Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
So Long, and Thanks for All the Shiz
When the November 2015 policy came out, I was furious. I couldn't sit with how blatantly the church was punishing its gay members and leveraging their own children against them. In the days following the leak, I wrote a page-long letter to LDS headquarters outlining how completely the apostles had lost any kind of moral compass and requesting that my name be removed from the records of the church.
I didn't send it. I was concerned that local leadership may inform my mother that I'd resigned. I didn't want to cause her more heartbreak beyond what she'd already experienced merely from having an inactive son. But it feels increasingly more important to send a message to the Church Office Building that their authoritarianism is immoral and indefensible. Should local leaders choose to inform my parents of my personal decision, it will be they, not I, who have hurt my mother.
I also have nephews to think of. Of course, more broadly, I support Sam Young's quest to help protect children from the shaming and grooming that too easily result from invasive questions from priesthood authority figures behind closed doors. But isn't it worth risking my mother's disappointment to try to help protect her grandchildren—and countless other innocent kids—by adding my voice to a chorus that informs the apostles that their inaction and insouciance and imperiousness are not things that people are going to continue to tolerate?
I received confirmation of my resignation from QuitMormon.com on October 30th. It needed to be done.
As I side note, I find it kind of interesting that my ordinances have now been revoked as a matter of procedure. My baptism and confirmation no longer count. But it seems incongruous that what had been established by God's appointed bishops and elders and high priests could be undone with something so mundane as an administrative task completed by an unknown bureaucrat. If it takes magic to create something, shouldn't it take magic to destroy it? How can the sign-off of an employee in the Confidential Records department have the ability to undo what the power of the Priesthood put in place?
Either some of the rules of Mormon mythology are inconsistent or the apostles have to hold periodic temple rituals to perform ordinance nullifications for batches of resigned apostates.
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