I've gotten used to living in my own exmormon bubble while surrounded by TBMs. I'm genuinely surprised when TBMs know anything about anything. Usually the unsavory happenings, the stuff that makes the exmormon sphere buzz, doesn't penetrate the general consciousness of Mormonland. When it does, it's only because it was something so stupidly audacious that the rest of the world did a double take and the newspapers commented.

"Staged"... what, the gay agenda strikes again? Did a 12 year old girl not bravely come out of the closet and own it proudly in front of her ward? Did something else happen? Was I tricked? My roommate pointed out that it was recorded in a chapel. Faithful Mormons don't violate the sanctity of a chapel.

So that's probably what he means: the girl had at least one accomplice, the person recording, and they were both faithless apostates out to stage a little show to wound the church. That's always what it's about. Because otherwise everyone would just sing ceaseless praises to the man who communed with Jehovah.

I'm reminded of when I first learned about Ordain Women. I was used to dismissing 1, 2, or 3 people at a time as trying to "stage" something to hurt the church. But this was hundreds. Would hundreds of women show up and politely request more rights if they didn't have testimonies? I waited with bated breath to see how many women in the church Ordain women really represented and how the Brethren would respond. The Brethren must have been waiting anxiously as well to see how far this went, and when they were confident it was only hundreds, and no more, they asked Ordain Women to cease and desist and disband. They did not, and the church's hawks descended on the poor souls on cue. Kate Kelly was exxed. Everyone else was chased out of the church or back into silence. The general membership satisfied themselves that it had all been "staged" — that no one involved there really had a testimony at the time and they were just there to hurt the church however they could because that's what apostates do, according to popular myth.

I don't know how to dusrupt this perpetual self-gaslighting that TBMs do to themselves. They will only hear criticism from one of their own but once you start criticizing them, they don't count you as one of their own for very much longer. Always busy trimming away more dissenters while telling themselves that the church has never been bigger. They can't see that they themselves are the reason the world thinks they're bonkers.

Consider this irony: the church pushes the image of Joseph Smith as a young teenager, because why would a young teenager put themselves out there for criticism unless it was for something that meant everything to them? Now, it's all a lie. Joseph was 17 when he had his first vision according to his 1832 account and it was significantly different from his 1838 account. In the telling and retelling the first vision story, Jospeh's cheeks got rosier and his innocence more obvious so that anyone who criticized the story would appear a son of a bitch. Because it is powerful when a young person knows who they are and stands up and owns it. The church holds up the image of a sincere young teenager to draw people into the church, but if you actually are a sincere young teenager boldly asserting your self-esteem, they turn off your mic.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/18/2017 09:08AM by Cold-Dodger.

What I'd like to know is why the guy sitting behind her at the podium waited so long to ask her to sit down?

He let her go on and on for quite a while. She nearly got her entire scripted talk in before he turned off the mike.

It was "staged" by virtue of her having written it. No one writes down their testimony before delivering it.

It wasn't meant to be a testimony. It was meant to disrupt the F&T meeting. Because she is considered a child people will minimize it and otherwise disrespect her for sharing what she did.

I hope for her sake her parents are doing the right thing by removing her from that unwholesome environment that teaches intolerance instead of acceptance for the person she is.

I assume "the guy" (he is the 1st Counselor in the bishopric and was presiding in this F&T meeting) was so stunned that he was frozen for a while he tried to figure out what to do.

And if one reads the transcript, she didn't mention the word "lesbian" until she was a few paragraphs in, while up until then it had been an unexceptional talk about "how God made me" brown-haired and freckled and so forth.

After she said the L-word, it actually didn't take too long for the hammer to fal.

Good points and well-written, Cold-Dodger! Thanks.

At least they are talking about it.

She along with her co-hort/s, are probably counting their YouTube hits as we speak.

I hope she gets counseling on her way out of there. She's going to need support not found at the morg.

I suspect she was encouraged by adults. She may have even been pressured. I could be wrong, but most kids her age are not likely to make a public announcement of such things on their own. Regardless, the way the church behaved by cutting off her mike and making her sit down was just plain wrong.

Like when I told people that Jeff Holland admitted in a 1993 conference talk that Smith translated the BoM by placing a rock in his hat. At first people didn't believe it, but when I pulled it off the website, the just said that the church's website gets back all the time.

And the rest of the three hour service was spontaneous and improvised.

Ha ha ha...good one.

Conspiracy theories!

Then the dude said the rest of the ["testimony"] 'meeting' would be (a regular Sunday) "callings"/ TALKS (not listens).

M@t

So many people stand up and give made up emotional testimonies for attention or for some other selfish reason. I have, just like some of you, heard some wacky, crazy, mentally gone people, go over the top in F&T meeting.
A 12 year old girl shares her true feelings,(truth) something not often heard over a LDS lectern and they shut off the mic. I find that ironic.

We don't know what the girl was feeling. And how do you know that 'true feelings, (truth)' is not often heard in LDS sacrament?

You don't.

Part of our 'bare your soul' culture with Disney stars coming out at 14 years of age, social media stars, confessions via YouTube, Whisper, etc is over-sharing, especially one's sexual preferences at the time.

She shouldn't be hailed as a heroine as we simply cannot know what the heck she was thinking nor feeling.

I don't think it is far-fetched to think that someone or more than one someone in the audience might have heard the direction her testimony was heading and popped out their phone to take the pics---not as a set-up.

Nor do I think it is far-fetched to think that a young person, deciding to share how they are thinking might have realized it was going to be tough to get up and extemporize such important, impactful ideas, and therefore think it out and write it down ahead of time.

I'm almost 70, and I don't feel all that brilliant socially a lot of the time, and I almost always write out what I want to say if it is important to me and I want to do my best to convey the ideas as accurately as I can.

I believe that being connected, belonging, is possibly the most important of human needs---that in fact, probably only air is more urgent, if not more important. I remember at just about that age making the conscious decision that if I had to dress a certain way for kids to like me, then I didn't need to be their friend. Maybe this girl made a similar decision: to be who she feels like she is openly, and see who stays as her friend.

Good for her, if so, and I hope she finds some who are, starting with her own family.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/18/2017 10:40PM by relievedtolearn.

Irrespective of whether her message delivery was "staged," or whether she was strongly encouraged by someone to do what she did, TSCC has a rebellion on their hands.

And I love it.