective look at the letter, read it as the First Presidency would (never having met their father in person), and objectively I said they would never approve it. The letter was weak, and in it my brother-in-law said that toward the end of their father's life he showed an interest in returning to the church, and he asked one of his daughters for a Book of Mormon, which she gave him. That's all that happened before he died. Years ago Mc told me that the process for coming back to the church after being excommunicated takes years, and the person is watched carefully by the local leaders and they have to show SIGNIFICANT change of heart and sincere repentance. Based on those requirements and the weak contents of the letter, I knew the request wouldn't be approved.
But it was.
A month or two or three later (I can't remember exactly), they got a letter back from the First Presidency saying that their request was approved. I was furious! When the person is alive they have to jump through so many hoops for so long to get back into the church, but if the guy is dead, all the family has to show is that he THOUGHT about MAYBE coming back to the church and he's good to go! The rationale is, "Well, who are we to stand in the way of his eternal progression? He can be considered a member again and we'll let the Lord handle the details." Oh sure, that's fine and dandy when the guy's dead, but if he's still alive they'll make damn sure he pays for it and is watched like a hawk. To me that screamed of hypocrisy and a desire to control people while they can.
Those are the practices that I disagreed with and that added to my decision to leave. The last section is about the social aspects of the church.
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