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.
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