I didn't want to hijack this wonderful thread.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2272513,2272513#msg-2272513

And I'm sure there are many former Mormons who have no idea what it is like to grow up in a completely dysfunctional and severely neurotic group of people.

But reading the above post I realized that of all the lies Mormonism has promoted and all the history it has hidden and all of the apologetics it has produced its by far biggest lie for me offered with absolutely no apology is that my family can be together forever someday.

Ironically, the most attractive take away from Mormonism is that families of any sort as long as they are traditional ones are worth saving. Take the short lived ban on baptizing children of gay couples. Categorically Mormonism defined those families as not worthy of saving yet no matter what fresh Hell a heterosexually headed family is, they are worth saving forever.

That is a colossal lie and I must underscore this point - not all families are worthy of theological endorsement and embalming. Regardless of any afterlife rebirth into health of a family, stamping the terrible families with certifications of God's approval is a heinous crime against the humanity within these families.

LDS Corp literally is as responsible and possibly more so than as any other factors like alcohol, drugs, irresponsible and reckless abusive behaviors are in supporting and creating codependences in familial relationships.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2019 12:52PM by Elder Berry.

Salvation is an individual matter, Exaltation is a family matter. Russ Nelson
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2008/04/salvation-and-exaltation?lang=eng


I think I'll write Mr. Nelson & ask him what this means in practical, everyday terms;

suppose one spouse attends Every church meeting, pays tithing, prays several times a day, supports all leaders including callings, talks, ... is a very pleasant, friendly, kind & honest person, engaged with church & community:

other spouse robs banks, is a child molester, apostate (but hides all these from other spouse)

what happens with this family?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2019 01:17PM by GNPE.

No one gets out of here alive...

I've yet to meet one dead person.

There’s too much security around the First Presidency.

back in the 1890s just because the U.S. Federal government countermanded a direct commandment from God.

Sorry, God. But all those families created with plural wives pursuant to your command have to be disavowed, disowned and ignored because, you know, a more powerful entity has decided to intervene.

As the official "Teachings of the Presidents" lesson manuals of recent vintage demonstrated, the disavowal and disowning of the families created with those "lesser wives" continues to the present day. Only the government-recognized spouses of the erstwhile polygamist prophets deserve to be noted and mentioned in any biographical information about those "great" prophets.

The lesser wives and their children were all painted out of the picture...apparently forever in intent, notwithstanding any "sealing" ordinances that may or may not have been performed and which the Church would prefer that people not talk about in any case.

From what I have read, when polygamy was banned, it only affected new marriages. Those who were already in plural marriages before the passage of the law could live out their polygamous lives without any interference from the government. It must have been in later years that someone went back and scrubbed the history clean of polygamy in some families.

The Manifesto did not purport to invalidate existing plural marriages. However, the Edmunds Act did not allow any exceptions with regard to pre-existing plural marriages (i.e. it was illegal for ALL polygamists to carry on married life (cohabitation) with multiple partners). After the Manifesto, many Mormons continued to enter into new plural marriages believing that God's "commandment" was still in effect and there were Apostles who approved such marriages after the Manifesto, which created the impression among many that the Manifesto was just a device to put the Feds off. Those marriages were ultimately held invalid and cause for excommunication.

The Mormon polygamists of course resisted to some extent, but whenever push came to shove, the Feds prevailed. Ultimately, the Church completely capitulated to the point that in recent years the Church goes out of its way to ignore those lesser wives' lives and families as though they never existed...even though a substantial percentage of multi-generational Mormons of today still trace their ancestry back to the lesser wives who had been pushed into polygamous marriages back in the day.

Wally Prince Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The lesser wives and their children were all
> painted out of the picture...apparently forever in
> intent, notwithstanding any "sealing" ordinances
> that may or may not have been performed and which
> the Church would prefer that people not talk about
> in any case.

Could you call Zina "married" to Brigham? I'm a descendent of a "lesser" wife.

Oh good grief yes, the perfect Leave It to Beaver forever family is one of the cult's best selling products.

They also thought-reform you into thinking that "forever family" is what you want. Someone else here phrased it, "inventing the disease to sell the cure". I love that. That's exactly what TSCC is doing.

When I used to believe in religious things, even before I joined Mo'ism, I believed that Christian Heaven meant being able to be with your loved ones, at least being able to fully interact with the ones who were dead and in Heaven too, and being able to watch over and wait for your loved ones still on earth, while you kicked back with ancestors you never met and maybe meet people who have gone down in history like Leonardo da Vinci or Harriet Tubman, even Biblical personalities...Peter, Mother Mary, Doubting Thomas or Three-days-stinky Lazarus, and ask them all the questions you could ever think of. It wouldn't be Heaven otherwise, would it? So when the cult picked me up, I was quite enthusiastic and responsive to "families are forever", like, duh, obviously, God would give us one huge party, right? It already made sense to my way of thinking, so it was a "sign" of the truth of the BoM to me.

But it was a bait and switch. I learned there were things I had to do, say, and money I had to pay God/Church for even getting the privilege to see my kids again eventually. And I'd have to put up with polygamy. And I'd be subject to my husband's will, rather than following my own. I don't think he's that interested in visiting UY Scuti, one of the largest stars we know of. So if he wants to world build, does that mean I can't go pop off to see the stellar behemoth for myself? Probably.

At the time when I was TBM, I never worried or put it together that if my father, my hideous fiendish father, did all those same essential things that the cult says God cares about, I might have to see him, too. And I never imagined until after my endowment that I'd be proximal in the CK to my polar opposite MIL. I never imagined that she and I, and if my father weaseled his way in by greasing God's palm with tithing and wearing his Gs, my mother would be there, too, and we three, together with our celestial sister wives, would all be cranking out spirit children for our husbands' worlds.

There's a dose of cringey cringey, right there. Just, ewwww.

And I'd also have to watch out so I didn't get poached away from GodHubby by JS. I used to be a dish in my 20s, so my resurrected bod might catch his eye. maybe right there while I'm sitting in the judgement seat. Nope. Nope. Nope.

And, and, and...there is so much wrong with this idea that I'd take up 10 pages laying it all out. I'll just part here with one last nail in this nasty coffin, to pin down the point that not all families should be glued together in an eternal unit...a name I will just leave sitting out to perfume the thread with the true essence of Forever Family eau d'TOILET, a designer fragrance by Mo Ism...

Warren Jeffs.

I happen to know the answer to your question, GNPE. I was the virtuous (yet not obnoxious about it) kind, loving, funny, Geisha wife/companion, who obeyed all the cult rules and magnified my callings, etc. I brought in a decent income, was a good mother. My marriage was my top priority. Even my ex-husband said I was "perfect."

My ex husband was a serial cheater, beginning on our first week of marriage. I had no idea that all this adultery and lying was going on, until AFTER the jerk abandoned me and his children. He was a total Narcissist, and didn't care about any living thing. All we knew was that he "didn't love us." He was constantly ditching out of the children's games, school functions, his parents' family get-togethers, reunions, etc., and then lying to us about it. He would stay out until 3:00 am, and then get angry at me, if I said anything about it. It was easier for me to take out the trash cans, prune the trees, take care of car repairs and household repairs, than for me to ask him to help out at all, and bear his aggressive and passive-aggressive outbursts. We all walked on eggshells around him. He began beating me and the children.

What happened to our family? My ex became permanently inactive, and his parents and our ward blamed ME. I was still active, and was the ward organist and cub scout leader for many years, during this time. My TBM MIL told me that "It's the wife's responsibility to provoke her husband to righteousness."

In "such a family" if the erring spouse is the male, he gets off free, and the virtuous woman gets the blame. If it seems unfair that she and her children do not achieve "forever family" status, the Mormons don't see it that way. It is the woman's fault. The marriage was her responsibility, and she failed her husband. My divorced friends and I have all been accused of not giving our cheating husbands enough sex. We were all still attractive, and fun-loving, and young, and when we were cult loose, we immediately were pursued by other men. But, we were accused of being "wild". People wondered about us. We were in the same ward together, and our bishop constantly questioned us about our sex life, which was zero, at the time.

Mormons think divorced women are awful. We didn't deserve eternal salvation or exaltation, anyway. As for our wonderful children, the Mormons said they would have their own chance, IF they got married in the temple, that is.

I have no idea what happens to such a family, if it's the female who is the transgressor. We do know that a man is allowed to marry another, and divorce her and marry another, and as many as he wants, in the temple, so he's covered, as long as he's still a member of the cult when he dies.

It's more about cult rules and cult obedience, than it is about virtue, anyway.

exminion Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's more about cult rules and cult obedience,
> than it is about virtue, anyway.

This statement really hit me hard. I've read your story and each time I'm struck by how damaging Mormonism is in promoting abusive behavior as acceptable.

But "virtue?" Virtue has never been a part of Mormonism.

It was only added to "personal progress" a decade ago.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2009/07/news-of-the-church/church-adds-value-of-virtue-to-personal-progress-program?lang=eng

Like grace it isn't really a Mormon concept. They turn it sexual like they do many things since they are hyper-focused on human sexuality and gender discrimination.

The family into which I was born was no family of mine. Preserve that? I'd prefer non-existence.

Very Zen. I like it. Me too. I'm not yet divorced from them but it is a very lengthy separation.