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so crazy to me that mormons aren’t embarrassed about their whole deal even a little bit. they’ll gladly tell strangers that they’re a member of the lds church as if that isn’t one of the single most incriminating and humiliating things to be in the entire world.
The frog stays in the pot because the water's fine.
its so weird to me that cis people will dislike their name so ardently and yet. not change it. you guys know that’s an option, right. no one can make you keep the shit name your mom gave you. no, not even her.
One of my friends in undergrad changed his name because he didn’t want to bear the name of his abusive and absent father. It’s been years since he did it, and he still says that it was the single best decision of his life.
One of my friends in high school changed his named as soon as he turned 18, so that the ethnic name his family gave him was finally the name reflected on all of his paperwork. He told me that he understood why his parents had given him an “English” name, but that he felt that if he needed to assimilate in order to succeed, then that was a type of success that he didn’t want.
When I was on my way home from the courthouse after changing my own name, I got into a conversation with my rideshare driver, who was extremely interested once I told him what I was in court for, and wanted to know how I’d done it, how much it cost, was it difficult, etc. It turned out that his girlfriend had chosen the name “Yo-yo” when she came to the United States, unaware of how rare that was as a name, and that she was frequently made fun of because of it. Neither one of them had realized that a name change was so easy, and he told me he was excited to let her know that she had options.
There was an intern at a summer job I had once, who changed her name to be the same name, but a different spelling. She said that she had no idea why her parents had spelled her name so oddly to begin with, and suspected that it was just an honest mistake either by them or by some nurse, but it had been a headache for her entire life, and it was a huge relief to not need to be correcting people’s spelling on important documents anymore.
One of my exes legally changed his name to have an exclamation point, because he liked to sign his name with an exclamation point.
You can always change your name if you don’t like it. You always have that option. It doesn’t matter why – it can be conformist or anti-assimilationist, serious or silly, a minor change or a major change. Your name is yours, and you have every right to change it to be whatever you want.
The main reason I’m pushing for people to stop using the term ‘pedophile’ and instead use the term ‘child sexual abusers’, is because since all discussions of child sexual abuse focus on this idea of an evil person who is just out to get kids because they are sexual attracted to them, it makes it hard for kids who where sexually assaulted by people who don’t fit that description to realize they were sexually assaulted.
It didn’t register for me until recently that my experiences of being forced to strip naked multiple times at the mental hospital to be ‘checked’ when I was 14 was sexual assault, because the people who did it were nurses/doctors who clearly didn’t find me sexually attractive but instead used it as a form of humiliation and control towards children they deemed as ‘unruly’ and ‘uncooperative’ (ie. children who asked to be treated like people). I thought only people who fit into this idea of a child attracted pedo could be child sexual abusers, so I thought my experience didn’t count.
Stepping away from the idea that there is a pedophile boggieman and instead highlighting that anyone can be a child sexual abuser will help more people realize that their experiences are sexual assault.
people act like ex-cult members are less likely to fall back into a cult but they’re wrong. i left mormonism and if i have to spend more than a week with my mormon parents bad thoughts start happening. it starts with “well maybe it wasn’t so bad but im still not going back” but that’s the trick because it really WAS that bad and you need to stay far away. even knowing it’s all bullshit you can get pulled back in because you spent years of your life doubting and pushing that doubt away. you are well-trained not to doubt. it takes a long time learn when to trust and when not to.
Throwback to all these Jesus comics I drew in 2012…
Good post OP
Good post, OP, and if you ever decide to do another may I please suggest “NOT IN HEBREW IT DOESN’T” as a punchline? So much of the Old Testament is HORRIFICALLY translated from the Tanakh, it drives me batty.
WAIT WAIT WHAT DOES IT SAY?????? I NEED TO LIKE,, DESTROY MI MUM FOR BEING REALLY HOMOPHOBIC
Okay, so, strictly speaking, the infamous Leviticus 18:22 does say “forbidden.” Here’s the thing:
1) The word translated as “forbidden” is “toevah.” While that translation isn’t … wrong, it’s sort of like saying “McMansion” means “really big house.” There are a lot of connotations in that word. The specific issue with toevah is that we … sort of … don’t know anymore exactly what it meant. Based on context, it seems likely that the word referred to something ritually forbidden. This part of Torah was written not only as a guide for future generations, but also to say “so, look around, see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT.“ Thus, if we interpret “toevah” to mean something that’s forbidden to do as a ritual before G-d, then the verse says nothing whatsoever about Adam and Steve and their two kids and their dog–it’s saying you shouldn’t have sex with another man in the Temple as a sacrifice.
2) Following the same “this is ritually forbidden” logic of toevah, this verse may also be interpreted as “don’t do sex magic,” which was a thing in. Like. A lot of fucking cultures at the time.
3) Hebrew is a highly gendered language, and the grammatical gender in this verse is really really weird. One of the “men” in this verse is given female grammar. Why? Who fucking knows, man, this isn’t the only grammatical oddity in Torah. (There are also places where G-d is referred to as plural, and also as female.) One suggestion is that this is a way of creating a diminutive–that is, that the verse should be read as “a man should not lie with a boy.” Now, it’s worth noting that modern secular scholarship has concluded the written Torah was written down around the 6th century BCE, and most non-Orthodox Jewish scholars are like “yeah, all things considered, that sounds pretty legit.”
Do you know what else was happening around the 6th century BCE? What laypeople tend to mean when they say “ancient Greece” was happening.
Do you know what happened a lot in that time period in Greece? Dudes forming relationships with younger boys, like ages 10-15, and using them for sex in exchange for financial gifts, mentorship, etc. While we don’t know just how young some of these younger boys may have been, we do know some were prepubescent. In light of this, and also something I mentioned under the first point–”see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT,” if this verse is interpreted to say “a man should not lie with a boy,” then it’s pretty clearly “my dudes, my fellows, my lads, don’t be fucking pedophiles.”
4) Because of the grammar I mentioned in #3, it’s also possible that “should not lie with a man as with a woman” is actually referring to a place, not an abstract personhood: a man shouldn’t have sex with another man in a woman’s bed. In the time period, a woman’s bed was sort of like–that was her place, her safe sanctuary. It was also a ritually holy place where babies were made. By having sex in her bed, you’re violating her safe space (and also introducing a man who may not be a male relative, thus forcing her into breaking the laws of modesty). If this verse is read this way, then it should be taken to mean “don’t sexually violate a woman’s safety and modesty.” 5) And as an offshoot of #4, this may be a second verse relating to infidelity. Which woman’s bed is any random dude in 600 BCE most likely to have access to? His wife’s. But laws were administered differently based on whether the person they pertained to was slave or free, male or female, and so on–thus, a man committing adultery with a woman would be treated differently than man committing adultery with a man (especially because the latter would carry no chance of an illegitimate pregnancy).
So you’ll note, there are a lot of ways to read this verse, and only a one-to-one translation with no cultural awareness produces “being gay is wrong, all of the time”. (You’ll also notice the word “abomination” is nowhere to be found. That’s like … a straight-up fiction created for who only knows what reason.)
Apparently tumblr mobile doesn’t want to show @prismatic-bell ’s long and in-depth essay, so here’s the screenshots, because it still shows up on mobile browsers:
Much appreciated.
I love when scholarship and history debunks bullshit
…I sadly have more bullshit to report.
“removed for violating guidelines”, EVERY screenshot.
…goddamnit
Let’s try this again
I am horrified that @prismatic-bell keeps getting censored + this info is gold.
Many thanks, @pulmonary-poultry. This isn’t the only Jewish post of mine that’s mysteriously stopped showing up in searches and/or vanished from my blog entirely, but it is the one I get the most requests to repost, so this saves me from having to rewrite the whole damned essay. @the-invisible-self, thanks for bringing it to my attention that someone was able to preserve the post!
The Leviticus stuff for Jews being ritually distinct is very interesting @prismatic-bell where can we learn more about how scholars learned about the context clues, for those of us who aren’t Jewish and/or scholars and don’t read Hebrew?
This is the kind of thing that gets discussed in yeshivas and synagogues. I don’t know that you’d be able to find anything, or if you could, where it would be. All of this came from study groups at my shul.
copied it into plaintext + my own info below from study groups i’ve attended:
Okay, so, strictly speaking, the infamous Leviticus 18:22 does say “forbidden.” Here’s the thing:
1) The word translated as “forbidden” is “toevah.” While that translation isn’t… wrong, it’s sort of like saying “McMansion” means “really big house.” There are a lot of connotations in that word. The specific issue with toevah is that we … sort of ….. don’t know anymore exactly what it meant. Based on context, it seems likely that the word referred to something ritually forbidden. This part of Torah was written not only as a guide for future generations, but also to say “so, look around, see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT.” Thus, if we interpret “toevah” to mean something that’s forbidden to do as a ritual before G-d, then the verse says nothing whatsoever about Adam and Steve and their two kids and their dog-it’s saying you shouldn’t have sex with another man in the Temple as a sacrifice.
2) Following the same “this is ritually forbidden” logic of toevah, this verse may also be interpreted as “don’t do sex magic,” which was a thing in. Like. A lot of fucking cultures at the time.
3) Hebrew is a highly gendered language, and the grammatical gender in this verse is really really weird. One of the “men” in this verse is given female grammar. Why? Who fucking knows, man, this isn’t the only grammatical oddity in Torah. (There are also places where G-d is referred to as plural, and also as female.) One suggestion is that this is a way of creating a diminutive-that is, that the verse should be read as “a man should not lie with a boy.” Now, it’s worth noting that modern secular scholarship has concluded the written Torah was written down around the 6th century BCE, and most non-Orthodox Jewish scholars are like “yeah, all things considered, that sounds pretty legit.”
Do you know what else was happening around the 6th century BCE? What laypeople tend to mean when they say “ancient Greece” was happening.
Do you know what happened a lot in that time period in Greece? Dudes forming relationships with younger boys, like ages 10-15, and using them for sex in exchange for financial gifts, mentorship, etc. While we don’t know just how young some of these younger boys may have been, we do know some were prepubescent. In light of this, and also something I mentioned under the first point-“see your neighbors? DON’T DO THAT,” if this verse is interpreted to say “a man should not lie with a boy,” then it’s pretty clearly “my dudes, my fellows, my lads, don’t be fucking pedophiles.”
4) Because of the grammar I mentioned in #3, it’s also possible that “should not lie with a man as with a woman” is actually referring to a place, not an abstract personhood: a man shouldn’t have sex with another man in a woman’s bed. In the time period, a woman’s bed was sort of like-that was her place, her safe sanctuary. It was also a ritually holy place where babies were made. By having sex in her bed, you’re violating her safe space (and also introducing a man who may not be a male relative, thus forcing her into breaking the laws of modesty). If this verse is read this way, then it should be taken to mean “don’t sexually violate a woman’s safety and modesty.”
5) And as an offshoot of #4, this may be a second verse relating to infidelity. Which woman’s bed is any random dude in 600 BCE most likely to have access to? His wife’s. But laws were administered differently based on whether the person they pertained to was slave or free, male or female, and so on-thus, a man committing adultery with a woman would be treated differently than man committing adultery with a man (especially because the latter would carry no chance of an illegitimate pregnancy).
So you’ll note, there are a lot of ways to read this verse, and only a one-to-one translation with no cultural awareness produces “being gay is wrong, all of the time”.
(You’ll also notice the word “abomination” is nowhere to be found. That’s like… a straight-up fiction created for who only knows what reason.)
and my commentary:
the grammar of the sentence is really interesting.
(note: i have not marked grammatical gender bc im really bad at that. someone fluent in Hebrew feel free to swoop in and correct me. additional note: the nikkudot and trope symbols in the sentence below are not in the Torah, so it’s possible the phrase has been corrupted (more on that later).)
״וְאֶ֨ת־זָכָ֔ר לֹ֥א תִשְׁכַּ֖ב מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֑ה תּוֹעֵבָ֖ה הִֽוא׃״
ואת־זכר - and the male
לא תשכב - do not lie with [him]
משכבי - lying (down), from lying down, from the bed of, my bed [typically translated: as (you) lie with; there is ambiguity in the phrase though]
אשה - woman [usually spelled אישה esp in modern hebrew; the spelling אשה can also mean a sacrifice/offering (different vowels but those aren’t written in the torah so we get to fill it in!)]
תועבה הוא - it is toevah [literal meaning unknown; typically translated: illegal, forbidden, abomination]
you can see from the ambiguity of the translation where a lot of @prismatic-bell’s interpretation notes are based in. without vowels or punctuation, or clarifying words that would be added in modern hebrew, the intent of the phrase is unclear.
one interesting point is the use of “male” זכר rather than “man” איש. an interpretation ive heard is that this is a prohibition against anal sex, in which case the translation would be: you aren’t allowed to penetrate a man (as you would penetrate a woman) because that would cause ritual impurity.
this interpretation could come down to a number of related reasons including that it’s easier to get STIs from anal sex (and you’re doing it with someone other than your wife) and thus you need to be considered a health risk. semen and bodily discharge in general are ritually impure, as are infectious diseases, or contact with things that could cause disease (eg dead animals).
or that according to the torah you’re not supposed to masturbate either bc you should only cum in your wife. the latter especially doesn’t make it particularly modern-view-of-sexuality-friendly but again it was written a pretty long time ago. our understanding of sex and sexuality has changed since then.
it could be a prohibition against cheating on your spouse, and as @prismatic-bell mentioned treated differently when you’re cheating with a man as compared to a woman.
i personally like #4 the best– it takes the interpretation of משכבי אשה to mean “in the bed of a woman/wife” and is a prohibition against taking action that would sexually violate another.
and to discuss one more common anti-gay misquoted torah section, the story of sodom and gomorrah (origin of sodomy) is about gang rape.
but above all, judaism allows almost every law to be broken if it protects a person’s dignity and security, and there is precedent for this in the torah. so next time someone tells you “the bible says being gay is a sin” you can respond that the bible also tells you to be nice to other people, asshat.
A note: Torah doesn’t actually say you shouldn’t masturbate. That’s from Talmud and it’s extrapolated from the story of Onan. The issue with Onan, however, isn’t that he masturbated—it’s that he was in a levirate marriage but hated his deceased brother, and Torah says that the first child of a levirate marriage belongs to the deceased, so Onan pulled out rather than impregnate his wife/his brother’s widow.
being an adult and watching others succeed because they have stable relationships with their families can actually be so demoralizing, because while they were experiencing growing up you were only surviving
they were learning how to love and be loved and maintain good solid relationships but you had no time for that because you were learning to differentiate between your families footsteps and listening for the volume and suddenness of doors closing and opening
and sometimes all this comes crashing into you when you’re out of danger, living completely alone and you’re making pasta and watching the water boil but you’re still back in your childhood home scared to come out of your room because your moms washing dishes angrily and all your friends are online wishing that they could save you
This is how you do a meme. I don’t want to tell anyone my name or my bra size or my date of birth on the internet. Why can’t we make memes using useless and non-personal data points?
fucking. Shoelace Con. Im…..dashcon
I…. I’m skeleton Sexyman
Blog superhell.. :3
…
SEXY SEXYMAN
Posts Superhell’s the name
Tag MeowMeow lol
how did u figure out u were bi
i had a best friend in elementary school that i kind of idolized. probably not in a healthy way. he moved away on short notice and i felt really... cheated? i'd had this vague idea of being in his life forever. i was just a kid but id had this sort of dream scenario of us growing up together. i'd had crushes before but not like that. he never responded to my penpal letters and i literally mourned him for like a year. kind of messed me up.
two years after that i got to middle school, and i met my first very openly gay kid. he kind of unsettled me at first, but we both got into dune at the same time, and we could talk about that. eventually, i wound up confiding with him about those old feelings because i needed to check if it was for sure gay to imagine growing old with another guy and spending my life with them and having a dog and sharing a bed and wearing matching pajamas and visiting national parks. i was pretty sure it wasnt but it had been nagging me for a while and i figured he'd know, what with him being 4realsies gay and all.
and he was like. hm. yeah. yup. that all sounds pretty gay. wait, was that friend hot?
and i was like. unfortunately. yes. he was hot.
and he was like. babs. buddy. this isnt even ambiguous. you like guys.
he was right of course, but in one of the strangest copes of all time, i actually convinced myself that he wasnt gay, and therefore was not an expert on the subject and therefore was unable to tell me that it was anything but totally straight to occasionally imagine happy domestic life with some of your more handsome male friends. that it was, in fact, the natural order of the world to experience powerful limerences with the opposite gender, but real and powerful and meaningful connection only with ones own.
it uh. turned out that this perception was largely a result of the fairly strong gender segregation that exists in mormonism during the early stages of puberty. you can get a crush on someone from a distance but you cant really imagine domestic life with them the same way. hence the different feelings.
as i got older and the weird gender segregation was dismantled and those distances got shorter, i started making real friendships and connections with the women in my life, and i eventually started feeling the same way about some of them. as in, intrigued by the idea of growing old with them and having a dog and sharing a bed and wearing matching pajamas and visiting national parks. not just momentarily swept up in powerful infatuations.
(as a side note i am visiting zion national park with my wife next week :)
experiencing true symmetry in those feelings was both a huge relief and extremely stressful. a relief, because i was like, oh, thank god, i could get married to a woman and have a great time experiencing them as people and not just distant but sexy aliens. i was still kind of half in mormonism and i hadnt really processed yet that i didnt have to get married to a woman. so it was a relief to know that such a marriage could be completely satisfying to me. but also, stressful, because it was like. if this is how i feel about women that i really deeply care about. and its how ive felt for some of the guys in my life. then i am. perhaps. a little gay. halfgay. weregay.
i only really faced the music on that around my junior year of highschool. i didnt actually have another relationship for... three years after that? i just dated as a hobby and tried sorting my shit out. it took me a really long time after mormonism to kind of pick through the clutter of my ideas and get myself into an order where i felt like i wouldnt be inflicting myself on someone if they started to care about me. in terms of dating women, im sure you're getting a sense of the sexism that i absorbed and in terms of dating men im sure youre getting a sense of the internalized homophobia i felt. it seemed kinder to just keep things casual and work through those tangles by myself.
but thats a different ramble, i think.
In a lot of ways @inbabylontheywept was a trailblazer for me. He left the church first, he broke through a lot of awkward ice so I could dive headfirst in, and he even recognized he was were gay before me. He’s so fun to watch, like a little bug trundling around a terrarium. Then I remember I am a different bug in the same terrarium and the cycle continues.
i felt that way about you. there were a lot of painful experiences i avoided by watching you run into them. i always felt like the lucky bastard following a tank across a minefield. thank you.
@lizardho also i have used the word trundle at least twenty times in the last two weeks because of this post. as if my lexicon wasnt weird enough. now im The Trundler. Trundlemaxing in his bigass fucking cowboy/construction boots. i was walking up the stairs at work today at people actually came over to see if i was okay because it sounded like “ikea furniture.” but that was just my trundling. hm.
I do love it when small children say something about my disability that clearly challenges their parent/carer to really think about disability in a way they haven’t before.
Today a small children turned to their dad and loudly said “Wow dad did you see how hurt that guy was?!”
And their dad was clearly thinking very hard and slowly said “well, he’s not exactly hurt?… more… that’s just how his body is”, as if he was thinking about the relationship between injury and disability for the first time.
It was a moment where the child and parent were learning together and from each other in a really wholesome way.
im honestly not really cool with the "-insert thing- can be a sin in your religion but dont make it my problem" thing because like even if evangelicals left me alone and didn't have influence over the law they are still abusing their children who are born into their faith and dont know any better. I can hear "you go to hell for being gay" and laugh it off but the default experience for children in the united states is to be born into religious abuse. for the vast majority of people being christian wasnt a choice and clawing themselves away is a painful isolating process
mormon kids under the age of 18 being told their church is a cult
mormons 18-24 after they go through their endowment ceremony and receive their new name and secret clothing and learn the secret handshakes and passwords and realize everyone around them has been secretly doing this the whole time and now theyre going to be sent away from their family for 2 years where they will literally not be allowed to be alone for 1 second of the day except to go to the bathroom and they have no idea how to get out of what they just got into
one of the only perks of being a mormon woman is that i didn’t get my endowment at age 19 and i had a little extra time to mature and be out on my own. that’s all i needed to make a clean break and i got out at 21 before i wouldve gotten my endowment.
wait what? can anyone elaborate on this? because I had no idea this was a thing
basically when youre a mormon kid growing up you realize your church is a little strict but you’re like whatever. i have friends at church because i go to church 6 days a week and everyone around me is affirming that this is the right thing to do and we have special knowledge no one else has otherwise everyone would be like this. so youve gotta go teach them & it’s the greatest thing in the world to be a missionary. also the temple is beautiful and amazing and spiritual and holy and everyone wants to go there. but it’s a secret! :) because it’s holy and sacred
then if youre a boy and u turn 18 they’re like wow amazing!!! you get to go on a mission and be like all the great men around you!! and now you get to go through the temple! so #blessed!
and then you go through the temple and all the above mentioned SECRET CULTY SHIT happens (EXPLANATION HERE http://mormoncurtain.infymus.com/topic_templeceremonies.html) and youre shipped off to a strange place where everything you eat, wear, go, listen to and do is controlled, and you’re not allowed to talk to your family or friends (except through a once-a-week email) and you literally are being watched by your companion at all. times.
some might say “you can leave at any time” but consider that i never went on a mission and i never went through the temple and i still consider leaving the mormon church the hardest thing i ever did. you have no social network outside the church. you are lacking major knowledge and skills. you have to grapple with the fact that you may never see your family again.
I’m reblogging this again bc I have Thoughts.
Leaving is such an isolating experience. No one inside wants anything to do with you anymore and no one outside understands the scale of messed up that Mormonism is. Like it’s easy to point and laugh at the ridiculousness, but it’s literally a cult. There’s so much trauma involved and there’s trauma in leaving.
People on the outside don’t understand how hard it is to leave. I grew up where all my friends were catholic and are no longer religious and they’re like “well everyone hates church, you just stop going” but Mormonism isn’t like that at all. For starters I had to get a lawyer involved to leave and then the ostracization from the entire community that nurtured me growing up was just the cherry on top. It’s effectively being shunned. Everyone you were forced to call sister and brother growing up no longer wants anything to do with you. And you deserve it, because you shouldn’t have fallen for the anti-Mormon lies.
Leaving The Church was the hardest thing I ever did and my family accepts me so I’m a lucky one. But they still ardently adhere to the institution that hurt me and has resulted in the deaths of people I love. I will never understand.
“There’s so much trauma involved and there’s trauma in leaving.”
It’s easy for people looking in from the outside to forget this. Thank you for the reminder. Can anyone recommend resources for young Mormons looking to explore their options?
Please note: this post will be directly addressed to those hypothetical young Mormons
If you know you’re ready to leave, use quitmormon.com. It’s run by the guy from reddit who is now famous in exmormon circles for offering absolutely free legal services to anybody who needs help leaving. You can give your church id number if you know it, but it’s not required (I never memorized mine, and I sure wasn’t going to ask for it). He takes care of everything. This keeps TSCC (the so-called church) from getting all your latest info and keeps them from hassling you or harassing you. They have to talk to your lawyer instead. Pre 2015, it felt almost impossible to try to leave, but it’s a lot easier now! The years of picketing General Conference to force an excommunication trial are over!
Find a support system. Lean on your friends that have never been mormon, any family members who left, anyone you know who left. I’m an exmormon happy to answer any questions, and I’m sure there are plenty others in the notes who would be super willing to be supportive too. Exmormon groups are many and varied now, and it’s best to find the one that vibes for you. There’s a subreddit that’s popular, but I personally used - and I know this sounds weird, since I don’t have kids - a forum called Mormonism & More on the site babycenter.com. It was started several years ago by some mormons who had questions they weren’t allowed to ask on the normal mormon board (because that board required uplifting, mormon-approved answers at all times). It’s since shifted to ex-mormons or people who want to leave but can’t right now because of family situations. Even though the threads were years old, I spent weeks on that forum, reading about what other people had gone through and how they got through it, and to me, that was super helpful.
Research the culty stuff at your own peril. I liked learning about that stuff for a really long time, because I felt learning about all those secrets (I especially liked learning about the truth of the Book of Abraham) … it helped me feel valid in my choice. It helped me keep in mind that this was something that I had escaped, something that had wanted to hurt me. Missing your abuser doesn’t mean you should go back, it means you should keep moving forward. Missing your cult has the same solution. Lots of people fell for the “we’re totally not a cult!” line by TSCC. Some of them will not offer sympathy. If you want to watch the hidden camera videos of endowments and other temple stuff, I would super super recommend you have a trusted friend watch them with you. And bring comfort food. You’ll probably need it.
TSCC put out a series of essays on controversial (read: faith-killing, eye-opening, omg how could I have ever supported the people who did this) issues in mormon history. They are the Orthodox LDS pre-approved responses to a lot of the more incriminating accusations that have been leveled at TSCC over the years. They should be hosted on TSCC website somewhere, and would have been posted around or after 2015. They may reaffirm your faith now that you know TSCC’s defense, but they may push you right out the door. (Or break the shelf? Do Mormons still use the shelf analogy, or is that retired now?)
Lots of mormons become atheists after leaving. Many join mainstream xian churches. Some become witches, some study every religion they can get their hands on, some try to go back and realize all the magic (or holy spirit, if you prefer) is gone. Don’t think you have to know right away. Some people throw away or burn all their mormon stuff, some people keep it to show their kids, but again, you don’t have to make that decision right away. Some people call TSCC a cult after they leave, myself included, but you don’t have to if it makes you uncomfortable or it it doesn’t feel true to your experience.
Look up religious trauma syndrome. It’s real. The pain you will probably feel is real, the grief you will probably feel is real, and in many ways, you may have to mourn the death of what you were always told Life Will Be For You.
And learn that the world is not half as evil as TSCC told you. Your coworkers who drink a beer at the end of the day are not evil or abusive. Your friends who wear sleeveless shirts are not evil or promiscuous. You’re allowed to wear short shorts! You’re allowed to drink coffee! You’re allowed to ask questions in a faith community without being silenced or condemned! You’re allowed to not want kids! There’s a lot of unlearning here.
TLDR? You have options. You have freedom. Find nonmormon friends who will support you. Be kind to yourself.
People joke about Mormons but this is the first time I’ve seen anything at all directed towards people who need to get out.
I had a high school friend turned college roommate who left, moved 4 hrs away, and I had to lie to people who showed up repeatedly that he wasn’t home. That’s just the smallest outside perspective of this. They kept coming.
It is a cult. It operates by manipulating people. My aunt, who also left, converted from Catholicism when she was a single mother in her 20s who needed help. The church gave her a network of tangible support and got her through a vulnerable, scary time in her life–and used that
crazy that mormons have like secret life long permanent indulgences where you are gaurenteed to go to super heaven no matter what sin you do forever
Isn't that a thing for most Protestants anyway?
I assume you're referring to the mainstream protestant concept of being saved, which can be kind of similar in some specific interpretations, but what Dead is referring to here is the mormon-specific doctrine of having your calling and election made sure, also known as the second anointing.
The key difference is that being "saved" is generally understood to apply only insofar as one continually accepts Jesus as their lord and savior, and if they ever stop doing so will need to be re-saved, whereas the mormon version is more of a legal contract whereby god promises eventual exaltation no matter what, including forgiveness for future and otherwise unforgivable sins. It's considered deeply heretical among protestants due to its apparent bypassing of Jesus, and the church flatly refuses to discuss in any capacity, so there's extremely limited official information about it.
In practical terms, there's really not much difference because religious leaders already tend to act with impunity regardless of theological justifications, and the second anointing is both secret and reserved for the highest echelons of mormon society, so it's not really something that comes up a lot outside of doctrinal criticisms or weird conspiracy beliefs about secret SCMC hitmen. It's lurid and obvious in ways that comparable beliefs aren't, so it tends to be a lightning rod for both good-faith criticism and speculation.
its very funny in the context of Protestantism because it is more or less selling indulgences, But Worse, and there was already a whole thing about that. I do hope that they have secret second-annointed goon squads though because otherwise what's the point of being an ultra wealthy religion with a get out of hell free card?
Broke: You don't really need secret hitmen when you are essentially a real-estate conglomerate running an entire state through soft power, so there are no secret mormon goon squads, and speculation otherwise ultimately distracts from substantive criticisms regarding the church's actual impact and undermines critics' credibility.
Woke: Obviously, the 1976 ordination of Haight signaled that the denial of execution via firing squad of his ancestor means that he did not fear perdition, and the Destroying Angels have been active in secret for the entire time. Joe Hill was blood atoned for knocking up one of the Smith daughters! The SCMC is just the tip of the iceberg!
Bespoke: They're called "Kirton McConkie."
quitmormon.com (a pro-bono legal team that helps people resign from the church) is fundraising to get a full-time paid lawyer and provide free mental health services to people leaving mormonism (especially LGBTQ+ people and our allies)
link to send support:
Help Quitmormon.com Empower More People in Faith Transitions … Mark Naugle needs your support for Help Quitmormon.com Expand Free Re
being raised mormon will have you apologizing for shit like “existing in a space” or “being a human with needs” or “not repressing any and all emotions that could possibly be interpreted as negative”
"that doesn't sound sincere- it sounds rehearsed" is one of the most devastating and fucked-up statements you can make to anyone in the neurodivergent/ADHD/Autistic/Schizophrenic/Disordered Personality sphere. yeah bitch it's rehearsed. because i wanted to get it right when i said it
I’ve recently discovered how much better life can be when we normalize this. My best friend and I have started saying “hang on, I’m scripting” when we need a minute to mentally rehearse during big conversations (and “bear with me, I’m doing improv” when we’ve reached the end of our script and start to struggle with words lol)
