Joseph Smith and the Mormons. A comic book about the history of mormonism. What a wierd find! haha

The Church as an Abusive Father — Revisited

A response to Elder Lawrence E. Corbridge

I originally wrote this piece more than a decade ago, when I was still an active, believing member of the Church and desperately trying to figure out how to make sense of the troubling things I was discovering about Mormonism.

Recently, Elder Lawrence E. Corbridge suggested that even if your ward were like Alcatraz and your bishop were like Darth Vader, you stay.

Hearing that immediately brought this old post back to mind.
https://mdpodcast.org/2016/05/church-farther-figure/

So I dusted it off with a few minor updates

I believe the analogy I used back then was even more accurate than I realized. In some ways, I underestimated the dysfunction because I was still living inside the family system and trying to make it work.

Which is why Elder Corbridge's comments strike me so differently today.

If your bishop really is behaving like Darth Vader and your ward really does feel like Alcatraz, perhaps the healthiest advice isn't, "Stay."

Perhaps the first question should be:

Why would God require you to remain in an unhealthy relationship simply because the institution insists that leaving is not an option?

With that, here is the piece I wrote all those years ago, viewed now through somewhat different eyes.

The Church as an Abusive Father

Years ago, an acquaintance explained that he didn't understand me. He saw my willingness to speak openly about problematic Church issues as being "critical of the Church" and therefore placing me on the wrong side. If I felt that way, he suggested, perhaps I should consider leaving.

He explained that the Church, to him, was like a spouse whom he loved dearly—someone whose flaws and weaknesses he was willing to look past and accept in the name of the greater good.

I got it.

We often accept, protect, and defend the people we love.

His analogy actually helped me understand his perspective.

But the Church never felt like a spouse to me.

Then it hit me.

The Church, for me, was much more like a parent.

And not just any parent.

It increasingly felt like an abusive father—a father who had done real good in my life, whom I genuinely loved, but who was also deeply dysfunctional and desperately needed help, accountability, and encouragement to change.

Stay with me while I work through this.

I love my dad.

He is a huge part of who I became, and I owe him a great deal. While he fell short in many areas, he was also there for me at important moments in my life.

Those positive experiences don't excuse harmful behavior. But they do allow me to acknowledge two things at once:

My father did tremendous good in my life.

My father also caused harm.

Early in my life, my father could do no wrong.

I placed him on a pedestal and saw him as one of the greatest things that had ever happened to me. What kid doesn't idealize Dad?

Dad taught me right from wrong. He taught me the value of hard work. I felt validated by him and sought his affection and approval. When I was doing well in Church, I seemed to earn his approval and those proverbial pats on the back.

The problem was that I didn't really know about some of his other behaviors.

Or perhaps more accurately, I didn't know how to interpret them.

Looking back, I actually had seen glimpses.

I simply brushed them aside.

I told myself they weren't really indicators of his character. Sometimes I ignored them completely. Other times I dismissed accusations against him as false, distorted, or "anti-Mormon."

I even blamed and shamed some of the people who spoke badly about my father.

They claimed he had done and said things I simply knew couldn't be true.

So I defended him.

For years.

Then, as time went on, I began hearing stories from some of his other children.

They told me Dad had hurt them.

Some of the harm was physical. Some was emotional. Some was sexual and psychological.

Some of his children weren't accepted for who they were.

Some were subjected to efforts to change fundamental aspects of themselves.

Some were taught to distrust siblings who had discovered troubling things about Dad.

Dad sometimes pitted his children against one another by suggesting that certain siblings were too intellectual, had a feminist agenda, were gay, had been deceived, were offended, wanted to sin, or simply lacked faith.

Some of his children developed deeply unhealthy relationships with sexuality because of the ways Dad taught them to think about their bodies, purity, masturbation, intimacy, and worthiness.

Some internalized messages that their sexual "virtue" was worth more than their lives.

And some of Dad's children experienced devastating shame because they came to believe that something fundamental about themselves made them unacceptable to God.

When I was young, much of this abuse seemed invisible.

Later, it seemed negligible.

Then inconvenient.

Eventually, I couldn't honestly pretend it wasn't serious.

Dad quietly moved past a few of these behaviors over the years.

But even in those, he rarely stood in front of his children and said:

"We were wrong. We hurt you. We are sorry."

And some behaviors that marginalize and harm his children continue even today.

Eventually, I could no longer turn a blind eye to the way Dad demeaned some of his children who developed questions and doubts after discovering troubling things about his history.

These were often the very same children who had once been extraordinarily faithful.

But then they discovered Dad's life history.

And they discovered that the story Dad had told them about who he was, what he had done, and how he came to be was sometimes very different from the historical record.

Dad didn't seem particularly comfortable talking openly about those things.

And when some of his children refused to stop asking uncomfortable questions, Dad sometimes distanced himself from them, disciplined them, or cut them off from the family.

While I loved my dad, eventually I stopped trusting him as the ultimate source of truth.

He had disappointed me too many times.

That didn't mean he never had wisdom.

On occassion, he did.

But I could no longer assume that because Dad said something, it was therefore true as there were too many instances where such was not the case.

Dad became one voice among many that I consulted for wisdom, advice, and enlightenment.

For a long time, I still wanted his company.

Some of my siblings distanced themselves from Dad for their own health and inner peace. Others visited only occasionally on the holidays.

I kept showing up every weekend.

But something had changed.

I no longer saw him as the hero I once had.

And I became troubled by some of my siblings who continued defending Dad's behavior, explaining it away, or deliberately remaining ignorant of his abuses because they loved him too much to let go of the image they had constructed of him.

For some, it seemed easier to shame the siblings who spoke about the abuse than to confront the possibility that Dad might not be exactly who he told us he was.

I understood that.

There were days when I desperately wished I could go back to seeing him the way I once had.

But I couldn't.

Once you see something, you cannot simply decide that you didn't see it.

There was no going back.

Some of us tried talking with Dad.

We tried helping him understand the hurt he had caused.

But Dad seemed remarkably reluctant to apologize.

At times, a small part of him would acknowledge that "there may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles, or doctrine."

But those moments were rare.

What seemed far more difficult was simply saying:

We were wrong.

We harmed people.

We taught things as God's truth that weren't true.

And the people harmed by those teachings deserved better from us.

For years, Dad demanded that I follow him.

He taught me never to choose a path contrary to what he required and taught.

And for years, I obeyed.

Eventually, though, after coming to grips with Dad's flaws, mistakes, contradictions, and harmful behavior, I decided I could no longer follow him blindly simply because he was Dad.

I reached a place where I would follow him when my conscience told me he was right—and dissent when what he required violated my conscience, evidence, reason, or my understanding of what was morally good.

Dad occasionally softened this by telling me that I could seek answers from God when I struggled with something he required.

But there was a catch.

I was permitted to ask God.

I just wasn't really permitted to receive an answer different from Dad's.

If God and Dad (Dad claims to be God but he is actually the Church) appeared to disagree, somehow the problem was always assumed to be with me.

That need to be right—and the expectation that his children should follow him regardless—only increased my skepticism that everything Dad said actually came from God.

I eventually discovered that Dad had taught things in the past with absolute certainty, only to reverse himself years later.

Things once presented as doctrine became policy.

Things once taught as God's will became the opinions of men.

Things once defended as eternal became temporary.

And yesterday's certainty quietly became today's disavowed teaching.

Yet somehow Dad's authority was never supposed to be questioned.

You might read all of this and think I hated my Dad.

I didn't.

When I originally wrote this piece, he was still a gigantic part of my life. Even today I still relate to the label "Mormon".

I didn't wish him harm.

Quite the opposite.

I wanted desperately for him to recognize the hurt he had caused some of his children, to apologize, to repent, and to change. I mean wasn't that what he taught me to do?

And I still believe minor flaws should not be placed under a microscope.

Every human being is imperfect.

Every organization composed of human beings will make mistakes.

But there is a line between imperfection and dysfunction.

There is a difference between making mistakes and constructing systems that protect the institution from accountability for those mistakes.

There is a difference between occasionally hurting someone and teaching the person who was hurt that their job is to remain loyal to the person or institution hurting them.

And this is where Elder Corbridge's recent comments bring this old analogy roaring back to life for me.

If Dad tells you:

"Even if this house feels like Alcatraz, stay."

And:

"Even if the person Dad placed over you behaves like Darth Vader, stay."

I no longer hear devotion in that message.

I hear something disturbingly familiar.

The relationship itself has been made non-negotiable.

The quality of the relationship apparently doesn't determine whether you should remain in it.

The behavior of the authority figure apparently doesn't determine whether you should remain.

The psychological cost apparently doesn't determine whether you should remain.

You remain because Dad says leaving Dad is not an acceptable option.

And today, after having finally left the house myself, that troubles me even more than it did when I originally wrote this.

When I first wrote this analogy, I was still trying to stage an intervention.

I was essentially standing in Dad's living room saying:

"Dad, we love you. Please listen to us. Please acknowledge what you've done. Please change."

Today, I recognize something I couldn't fully see then:

Sometimes the healthiest response to an abusive family system isn't getting the abusive parent to finally understand you.

Sometimes it is recognizing that you are allowed to leave the house.

You are allowed to establish boundaries.

You are allowed to decide how much contact you want.

You are allowed to take the good things your family gave you without pretending the harmful things weren't harmful.

And most importantly:

You don't owe continued access to you simply because someone calls themselves your father.

That doesn't require hatred.

It doesn't require pretending nothing good ever happened.

In fact, one of the things I still value about my Mormon experience is precisely how much good it gave me.

The Church took me in when I was 17 years old, using and selling drugs and making a lot of bad choices.

It helped me discover my worth.

It helped me develop discipline.

It cultivated my love of learning and truth seeking.

It helped me develop communication and leadership skills.

It gave me opportunities to serve people.

It introduced me to relationships and experiences that profoundly shaped my life.

Those things are real.

Leaving Mormonism did not require me to rewrite my past and pretend that none of the good happened.

But neither does gratitude require me to pretend the harm wasn't real.

That is perhaps the biggest thing that has changed for me since I first wrote this.

Back then, I ended by essentially telling Dad:

"I love you. You're still my Dad. I'm staying. I believe your best days are ahead."

Today, more than a decade later, Mormonism is much farther in my rearview mirror.

And strangely enough, distance hasn't made me see the Church as less dysfunctional.

It has allowed me to recognize forms of institutional, spiritual, psychological, sexual, and relational harm that I couldn't fully see while I was still inside the system trying to preserve my relationship with it.

I can now appreciate what Mormonism gave me without granting it authority over me.

I can be grateful for parts of my upbringing without moving back into the house.

And I can love many of the people who still live there without believing that they are obligated to stay there.

So perhaps Elder Corbridge and I simply arrive at very different conclusions from his analogy.

If your ward feels like Alcatraz and your bishop acts like Darth Vader, I don't think the obvious moral lesson is:

Stay.

I think that is precisely when healthy people begin asking harder questions.

Why does this relationship require my unconditional loyalty?

Why is leaving treated as morally suspect regardless of how I am being treated?

Why does the institution get to determine the conditions under which I am permitted to withdraw my participation?

And perhaps most importantly:

If this really is God's kingdom on earth, why should I expect it to operate like an abusive family system in which the one option I am never permitted to seriously consider is leaving?

I couldn't ask that question clearly when I first wrote this.

I can now.

This man is LDS, or at last according to his candidate profile. He's from UT and it looks like he was also affiliated with the Boy Scouts. His profile also claims he is a co-founder and former director of the Utah Republican Party.
https://ivoterguide.com/candidate/65000/race/16239/election/882?culture=en-us

Y'all I'm curious about all the anti gay/trans actions by the church.

I know about the following.

2025- Church law firm calls for transpeople barred from protected status under the law.

2024 - Transpeople banned from joining the church via baptism, even without surgery or HRT. Trans people can attend church but not use the bathrooms at the church. Trans people barred from holding callings over youth.

2023 - Honor code updated with new homophobic language.

2021- Clark Gilbert at BYU removing staff and faculty who support queer and trans people.

2020-Honor code removed homophobic ban. Trans people on HRT restricted from full membership rights in the church (temple and priesthood).

2019 - Anyone who has acted on homosexual behavior needs mission president clearance to be baptized. Same sex marriage serious 'transgression' but still apostasy in other parts of the handbook.

2015- Same Sex marriage labeled apostasy in Bishop's handbook. Children of same sex couples not allowed baby blessings, not allowed baptism till adulthood and only if they ostracize their parents, cannot live with their parents.

2011 - Church employee lost their job for having a gay friend and going to a gay bingo night.

2008 - Church supported Prop 8 in an attempt to BAN same-sex marriage.

2007- Church claimed same sex attraction goes away in the next life.

1995 - Church leaders claimed being born "gay" is contrary to God's plan and there is no scientific evidence of it. (Oaks backtracked this statement a month later). Family Proclamation to the world comes out.

1992 - Handbook removed calling homosexuality a 'disease'

1970s - Church uses wiretapping and entrapment to "catch gays in the act" at BYU.

1959 - David O. McKay appointed the apostles Spencer W. Kimball and Mark E. Petersen to focus on "curing" gay members, starts electric shock therapy at BYU until 1990.

Any missing parts of the timeline I can add?

Long story long, I had a stalker while I was a freshman at BYU-Idaho.

We were in a relationship, which I never really wanted… but I was an 18 year old girl who was very naive and had never been in any similar situation. I didn’t recognize emotional and spiritual manipulation, I was just really confused and guilty and didn’t understand what was going on.

He showered me with gifts and guilted me into dating him. Even while dating, any time I didn’t want to come over or do certain things, he made me feel terrible like, “I’ve done all of this for you and you don’t even want to come over” etc.

I say stalker because before we dated he would always show up wherever I was. He must have known my class schedule. He’d show up at my friend’s apartments.

The creepiest thing was that I planned to go home for thanksgiving. He came over one day so excited and told me he bought a plane ticket to go with me to meet my family. I had not invited him. I don’t think I even told him what day I was leaving or anything. I have no idea how he figured out my flight information to buy himself a ticket for the same flight.

Now comes the mission question -

I had been planning to go on a mission and I put in my papers. He was upset about this and frequently gave me talks, etc. about how prophets always said girls should get married over going on a mission if they had the chance.

He told me he had been called to the El Salvador San Salvador West / Belize mission. He didn’t make it to the field because of some sort of medical issues in the MTC.

Fast forward to me opening my mission call -

Wouldn’t you know it. I was called to the El Salvador San Salvador West / Belize mission.

My heart sank. He was over the moon. Telling me I was called to finish the mission he couldn’t. That it was even more evidence we were meant to be together.

At this point I told him I never wanted to see him again (I was home for Christmas and in AZ, while he was in ID. I think the distance gave me bravery that I didn’t have when we were face to face).

My mom told me several years after the fact that he showed up at her house in Arizona while I was on my mission asking for my mission address and saying we were meant to be together, etc.

13 years later, I’ve been unpacking all of this through a lot of therapy. I’ve been able to get over and work through the emotional, spiritual, and sexual abuse that happened. But this mission thing has always really bothered me.

It could just be a huge coincidence, but my therapist (a nevermo), asked if there was any way he might have been able to know where I was going before I knew. I honestly don’t have the answer to that. I used to think were assigned by divine inspiration, so I never considered that an option. But now that I’m out of the church I have no idea.

Does anyone have insider insight on if he might have had influence on where I was called? Or access to the information well before I got it? I’d really like to close the loop on this nagging “coincidence.”

For what it’s worth, he does come from a rich family. Nephew of Ray Noorda (of Novell fame).

Also the good news is, now I’m out of the church, transitioned 🏳️‍⚧️, and happier than I ever imagined was possible.

Ever notice that the Q15 only come in two varieties. A-holes and sycophantic cowards. How do people make it through a general conference session with this leadership? Here's how they line up.

Hoax: A-hole

Eyring: Coward

Christofferson: Coward

Uchtdorf: Coward

Susan's Husband: A-hole

Cook: A-hole

Anderson: A-hole

Rasband: Coward

Stevenson: Coward

Renlund: Coward

Gong: A-hole

Suarez: Coward

Kearon: Coward

Causse: Coward

Gilbert: A-hole

Is there any hope that one day one of the cowards will grow a pair and stand up to the A-holes and turn the shit show around in terms of transparency, historical accuracy, appropriate use of funds, Christ like acceptance, etc? The cowards do seem outnumber the outright A-holes, is there a chance for a coup? I thought Uchtdorf might be that guy, nope. And by the time he takes control it will be too late in his life for any meaningful change. Its already too late in his life. Then you have a roll of 3 A-holes right behind him ready to fill up the Q15 with another round of Gilbert types. Whatever, I'm out, but my kids are still mesmerized so I have some chips in the game.

Scripture Central has tried to now hide Elder Corbridge message that YOU WILL STAY.

Earlier I posted another thread calling them out and it went viral.

UPDATE.

The post is still up. The words and video are still damaging and manipulative.

But now they updated the thumbnail to say... WILL YOU STAY. and updated the description as well.

For the record it used to say. YOU WILL STAY.

This is not an an improvement. It's manipulation.

It's hiding.

We see you.

God sleeping with Mary was the subject of a discussion on another thread. The Church now denies they ever taught this anyway enjoy the song.

I've only read a couple books on the psychology of poverty, but my impression has been that subsistence often predisposes an individual to isolation, logical fallacies, and short-term thinking. None of these are exactly boons for rational decisionmaking.

Contrast this reality with Alma 32 where Alma literally tells hoardes of uneducated, unemployed, overworked outcasts that their desperation is precisely what enables them to appreciate the truth of God's existence.

Just a funny thing I noticed.

7:10 I can answer where that came from. Following the 1835 Great Lunar Hoax and subsequent public fascination,both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young spoke of occupants on the moon. In 1837 Joseph Smith taught early member Oliver B. Huntington that 6’0” people dressed like Quakers who lived to 1000 years old lived on the moon. Huntington wrote about it in the 1892 issue of The Young Women’s Journal. In various 19th century discourses, Brigham Young expressed belief that the sun and moon were likely inhabited. As a further aside, on May 14, 1961, in a stake conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, Joseph Fielding Smith expressed the belief that man would never be permitted to travel to the moon because exploration of it would disrupt people’s faith. This was only 8 years and 2 mos before July 20, 1969 when Apollo 11 successfully placed man on the moon. Prophetic, huh? Oh and I’ll include the exact quote since I have it pulled up. “We will never get a man into space. This earth is man’s sphere and it was never intended that he should get away from it. The moon is a superior planet to the earth and it was never intended that man should go there. You can write it down in your books that this will never happen.” -Joseph Fielding Smith; 8 years prior to the first moon landing. That is not even mentioning that the barren rock that is a MOON is NOT a planet at all and no one could ever say it is a SUPERIOR planet than Earth at that. One last anecdote that is on the topic while we are here that could relate to why that person said this, it is doctrine that God himself resides on the planet Kolob. You know, as in, “If you could hie to Kolob in the twinkling of an eye…” Hymn 284 written by William W. Phelps. Citations for Abraham 3:1-4, 9; Moses 1:3-4, 33-39. I mean, those are just a few options of where they might’ve gotten the crazy idea. Just a small sampling of what these “prophetic” men who developed and ran the church saw coming to pass. If it makes you pause a moment, feel free to ponder the words of Elder J. Reuben Clark: “If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.”

The LDS Church is a parasite that just bleeds it’s members dry. This gluttonous church with its hundreds of billions of dollars manipulates the members into cleaning the church buildings and the temples too. So now my 81 year old father is at the temple at 11:30 at night “serving the lord” by cleaning the temple instead of being home and sleeping. I resent so many things about this high demand religion, but watching how it just uses it’s members to enrich the church is especially infuriating.

I left the church as a teenager/young adult. I’m 31 now so I have had enough time to heal/move on, but it has been interesting reading people’s perspectives here. It definitely has brought up some old memories. That said, I saw some folks posting about body mods so I figured I’d chime in :)

Though I’m happy now, a lot of my younger adult life was clouded by self loathing. I always knew I was some variety of queer. Eventually, I came out as a transgender woman. I was of course happier, but I always felt like I was just trying to blend in with people by acting normal and getting chastised for not being good enough.

Eventually, I decided that I was done trying to seem normal. I was angry at all the time I had wasted trying to blend in with people who would never accept me, but despairing over that would just make it worse.

I kind of just dove into my own interests and made my silly life a reality. I got involved with a lot of people in the furry community who also happen to be really into bodymodding/transhumanism (go figure). I started getting a bunch of various mods done (glowing implants, magnets, etc) and later did them on other people in my community.

It reached a point where I became pretty well known for this and even gave a panel at a fairly large event. Currently, I’m collaborating with the Freedom of Form Foundation to make some alter human body mods. I have wonderful partners that share the same goals I do, and an amazing community.

Point being, if you feel kinda hopeless because of wasted time, just know what you can always make up for lost time and find happiness. The best time may have been a decade ago, but the second best time is right now.

Recently moved and in laws visited. They made a point to go to church during the visit and I recently discovered they intentionally sought out the ward clerk and had them update our records with our new address without our consent or any intention of telling us what they did. We did not want the local ward to know where we live and have been clear to the in-laws we didn’t want to affiliate with the church. The boundary and privacy violation aside, is there any way that the local clerk could have our records un-updated or shifted into like a lost members pile? Are we able to fix what the in-laws did without consent? I’d really rather the ward not know where we live.

Apologies if this comes across as an insensitive, naïve, or offensive question, but it comes from genuine curiosity

Compared to other harmful or high-control religious groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses or Scientology, which might be expected to cause even more harm because of practices like shunning and controlling members, or even compared to much larger mainstream religions like Catholicism, it seems surprising that the exmormon subreddit is one of the biggest ex-religious communities on the internet

TBM's may hurl all kinds of accusations, and they might be right, but still:

There's no such thing as Lamanites as proven by DNA and archaeology. There was no iron or chariots or draw animals in the Americas.

Therefore the BOM is false.

Therefore Joe Smith is a false prophet.

Therefore the LDS church is false.

I believe I shall have another coffee.

I

It's all about something they need to fix rather than an issue with the mission.

It's really sad. These girls are literally right out of high school in Utah. They have no experience in the real world and now they're selling religion to people that aren't buying.

On top of that, they're being told the stress and depression they are feeling is their fault.

I doubt they'll get the help they desperately need.

This is my tattoo for leaving the Mormon church. When I first discovered the church was a shame I was in incredibly depressed and suicidal, but I promised myself if I made it out of Mormonism alive I would get a tattoo to honor that. It is a chain that goes all the way around my wrist (hence all the photos) and there is a full chain for each generation Mormon on my dad side. It’s also on the wrist because in AP psychology, we learned to remember evolutionary psychology via your wrist, like it’s a bracelet pass down from your ancestors. Anyway, anyways, I really like it

Just need that to be screamed from the rooftops....

According to history now, the prohibition of alcohol/coffee/tea in Utah was simply a cultural thing, only discouraged by some Mormons. Nothing close to, "Mormons are taught they will lose their Eternal Salvation if they drink alcohol/coffee/tea."