There have been so many posts about soaking and BYU lately that I thought you might have questions. Burner account to not dox myself
do most mormons know that joseph smith stole heavily from masonic regalia and ritual? if so, is it just politely ignored?
Did y'all ever figure out the whole "No Hot Drinks" thing or was that still a topic of some debate around the church?
As of when I left it was still open to interpretation. Only the most hardcore Mormons I knew didn’t drink caffeine. Some of my family members drink tea every once in a while. Drinking a cuppa joe still makes Mormons visibly uncomfortable though :maduro-coffee:
Yes. This is a controversial question even for ex Mormons though. In my mind it is for three main reasons:
- Reverence for their leaders as god (Joseph Smith and their current prophets are treated as if they were as holy as Jesus)
- Demands for huge amounts of your money (10% of your gross income, otherwise your access to religious blessings are revoked)
- Difficulty leaving the church (it took me months to officially leave and I was ostracized from my community for it)
Gay Mormons break my heart. If they come out they’re usually expelled from home if they live with their family. If they try to stay Mormon then they’re systemically excluded from participating in the organization. The dinosaurs who run the church are super bigoted about it.
I just found out an old church friend came out of the closet recently. he's still deep in the church though. I think he feels pressured to stay despite it all because his family is extremely wealthy and they will cut him off if he leaves.
Breaks my heart to think about too.
If that were me I'd start pretending I had some sort of project that I needed financial help with then once you've got enough cash to set you up for a while tell them "the actual financial project is I'm gay and I've bought a house to be gay in. thanks"
Thanks for the link, I've never seen this clip before. The information is accurate, except for the castration thing. Although I think they worded it as salaciously as possible to paint Mormons in the worst light. (nobody talks about "endless celestial sex" in church)
Mormons all claim to be Christian, that's the official doctrine. Like you said though, it breaks from mainstream Christianity dogma, so other Christians are always calling them out about it.
How do you deal with a majority Mormon Utah after the revolution?
Install a puppet prophet who will lead the flock back to Jesus's original socialist teachings :jesus-cleanse:
I actually think this is a situation that could hypothetically be a big problem for a socialist USA. We wouldn't want to start another War in the Vendee in Utah. I think we should be ready to accept just controlling the Mormons through some kind of agreement than believing we could eraticate them or whatever, they are a pretty entrenched minority at this point. Of course just hypothetical who knows what that situation would actually look like.
There's a lesser known Mormon prophecy that talks about a time when "the constitution of the US will hang by a thread" at which points Mormons will descend from the mountains and take control, restoring our big beautiful God given paper. Mormons I knew would bring that up to be edgey when Romney ran
You don't. Build the wall was the correct position, they just keep trying to build it in the wrong desert
I loved hearing my coworkers talk about the White Horse prophecy and Mitt Romney
No, I was too scared of girls to even think about it. Mormons are forbidden from dating until they’re 16 and even then it’s frowned upon, because you should save your dating energy until you’re 21 when you can date to get married.
Also I don’t know anyone who has soaked or jump humped. tbh I think it’s an urban legend but friends of friends have claimed to have done it, so :shrug-outta-hecks:
Why do y'all live in the desert? Like, what do you do for a living in a fucking desert? The Salt lake is probably salty so where do you get your freshwater?
Early Mormons were chased out of the US for being polygamists/pedophiles. They kept fleeing west until they reached the Salt Lake Valley (which was then part of Mexico), which is relatively habitable (even though it’s in the desert) because snowmelt from the nearby mountains provides enough water via irrigation for drinking and agriculture.
Why do y’all live in the desert? Like, what do you do for a living in a fucking desert?
Los Angeles: :side-eye-1:
I guess California used to have snowmelt rivers, right? that's why all the wineries and stuff. But Utah doesn't have such snowy mountain ranges, right?
Oh wait apparently they do have mountains and rivers, nevermind.
The Rocky Mountains extend through Utah. The Wasatch and Uinta ranges are the most prominent, and lots of water comes from their snowmelt. Although that will likely change with climate change. :agony-consuming:
Los Angeles is built on what was literally a desert, check out the LA river
When it was originally settled by Spain it was a Mediterranean subtropic climate (although there are several microclimates in the area) and the LA river wasn't concrete until the late 30s.
But go off.
I didn’t go to school there but they do allow non Mormons to attend as long as they follow all the fucked up rules. Seems like they get a few Muslim students who are attracted to the conservative, sober atmosphere.
I feel like I remember a few years ago a basketball player ended up getting suspended for having sex.
Edit: Yeah it happened
I think the church will bend before it breaks. A lot of ex-Mormons want to believe that internet use and growing LGBTQ+ support among young people will end the church, but I think they'll adapt with some new "revelations" that accept gay people, similar to the black membership thing from the 1970s.
How many "closeted," for lack of a better word, ex-Mormons do you think there are? Like not hard numbers, but is that very common due to the difficulty of leaving and ostracism?
Related, how many Mormons who aren't complete chuds do you know? Like I know that mainline Christianity (protestantism and western catholicism, I mean, I don't know much of anything about Orthodox Christians) has a few strains that are trying to push for more, you know, anti-racist, pro-LGBT+, pro-working class forms of Christianity. I can tell as an outsider that to the extent that they exist at all they're obviously not dominant, but is it a thing at all for Mormons?
When I was growing up I genuinely felt like the only "closeted" ex-Mormon in my community. It was very alienating. I tried reaching out quietly to a few friends and family about it at the time, but they all freaked and started lecturing me about apostates. I think it's becoming easier and easier to leave the church via knowledge and communities on the internet, though. Membership growth is falling, which I think is telling given the huge families they typically have.
As for non-chuds, there are some Mormons whose hearts are in the right place. There's a small movement of Mormons in Utah who attend Pride and advocate for LGBTQ+ acceptance. They're usually quashed by the church pretty quickly though, sometimes they're excommunicated for their efforts.
I was friends with a couple of folks from a Mormon family and so I would love your insight as a leftist.
Did you do a mission? If so, where, and how bad was it?
Did you believe your patriarchal blessing when you got it?
How old were you when you left the church and what was the main motivation?
And how much is the bigotry sugarcoated behind closed doors? I've heard Mormons being sexist, racist, homophobic, etc using dog whistles and euphemisms, but I wonder how much the mask slips when there aren't outsiders around.
Thanks for doing this ama!
Good questions! I'll answer them in order.
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No. I was terrified of being sent away on a mission, it was one of the main drivers that lead to my leaving the church. I know several men (women generally don't do missions) who considered or attempted suicide during their mission because they couldn't stand it any more. I'm grateful that I stood up for myself on this one, the social pressure to do a mission is unreal.
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I never got mine because the blessings usually happen around the time before you leave on a mission, which is when I was making my exit. I spoke to a lot of people about theirs though, and even as a teenager it smelled like bullshit to me. It's kind of like astrology for Mormons, some believe it word for word while others think the blessing is open to interpretation.
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I was 17 when I told my family I wasn't going on a mission, then 21 when I "officially" left the church. My main motivation was researching the contradictions between what Mormons taught me at church and what teachers taught me at school. Mormons said Native Americans were descended from Jewish people, school said Native Americans crossed the Bering Straight 10,000+ years ago from Asia. One of them had to be wrong, ya know?
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As an organization, the Mormon church is about as systemically bigoted as it gets. They helped genocide the indigenous people of the US West, they colonized Mexico, they believe non-whites have dark skin because of a curse, they excluded black members from full membership until the 1970s, they still don't allow gay people to be full members, and they have a $100 billion (!) investment portfolio, so they're all in on US capitalism. Individually, I think this means you get that typical white American attitude towards race/gender/sexuality - if you point out the way they benefit from systemic white supremacy, they get real mad. There's definitely a mask that comes off when Mormons aren't around non-members though.
The bigotry stuff is very interesting. We don't really get Mormons in the UK, the only one I know of is one that met and I guess tried to convert my gf at her uni. Weirdly he then added me on FB but not her (I never met the guy). Is that a sexism thing?
Is there much bigotry towards mixed people or non-Anglo/American whites? My gf is half Polish and I'm half Asian, I'm interested to know what opinions that guy might've had on it.
Hmm, maybe he tried to reach out to you because he struck out with your gf? They are tenacious proselytizers.
As for non white people, Mormonism is systemically racist. They still have books that discourage their members from marrying outside their race. On an individual level it's sort of a mixed bag. Some white Mormons are your bog standard chuds, while others are proud to accept everyone, even if that can border on tokenism.
This is all surreal. I can't imagine going to a standard Christian Sunday school and here you were taught factually wrong things with survivors of those genocide still around to respond and refute those claims.
Thanks for doing this ama and your answers!
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I know you didn't ask me but:
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I did a mission, not gonna fully dox myself but it was in a border state between the US and Mexico, US side. I learned Spanish as part of that. Overall it sucked very thoroughly, no personal time, you aren't allowed to use your first name so you start to lose your previous identity, they take your passport if you're not from the US (just like other human traffickers), lots of gaslighting (the reason you aren't baptizing converts and generally feel like shit isn't because you've been separated from everyone you know know and work 12+ hours a day, it's because the Spirit of god cant be with you due to the fact that you don't get up exactly on time, you aren't focused enough on scripture study, you let your companion take too long in the shower, etc, and yes those are all real). So even though noone should ever go on a mission, at the same time I do in some ways still value parts of it, I mean I wouldn't speak spanish without it. Idk it's still a weird space in my head.
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Yeah, I got it and believed it. Mine was pretty easy to believe, it was pretty boring stuff, "You will get married" "you will have a career". Just added in a lot of stuff about how god felt about me, how there was this incredible plan for my life, but yeah not a lot of hard details, as one might guess. I did know a girl in college who got one that told her she would mature into a "striking beauty" and that all men would desire her, and it gave her incredible body image issues because she was overweight. If you patriarchal blessing doesn't come true, we're taught, it's because we chose the wrong path, so for her weight loss and appealing to the male gaze was a commentary on like the purity of her soul.
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Late 20s, it was a result of political radicalization. I started caring about a variety of issues, including american foreign policy, and was pretty let down that the Mormon church was radio silent on all that, and instead wanted to die on the "no gay" hill. A lot of reasons, but I think that was the core of it, I began to feel that an organization actually led by an all knowing, all loving god would give his church different priorities/insist on them not being completely shitty.
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Mormon's are very racist, sexist, etc, but in like a clueless grandpa kind of way, for the most part. The actual members, I mean, the top brass are just straight up racist. So like a mormon guy gets all his opinions from church leaders, so like if they tell him "gays shouldn't be married" then like yeah of course they shouldn't. You could hate gays, but chances are you really don't care, you just know that god speaks through church leaders and that's it. End of story. Not to excuse it, but it's a very effective organization when it comes to thought terminating epithets, to steal from citations needed. But yes just to be clear they are still all of those things, but not in the same way like a maga chud would be.
Thanks for your answers. It's all so fascinating from an outside perspective. The other day someone mentioned how America Mormonism is and it feels truer the more I think about it.
That detail about the blessings is really disturbing. I've only known Mormon guys and I can only imagine how horrible the ones directed at girls could be.
Yeah, after I heard about hers I always wondered about what they were like (for women). Even though I spent so much time in the mormon church, that's one thing I feel I don't have much of a clue about, since the blessings are considered sacred and supposed to be secret (I know most couples let their spouse read theirs). You're allowed to share details "if moved upon by the spirit," so occasionally you'd hear someone in a church meeting vaguely allude to theirs, or hear through the grapevine what someone said second hand. The only other "girl" blessing I heard about was one that actually did give some pretty wild specifics, like that she was going to be a musical talent who traveled the world with her husband, and her husband's position would be significant enough that she would play for dignitaries and so forth. She did end up learning an instrument at a professional level, in spite of teachers telling her she had plateaued talent wise before that. Not sure if she ever married a diplomat or whatever that would be, but yeah I mean who knows what that does to someone mentally if a blessing with that level of promise doesn't "come true" and the only explanation is "huh i guess you goofed up at some point, only god can say teehee."
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I don't think non-mormons quite understand how wealthy the Mormon church is
$100 billion investment portfolio and growing, thanks to that 10% tithe :ancap-good:
What's the class composition of the leadership and the membership more broadly?
The high ranking leadership is mostly made up of the bourgeoisie and the petite bourgeoisie. Most of the higher ranking leaders come from the original settlers who colonized Utah, and therefore have that generational wealth from families who run industries in Utah (think the Romneys and Huntsmans). At the ward level (wards are parishes in Mormon speak), the clergy is unpaid, but it's generally run by PMCs and small business tyrants who have the time and energy to do it for free. Mormons believe in Prosperity Doctrine, so the guy who has a successful used car dealership is obviously the best pick to be the bishop.
In the US it's 100% petit bourgeois/pmc. In developing countries you get a few working men. All men, no significant female positions of leadership.
what percentage of mormons would you think have a sincere belief in, and relationship with god and religion vs mechanical duty religion?
Mormonism is a very all-or-nothing type religion. If you don't meet all their standards, you're ostracized pretty quick. I think leads to a lot of the "cultural" religious types to quit, leaving mostly true believers. Members call the mechanical duty religion types "Jack Mormons", so they do exist, but I'd say it's like a 90-10 split.
Mormons have a pretty tightly knit mutual aid network. Any time someone needed to move, or build a fence, or do anything like that, you could reliably count on like half the neighborhood to turn out to help. This generosity doesn't extend to non-Mormons. It definitely affected my politics. I think if Mormons genuinely practiced what they preached without all the Prosperity Doctrine bullshit, they'd be communists.
Also Trax and Frontrunner are ok if you live within a 5-10 minute walk from a station, otherwise you have to drive to a parking lot to wait for a train, which sucks. They don't run very frequently outside of business hours though. I lived for a long time without a car in Salt Lake though, so it's serviceable.
This generosity doesn’t extend to non-Mormons.
In my experience as a non-mormon (far from Utah, fwiw) that's not true at all. I've met some very lovely Mormons who are very open to being part of the broader local community.
I'm glad that you've had a positive experience with Mormons. I think the thing that makes the difference is whether you're in Utah, which allows Mormons to be super insular. Outside of Mormon HQ they have to play a little nicer.
