Once a year I put this back up on the forum for the new people here, and also for review by the old members here. It is a 2003 quote from Paul Toscano, who has always been a real wordsmith. I was privileged to know him right after he got off his mission (2 1/2 year mission to Italy), and I thought, "Man, this guy is SMART!" He always wanted us to ask all the hard questions. It was no surprise to me later when he was kicked out of the church later so publicly and by the highest levels. I posted this last year near my birthday, so I'll probably be doing it about the same time next year.

One of the most helpful quotes ever for me to understand the LDS church:

"[The church] is like a cherished old relative with advanced Alzheimer's disease. The tabernacle stands, but the lights are winking out. The Church is preoccupied with exteriorities. It prizes righteousness over holiness, image over inspiration. The Church is no longer the Saints, but an increasingly judgmental, puritanical, and authoritarian corporate entity.

"It has become an arch conservative culture built on the sand of family and tribal values, with respectability as its chief cornerstone. Its adherents are less like living stones in the mystical temple of God and more like living stiffs in a morgue of quiet conformity.

"Members are relentlessly pressured to strain at gnats by avoiding alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, facial hair, tattoos, body piercing, R-rated movies, public displays of affection, nudity, erotica, masturbation, necking, petting, premarital sex, disrespect or questioning of authority, dissent, and anger, while being constantly encouraged to swallow camels by tolerating elitism, racism, misogyny, lack of intimacy, homophobia, xenophobia, moral superiority, purification by exclusion, institutional secrecy, theological correctness, spiritual abuse, class discrimination, disdain for civil liberties, and the abdication of personal judgment and responsibility."


That last huge sentence ("Members are relentlessly pressured...") is one we should commit to memory.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 09:43AM by cludgie.

Cludgie,I've been around this board,on and off for more than 10 years.This is one of the best descriptors I've read.Don't know how I've missed it-and your birthday! - for so long.

I look forward to seeing the annual posting.

I have missed it too. Don't know how; it's perfect.

Which is precisely why I like re-posting it. I think I've done it at least 3 times, minimum. Not all of us can see everything here, and many of us don't.

Wow -- that sums it up. I have not seen it before either. Clearly a brilliant mind -- no wonder TSCC hounded him and finally threw him out. This is a keeper.

Thanks for the quote! I am responding so that I can always find it by searching:). I liked Toscanos work (both of them) back in the 90s. Don't know where they are now?

Great quote cludgie. Those of us on this site get it, but you show a holier than thou active Mormon this quote and they will say "that's not true". Mormons blinded by the heavenly halo that they believe they wear.

2nd thought: If because of the Essays pouring out from the church and because their is no mass hysteria among the Mormon faithful for mass disaffection then I don't know what to say. The history of the church is there for all to see and even when you show a blue blood Mormon the evidence, they still believe. There is a huge disconnect between reality (evidence) and Mormons faith (feelings). Mormonism is ZOMBIE LAND. BIZARRE at best, CULTISH for real.

Mormons will say they like the lifestyle and I get that. Mormons for the most part are good folks and good neighbors, but if your belief system is built on lie after lie then join the Salvation Army. They encourage a decent lifestyle too. Plus, they give most of the donations to their charitable causes.

Frustrating!

"Most Mormons" have left Mormonism. The percentage of those leaving each year who were former TBMs is increasing. They are losing their "seed corn".

"purification by exclusion"

That's something both Paul Toscano and I have experienced.

I was ex'ed because I was accused by my wife of having extra-marital homosexual sex. When we were still married, my ex-wife asked me to talk to a female friend of hers, an older woman who was a very strong & faithful TBM.

I agreed to talk to her, since I was still trying to cope with believing in Mormonism as a gay married man.

The friend interrogated me about my "deviant activities," and I saw no reason to hide who I was and what I had done. (I feel quite differently now, and wish I'd have simply refused to answer her questions.)

After she had finished her questions, she commented that I would be better off outside the church, not for MY own good, but because the church needed to be pure.

Purification by exclusion.

Yours is a moving story, a reminder of the many broken, clattering parts in the Mormon machine.

My favorite phrase in Toscano's quote is "abdication of personal judgment and responsibility." I'm sure that he means the abdication of personal judgement and responsibility that comes with "follow the prophet--he knows the way," then turning over all one's responsibility for original thought and personal actions to The Brethren. It's one of the most intrinsically evil and soul-destroying things about Mormonism.

Politicians also get people straining at gnats in order to distract the public from the ways the politicians and their masters are screwing them over.