It’s clear from the lack of published complaints that the vast majority of women in Afghanistan are doing perfectly fine as well.
That’s a truly terrible pun. Well done.
So if Mormon was supposed to mean “More Good” then would lesmon be “less good”? I’m not sure, when weighed against the other extant world religions and their histories and current actions(Catholic sex abuse coverups anyone?), that lesmon is objectively accurate either. I suggest Mehmons.
Enjoy,
Steven
It isn’t just Utah. I live in a part of California with lots of Mormons, and my daughter knew a lot of them in early high school. Her Mormon friends pretty much universally dropped out of college as soon as they snagged a husband and started pumping out babies. All her non-Mormon friends got degrees - and also got married.
By senior year the Mormon girls withdrew from most of their non-Mormon friends.
They were all nice, and the parents I knew were nice, but their behavior was like they were living in the 1950s.
Is it similar in Utah?
Very much so. From a young age women are taught their husband will elevate them by taking them to the Temple and making certain covenants. They’re taught these rituals affecting their afterlife are more important than what’s going on in their current earthly (Terrestrial) life.
Here’s a sign recently seen at apartments adjacent to BYU at Rexburg, Idaho. Subtle, no?
Even before their usual 2 years are up, male missionaries are encouraged to marry as soon as they can after they get home; as one person told me, “It’s b/c they’ll be so lonely after being w/ a companion 24/7 for the last 2 years.” The trope of a returned missionary buying an engagement ring as soon as he can afford it, whether or not he’s seeing someone, is a trope b/c it happens. They’re often married within 6 months of returning, after a short engagement (90-120 days). They’re encouraged to ‘strengthen the covenant’ of their Temple marriage by having a baby as soon as they can.
While these aren’t 100% of the people, of course, does this explain what you’ve seen?
Just ran across this unintentionally hilarious story from a Mormonette.
Wow. I sure hope that is a Poe, but if not, that bitch is seriously fucked up, and not in a good way. One week before her ideal marriage she discovers that her man has looked at porn and her life is ruined forever. Did she ever consider that one reason may have been that blow job she denied him until marriage? Hasn’t she ever heard of God’s Loophole?
I grew up in Utah. And HD’s question is a good one.
The California Mormons were different from Utah Mormons. California Mormons drank Coke. Utah Mormons didn’t.
Not comparing Women and Coke, just saying there were differences between Non-Utah and Utah Mormons.
Nope, unfortunately, this is not Poe’s Law. This is actually quite typical in Mormonism where sneaking peeks at Victoria Secrets is placed in the came category as Bill Cosby or Arthur Gary Bishop.
The Mormon church is constantly hammering on the “sin” of pornography and suggesting it directly leads to homosexuality and adultery. You can’t listen to a General Conference without being constantly reminded that porn is one of the most pernicious sins ever.
Here are a couple examples of Mormon teachings on pron, both of which come from the official Mormon website.
First.
Of course, there is no level of healthy pornography. Any viewing of any nekkid bodies is evil, and will inevitably lead to sex addiction.
Here’s a talk by one of the senior‵leaders of the church, Dallin Oaks who directly links viewing porn with adultery with quotes from the Book of Mormon
Within Mormonism, adultery is the second greatest sin, save murder. Far worse than little things such as torturing children or abusing wives and kids. (Yes, this is personal, if you haven’t guessed.)
So, any viewing of porn becomes a sign of addiction, is a sin equivalent to fucking the neighbor’s wife and gets a scarlet “P” or “M” for masturbation branded on them. People stupid enough to admit masturbating can be punished by their bishop by not allowing them to partake in the sacrament, a very public ritual. Everyone is looking of course and the worst of often assumed.
On the popular Mormon Stories podcast, they have discussed where guys who have looked a few times at porn get branded as a sex addict and then are sent to Mormon church run 12 Step sex addiction programs. Obviously, it becomes a huge deal, leading guys to feel all that much more guilty about it.
For the fiancé of the author of that piece, what exactly is he supposed to do? Admit that sometime he look at nakkid women on the net? Then he’s admitting to virtually committing the second worst sin possible and being a monster.
He can’t come clean because he was only a week away from his scheduled temple marriage. An understanding bishop may allow him to quickly repent and go one with it, but with the Mormon leadership roulette, a hard ass could withhold his temple recommend, forcing him into public shame.
Ironicly, “punishing the bishop” is what I call masturbation.
I was seeking permission to participate in baptisms for the dead. I was maybe 12 years old.
In the interview the bishop asked me if I masturbated.
And I asked,“What is that”?
He described it.
And I replied, “Disgusting! People actually do that”?
So, I didn’t have to lie, and got the recommend for the temple.
This is a true story.
I got this second hand through my daughter, but that makes sense. A lot of these kids - most of them I think - went to one BYU or another.
The interesting thing to me is that the behavior is the same here in a very liberal and diverse environment as it is in Utah.
Thanks for the details.
Not the ones my daughter knew. We kept Sprite in the refrigerator just for them.
I’m reluctant to answer because you’ll be getting this second-hand and from a non-Mormon, and I may not do this justice. As I understand it, they believe that too often, women who have been raped are blamed instead of supported, particularly by bishops. Changes in the way the LDS Church and bishops in particular, treat rape victims–no blame, no shame, more support and compassion. One woman who developed PTSD from a rape was told by a bishop she still had nightmares because she hadn’t fully repented for not having fought off the man (an older, much larger family friend) hard enough (I’m not sure what constitutes “hard enough”.) and didn’t seem sorry enough. She was disfellowshipped for a year. I don’t know what, if anything, happened to the rapist. I hate to ask her.
You’d surely get more and better information if you spoke directly to a Mormon feminist.
Now there’s an oxymormon.
One way to distinguish a church from a cult is to look at how they deal with things like rape and other sexual crimes amongst their adherents. Though by that distinction, not only is Mormonism a cult but so is Catholicism and a whole lot of others.
Here’s my favorite list of ‘cult’ checkboxes:
You can decide whether or not the LDS fall into it or not.
As I was reading it, I thought your list was talking about the Democratic Party.
Sure you did.
That is directly from the prophet I grew up with, Spencer W. Kimball who wrote
So, yes. The prophet said that it was better to die than submit to rape.
I have heard directly from friends who were molested and then treated worse than the offender. One woman was disfellowshiped for a year after reporting that her older stepbrother molested and then raped her. He wasn’t disciplined because he was a “good man” and was going to get married. Go on any of the ex-Mormon sites and you hear many similar tales.
It’s not terribly difficult for Utah residents to be well informed. The Salt Lake Tribune regularly runs articles on this, frequently enough that even occasional readers such as me are quite aware of the issue. Enough so that one really wonders how someone could not be aware of the issue.
Actually not. There is a strong tendency for willful ignorance. People just don’t want to know. When the unquestioning assumption is that the Church is absolutely correct, then little details don’t matter.
For example here’s a typical article:
In BYU approved housing, even off campus, men cannot be in women’s apartments and vice versa. In a well publicised case recently, a woman was raped in her apartment and then prohibited from taking more classes at BYU and the school refused to allow her to transfer her credits to another school. Here’s just one of many accounts.
In her case one of the local police, a Mormon, provided the honor code office with the police report.
This was all over the news, so one really has to question any claims of not being aware of the issue.
In our family, after my sister reported my father to the bishop for repeatedly molesting her and another sibling, my father was mildly disciplined. While my siblings weren’t disciplined (we had a “good bishop” in the Mormon leadership roulette where there are no standards or even much training) there also was absolutely no support for them.
Likewise, my older brother received no real punishment for him raping me, our younger brother and several other boys which occurred when he was 17 to 18 and his victims were 10 to 14. He claims that he confessed to the mission president while he was on his mission and that they allowed him to continue without any discipline. This should have been an automatic one-way ticket back home, but rapists aren’t treated that severely by some leaders.
Of course Mormonism has a rape culture. When the founder was a sex pervert who strong armed his inner circle to allow him to marry their adolescent daughters, then you are going to set up a culture in which rape is overlooked far too many times.
Whataboutism is generally an admission of guilt. My guess is that in Hurricane’s mind, the list came uncomfortably close to the truth.
In the interests of disclosure, I’ll do it for my particular religious beliefs (United Methodism)
We don’t have a leader. Though we do have a Council of Bishops although I don’t know any of their names except our local one. True decisions are decided upon by an elected body of lay and clergy. So I’ll say “No.”
Heh, no. We’re a pretty cantankerous bunch. We’ve already had churches withdraw from the UMC because they were talking about changing a book of discipline rule. Our ‘judicial’ system is notoriously toothless.
I’m not sure what excess is. Some of us meditate and on Sundays we read in unison. I don’t find it excessive, but who knows.
Yeah right. I don’t even think they encourage us to do any of those examples. As far as thinking, acting and feeling in general, they certainly do encourage us to live in a certain way. Give to charity, get involved in your community, love your enemies and all of that stuff.
Again, heh. We can’t even decide if Muslims are non-Christian or not. It depends on who you ask. I think the current concensus is that we serve the same God, but they view him from a different angle. A good portion of us are universalists anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
Maybe? We think that there is evil in the world and we need to do good to bring light to the darkness. It’s almost never directed at a particular group though and is more of a vague feeling that people do bad things.
No, we have a strict accountability chain and any member can file charges against any other member including bishops, pastors or whomever else you fancy. We’re non-hierarchical. Everyone is elected to their positions either directly or via representatives that are themselves elected.
I don’t think so anyway. We’re mainlines. Typically we emphasize that the means are the ends. Doing good on this earth is the end in and of itself.
Depends on your church. There are definitely some Sister Better-Than-You’s floating around, but they typically aren’t leaders so much as other people who are just snobs. Oh well, what you gonna do? I can honestly say that I have never had a pastor or other leader shame me for anything I’ve done. Typically, if I confess something wrong, they’ll laugh about it, say, “Oh well, I’ve wanted to do the same thing myself. Whatcha gonna do, we’re just people?” It is probably dependent upon the pastor though.
Ummm… no. If you tried to cut ties with your non-UM family, the pastor would probably tell you that was a bad idea.
Depends on what you mean by preoccupied, but there is definitely mention of inviting people to church.
Again, depends upon what you mean by preoccupied, but we do have offering every week and once a year they announce the budget and ask you to make a donation to meet it.
I wish. Our church of 300 has about 15 people that actually do the work. Most members show up on a Sunday morning about once a month and occasionally chat over snacks.
That’s actually DIScouraged. We’re encouraged to be part of our community.
I see the other people in my church once a week, sometimes twice if there’s an activity I want to go to. 95% of my life has nothing to do with my church group and for some people it’s closer to 99. We do our own things and meet up once a week. You do make some friends in the church and you’ll see them more often, but usually it’s to have a bbq, not talk about church.
So for me. I think that I can come down on mostly not a cult, but there are a few iffy things. I think that most groups whether religious or secular will probably have a few things on the list. Anyway, that’s why I like the list. I think that it shows that groups can have cult-like tendencies. I’m not a Mormon, I couldn’t fill out the list for them, so they probably need to decide for themselves.