Jk. They probably could.

Just capitalizing on any chance I get to dress as least Mormon-y as possible these days.

To the women taught we could be walking pornography, endowed with the power from on high to control the thoughts and actions of men:

Fuck
That
Shit.

Our shoulders and legs and stomachs and clavicles deserve to be seen and shown and treasured and valued exactly as much as we do or do not wish. This decision, of displaying skin in celebration of our bodies? May it forevermore be ours and ours alone.

“My body may be a temple but I am the god to whom it is devoted. Do not presume to tell me how I may decorate my altar.”

(Edit: Reddit. I beg of you. Please install the feature to edit post titles, at least once, after they are posted. “ . . . they MAY take our [shoulders]. MAY.”)

If anything will be done about it remains to be seen, still it's nice to be vindicated

I was just reading something and it got me thinking about the few things that we were allowed to do as kids but weren’t supposed to tell anyone in church about. My grandmother (who I grew up with) was an absolute true believer and super Mormon. We followed all of the basic rules with the exception of a couple of Words of Wisdom guidelines. My grandmother was diabetic, so fast Sunday was out. Which meant we could all skip it. Granny loved her Tab, which was a diet soda with major caffeine. Again, it was hard to find diet soda that she liked, and so her medical condition allowed it. The rest of us drinking diet Mountain Dew was therefore allowed. This was the seventies, water was not a beverage anyone considered 😂

There’s one more that isn’t so much a rule as it just seemed to me at the time to be completely hypocritical, especially since I wasn’t allowed to go watch the movie Grease when it came out in the theaters. I did see it, but that’s not the point. I had a strict bedtime, so that Granny could stay up and watch Benny Hill. Granny immigrated from England when she was fifteen, and I’m sure it made her feel closer to her birthplace. However, Benny Hill often had women in bikinis and sometimes topless. It was just a lot of misogynistic jokes, and sometimes actually funny stuff too. Now it’s funny to think about, but got me wondering, what kinds of things were you guys allowed to do growing up that were not exactly approved by the Church?

Anybody have any funny bishops stories/interview questions?

Before I got married, my (now ex) wife and I were having issues with the law of chastity (because we are human and that’s what our natural bodies want to do), so we were frequenting the bishops office. When we got close to the end, right before we were going to get married, he gave us a bunch of unsolicited sex advice and tips and tricks on positions, etc. it’s absolutely crazy they’ll just let completely un qualified men be responsible over people and young adults in such crucial times in their lives. While I believe there are good people in the church, this should not ever be a topic of discussion. Thank god my kids will never go through this.

This honestly made my blood boil. Sent to 12-18 year olds. Reads like the Nancy Rigdon happiness letter. “Ignore your intuition, what might look false is true. Satan is trying to deceive you. Who can you really trust anyway?!? Here’s some optical illusions that will help you distrust your gut when you see things that CLEARLY show you the church isn’t true…”

Hey MFMC…if your church was true you wouldn’t this absolute horseshit in your youth magazine. Freaking cult garbage. Ughhhhh.

Imagine how interesting it would be if Bruce R. McConkie became President of the LDS Church—just the sheer amount of damage control they’d have to do.

You already know the PR cadence would be nonstop: “It was just his opinion. He was speaking as a man.”

McConkie's "dOcTrInEs" are already a headache to Mormons. Imagine if he taught and instituted them as a President.

The McConkie talks are awful for their rebranding in order to try to appeal to Mainstream Christians.

McConkie's also probably spinning in his grave right now.

While he was reactionary asf, I can't help but find the church's departure from his ideas to be fascinating.

The people pushing these conspiracy theories (thanks to YouTube Channels such as We The People Utah) want us to believe that Satanic Ritual Abuse is real the same way the LDS Church wants us to believe their church and the Book of Mormon is divine and true.

They don't want to give us physical, tangible, investigatable evidence that satan worshipping cabals are ritually abusing children for special powers the same way the LDS Church cannot give us evidence anything in the Book of Mormon is more than 19th century spiritual fiction based on the Bible.

They just want to give us stories, and then ponder on our feelings to see if they're true. I'm sorry, that's absolutely bullshit.

Sorry, it takes more than spooky stories, "witnesses" claiming on words alone what they've seen is true, and feelings/vibes to believe that what you're saying is true.

It all boils down to lack of evidence and the philosophical burden of proof. It's annoying that this shit is having a resurgence online for political and spiritual clout by self proclaimed God warriors, both on the believing and non believing forums.

I need to stop fighting with the SRA pushers online but people also love to eat this shit up. I'm not trying to be callous towards victims of sexual abuse which makes talking about this topic candidly hard.

However at the end of the day, there has never been any credible evidence EVER produced of organized groups sacrificing, mind controlling, and molesting children for special powers on satanic altars in Utah. Full stop. No, some lady sharing a sad story online is not evidence of these organized satanic cabals mind-controlling children either.

Nevermo, but reading a lot of Joseph Smith's writings for something else and I keep coming across specific instances of him berating someone for killing a non-aggressive snake, using the hunting of prey animals for consumption as one of his MAIN EXAMPLES of what was evil about the Lamanites, clarifying explicitly in the Word of Wisdom that meat should only be consumed "in winter or times of famine"

Like it takes very little reading comprehension to understand that the only reason Joseph Smith himself was not a vegetarian was because he'd have starved.

I'm sure an amount of it is the fact that most mainstream mormons are americans first, capitalists second, and mormons third, but this still feels like an odd thing not to practice.

Just wanted to share that I officially submitted (to quit Mormon) my resignation. I realize my records are still technically there as of this moment but submitting the notarized paperwork feels good. I’ve been out ten years but knew they still have records and info on me. Thinking of the MFMC using me as a statistic in anyway gives me the ick.

My deconstruction process has been long and hard. It may never be over but I think the worst is behind me and now officially resigning feels good, light, freeing. It’s over. 🥹 ehem….

it is finished 😂😂😂

This is the second ad for institute that I've received in the mail, however this time they didn't even say what it was for! The back side had a big address printed and a tiny institute label that had been stamped over, making it hard to read. I didn't take a picture though, as I would have had to black out half of it to avoid doxxing myself.

From Bryant S. Hinckley’s ’That Ye Might Have Joy’. Hilarious double standards.

And I blame him, the church, the bishop and the stake presidency. They talk to him on going into a mission. At first he didnt want to but then he left because it was the "right" thing to do. And now we are stuck with a big debt that specifically my mother has to deal with.

My whole family basically rejoiced him when he decided to go, my grandparents, uncles, aunts and even me. I thought look how he goes into a mission, when I never did. And 2 weeks later he told us about his debt.

Now I feel like a mess and betrayed, I always thought if someone went to a mission then that means that he would be doing his own things and there was nothing to worry about but no. What if he never went and paid of his credit debt like he supposed to but no, looks like God had other plans, serve me and fuck your family.

I had been keeping an eye on FB posts, assuming that I would find out when the funeral was planned for, but it was silent nothing about the death from any family members to clue me in on the funeral plans, but after seeing a new update yesterday, I now know that my family's intent has always been to exclude me, it could have been dangerous to try to just attend the funeral, but it still hurts to not be included - that's another thing I have a problem with about the "family is forever" BS that TSCC dishes out... It's clear now that I have no real family on earth, the only person who gave AF about me was my dad- I'd be happy only if he's the only family member who I have to interact with for eternity...anyone know what the MFMC has to say about what if you have a shitty family and being around them for forever would be legitimate torture & punishment? 🤬😪🤬

Obviously, you can't be Mormon and post about a funeral on social media without including shitty quotes from past General Conferences, so I guess I didn't miss anything by not taking a long plane flight!🙄

The thing about prayer (especially Mormon prayer) is, the answer is inside us the whole time. But if you're stressed or anxious you aren't gonna get anything and just feel more stressed because of it.

But with tarot you can gently get the answer out of you without having to force anything. You can even get multiple answers instead of just one! Mormon prayer seems to tell people "go with the first answer you get" which isn't healthy once you realize that the answers are inside of you and not from a god.

I also like how it has to be an intentional event. I care about my cards so I'm not gonna do it half awake before bed or in front of a cluttered desk. When I feel like i need to do a reading I'll clear space on my desk or make a note to sleep on the worry then read tomorrow with mental clarity.

Also I recommend looking up your birthday cards even though there isn't anything magic about it, since having a reason for personal attachment to certain cards is just useful for introspection.

So this actually came from a reply that I’ve made to a comment earlier from another post about a story from my personal experience, but then it got me thinking and I wanted to tell it.

Many years ago I went on an overnight youth conference that was a couple hours away from where I lived at a college campus. I can’t remember how long it lasted, but it must have been about a week, but I could be wrong. I don’t remember a whole lot though, because I spent most of the time being sleep deprived and I’ll tell you why.

For starters, I knew something was off the first time when I looked at the schedule for activities and classes and I felt something wasn’t right. When I saw the sleep schedule it said it only gave us five hours of sleep from 12 a.m.- 5 a.m. when it was confirmed that it was real, I was like “ you gotta be kidding me.”

All of the days would be spent doing all these activities, but I was mostly tired after the first day. Everybody in my group kept falling asleep, especially me, and I remember the adults would get mad and yell at us, lecturing us why we shouldn’t fall asleep. But I was like it wasn’t our faults. You only gave us five fucking hours of sleep!

Even during an assembly, the speaker got pretty pissed when he saw everyone falling asleep and his yelling actually woke me up out of it. He called us all out on it and said “ why are so many people falling asleep?”

I’ll tell you why good sir: five fucking hours of sleep.

None of us could help how tired we were and our bodies were crying for rest and sleep. We just couldn’t help it.

But then the other time, there was actually only one adult out of all who was pretty chill and understanding about it. When he saw that we were falling asleep in his class, he was nice and just told us to get up and stretch and he stretched with us. He was the first and only one who didn’t give us shit about it, which is why I liked him.

But anyway, looking back, I see these adults getting mad at us kids for being so tired, even though it wasn’t our faults and we had no control over it. I wondered why they weren’t tired either and how they were able to stay awake, since Mormons don’t drink coffee. I wondered if they were also cranky too from lack of sleep, and were probably bitching and complaining about it and just taking it out on us, but who knows.

Even though this was all supposed to be spiritual, or whatever you call it, I don’t I think I ever actually recall learning something from it. Because I was too tired.

I’ve never gone on another youth conference after that and thankfully this was my last one.

I’ve actually heard that once I’ve realized the church is actually a cult, I’ve come to realize that they do use sleep deprivation as a tactic for brainwashing and control and it made me wonder if that’s what they were doing. I think already have the answer to that.

TLDR; I realized that trespassing for Jesus wasn't cool, and curious to hear your experiences.

Picture this... It's nighttime. Two missionaries nervously laughing and dripping sweat, running up stairwells and elevators, evading security guards in a large apartment high-rise.

Why are they running? Trespassing.

This was the game I was taught by my trainer from day one, and I never questioned it.

In Taiwan in the early 00s (can't speak to current day 100%) EVERY missionary did this. Multiple times a day. Common mission practice, as common as street contacting.

Find a high-rise complex (some of these buildings in 2026 can fetch over $100M in market price) that you want to knock out, and you do what you gotta do to get in. ("Families' salvation is on the line" of course.)

The first tactic we would use was ringing residents on the outside building intercom and oftentimes not even saying who we were or what we were doing (cause if they knew we were missionaries, the answer 99% of the time was "no"!) So we would say stuff like, "Uh...please open the door" (hoping we'd pass as a resident who just got locked out.) I regret to say that on occasion I'd even change my voice to sound elderly and confused.

Many buildings had a dedicated security guard(s), and as soon as they saw us trying to go in, the majority of the time they would immediately kick us out. So oftentimes we'd keep a watch out on the guard stations, and when we saw they were off their post, we'd seize the opportunity and haul ass into the stairwell or elevator to get to the top floor asap so we could start knocking out each unit. We always knew this was on borrowed time because a resident would inevitably report us to security and we'd get kicked out. (Of course the resident who ratted us out was the one "led by Satan", stopping "God's work"). We'd even try to get into the same building multiple times in a transfer if we saw there were different security guards on duty. Cause after all, "THAT specific security guard hadn't already told us to leave."

There were certain buildings in each area that were almost impossible to get into undetected, and those were the ones that we would PRAY that we'd coincidentally run into someone on the street that happened to live there, who we could teach. That was usually the golden ticket! If a resident invited us there to teach a lesson in their home, then we had a free pass to bypass the security guard.

It was well understood that once the lesson was over, we were supposed to exit the building, but more often than not, we would just start knocking the floor below our investigator (so they didn't see us knocking on their neighbor's door across from them).

We would knock as many doors as fast as we could before we would get kicked out by security.

We even tried to be smart about it and would purposely be less pushy to the other residents, in hopes they wouldn't report us.

This was all just "the mission" and part of what was normal. It was seen as "faithful" and "hard working" and was viewed as a way to "reach that one person that the previous elders for decades, "hadn't been able to talk to".

Flash forward to last night, I was reminded by a podcast just how problematic and extreme people can be when "God is on THEIR side" or when people believe they are sharing "God's message."

I thought back to these shenanigans, and recognized that at the time, because I was 100% convinced I was doing God's work, that all those "silly rules" made up by lowly security guards pailed in comparison to the importance of me staring into the eyes of a random stranger on other side of the world, and telling them that "in 1820 a 14 boy in New York blah blah" (as if there weren't multiple conflicting versions of that story, even down to the age of the boy).

I look back now and think about how, even from a secular view, how embarrassing that was for the organization (we thought we were the heroes for), being careless kids, trespassing, and trying to be sneaky to get into these buildings. Not a good look. Hell, sometimes residents would ask, "How did you get in?" And the answer without even thinking was, "Somebody let us in" (even if that 'somebody' was yourself).

I even remembered back to writing my buddy, who was serving at the same time in Brooklyn, NY. We would swap these kind of stories, and he told me that he had gotten good at picking lock gates and doors to be able to get into places to tract, and he was often dealing with security guards too.

It got me thinking, what did you do on your mission that was either illegal or gray because "the message was so important at the time"? (Or seen missionaries do)

PS Yes one of those is me in the picture!

I probably look and sound like a total wacko now but I’ve had it with the missionaries being in and out of my apartment building. We have some new immigrant families in our building and I see the missionaries coming and going to their apartments. It’s fine and all if they want to investigate, though it still makes me upset that the church preys on vulnerable people under the guise of “service” to try and trick them into joining. But if they want to talk to the missionaries, that’s fine. Free agency and all, it’s not my life. But now the missionaries are leaving Book of Mormons in the mailroom. You can’t get into the mailroom unless you are let into the building, which is locked to non-residents. So this means they’re not just trying to convert their investigators, but now using the opportunity to be in our building to leave stuff out in our common areas to try and snag other people.

I know most normal people wouldn’t bother to pick up a random religious book left out by missionaries, much less be converted by it. I probably should have just thrown it away. But I’ve read the CES Letter cover to cover and know exactly why that book is not true. So a very upset me decided to summarize and write the points of the BoM section of the CES Letter right on the book and put it back in the mailroom. I feel crazy and know I look crazy, like the dudes who write wacky religious stuff all over their vans or whatever. But I’ve just had it with staying silent about these missionaries coming near my home to try and draw in my neighbors when I know the truth. It hurts my heart to see other people get drawn into such an awful and deceitful church.

I know others have the freedom to seek out whatever religion they choose and it’s not my place to discourage or deconvert them. But I want the evidence found in the CES Letter to be just as available as the BoM itself. I believe all people should have the right knowledge and tools to intellectually engage with this book and not be deceived by the church. But I also feel unsure about going about it like this. Is this too weird and too crazy? Am I being an inconsiderate neighbor? Am I just as bad as the missionaries for leaving this kind of religious material out in a common area?

TL;DR - Missionaries are visiting investigators in my building and left a BoM in the mailroom. I wrote the CES Letter’s points challenging the validity of the BoM on the book and don’t know if I should still leave it out.

Hello! I feel hesitant to post, but ultimately I think I can really use some community and advice from anyone here. Alt account for privacy.

Firstly, I would like to explain some context before this story. I attend church nearly every week but I don’t believe in the church. My family relatively knows where my beliefs are, but no one at my Single’s Ward does. I attend church for the sole reason of my family. They mean more than anything to me, and I go not only to keep my sibling company but as an ode to my parents because I know they appreciate it. It feels like the least I can do for crushing their hopes for me in the church, and I find that attending doesn’t really hurt me in any way and I find keeping structure/spirituality in my life has still benefited me.

Back in January, Bishop texted me asking if I wanted to give a talk. Feeling brave to open up, the response I gave him was as follows: “Hi Bishop!! I’m really sorry but I believe I’m not in a good place to give a talk. I don’t believe in the church so I can’t really promise a lot of what I would say would completely line up with the church’s teachings.” I thought it was direct enough about my stances, and open enough if he wanted to ask about it more or if he was still okay with me giving a talk. But I never got a response back, so I just assumed that I scared him or something. A few months later, he texts asking how I am and I say I’m doing well. I figured he was asking out of formality more than actually caring because that was all that conversation was and we have had no more interactions.

Fast forward to last Sunday where we had the Stake visiting, and Bishop gave a talk. I was only half paying attention until I heard him start to quote my text word for word. He never said my name, but it still made my heart drop. I was shocked for it to randomly appear again after 7 months and I felt blind sighted. (His talk was about how we should love and make effort to reach out to people in the ward, even if they’re different/etc). He followed the quote by saying something along the lines of how and yet I’m still attending this ward or others every week and then proceeded to tell another story.

This really hurt me. I can get over the fact that he didn’t ask me to use me as a story (it would have been nice, but I can get assuming it was okay without permission due to it being anonymous..). What really hurt me and made me feel ill for the rest of church time was that he spun my story into something it wasn’t. Whether intentional or not, by ending that I still attend church weekly, it left a “hero” undertone. Like that I’m holding on to the church even if I still don’t believe, like I’m full of faith for still attending. It hurts because that is not the reason I attend at all, my narrative was shifted into something that benefited his story and the church. Even in Sunday School it was brought up again by another person giving the lesson with that same underlying tone.

All of that to say, I don’t really know how I should proceed from here. I’ve felt so conflicted the past few days, but I’m very good and burying things that bother me until they disappear, so I can probably proceed as if nothing happened. But should I confront the Bishop on this? Would that be rude? Am I blowing this way out of proportion in my head? How have you overcome something hurtful that was said during church? Any insight or thoughts would be helpful. Thank you for taking the time to read this, just knowing people will be aware of my real story, even anonymously, tremendously helps.

Anyone have any stories about how you came out of the exmo closet? Is it better to do it a little bit at a time or do you just rip the bandaid off really quick? I can think of a lot of fun somewhat passive aggressive pictures one could post on SM- Starbucks cup with an iced latte for "Apostate", selfie while smoking, etc!

I'm basically trying to figure out if I ever get the courage to officially get my records removed, would it be better to leave little things towards leaving, or do I wait until I can use the line "Thanks Mom, but I actually had all of my records removed from the church officially a while ago" and risk being sucked back into the cult?

Y'all. Wow. The man pled guilty to abusing two children. For years. And he gets off easy. WTF. Please, view this and share. Also, wasn't sure of the flair, but I am sure of the message.

Most look at this building and think "Holiness". The truth is evil. Evil things take place here on a daily basis. Coverups, payoffs, decisions that destroy entire families and ruin people's lives.

I posted about this yesterday and I think I was wrong. I removed the post to get the ID info off reddit. Here's what I learned after talking to a non member with access to legal info that I don't pay for the subscription for. If he was a bishop in 2018 like it says on floodlit, then he probably was not a bishop in 2024 at the time of the offense. The victim was a member of his home, as DCFS was involved, so it was probably his daughter and the abuse was unlikely to be related to the church in any way. If he wasn't an active bishop at the time of the offense and it's a creeper filming his daughter naked, the church might not even have known about it. It's pretty common in family sex abuse cases for the media and courts to keep things under wraps (the media doesn't have to, but they do out of respect) to protect the victim from being identified in the community and being embarrassed as they are trying to get over the abuse. I think I was wrong about this one.

Anyone else feel that same “savior” energy about people you love still in the church? It reminds me of when I was in it, feeling sad about those who had left.

I just wish my sisters could get out. They deserve so much better than this.

I wish we could have reasonable discussions but they are afraid of them. So we just keep being friends and never discuss the church.

I feel like I keep hearing about more swingers, events and places that are popping up in Utah.

Is Utah the best state for swinging or does it just feel that way?

Curious…would love feedback