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Edited on Sat Aug-23-08 07:28 PM by eshfemme
My dad's a Republican who voted twice for Bush (in a great victory for me, he has since admitted that he was wrong and claimed that he will vote with the rest of the family as Democrats) and is also a Mormon. Mormonism is basically chauvinism religionized. Once a boy hits 13 years of age, he is considered a priest, albeit of junior rank whereas all women, regardless of age, are considered simple parishioners. At best, they are allowed to be missionaries but all women are a generic "Sister" while a man can be a "Brother" or an "Elder."
Mormons also have Temples, which allow only men entry to the inner sanctums-- women are absolutely treated as "visitors" regardless of whether or not they are Mormon. On their first visit to a Temple, a man is given a secret name (does this sound familiar? It's basically a grown-up crazy version of the "Boys Only, No Girls Allowed" clubs boys like to make when they're small) and they all dress up in special robes and crap like that. It's all very mysterious since as a woman, I don't have any idea what they get up to in there. :eyes:
As a girl who happened to be a tomboy and liked being one, it was horrible to grow up with a Mormon dad who made you go to the church. My dad personally didn't enforce anything but the church certainly did put lots of pressure to try to mold me and my sisters into their ideal of a perfect Mormon woman. Their religion is horribly gender-coded. To see a woman wear pants was highly irregular (I only remember seeing one parishioner who did this regularly and I remember being told when I asked why formal pants couldn't be worn by girls that skirts and dresses were the only right way for females to "show respect to God"). After puberty, the Sunday Schools were segregated by gender with an additional Boys Scouts and Girl Scouts knock-offs. The goals for the Girl Scouts were extreme throwbacks to the Suzy Homemaker era where you were awarded points or rewards like necklaces for doing things like knitting and sewing. I know because I tried to game the system (I'd already grown quite cynical about the church by then) by seeing if I could earn a free necklace by doing stuff that wasn't entirely against my principles or things I didn't enjoy (like making a fucking prairie dress). But in my perusal of the activities that I could do to earn a stupid freebie, there wasn't enough that were generic enough that I could do without giving into that gender-coding. The Boy Scouts knockoff had suitably "masculine" activities like survival techniques and crap, which I was far more interested in but was prohibited from participating in. As a woman, you are basically encouraged to stay home and be fruitful.
Secondly, despite their claims to be an offshoot of Christianity, they don't refer to the Bible at all-- they mainly rely on their own "original scriptures" which are the Book of Mormon and the Pearl of Great Price. Most of the time, if Jesus or the Holy Spirit is mentioned, it is a platitude for when they give their "testimonials" or pray. What is more important to them is the worship of Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion and their "true prophet," as well as the president of their church whom they believe to have the power of prophecy as well despite the fact that the Mormon president is chosen through a strict line of hierarchy that depends on seniority rather than holiness. And c'mon, even the fucking Pope doesn't deign to be a prophet of God, which all Mormon LDS Presidents claim to be despite the prophecies of past presidents proven false. Yes, every year, all the Mormons congregate to listen to the annual prophecies of the LDS President.
Also, although my source of information might be biased, their doctrines are too inconstant to actually be relied upon-- at least with other religions, they have dogmas or certain principles that won't be changed. The Mormon church has believed in many theories that have then been covertly switched out over the years like they were fads. Examples of this are the "Adam is God" belief, the invalidated Native Americans are Jews who migrated to America (or some shit like that) theory, Color is the result of your pre-life before being born into this life (this might still be valid within the church but not actually spoken of to outsiders) and of course, the infamous "A virtuous man earns multiple wives" practice, which is still in practice by sects and is offered as a Heavenly reward by the LDS (I remember asking why they abolished this practice if they believe in this as a tenet and I was given some BS answer of how they observe state laws as well as church law. I remember thinking, well it certainly doesn't stop a lot of the other religions from protesting the crap they do like the pro-lifers and anti-gay activists) and all kinds of other messed up shit.
Personal Disclosure: I was raised in the church until my sisters and I were sufficiently old enough to raise a ruckus against our dad forcing us to go to church. Reason being that being raised in an environment where there was constant pressure to act a certain way in NYC, where it is hard to be controlled when you have such a plethora of choices, makes it hard to be brainwashed without reason. It took until last year before my father would stop harassing us about it and that's because I finally told him one hair-raising story about our experience in the church that he never knew about. Before, we'd still have people from the church calling or writing us while we were away at college, which was certainly stalkerrific. Please note that for the most part, I am talking about the Church of Latter Day Saints, which is the "mainstream" sect of Mormons that people think of and not the more radical sect, which are the infamous child-abusing polygamists.
PS My experiences were in a church that was located in the liberal New York City. Imagine if it were set in Utah where something like 95% of people are Mormons-- the pressure there would be nothing like the pressure I faced. I had a on-Mormon teacher who visited Utah before and came back to comment, "For once in my life, I understood what it felt like to be a minority."
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