Baby Gods: How Mormon Doctrine Leads to Abuse
I was raised in the Mormon church. I attended services weekly until I was fifteen. Generations of my family on both sides were LDS. So I know their rules and beliefs. Aside from Scientology, they are the most messed-up and dangerous mainstream cult in America. Probably the worst thing about it is the way in which it shapes young men into abusers, rapists, and child molesters, because it encourages treating people as things.
Like all monotheistic religious traditions (particularly Catholicism and all of its bastard children), LDS doctrine is all about male exceptionalism; Mormon men are told that when they die, they will become gods. That is their destiny. Mormon women are told that their entire existence must revolve around giving her husband anything he wants and obeying his every command, and then bearing his “spirit children” for all eternity. (Why would any woman want to be a part of a church that relegates her to being a celestial brood mare for all eternity?) Young Mormon women are taught from the age of about twelve that their goal should be finding a husband and bearing his children. They are taught that their bodies are not their own and given a strict set of rules to adhere to so that they can go to this “reward.” They taught us makeup tips at the age of thirteen. Young women in the Mormon church are actively sexualized, and it teaches young men that women’s bodies exist solely for their pleasure.
The church also teaches men that their wives and children
are their property, to be used or abused entirely at their whim. As a result, child
molestation and domestic abuse is rampant in the Mormon church. I would let a
drag queen babysit my granddaughter any day, but there is no way I would leave
her alone -at any age- with a Mormon bishop or a Catholic priest. This is
because those men do not respect any girl or woman’s bodily sovereignty. These
are the same churches that are pushing to outlaw abortion. They cannot wrap
their minds around the idea that women own their bodies.
If you dig a little, you can find some dark stories about
the kind of men that the Mormon church tends to produce. I have seen firsthand
the entitlement and the abusive behavior some of the most devout Mormon men
engage in. There are a few who are genuinely nice guys, just doing their best.
But they are shackled just as much as women are by the pressures and
expectations and unearned adulation. “Boys will be boys” hurts boys. It
prevents them from growing into good men. Boys need to be taught to respect
women, to honor their bodily autonomy, to treat others with kindness and
compassion. They need to be taught that
kindness requires more strength than cruelty does. We also need to encourage
children to speak up if they are being harmed, that people who hurt them will
tell them that the most awful things will happen if they tattle, but they are
lying. The reason these predators go after young children is because little
kids believe what grownups tell them.
Have you ever been part of the LDS church? Are you aware of
the profound problems with its doctrines and practices? Did any of this change
the way you see the religion?
Post-Script: Here's what I think: Joseph Smith ate some
mushrooms in the woods and was in fact contacted by a kind of “god,” which are
just pockets of independent sentience -not necessarily benevolent ones- within
the vast matrix of collective cosmic consciousness. He did receive a message, but
he was corrupt and he twisted and warped it out of true so now the statement: “You
shall become as god” was completely misconstrued into the monstrous cult it has
become. That “deity” was one of millions of such coalescences of thought, but
young Joseph had been brainwashed to believe that there was only one god in the
world. Then he decided that only men would become “as god” because he was a
product of the patriarchy and that women’s purpose is exclusively to bear
children. This strict division of gender roles would become the worst thing
about the cult. I imagine Joseph Smith
got a nasty shock when he died.
If you want to know more about how the LDS church handles accusations
of sexual misconduct:
https://wasmormon.org/question/does-the-mormon-church-protect-sexual-predators/
All of those links can be found by asking Google about
Mormon child sex abuse. There are multiple lawsuits against the LDS church for
covering up for child molesters.
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