I stumbled upon clips of Orgazmo and a South Park episode about Mormons while, strangely enough, looking up Napoleon Dynamite clips on Youtube. But anyway, I noticed how nice, wholesome, and sure of themselves they portrayed the Mormons to outwardly appear, and it was creepily accurate. If you'd never met a Mormon, you'd assume that these portrayals were exaggerated. But they weren't. And I never would have guessed that by the way Mormons act that some of them aren't truly happy on the inside.

Even though I knew I could never become Mormon because of their vastly different beliefs, I was really jealous of all of my Mormon friends in high school because of how happy and secure in their beliefs and way of life they seemed to be. After my family left Catholicism when I was 13, I had all of these questions about God and religion until one day, I became very disillusioned with the realization that I no longer believed in any of it, even though I wished I still did, because of how much more secure it would feel.

Another reason I ended up with so many Mormon friends is that there was something about the way they treated you that made you feel like a part of the group. They were always so nice and well-behaved and charming towards me. Some of my favorite friends are Mormon. I always thought they had strange beliefs, but I never knew there was an ugly side to it until I began dating my (now ex) TBM boyfriend and stumbled upon this site. (For the record, we broke up because he's going away on a mission and I to college. He never tried to push his beliefs on me.)

Is it encouraged among young Mormons to convert other young people in this way? It makes me wonder now if most of those kids were only so nice to me because I'm a person that is modest, clean-cut, and gets good grades, and they saw me as a potential convert.

The image is wholesome and they do try to live wholesome lives. The ugliness issues is that from the cradle to the grave they are reminded that the whole world is watching them and judging the whole church by one persons actions.

If you do something wrong or act unhappy, you lead those who are watching you to assume that all mormons are unhappy or doing wrong like everyone else. Even among themselves, family A tries to act as perfect as they think their neighbor B is. Unfortunately, neighbor B thinks they'll never be as good as family A.

At the same time, everyone knows everyone and no matter how nicely they smile to each other, the secrets each of them has on each other is a perfect weapon in case neighbor B reveals anything about family A.

It's a very stressful way of life to pretend for your neighbor, while living in fear that someone in the world might not join the church because of you, thus leaving their loss of eternal lives on your head.

"Is it encouraged among young Mormons to convert other young people in this way? It makes me wonder now if most of those kids were only so nice to me because I'm a person that is modest, clean-cut, and gets good grades, and they saw me as a potential convert."

Yes. When my dad was Ward Mission Leader, he used to assign me to "adopt" kids (who were my age) of investigators he was teaching with the missionaries. One year, he was taking me to this big amusement park (our big annual trip to that park) and said I could invite a friend. I was making my mental short list of my actual friends whom I might want to invite, but he pretty much told me to take this one girl with me. We went camping for the weekend and I had fun with her. I'm easygoing and can get along with just about anyone for a short period of time. But I didn't know her very well and I would have had a lot more fun with one of my close girlfriends. After her parents bailed on the church thing, we drifted apart and I never saw her again, even though we went to the same school. I was always showing up at church things with some child-of-investigator in tow pretty much because my dad told me to. I didn't like being fake friends with people whom I otherwise wouldn't have chosen to be friends.

I went to BYU and attended a single's ward in CA for a while. Some Mormons are very open, even joking, about something called "date 'em and dunk 'em and dump 'em". What they (mostly cute LDS guys but some cute girls) did was to find an attractive non-LDS person and date them in order to expose them to the church and then "dunk them" when they are baptized. (Mormons baptize by total immersion, in case you didn't know that) Then, these clowns would break up with their boyfriend/girlfriend once they were members. They considered it a missionary tool. In my single's ward in CA, a nice dental student baptized 3 girlfriends that way. None of the LDS girls would date him, even though he was really cute, because they all considered him a "user." Most nice LDS youth and Young Adults thought it was appalling and would never participate in this practice but there were some that do and they brag about it openly. They feel whatever it takes to "save" the person.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2011 04:12PM by CA girl.