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Note that slavery was abolished in 1865 and the civil rights movement started in 1950s-1960s.
And in 1978 mormon god said that black men can have the priesthood which is mormon god's way of saying black men are treated as equals now. (Women, regardless of race, never were treated equally and still aren't).
The Mormon church likes to celebrate the fact that black men are treated equally but they never mention that this was 110 years after slavery was abolished and still ~3 decades after the civil rights movement started. Mormon God sure has great timing.
But polygamy is actually still alive and well in the Mormon church, and i mean the actual Mormon church and not an offshoot. The Mormons stopped practicing polygamy outright but it is still alive in how they actually treat marriage.
Under mormonism they marry you for eternity. Except if your spouse wants a divorce or they die then you are no longer married from a civil law perspective. If a woman wants to get married again then she needs to have special permission from the Mormon prophet which i believe they do to release her from the Mormon eternal sealing. To do this they also try to get the ex-husbands approval (and too bad if he's dead). Where this gets interesting is that if the husband wants to remarry then he can. No strings attached. He can have as many eternal sealings as he wants. No permission needed from the prophet or wife. Just can have only one civil marriage at a time but if you get a civil divorce then a man can easily get another eternal marriage and a woman cannot. Basically this means that Mormons are letting men practice polygamy in the afterlife. It's wild.
But this just one example of how women aren't treated equally in the Mormon church. And don't get me started on LGBTQIA+. But if you ever hear someone say mormonism likes the the gays they are gaslighting you. They believe that being gay is a sin and you can only be accepted at arm's reach if you're gay, but never do anything gay, and conform to your gender. Telling someone you accept them while believing part of them they can't change is a sin is Olympic level mental gymnastics. But welcome to Mormonism!
But if you ever hear someone say mormonism likes the the gays they are gaslighting you.
There are a lot of members that don't agree with the church's approach to the LGBTQIA+ community. They hope to change things from within and don't always leave because they hold out hope things will change. Not all mormons are the fuckin mindless whack jobs, though there are plenty of those around. Plenty are really normal people and they disagree with the way the church handles certain topics.
Hello, I'm well aware that there can be good-intentioned people in the mormon church, however, I'd ask you to consider what it means to stay a member of an organization whose teachings lead to LGBTQIA+ youth committing suicide at a prevalence higher than other states? How can you be a member of an organization that doesn't, really, treat women equally when you stop to think about it? There are a lot of warts in the mormon church, and they have rewritten the history and have been gaslighting their members about it. You've been told that people will just try to spread lies about the church, and that the church is true so you don't need to question it. But if the church is true then it should be able to stand up to scrutiny of your own research.
Just because you think you are doing some greater good by trying to change the mormon church from within doesn't mean you're not oppressing LGBTQIA+ directly or indirectly. Consider this-- does someone joining the KKK with the intent to change it from within make them not a racist? How many years can they be part of that organization before they are complicit?
I'm sorry if any of this seems too harsh, these are just things I wish I would've thought about a few decades sooner. Best of luck in whichever path you take.
Nah, not harsh at all. I understand your perspective and agree that it's a bad look to stay in a place that does bad things. I greatly disagree with the church on many points and have been on the edge of leaving for a long time. My wife and I talk about various things on the near daily honestly including all the bullshit they have done to women. We both have our own wounds from the church.
I see through the gaslighting. I'm under no illusions that the church has some fucked up past and present. Much like our own country though, which also has fucked up past and preseng, if people don't try to enact good, it won't come on its own and the assholes win. I'm not ready to throw everything away that is good when I can see the bad being removed, and it is happening. Despite the old guard clinging to their bullshit I see more and more of us pushing back against that and trying to correct the wrongs of the people that came before. Very few things in this world are all good or all bad. Especially anything with history to it. And if no one tells people they are in the wrong, then people will rarely question themselves if they are.
And in that same vein, I appreciate your words. And I will honestly take them to heart and consider more thoughtfully if my time with the church needs to be done. Because you are right, how long can one be in any group without being an accessory to its actions?