I thought the topic of this post would get some attention. Too bad it hasn't happened yet.... (with possible exception of Jeffrey Holland's brief admission about throat slashing,on video a few years ago) because the mainstream media refuses to reveal dirty mormon secrets to the public, least they offend the mormons. In another post, some people argued that the mainstream media does not protect the mormon church. Why have we never seen the first, second, or third token of their respective priesthoods, along with their accompanying name, sign, and PENALTIES, on primetime TV, acted out for everyone to see? I guess that threats of body mutilation as a means of murder isn't something that's fit for primetime TV, especially when your friendly neighborhood church is the one issuing those threats. Any reporter over recent decades could have had the scoop of a lifetime, if not for their editors who never allow this true information to be released to the public. By having numerous documenraries about the mormon church on TV and leaving this out of all of them (even the ones that pretend to be critical of the church), it is clear that the mainstream media does protect the mormon church. In many cases, the mainstream media is the mormon church.

Maybe another Headline could be "Mormon Ostracism of Blacks From Most Fellowshipping Until 1978". Once again, there are many television documentaries that explain the pre-1978 priesthood ban on blacks in the mormon church. Through lies of omission, they make it look like the only affect of the priesthood ban on blacks was that there could not be black leaders of congregations (as would be the affect in most protestant congregations). Not even one of the TV documentaries that I've seen has ever explained the nuances of not letting a father give blessings to his own children, and not allowing black teens to go on temple trips with their peers to do baptisms for the dead. The significance to mormons of the priesthood in every aspect of daily life is never discussed in context of how utterly the entire black race was shut out of mormon fellowship. Why isn't this ever discussed in TV documentaries?

Mainstream Media, where are you when we need you? Quit covering up the lies of omission. Produce a real and honest docementary. Make it fair. Make it honest. Don't leave these terrible things (and a lot of other bad but true things) out. These truths are supposed to shock the public because these things are truthfully awful, and without excuse.

Am I the only one here who feels this way?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2018 12:35PM by azsteve.

I agree!

Maybe it's a risk/reward thing?

They know who is going to be offended and they then have to wonder if it would attract enough viewers to make it socially or commercially profitable.

They attack Hillary. They attack Trump. Don't get me wrong here, they're attacking both sides and this is not a partison comment. Why not attack these pricks that once ran the mormon temple death threat / body mutilation threat brainwashing machine? Maybe Lot's Wife was right. No one would care. Who cares if your church issues death threats when there are real teenagers killing wholesale in the highschools?

School shootings in Utah will always be dwarfed by teen suicides driven by dysfunctional church policy.

Mormonism is tame until you have to put your kid in the ground.

There's some pretty serious egocentrism going on here.

Our concerns are not the world's concerns, not the nation's concerns. Who cares about the teachings of Scientology or the JWs or even the Jonestown cult or that little group that killed themselves when the comet passed the earth? People may be interested in bad that are happening right now and have national implications, like Rob Porter, but even most Mormons don't care about past teachings.

And as for the "mainstream media," why are you only focused on that? Have the non-mainstream media--Breitbart, Mother Jones, Huffington, etc--covered the temple ceremony before 1990? No. Why not? Because there is no money in it for them either. What you mean is that the "media" have not covered your particular interests.

If you want someone to write about the blood oaths, that is more the bailiwick of historians; it is not in any way "news." Yet even very few researchers will spend their time on such esoterica because even people with historical interests find Mormon minutia irrelevant or just boring. If you want discussion of the oaths, it exists--just not on any bestseller lists.

The mainstream media set the directions for society. If some guy that no one had heard of says something controversial, no one cares. If the same thing is in the mainstream, people care. They decide whether or not to associate, whether or not to spend money in certain ways, whether or not to discuss it with others. The mainstream media has given the mormon church a free pass on a lot of bad things.

To Lot's Wife - have you ever been through that ceremony yourself? How did it make you feel about your church, and about your fellow church members, about life itself? Have you ever lied on behalf of your church, or told others who you care about that they should go through this same ceremony too, knowing yourself what they will be exposed to? Oh no? Then I guess you just don't know what the hell you're talking about. This is not esoteric, it's what the mormon church has done to a lot of people here. The people who seem to handle it the best are sociopaths.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2018 07:20PM by azsteve.

You make a lot of assumptions about me, many of which are incorrect. You should consider whether you feel comfortable stating so stridently things you know nothing about.

As for the media, you twist yourself in pretzels. Things you dislike are all blamed on "the mainstream media," be they political or religious. You say the mainstream media set the agenda, yet is MSNBC or CNN really more "mainstream" than Fox News in today's world? Of course not.

Moreover, you still haven't answered the question why people should care about Mormonism. It is your obsession, and perhaps mine, but we are rather extreme outliers. When a cult starts to lose its appeal, people stop paying attention. You seem to want the church to disappear and yet expect the big commercial news outlets to treat it like it really, really matters.

To Lot's wife. It should have been easy for you to answer the question about whether or not you went through the pre-1990 temple blood oaths. Instead, you remind me what little I know of you. That's a classic 'church owns me' response if I ever saw one, considering the question I asked (another version of "we don't talk about our temple ceremonies"). You are an intelligent person. I don't/can't know much about you other than from what you express here in writing. Why be so elusive and in the same expression act like no one else cares? Most people here look for healing, not so much to prove to others what they know. So what brings you back here like many of the rest of us if you're above it all?

And to answer your question, I don't just want the church to disappear. I want to see it destroyed by the same people it has victemized. I would take it just disappearing over existing and thriving. But to see it proven wrong all the way to its own destruction would be so much more fun.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2018 10:20PM by azsteve.

I assure you, AZSteve, that I am not above it all.

I would love to see the church go away and stop hurting people. On a visceral level it would be rewarding to see the people who hurt me and my loved ones experience some retribution as well.

But I would rather that it just went away and stopped hurting new people. The sooner it is forgotten, the better.

Only a tiny number of people ever get into the temple, a fraction of total baptisms and not even all BICs... to have gone through pre-1990, you would likely have to be in your fifties or above to have much experience of throat slashing... so it's no wonder hardly anyone talks about it. You have to be part of a minority, likely elderly too.

50+ yes, elderly no. Unless you've had your life ritually threatened by those who you trusted, in a religious ceremony, with threats to mutilate your body in painful ways while you are still alive and as a process of your own murder if you ever reveal their secrets, you probably can't relate to the significance of these terrible oaths. To act like this is no big deal and to give the church a pass because they didn't do it to you, doesn't make much sense.

How many people if they only knew, would think this behavior is acceptable?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2018 07:11PM by azsteve.

I began going to the temple in the mid-70s. I never took that stuff literally or seriously. It was a game with some religious symbolism.

Hi Justin, things that didn't seem to matter then probably messed with your mind more than you know. By the way Justin, what is your temple name? Mine is Mormon (literally, that is really my temple name except I did resign). Afraid to share it? Even in an anonymous forum? How many people at work know about these kinds of oaths you've taken? Just curious? Please elaborate here for us...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2018 07:29PM by azsteve.

I've been right up front, from the start, that I found the temple experience to be a joke. And as I commented on another thread, the people in the temple, and mormons in general, only have the power over you that you give them.

Had there been stories of bodies found with their throats cut and their bellies sliced open, perhaps my laughter might have been muted...

I think my temple name was... Jethro

Mine is my user name shortened.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2018 08:13PM by abby.

I wonder if anyone has been given the temple name of Lucifer. That would have played with someone's head. Assign him a temple name of Lucifer and then kick him and a third of the other Endowment-goers out of the session.

The mainstream media probably could not care less overall about the LDS church and their weirdness. The church is laughable and I think a good description is Scientology Light. They are probably aware of how doctrine has changed throughout their history in order to remain relevant. They probably look at the temple oaths like the Catholic sacraments, partaking of the body and blood of Christ.

I had a bad temple experience for other reasons (post slitting the throat oath).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2018 08:12PM by abby.

Yes, media doesn’t care cause not enough people care. It’s a non story, period.

I think there’s some truth in the notion though that the media does set the tone. If MSNBC or Fox news or CNN wanted to do some expose about the secrets of the Mormon Temple or something, I’m not sure that it would necessarily be a ratings grab, but I’m sure it would generate some uncomfortable attention for the church. But like people said, I think stuff like that is not particularly popular. Stuff like Scientology is much more controversial and has more popularity for media consumption because of its associations with Hollywood,because of a direct correlation to scandal, deaths and so on.

Not that Mormonism has not been scandalous or had correlations direct or otherwise to deaths, à la the mountain meadows massacre.I think compared to the nuttiness of Scientology, in my Opinion Mormonism seems relatively tame.

It may be a non-story today. But it just amazes me that in 1990, when the church actually abandoned these parts of their so-called eternal ceremony, that no one except Deborah Laake was talking about it publicly. And for those who didn't happen to read her book, they didn't hear it anywhere. I mean, you literally had a secret with at least hundreds of thousands of people in-on it, the secret had to do with death threats coming from a mainstream (at the time) church, and virtually nobody was talking about it. No one was on TV saying "they probably changed the ceremony because it creeps people out to have their church routinely issue threats of body mutilation/murder against them. Especially when the church is always talking about the sacredness of the human body".

To not talk publicly about those repulsive, offensive, soul-crushing practices is just amazing. The reason that it is amazing is that it actually worked. Hundreds of thousands of people who had received those threats were afraid to talk about it. So to stay safe, they kept their respective mouths shut, all hundreds of thousands of them. That is absolutely amazing. It actually worked. And the mormon church is not damaged much because of it, when they should have been publicly exposed, publicly shamed because of it, and to where pretty much every average member of the public today would shake their head and say "that's that church with the (or that used to have) death threats and body mutilation threats against those who took part in their temple ceremonies". Response "oh yeah, I saw that on TV. That was really creepy". But no, the mainstream media gave the mormmon church a free pass on that.

To this day, most mormon church members, not to mention virtually all of the general public, are ignorant about those mind-controlling, repulsive tactics that were routinely used on the church's most loyal members, even if 28 years ago. The average church member today would never believe that their church would ever be capable of doing what they actually did do. When I go to Disneyland and pay for an e-ticket ride, I want my moneys-worth it damn it, not psychological trauma or at best (something really bad that I am not allowed to talk about). I don't want the train to travel a few feet and everyone told to get off the train, 'and if you ever tell anyone about this day, we're going to cut your throat open and tear your innerds out'. When it's your church that does this, it's worse. Then, everyone goes out in to the amusement park, talking about what a wonderful ride that was, encouraging everyone else to try it too. Others go and take that ride and they too claim that it was wonderful, inspirational, and sacred. No one mentions the death threats or says that this ride made them feel sick. To this day, everyone keeps their respective mouths shut (hundreds of thousands of them, if not millions of them), and acts like there is nothing important to talk about. That's really messed up.

Meanwhile, the mormon church today enjoys prestige and influence in communities world-wide. People naively donate money to the church. The church receives huge on-going tax breaks because they qualify as a religion according to the IRS. These men who run the church have all been through that ceremony. They live in ivory towers, well taken care of, with millions of followers who praise them. A death threat on their own respective lives at least twenty-eight years ago is a small price to pay for the lavish lives they lead now. So they justify everything. The church is immune from ever needing to admit that their "sacred" ceremonies were wrong and psychologically harmful, and exploitive. People keep donating money to them. For the most part, the media leaves the church alone and gives them credit every time the church stages something that might boost the ratings. One hand washes the other, especially in cases where the church owns the media outlet.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2018 06:27AM by azsteve.

My husband and I went through the temple for our first time in 1983. For the next seven years, we dutifully went back once/month to perform those death oaths/penalties for those who were already dead. Because we (especially myself) were brainwashed, I made myself think that those oaths/penalties were the same things done in Solomon's temple, so it must be okay. Then they were removed in 1990,and the reason they were removed, I heard from others, was because the ceremonies needed to be "softened". It wasn't until I read "Blood of the Prophets" by Will Bagley that I learned about the connection of the murderers in the MMM and the death oaths and penalties that they made to each other and the penalties that were mimicked in the temple. I wish the "mainstream" media would expose this and the truthful, historical details of the MMM.

In full disclosure, the media might want to also address the little know aspect of the church practice of the second anointing. I wonder what percentage of the members of the church realize that the practice of quaranteeing exhaltation is available to only a select, few leaders of the church. The church keeps this secret, not only from the public, but also to its general membership. It has cult overtones all over it.

So far, Topics in the Television Documentary Should Include:

1.) Routine death threats / body mutilation threats against its own members
2.) Complete ostracism of the entire black race from fellowship / and curse of cain
3.) Truth about the Mountain Meadows Massacre
4.) The second annointing / guaranteeing godhood to certain people

Is there anything left out here that should be included? Looks like we have enough here already for the first half of a good two-hour documentary. What about the mormon money flow and no disclosure to anyone, even the church members, about how their donations are spent? How much is a GA's so-called "stipend" in this unpaid ministry?



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2018 11:05AM by azsteve.

I disagree with the opinions stated here that there isn’t a potential, underlying public interest in these issues - and that is why the media does not address them. For heaven’s sake, these issues have provocative overtones all over them! Think media attention to Scientology, or O. j. Simpson. This morning both issues are STILL being covered by the news. Are we saying that the media could not generate ratings by addressing these issues, when public figures like Steve Young and Orin Hatch belong to a church that is aligned to them? Hmmmm -

I wonder if Oprah Winfrey would be interested in interviewing me on TV about this? I would probably do such an interview if a fair and honest mainstream host wanted to take the time to discuss these issues with me in prime time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2018 11:20AM by azsteve.

Include a fifth item on the list to discuss with Oprah - belief in spiritual/eternal polygamy. Her audience would love to know about that - particularly since the new prophet of the church currently practices it.

I believe the Death Threats thingee started with Joey's demise.

Weren't Mormons obligated to avenge Joey's death to 4 generations?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2018 12:51PM by GNPE.

Yes, before the church ended the temple death threats in 1990, they had already ended the "oath of vengence" in the temple, several years earlier. The Endowment ceremony at one time included also, tearing your tongue out by the roots, and having birds feast on your spilt-open innerds. But that oath of vengence was supposed to last for four generations. Temple goers were required to pray ceaselessly for vengence against the United States, and to teach the same to their children until the fourth generation. The vengence was against the United States government and people, for the death of Joseph Smith. I don't know when the penalties quit being as graphic, or when the oath of vengence ended. I doubt that anyone alive today went through those ceremonies with the more grusome penalties, or the oath of vengence.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/2018 12:10AM by azsteve.