The #Givethanks Anti-Polygamy Posts:

Day 10

It comes down to this.

🍑 The Emperor Has No Clothes. 🍑

➡️D&C 132 exposes the fallacy of Joseph as Prophet, and all those who have taken up his title.

🗣He slips into speaking as God in a supposed revelation that contradicts EVERY other principle or value of “the Gospel.”

D&C 132, emphasizes:

➡️Sexism: Men’s value as dominating agents and women’s value as sexual/procreative objects (Christianity says all are alike before God)

➡️No Agency: men MUST comply, women MUST submit

➡️Power is more important than People

➡️Law is more important than Love

➡️Hubris is redefined as humility

➡️Cruelty is redefined as kindness

➡️Duplicity is redefined as honesty

➡️Adultery is redefined as chastity

➡️Hell is redefined as heaven.

😕And, if Joseph could slip so easily into God-voice for something so clearly not divine, it lays bare his entire method for contriving revelations. 

Furthermore, this issue of section 132 and polygamy alone is enough to discredit every supposed Prophet who has followed him because: 

👉1) instead of recognizing the problems and fixing the issues themselves like, you know, a prophetic person would do, they’ve been flinging themselves backwards–clinging to oppressive, coercive, misogynistic standards of the 19th Century or worse, unless or until the government has forced their hand.

👉2) Even when they have been forced to acknowledge women as people in a legal sense, they have done everything possible to keep women’s voices quiet, their finances dependent, and their hands full of domestic and Church dirty work.

👉3) When they are confronted directly by women who go through “the proper channels” to tell them they don’t like the inequality and request that it be changed, they excommunicate them (and blame the local bishops).

☢️ This toxic stew of Theo-psychology  ☢️ has created a mountain corridor that is leading the nation in all the wrong ways:

🏆Botox: 5th (https://www.groupon.com/articles/most-botox-deals-by-city)

🏆Breast Augmentations –1st and 10th highest for cosmetic surgeries overall ( https://www.yesstyle.com/blog/2019-11-01/which-states-are-most-obsessed-with-cosmetic-surgery-data/ )

🏆Depression–pre-pandemic, women were already twice as likely to be depressed as men ( https://ibis.health.utah.gov/ibisph-view/indicator/complete_profile/Dep.html)

🏆Prescription Drug Addiction (https://www.alpinerecoverylodge.com/utah-drug-abuse-statistics/)

🏆Underpaying Women: they receive, on average about 1/2 of what they should be (https://www.ksl.com/article/50256062/utahs-gender-wage-gap-one-of-widest-in-the-nation-usu-study-shows)

🏆Affinity Fraud–which preys on women and the elderly, especially (https://www.economist.com/business/2012/01/28/fleecing-the-flock)

👆This one is blocked by a paywall, but here’s an excerpt:

“LuElla day, for example, lost $1.2 Million in a deal hatched by Daniel Marrimen, a fellow Mormon she had known for four years. “He’d spoken at out meetings. When I sold my farm, he came and said the bishop had asked him to help me invest the proceeds,” says the 81-year old. He told her the money would go into government debt. The transaction was done on a handshake. Ms. Day never got a penny back.” 

🤷‍♀️I guess, it won’t last too much longer.

If the Climate Crisis keeps being ignored or under-helped, that will end things soon enough. 🌎💔

But, even if things do turn around for the planet,

The Church will have to deal with its truth-crisis.

Before Prop 8,

😳 70% of LDS youth and YSA in America we’re leaving before age 30

😳 80% of the youth and YSA abroad.

(https://youtu.be/FBH045ooaY0?t=360 )

Why?

Spoiler alert: it’s not for coffee. 👇☕️

http://www.whymormonsquestion.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Survey-Results_Understanding-Mormon-Disbelief-Mar20121.pdf

And the numbers after COVID are almost certainly higher. 📶

❤️‍🩹For those of you who are LDS, this means that even if you somehow manage to ignore the looming problems in Church doctrine, history, leadership, inequality, etc, your children definitely will not. 

❌We are at a crossroads as a community–

✳️Do we continue to face this problem separately, pretending that we can wait for the leaders to grrrrraaaaaduuuuuallllly catch on and stop traumatizing the majority of our children, friends, and neighbors?

OR

✳️Do we face it as a group and maybe salvage something of the scrappy, good-hearted network that we’ve built together over these years?

🧗Hopefully, it’s clear by now that I would rather do it together.

But, I realize that’s a long…maybe a very, very long shot.

💧In past years, I thought that all the good things I had in life were thanks to the Church, but studying Church history, doctrine, leaders, patterns, has taught me to put the credit back where it belongs.

💦Now, I #givethanks for the people I met through the Church.

✨I had excellent parents, ✨wonderful youth leaders, ✨kind bishops, ✨insightful Stake Presidents, ✨generous professors, and so many ✨amazing friends.

(“Had” because it’s yet to be seen, if/how many of these people still want to talk to me, now that I’ve trespassed on so many Mormon taboos.🤷‍♀️)

😔Doctrinally, the Church never had much to offer. Every good thing I’ve gleaned from the Church has been better explained to me through Christian preachers. One could argue that Joseph synthesized things in some original ways, but the more I study his life and words, the more I can trace the genealogy of his ideas to his contemporary inventors, theologians, and preachers. His most original contribution seems to have been packaging his cultural milieu into forceful “Thus-sayeth-the-Lord” declarations paired with the assumption that he had a right to insist others treat them as God’s words, too. 🙇🙇🙇

🥸Socially, the Church never had much to offer. For the most part, it just got in the way of genuine acceptance and charity.

🤔Structurally, the Church is a very efficient machine. Not a good machine, IMO, but maybe that could change.

Final words:

I loved being a member in the Church.

💖 Loved the clean fun, 

💖 Loved the scrappy generosity, 

💖 Loved the pure-hearted kindness, 

💖Loved the desire to live honestly (even if we were living on a foundation of lies, the desire was there!)

💖Loved the spiritual experiences I had, 

And I still love all that.

But I don’t give credit to…

❌The Church Corporation

❌The Church Leaders

❌The Priesthood

❌The Doctrine

❌Joseph Smith

for any of the things I loved.

I don’t want to oversimplify this. Discovering that the Church’s fraud sucks.

Especially for someone like me who spent more than 30 years putting every egg in that basket.

It’s taken my husband and I almost 2 years to feel even semi-normal. And even up to 6 months ago, I wanted to believe there was still some way we could make it work. (Some people do find a way, but it’s not happening for us.)

But, when an honest person discovers they are mistaken, they can either choose to keep being mistaken OR to keep being honest.

🌱 I’d rather be honest.

And, there was a consolation prize (for me):

Discovering the Church wasn’t true is how I discovered that my people always had been.

I thought the Church was something other than what leaders, scriptures, doctrine said…because the people I was closest to actually didn’t follow those templates. So, for 33 years, I believed them.

But, eventually you have to reckon with the systems your contributing to and eventually, you have to believe these leaders when they show & tell you that what they care about is power, authority, money, conformity.

It was a tough choice all the same. Not everyone has the privilege of making it.

But I do.

So,

Thanks for the journey, LDS friends.

❤️

PS–I have specifically been addressing polygamy, misogyny, and sexism in the LDS Church, but I realize that these issues bleed over into the Church’s homophobia, transphobia, racism, and mistreatment of men, also. Sending love to all those who have been hurt by these words.  ❤️‍🩹