Hi, I'm Wylie.
I was a mormon.
About me
I'm pioneer stock, my family's been trapped in the Utah bubble for generations. I earned my eagle scout and went on a mission. I got my degree from BYU, and was fully bought in on the bullshit.
On my shelf
On the Mormon Spectrum
# Why I left More stories of 'Why I left' the Mormon church
After ignoring hundreds of shelf items, I was traumatized by my mission. I sailed low through the rest of my college degree, fully aware if the church caught wind of my attitude they might sabotage my career prospects. Then I moved out of the bubble, and saw some of the real world without wearing the nametag. I started paying attention.
It became clear to me that the leaders of the church are not guided by god when it took them half a year into the pandemic to council members to maybe wear masks. I realized I had been duped. What really did it for me though was realizing that I am transgender, and that is something that people can just do, and there needn't be all the judgement and vitriol the church prescribes. At that point I just started seeing through the lies, and learned more about church history and what kind of a man Joseph was.
Questions about Mormons My Answers to Questions about Mormonism
#Link to this answer of 'Did you receive a patriarchal blessing? What did the experience mean to you?' by layhandsondeez Did you receive a patriarchal blessing? What did the experience mean to you? See more answers about 'Did you receive a patriarchal blessing? What did the experience mean to you?'
I received one of those shortly after turning 13 and thought I had a god-damned treasure map for how to be happy in life.
It was fucking wrong. The advice it gave me during the worst period of my life was the opposite of what I needed to hear. All of my leaders at the time said the same thing, so thinking I had received the same council from both my leaders and this mystical message from god, I doubled down, and it nearly killed me.
FUCK this shit.
#Link to this answer of 'Could you give us a brief overview of Mormonism?' by layhandsondeez Could you give us a brief overview of Mormonism? See more answers about 'Could you give us a brief overview of Mormonism?'
Mormonism is a cult that sucks as much time, money, attention, and identity out of it's members as possible. They try to present this squeaky clean image to the public, while doing their best to sabotage any cultural connections the members might be able to form with non-members. From the smallest things in life like what beverages one chooses to imbibe, to defining what clothing members wear, what words they say, and what thoughts they think, the cult maintains strict control over nearly every aspect of member's lives, making it difficult for many members to ever be comfortable maintaining relationships with non-members. The church fosters an "us vs them" attitude between members and non-members.
Nominally the church worships Jesus, but instead hordes resources and reigns over Utah like it's their own little kingdom. As much as the federal government will stay out of their business, the church shapes Utah culture and politics to their liking.
The church continually focuses it's members to devoted study of their own modified stories of church history. Members learn of important stories in the church's past, but with important details and events left out that give the church a favorable or sympathetic view, effectively inoculating members against the truth because they've already heard those stories from their trusted sources (a classic pattern being that people were angry at Joseph, and always excluding or changing the WHY people were mad at him).
For the entirety of the church's existence, it has been a grift that enables church leadership to funnel funds into their own pockets and live happy, comfortable lives, on the labors of the members. The temple industry is largely a mechanism to project strength, manipulate real estate markets, and hire companies owned by church leadership to build expensive structures to boost property prices that have been bought up by church leadership prior.
The apostles of the church have been grifting members from the beginning, just like Joseph.
#Link to this answer of 'Do Mormons Believe in a Loving God?' by layhandsondeez Do Mormons Believe in a Loving God? See more answers about 'Do Mormons Believe in a Loving God?'
No. Not at all.
The mormon god is one who will cut you off from your family for all eternity if you ever leave him.
The mormon god is one that will ask everything from you, and in return give you nothing but less of the things you already had.
The mormon god is one who asks you to accept living in perpetual misery for the promise of a happy future you will never see.
#Link to this answer of 'Can you describe the type of faith you had prior to your loss of faith?' by layhandsondeez Can you describe the type of faith you had prior to your loss of faith? See more answers about 'Can you describe the type of faith you had prior to your loss of faith?'
I used to believe in magical things.
I used to believe most of my problems could be solved if I just approached it with enough fasting, prayer, meditation, and humbly asking for direction as the problem required. To a crippling degree at times. God blesses those who act, but also asking god to do it for you counts. I used to believe I could influence world events by private prayer with god.
I used to believe that prayer and people simply not asking the right questions were the only things standing between humanity and lasting happiness.
I used to believe in a much simpler world... one that was under someone's control.
I used to believe most things happened for a reason... from the grand to the mundane, every interaction of matter could be a matter of divine intervention.
I used to believe there were a path I was meant to walk.
I used to believe I had a personal connection with beings I have never met.
I used to believe most of the contents of my personal thoughts to be products of angels and demons.
I used to believe in a divine conflict playing out inside my own head.
I used to believe dangerous things.
I knew people weren't infallible, but secretly suspected many individuals to be so.
I used to ignore the evidence of reality, believing all of existence to essentially be god's playground for the purpose of playing out a little drama with pre-existing narratives and purpose and meaning behind everything, and the promise of justice and peace and fairness.
I used to believe myself to be accountable for every thought, feeling, word, and deed.
I believed myself accountable for others' behavior... that it was my job to save everyone... or at least that it was some divine destiny I was continually falling short of.
I lived every day ready to answer the call of god to some adventure unknown for no purpose other than to please him, and to mentally beat myself up the whole time for not doing it well enough.
#Link to this answer of 'Did you want to sin? Is that why you left?' by layhandsondeez Did you want to sin? Is that why you left? See more answers about 'Did you want to sin? Is that why you left?'
Yes I wanted to sin, no that's not why I left.
I used to believe in a world where there was inherent moral value to all of one's actions.
I used to believe the foremost reason for not engaging in sin was not a moral one, but simply because god did not wish it.
For many sins I felt no pull.
For sexual sin, I was shamed continually for the assumption that it would be such a continual temptation that I must attempt to drive it from my mind at all times. My parents pulled me from attending either of the two, single days of sex ed requisite for a Utah education, and then failed to tell me themselves. I learned sexuality from the internet.
I was failed in that regard, it wasn't until later in life that I'd learned more about consent from kink and sex clubs.
I had a deep internal pull towards the feminine in a way that I lacked words for. What I now understand to be my gender dysphoria, I used to believe was the devil tempting me toward sin.
I used to believe sex and gender were the same thing, and that wanting to express any gender identity other than the one assigned at birth was sin. All my life I have wanted to do that. I left because it's simply not true.
#Link to this answer of 'Are you happy?' by layhandsondeez Are you happy? See more answers about 'Are you happy?'
That's a hard question.
I'm happier.
I get so much genuine joy from just expressing my gender... suppressing that for so long was painful. I look at my body and I'm happy now. I love my little tummy flab, it's so feminine. And I've got boobs now! And an ass! Actually, I always had quite the dumper, but it's got even more curves now.
I like living gay. It's harder, but the feelings are deeper. The world looks completely different from the other end of the gender spectrum.
I'm still coming to terms with having lived in a cult for decades, and my family still being in that cult... and the entire world feels to have changed around on me. My old enemies are my new friends, and my old friends... are hard to talk to.
Everything is different now... and I might do it differently, but I'd do it again.
Are you happy?
#Link to this answer of 'Are Mormons Christian?' by layhandsondeez Are Mormons Christian? See more answers about 'Are Mormons Christian?'
If you're asking this question you're missing the point, imo.
Mormons nominally worship Christ. He's the figurehead their church is centered on when it's not Joseph or the living prophet. He's the deity figure everybody puts their faith on. From that point of view it's not very different from one of those televangelist megachurches that also claims to worship Jesus while hording wealth. Mormons don't follow most of the traditional Christian customs... except suddenly are more recently. I imagine in the coming decades mormons are going to look ever more like Christians. Politically they represent a bit of a wildcard in the voting block, so that's cool, but still skew hard right. Idk. Weird question.
#Link to this answer of 'Is the Mormon church a cult?' by layhandsondeez Is the Mormon church a cult? See more answers about 'Is the Mormon church a cult?'
Yes.
#Link to this answer of 'What broke your shelf?' by layhandsondeez What broke your shelf? See more answers about 'What broke your shelf?'
When the prophets and apostles didn't warn the people away from Trump, and then took half a year to even say anything about the pandemic. I feel like that kind of shit is supposed to be their main thing and they kind of dropped the ball on both of those.
#Link to this answer of 'Do you hang out with other ex-Mormons?' by layhandsondeez Do you hang out with other ex-Mormons? See more answers about 'Do you hang out with other ex-Mormons?'
Honestly it's been kind of hard to.
They are some of the only people who understand in detail the sort of things I went through that have so adversely affected my life... but at the same time, I kind of prefer not centering the church in my life anymore. Sometimes I run into ex-Mormons, but I don't like thinking about the church, so it doesn't usually come up unless we're specifically shit-talking the church. I've got a buddy I see every now and then, and I participate in some online social groups, but no, generally I don't hang out with other exmos.
#Link to this answer of 'Does the church encourage leader worship?' by layhandsondeez Does the church encourage leader worship? See more answers about 'Does the church encourage leader worship?'
100%, members are encouraged to study the leaders' lives in detail and to suckle from their teats of wisdom. Past leaders of the church are idolized as the titans that built god's kingdom.
#Link to this answer of 'How did being Mormon affect your daily life?' by layhandsondeez How did being Mormon affect your daily life? See more answers about 'How did being Mormon affect your daily life?'
I learned to motivate myself through shame and to view myself through a lens of self-hatred so dense no self-reflection could penetrate it.
I learned to doubt my own thoughts and to avoid acknowledging my own triumphs.
The way I learned to move through the world was deeply shaped by the church's worldview. None of my time, talents, or resources were my own. All glory to god. I was just the fuckup trying to follow the line laid out for me.
My life felt tangential in my own existence. My freedom was to fill in the cracks around the blocks that the church laid out for me. Every worthy thing I did was god's triumph, and every failure was my own.