While my story is a bit different, I feel compelled to tell it to you in hopes that maybe it will show light on another issue facing youth within the LDS faith. One day, while my regular teacher was out for a teaching conference, my class and I were substituted by a different. He was…
I began dating my husband when I was sixteen and he seventeen. I lost my virginity after we had been dating about a year. I felt an immense amount of shame and guilt and went to my bishop. He wasn’t loving. He was cold and condescending. He told me that I could go through the…
Bishop’s interviews made me feel like my sexuality belonged to everybody but me. I lost my right to secrecy, and that has had dire consequences. From those interviews, I became so uncomfortable with sex, that I was already too weak to defend myself when I needed to. Aged fourteen, I was raped by my best…
I didn’t realize what masturbation was until I was 13 and went to church. It began at the stake center, when I attended the audio portion of a general conference priesthood session. This was in the days when it wasn’t broadcast on TV. One of the speakers described a terrible, vile practice. Slowly I realized…
When I was 16, I was dating my first real boyfriend. We would make out often and each time got more intense. When we began touching under our clothing my boyfriend decided we needed to go talk to our bishop (we were in the same ward). We went together and our Bishop reacted surprisingly appropriate.…
Growing up, I was not talked to about my sexuality in what I would consider a healthy way. I don’t fully blame my parents, because I was not an easy child to have serious or deep conversation with. I was the oldest and always felt it was my responsibility to be the example my family…
As a teen, I remember being asked if I masturbated in bishop interviews and these questions continued through the mission, my years at BYU, and singles wards after. I became accustomed to the questions and feared every invitation to meet with the bishop, suspecting I would again be asked. In my youth, I lied about…
In short, i was 9-11 years old and my parents found out me and my friends had found pornography. They took me to meet with the bishop, a close family friend. He wanted to know all about it. He asked where I found it. I told him it was in some bushes along the highway.…
I was a new Convert and I had just turned 18. In my home ward all of the Moms had it planned out which boys from the Ward their Daughter’s were going to marry. It was my first introduction to the meat market. My first Sunday my Mom stood up and introduced me in relief…
I’m a Mormon male who grew up in a small Mormon town in Idaho. The first time I confessed was when I was 13. After a Deacon’s Quorum lesson about “self-abuse”, I spent a lot of time considering the things they had talked about and I really internalized the teachings that masturbation was very awful.…