I've been living in Utah since I was nine years old. I moved here with my parents from Germany and wasn't really raised around religion What so ever.

Everything was fine through elementary school and middle school up until high school five years ago.

I started going to a charter school in good old northern Utah due to my mother and fathers decision of wanting to take me put of Public school, after I scored incredibly high on end of year testing.

Everything was fine and I was really popular amongst everyone for the first month or so when until people started catching on that I didn't go to seminary. I started to get pestered about religion and learning about Joseph Smiths prophecy. At one point I had to leave school for a week due to falling incredibly ill and came back to find someone had gotten into my locker and left a German book of Mormon and an English one in it.

Once I showed no real interest in wanting to convert I got belitted, bullied and consistently discluded from all aspects of school life.

During my junior year I began to struggle with my sexuality and confided in a TBM whom I thought was a friend. He ended up telling everyone and then i stated to get harassed on the Internet. A girl made a fake Facebook account and led me on for nearly a month before revealing who she was and telling me to go kill myself for being a slur that starts with f and not a daughter of God. The school administration did NOTHING as the principal was a TBM and the girls father is high up in the church and donated a ton of money to the school. I ended up talking to the police after I got physically assaulted by her and another group of girls and that's how things got solved.

Senior year I got into a relationship with a very popular well liked LDS boy. We got intimate and everyone somehow found out (surprise) after he told a friend he trusted. We were both scorned and he eventually left the church but not after humiliating me in front of everyone during senior prom when he called me a name after attending prom with a cookie cutter TBM girl. He's since apologized.

My question is why? I showered this people with kindness and had never experienced anything like it. Three of my best friends are TBM from other states (not Utah) and they're nothing like this.

I'm turning twenty in June and those memories still haunt me

I didn't grow up in Utah, but I would guess that kids in Utah act this way becuase they're taught that they're better than everyone else and simply because they can. If they grew up in almost any other state, they wouldn't have their LDS clique to fall back on. They would realize that their "church" is insignificant in the world. My high school was 0.2% LDS. I rarely saw the few LDS kids that went to my school...none of my school friends were LDS. Try not to let these memories haunt you. Live a full life...and pity the deluded TBM's that never will...

Good advice.

It just breaks my heart because my younger cousin is going through the same thing now.

Southern Alberta is really bad for this. If any non-mos are planning on moving to this area don't move south of Lethbridge.

Mormons in Utah actually have a reputation amongst those mormons not in Utah of being more shallow, more cliquish, and not all of them actually living their own gospel properly.
The problem is, their own gospel teaches a lot of divisive messages, be in the world but not of the world, mormons have to rise above the natural man, and gentiles(another dividing word) do not.
All of these things can lead some mormons to feel very superior, especially with all the talk of chosen generations, saved for this last dispensation, etc, etc.
You've probably heard all this at one time or another, but since you are a good person, you did not feel raised up above others.
Jesus' messages are lost on many mormons since the focus isn't really on him, but on the organization of the church itself instead. (And I'm an atheist, but I recognize hypocrisy when I see it.)

I hope you are able to get past these awful experiences. It really does get better out in the real world. These experiences are very harmful and leave lasting scars, I too am still working on recovering from emotional abuse at the hands of mormons.
Please come here to vent any time. Somebody is always online day or night, and 99% of us can relate. Watch out for trolls though, they come with the territory when it's an open message board like this.

Are you away from Utah now? WE lived there too and you were lucky if you got thru middle school (Jr. High) without being harassed. My daughter didn't. Her English teacher let a debate go on about religion and only my daughter and two others were not Mormon in the class. That is just wrong. You will never survive in Utah if those around you are Mormon or your neighbors are. We were ignored and so were our kids by all things Mormon. Well, the Mormon doggie across the street liked us. Thank goodness we were military and got out before my girls had to go to HS.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2014 07:12PM by honestone.

She was pretty excited about going off to girls camp since her older sister had loved it. Then she heard that her tentmate was going to be the bishop's daughter, a snobby little witch.

It was against camp rules, but my daughter begged to take a single-person tent.

Since we are an avid camping family, we have everything from a minimalist single-person to a tent big enough to hold a revival, so we let her take the single person tent.

She smiled sweetly upon arrival and said, "Sorry [bishop's daughter], there's only room for me." There wasn't any real sorrow on either side - the two never liked each other. We caught some flak from the bishopric about this, but we maintained that our daughter was accustomed to having a room of her own and didn't believe she could sleep if she had a share her personal space.

Apparently girls camp had changed enough by that time that it was more like a sacrament meeting held in the woods than a real camp meeting, so it was never an issue again.

It's so sad.

At least it's comforting to know I'm not the only one whose had these experiences. It really soured me as a person for a while especially after my bisexuality coming out at a time I was emotionally vulnerable.

I'm so sorry about your daughter, I have a younger cousin going through it now and it's disgusting.

You need to get out of UT as fast as you can. I was beyond miserable there, and when I left I stayed awake for 3 days...because I couldn't believe that there actually was and IS a real world out there. Utah is its own little world and it always will be. There is nothing you can do that will change that. My mom who never was a Mormon was constantly harassed and ridiculed by those awful Mormon girls. That was in the 1940s. It will never change. She stayed true to herself and never let them persuade her to join. They couldn't get her to convert and they never let up on the harassment...Fortunately her Dad was in the Army Air Corp so they never stayed in one place for too long. None of what you have been going through is your fault. That is just the way they are. When I moved there in 1990 I was in total culture shock...not that Utah had any culture in the first place, but just that way of life. Everything revolved around "The Church" and since I was NOT a Mormon I was ridiculed as well...well, stupid me, I let a Jack Mormon manipulate me into joining, and before I knew it I was into the cult neck deep. I had to let events get so bad in my life before I woke up and smelled the coffee. At that point I found I liked coffee. ;) Took 19 years, but I left and I am much happier now. Also, I met a lady while in UT and she had just moved into UT and she was from NYC and she was in culture shock as well. SHe asked me WHAT was there to do in UT I said that unless she was a member of "The Church" she would be miserable. She said that she had lived in every borough of NYC to include Queens and the Bronx and she had never seen anything like UT. I told her to get back to NYC as fast as she could, and that I was planning my escape as well. I told her DONT get stuck here like me. 3 months later she did in fact move back to NYC.

Virtually all of the religious persecution I received was at the hands of Mormons, especially my parents. I once had a knife pulled on me in a Mormon church, because a bully thought my hair was too long. My parents told me I followed the devil and warned my siblings not to associate with me.

I know what it's like Stuckinutah. You never get those years back, and it makes you feel cheated. The only way forward is the way out. Make the life you want for yourself, and never, ever trust a moralist.

Utah is toxic.
It's not a normal secular place. Mormonism is ever present, including a counterculture that has its own dysfunctionalities. In Utah you're practically either for the church or against it. If you've been there any length of time, you've been asked about where you stand on Mormonism in some form, whether by TBMs, exmos, or nevermos. Not just Mormons, but almost everybody's treatment of you is affected by your attitude about Mormonism. Most of them don't even realize they're doing it.
In normal secular places, your religion is largely unknown, not assumed. People usually don't ask, and even if they know what your religion is or isn't, it's not nearly the social discriminator that it is in Utah.
I grew up in Utah and left at age 20. I was an active Mormon for almost 20 more years. Even as a TBM I considered my Utah experience to have been toxic. I wasn't proud of being from Utah, even as a Mormon. My non-Utah Mormon in-laws sometimes suggested thinking Utah was a lesser place even in Mormonism.
Utah has along way to go before it's a normal secular place without the overt discrimination based on Mormonism that occurs on both sides. It's such a beautiful place, I wish it weren't so, but for some the answer is, just leave.

Wow Don. I never would have thought that Mormons would pull a knife on someone. And in a "church" of all places. That cult is unbelieveable.

That was in a redneck town in Oregon. Now they actually have Mormon gang members in Salt Lake City. Mormons are not Quakers, make no mistake.

My kids were harassed by the tbm kids in a small redneck oregon town as well...although no one pulled a knife on him, they did lock my son in the bathroom among other things.

I went to high school in utah county, I had a nevermo friend on the wrestling team who only hung out with jackmo's, partied all the time, didn't care what the tbm kids thought and generally gave them the middle finger, thinking back I wish I had hung with that crowd too, but I was too brainwashed back then

I was so happy to leave Utah.

I did not go back. Perhaps it has changed now.

I lived in Logan going to USU. I was happy to escape and finally go back home to Montana.

It gets better.

I'm sitting here crying for all of us. I endured a lot more through my time at school but it's all a blur that I try and block out for the most part.

It's so sickening and makes me so sad for everyone out there whose had to experience this first hand in Utah. It's a comfort to know I'm not alone but it's also disappointing to say the least knowing this is a lot more common than I thought.

The thing that bothered me most and still does is how I was belittled for things I did but you had TBM drinking and sleeping around together. That wasn't talked about. When I did some thing most normal high school aged kids would do though everyone made sure I knew they disapproved.

I'm most thankful that I'm out of high school and have been since I was seventeen but I still see a few of these kids on the regular due to our current school choices.

Ha! I am now registered. This is the same person as the two above responses.

I know exactly how you feel. Feel free to email me. Rubypumped at g mail

Simple. Hive mentality.

Happy that you are able to talk about the disgusting treatment you have received. Keep posting, take one day at a time, and know that we care.

The CULT is Utah Creates BETTER PEOPLE THAN ANY OTHERS ON EARTH!

Gawd, I am happy to be out of the SUCK DICK state..... BYE Utah.. I miss you as much as I'd miss gonorrhea.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2014 02:31AM by verilyverily.

Yeah, I'm in Utah right now and let me just say, it sucks big time. I can't believe how much I hate it here. I'm only here because I needed to flee an abusive relationship last year. (I was definitely suffering from Stockholm Syndrome) I had left my-legally married- wife last year. If I could, I would move back to Germany, which I was born there, and NEVER come back here. I am doing much better since leaving her, and I'm relearning German although it's difficult, and I just want you to know, that things will, and do get better. I'm also saying this as a note to myself. I'd like to try and practice what I preach. Do not give up no matter what. You and everyone else here needs to keep fighting for your own freedom and happiness. It will come.

*Also, on a side note, I'm always interested in people who were also not originally born in the U.S. or from the U.S. I'm not sure why...

I just realized, I'm responding to this much later than the last person who responded. Oh well.

"If I could, I would move back to Germany, which I was born there..."

What is keeping you from doing this?

Have you been Naturalized as a U.S. Citizen or are you still a citizen of Germany?

If this is what you want, work for it and do is as soon as possible.

You might consider moving away from Utah for the present time. Even Colorado would be an improvement for you.

They moved here when he was just starting high school. He became suicidal and so they put him in the Catholic high school.

I couldn't stand Utah, even when I was a Mormon. I thought their self righteous preachy attitude was appalling. It embarrassed me that I was associated with people who acted like that.

Stuckinutah, I am so sorry you were treated so badly. I grew up a TBM in Davis County and other so called TBM 's in my ward and at school were awful to me. I think kids that age just want to find someone they can bully and make themselves feel better. Mormons seem to like to behave that way towards anyone who thinks outside the Mormon box.

I'm so sorry you're dealing with this. I grew up as a non-Mormon in Utah and it sucked big time. My husband and I were temporarily back in Utah after having our first daughter. By the time she was 2 we couldn't stand it anymore and moved to Texas. My husband had no job and we didn't know anyone here. He came down and bought a house and we moved. It was terrifying but I couldn't imagine raising my children in Utah. Moving was the best decision we could have made.

They don't care if you're kind or not. They don't care if you're a "good person" or not. Non-Mormons will always be less than them in their eyes. It sucks.