This was in the SLTrib, and it is probably paywalled, but that really isn't important. Basically everyone here who was born into LDS Inc could finish the letter without even breaking a sweat, based on their own experiences.

Headline for the letter: Who wants a serious chat about grooming?

The opening of the letter:
All of the talk of drag queens grooming kids by singing, dancing and reading story books to them, has brought back some memories of my own childhood.
I, too, was groomed — at age 8.
======================

And it goes from there. The author seems to have been in a part member family and stepmother was a Mormon. At least that's how it sounded. Baptism and confirmation was kind of sprung on him cold. His description of it was rather like the experience Nightingale has related here.

He had an uncle that joked at the after-baptism party that all his sins were now forgiven. The only sin he was aware of was shoplifting an orange, and this seemed like a lot of hoopla over an orange. :))


I too was carefully groomed - to never turn down a calling, to bear testimony, to pay tithing, to go on a mission, yada yada yada. We all know the drill. Each person's details differ a bit, but the general game plan is pretty cut and dried. If that wasn't grooming, I don't know what is. Think every Primary song ever.

So I'd say the LDS fear of grooming children is basically projection. They are experts at it.

> So I'd say the LDS fear of grooming children is
> basically projection. They are experts at it.

Bravo, BoJ. The LDS church is all about subordinating one's own conscience to the authority of other human beings, particularly men.

That is grooming both in a sexual sense and in a political one, for adults too must defer to the larger organization as defined from one moment to another by priesthood leaders or their secular equivalents.

In Mormonism there are no psychological or moral boundaries behind which the individual can seek refuge.

Excellent! Yes, they are indeed experts at projection.

The loudest types who want to impose their views onto everyone seem the most incapable of turning the lens to themselves to see if they are doing comparable things.

This letter will probably be a shock to Mormons (not really, since they can't conceive they are ever wrong), just like finding out the Bible should be banned for the same reasons they complain about other books.

One Sunday I was sitting in Primary sharing time. I hated Primary. I did not hate the kiddlings, but the sitting, and sitting, and how Einstein skipped how time slows while sitting in primary. One day the youngsters were belting out an unusually robust version of "Priesthood Power", when I realized the brainwash that was going on. I understood the decades of hidden unhappiness most would endure. Some would escape. But many would spend years "serving" a religion that was going to chew them up, and spit them out, and never show an iota of thanks. Just some glowing lines in an obituary.

some wives Groom their husband's to be / become Peter Priesthood Walking Wallets for their own satisfaction & prestige.

If that doesn't succeed, watch out guys!

It was the sacrament meeting primary program that finalized my decision to leave the church.

Proposition 8 was one of the biggest issues I had with the church prior to the year I left. I was in the elder’s quorum presidency, and it did not sit well with me that stakes in Idaho were setting up call centers against Prop 8.

In a meeting with my ex and the bishop, after my resignation, I told him I realized during the primary program that the testimony/good feeling was from indoctrination since childhood. I also compared it to Hitler’s youth programs. My ex banned me from reading anymore holocaust books after that.