Growing up I wholeheartedly believed the Mormon Church on everything. When I was in 8th grade I masturbated for the first time, I didn’t even know what it was. But I confessed to my father who was bishop at the time and so I didn’t take the sacrament for that week. I highly respected my father and believed him on everything that he told me. He taught, per church doctrine, that sexual sin is the 3rd worst sin anyone can commit. I was super ashamed of not being able to take the sacrament that week because I was a super good kid in my wards eyes. So I lied to my church leaders saying I didn’t masturbate so I wouldn’t be publicly shamed as well.
That caused extreme self loathing and fear in me because not only was I committing the 3rd worst sin right under murder, I was “drinking damnation” to my soul by being to ashamed to tell the truth about it. I had and have (but comparatively better now) extreme depression, diagnosed with dysthymia. And the thought often crossed my mind it would just be better if I ended my life then to go on sinning. I loaded and held my fathers rifle under my head as a kid, I turned on the car in the closed garage, I tried choking myself with some rope, and all this was as a kid. I am so glad that I didn’t go through with it. It is not just the bishop interviews, which was the first sex talks I ever got, it is also the self loathing they induce by convincing little kids that normal, and healthy sexual thoughts and practices are unhealthy, unnatural, and should be ashamed of.
Shame on such a hypocritical organization who knowingly lies and abuses their power. Shame on the hypocrites whose founder pressured 14 year old girls to marry him, had sex with a 15 year old outside of marriage before polygamy was introduced, and married men’s wives while he sent them far away on missions. And shame on the church that teaches my family to stop loving and keep away their family members away who left the church. That leaving the church is the worst sin a person can commit, worse than even murder. And taught that people of African descent are inferior by nature, supported slavery, and currently try to restrict rights of lgbtq people and teach them that their very nature is an abomination to god. And then they have the gall to say that I am evil. Shame, shame, shame.