Mormonish Musings

During high school a few close friends shared with me that they were addicted to porn.  This shook my world .  Great, if these guys struggle with porn, then everyone does.  This was especially hard to grasp because  g rowing up I believed that if you viewed pornography then you were fundamentally sick, a bad person, and had a legitimate addiction. After these encounters I was mostly suspicious of men who entered into my life.  Is he a porn addict too?  I started reading  Christian books  about overcoming porn and attending porn addiction support groups for loved ones of porn addicts. For the most part, these efforts only fed my fear of the streets running rampant with porn addicts. I began to dehumanize these men who viewed porn. Because of the conservative religious culture I grew up in I believed that if someone viewed it (at all) they were an addict. It didn't matter the frequency. Instead of being curious and asking questions to understan...

"There's something wrong if you're always right."  --Arnold H. Glasgow, Psychologist  "It's okay to disagree" has been my mantra this year. It's hard for me to be okay with disagreeing...but I'm working on it. For the longest time I felt like if you disagreed with someone then you couldn't be friends anymore. And other times I felt if I disagreed with someone then they were an idiot because if I was "right" then they were "wrong." Ben & Jimmy are pros at disagreeing. Ben thinks you  should  plan  everything one day in advance (aka: never plan) and Jimmy  thinks  you  should  plan  everything 5 years in advance. It's a miracle  that they  are even  still friends  after  discussing such  a controversial topic ! I've come to learn that putting the relationship first is more important than being "right." And the word, "right" is often so arbitrary that there might not always be a ...

Preface Last year I interviewed my brother, Ben. Ben was vulnerable by helping me with this post so please be kind and respectful as you browse this. Just pretend like Jesus or a cute baby sloth are sitting next to you while you read this. 😇   Ben's  answers to my questions were raw and not prepared in advance. My purpose of this post is to help people be more self-aware and sensitive to the LGBTQ community and to gain empathy for others. This is not meant to point fingers at anyone and it is not meant to explain everyone's experience in the LGBTQ community. This is simply one Mormon gay man's experience. I hope you find this insightful. Thank you Ben for your courage. Love, Sarah * At the end of this article are resources for LGBTQ youth and their family members & friends in the context of their faith.   Me:  Describe your childhood Ben: I'd say I had a pretty normal childhood...an interesting one, but I think everyone does. I ha...

I wrote the following letter and mailed it today. Dear Elder Uchtdorf, First of all, thank you for all you do. I appreciate your warmth and perspective on life and the gospel. Thank you for taking the time to read this--I know you're incredibly busy. I wanted to invite you into my struggle as a woman, returned sister missionary, a mother and an active member of the Church, which I love. The current system we have as a Church puts our most vulnerable members--women and children at risk. Our current system is breeding grounds for sexual predators because of the power dynamics in the Church. I understand that abuse is a complex and systemic issue, but we must openly talk about how to improve the Church's current structure. I know some minor changes have been made, but I hope we will use all the current and past sex scandals in the Church as a time to evaluate and learn from our past mistakes. This needs to be seen as the  beginning  of a process of improvem...