My Story:

I grew up in the church and pretty much did everything I was ever asked to do (and was fairly happy most of the time). I was always considered to be practically perfect by people in my ward because, frankly, I was probably too shy to ever have done anything wrong. Except for masturbation of course though, and in accordance with my shyness I bottled up all of the shame and guilt that I felt and that I thought I deserved because of what the church always taught about it (the church attempting to help kids not feel so guilty and such just does not work). That is one of the reasons I’ve come to despise the church’s “law of chastity.” It’s something I’ve never understood despite having kept to it all growing up.

The next thing on the list that caused me to start questioning the real legitimacy of the church was my mission. Something inside of me kept on telling me that the sales tactics and such that were being pushed on us were totally inappropriate for anyone going about wearing the name of Christ. Also, the insane rigorousness of the mission nearly drove me mad—I had never experienced depression until I submitted myself to that most difficult experience of a mission, and depression has severely plagued me ever since. So, after my mission I hardly knew what to do with myself because I had been so focused on getting to and through the mission, which seemed to me because of my fanatical beliefs (due to my trying to be a really good mormon) to have been he capstone of my life. I ended up continuing school and soon went to BYU. I just don’t think mormonism ever looks the same after you live in Utah for a while.

Anyways, here is one of the greatest follies of the mormon church and something that has permanently injured me physically, spiritually, and mentally: Guys and girls want to have sex from puberty onwards. So, what do a bunch of young mormons at BYU who are not allowed to have sex until they get married do? Well, of course they get married. One of the biggest upsets in my marriage is that we ended up not being very sexually compatible. In fact, my wife turned out to be much more lesbian that straight. How does that happen, you ask? You should have known better! Well, my wife having been righteous enough to have not explored her sexual self even through masturbation did not know 1% of her real sexual self before we got married. So, because we kept the so-called commandments of the Lord, we ended up getting screwed over horribly in the end—this relative sexual incompatibility has led to serious bouts of depression for both of us, it has cost us great amounts of time and money due to the fact that it has slowed down my schooling, and it has caused our souls to go through hell because the “one true church” that we so sincerely believed in for so long and had invested so much in ended up rearing its ugly head to show us through experience and eventually study that it is almost nothing that it professes so vehemently to be. We are trying to stay together since we have a fairly good friendship and most importantly, a kid, but the outlook for the future of our relationship seems very uncertain at best. I feel quite sad sometimes that I may never know what it’s like to be with a woman who is very sexually attracted to me, as my wife does not find men (including myself) to be hardly attractive at all.

I know there have been some stories going around about homosexuals living successfully and happily in heterosexual relationships, however, such a possibility is one that only a rare few couples can actually manage. DO NOT hang on to such idealistic stories as these to prove that “it can be done.” We must not cherry-pick slight evidences to support the ideas that we hold to be true. Please, look at issues holistically before making a decision on which side to support. Realize that there are far more couples and families splitting up because of the existence of repressed homosexuality than there are of couples and families being able to stay together. To ignore the great harms done by the church’s obsession with obedience—especially in relation to the “law of chastity” is to condone and support it, which is an issue we should not be so complacent about. I know for a fact that my story is not the only one like it, and I know that there are many other people who have been hurt by the church in many other ways. Honestly, it is idealistic and unrealistic to believe that all such problems can ever be avoided, however, when it comes to some issues like the “law of chastity,” women’s rights, homosexuality, etc., something should and must be done about it. And if the leaders of the church will not listen, then the only choice is to leave.

I have done a lot of studying and pondering about the church because of my negative experiences and have found that it simply does not level with what it professes to be, and is, quite obviously now, a man-made institution as much as any government, business, or other major Christian religion. Have I decided to leave the church because of its very shady history? No, not so much—we all know that it’s tough to get real facts even about things that only happened so long ago as the founding of the LDS church. The thing that really bothers me the most about the history of the church is simply that the leadership of the church seems to not care one bit about discussing it with the youth who today with the internet, are assuredly looking at it and are feeling deceived because of how different it all is from what they have been taught. And the church of today is most certainly not the church that Joseph Smith envisioned, whether that’s for better or for worse.

I, and other mormons (many active ones that I know) as of late, have also been appalled at the treatment of homosexuality by the church, its non-disclosure of how it uses donated money, and the great disparity between the amounts of resources the church will put into business investments vs. humanitarian efforts. These things prove all the more to me and my wife, and it has started to prove to others of course, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not a church to be trusted, and that its mission is not in accordance with the mission that Jesus Christ set out for when he lived on this earth (if indeed the Bible is truthful—whatever the case is the Christ of the Bible and Book of Mormon is not the Christ of the current mormon church).