I was raised in the church, and while I didn’t always know if I believed it was the ONLY true church I did my best to follow its basic teachings through my childhood. I didn’t drink, didn’t do drugs, didn’t date until I was 16, held leadership positions for youth, and didn’t miss any temple trips.
When I graduated high school my boyfriend at the time fell upon rough times (non member) and I allowed him to move in with me so he could stay in school. One thing lead to another and we lost our virginity. I was less active by this point.
Later, when our relationship fell apart, I moved back in with my parents and decided to try the church thing again. I of course had to read The Miracle of Forgiveness and go through the whole repentance process. Which apparently involved giving a talk in sacrament at the YSA about my experience with sin (what I had done) and how tiebreaker had changed my life. Can you imagine standing up in front of your new friends, your only friends in a new area, and confess you had lived with a boy and had sex! It was humiliating.
Not long after I started dating a man I met at church who has also been active and recently came back. To be honest I felt he was the only one who would have me at that point. Who wants chewed gum?! That’s the analogy they always used for the young women growing up. I felt we could be chewed gum together.
Things got serious between us. We stayed chaste as we wanted a temple marriage. Suddenly I had to go in weekly to discuss my past sins in detail. How many times, what positions, did I orgasm, did he, where, did he cum, how did that make me feel, how did he touch me, how did I touch him, when was our last encounter? It was expressed to me that they were worried if my fiance and I married we would both fall into bad habits and walk away from the church again.
After we finished our temple prep courses we were given the okay for our endowments and the temple marriage. We sent out our invites, and made the wedding preparations. Then, less than a week before the wedding, I received a phone call. I was told as it has not been a year since my last sexual encounter we would have to post pone the wedding. I was furious, and hurt, and humiliated all over again. I would have to call up all the invited people, many of which had already bought gifts and plane tickets and made Hotel reservations, to let them know I had to put the wedding off. Most of which grew up Mormon and would know that meant sexual sins were the only real reason to do so last minute.
I called my fiance that night to talk to him about his we couldn’t get married after all. He hung up on me. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was furious as well, and called the stake president to discuss with him. He told him that he could either let us get married in the temple for time and eternity, or we would elope on schedule. Which is romantic, but also insane that it was okay to deny me a marriage and make me cry on the phone, but not okay to upset a fellow priesthood holder. Shows the sexism in the church.
I only went along with the invasive questions because I had assumed my fiance was going through the same thing as me. Later I found out he confessed to having had sex, they told him to not take the sacrament for a week. That’s it. No invasive questions, no humiliating public speech, no book reports on The Miracle of Forgiveness.