I have no more or less objection to Mormonism than any other religion, but if this is all true that SUCKS. I really think it should be illegal to indoctrinate a kid into any religion until they're 18.

that also sounds like high school

john has a valid point. those dipshit parents were kids not so long ago, who were conditioned by their parents and elders to hold the beliefs they do. there is nothing about the mere advancement of age that compels one to see the world more clearly, particularly when that person lives his/her whole life within the confines of an intellectual, spiritual, and emotional framework like mormonism. i find mormons (and nearly every other flavor of christianity) as distasteful as you, dan, and i completely follow the logic of the whole "that's so mormon" idea. but we have both experienced the complicated twistedness that is a religious upbringing, so i'm sure you can recognize why "that's so mormon" is fine in theory, but in practice would give results off the mark. there are places where it would probably work as you say, but i think they are relatively small in number.

Religion is a choice! If those kids' parents weren't such dipshits they wouldn't be so depressed. Dude, fuck mormons.

Oh my god! I love Steve the ex-mormon! What a funny, wonderful, lovely man!

@ 5, not for the kids, it isn't.

i have a thought: let's all agree to settle on, "That's so Raven".

Being ex-Mormon ... yeah, it's the parents. There's another thing called "scripture chase" which starts from when you can read that pretty much drills the books into your head, so much that one can see a few words and tell you where the scripture is located (book, chapter, and verse) or if it's a common one all of them. There are races to see who can get the right one faster. It's another of the many tools employed by the Mormons to indoctrinate youth. Like all organized religions, you get the youth hooked or brainwashed as soon as possible and scare them into remaining until the process is complete. It is the primary reason I am against organized religion and parents having too much power over their kids.

It is my considered opinion that using a person's age, sexual identity, ethnicity, or general physical completeness as food for mockery is in bad taste at best, since these are traits one can do nothing about.

One's religion, political opinions, taste in clothes, or tendency to dance like a spastic elephant on roller skates all represent a much higher level of choice and are fair game.

Fair game, but with the special observance that mockery is in itself inherently cruel and cruelty is a trait subject to censures that make simple mockery hollow. But Valentine Michael Smith was right when he discovered all humor to be based in cruelty and without humor we are less even than the lower primates.

What I'm saying is that mockery is okay, if and only if it's funny. And the only way to determine it's funny is by putting it in play and seeing if the judicious will laugh.

Mockery of politics and/or religion, however, can be inherently constructive as these are traits that need to be tested. If your faith can't stand up to a cruel joke, it's not faith, it's not even a stage property, because it can't even be returned to the properties master once the curtain has been run down.

I've had friends who "escaped" Mormonism, so I sympathize with John. But I don't think his statistics prove anything. The western states have the highest suicide rate (there was just an interesting Feakonomics podcast on this topic). Seems like Utah's high rank has more to do with it being western US than being Mormon. My state, the neighboring Colorado has the highest rate and I don't think we have that many Mormons.

I would prefer not to have any "That's so ....." statements that make any suffering teen feel worse, but in my opinion "That's so Mormon" is better than "That's so gay" or "That's so retarded." A person can choose to be Mormon or not. Even a teen, though it might be very tough. A teen can't choose whether they are gay or have developmental delays. And, agree with #4 "That's so fundy" may be even better. Hard to defend fundies and would be great if teens thought it was uncool to be fundamentalist anything.

@7: Then how come many kids reject their parents' religion? I was raised Catholic, and at 12 or 13 I turned my back on Catholicism and refused to be confirmed. I was far from the only one.

It's worth remembering that the support group is not otherwise unconditional: you're only "supported" to the extent you follow all the batshit rules, many of which are designed to make you feel shitty about yourself. Better to get the fuck out than live with all that guilt and shame.

@13 - I've always loved the farce of confirmation or--in the case of Mormons--baptism. I was baptized when I was eight years old, presumably because I would be old enough to make a conscious, willing decision to enter the church. I did it because I thought it looked like fun, I liked getting a new outfit, and most importantly because I was eight years old and my parents said I would be getting baptized.

The confirmation was the following week, again presumably because I was old enough to make an informed decision.

@9 Mormons aren't the only one. I was raised Baptist, and we also had "bible drills.". The great thing, maybe the only good thing to come out of being indoctrinated at such young age, is that developing just a modicum of critical thinking, you see what utter bullshit it all is. But you also have the scriptural knowledge to use their own weapon against them. I used to love it when my parents would start quoting bible verses to me and I would quote one right back refuting whatever ignorance they'd just spouted. Of course, now they have so given up on their godless heathen homosexual buddhist liberal son that I don't get to play the game anymore.

How about; "That's so Tea" as a replacement?

I love ex-mormon Steve! What a fabulous video :)

@15 Bible drills with an old KJV also makes Shakespeare a snap to read later on in life. Other than the textual skills, nothing much to show for it all.

I grew up Mormon myself. I served an LDS mission and graduated from BYU. I finally came out at 26 and quit going to church. I regret wasting my college years in the closet, but I never considered ending myself, just ending my relationship to the LDS Church.

The worst part was thinking I was the only gay Mormon out there. I later found out that 3 of my friends from my mission or from BYU were not only gay, too, but that they killed themselves over coming out issues.

It's not just a civil rights. LDS teachings are causing Mormon children to kill themselves. That's just nothing short of criminal. I've lost 3 friends to suicide because they couldn't reconcile being gay and Mormon. That's more than a tragedy; it's an epidemic.

@18 I never thought of that! But that explains why I did pretty well in my Shakespeare classes in college -- the college my mother still blames for "making me gay."

I thought we had all settled this on the last post. We're going with "that's so fundie", Dan.

Richard Dawkins argues that indoctrinating a child into a religion should be considered child abuse. Reading about what Mormon kids go through makes me think he's right.

"Leaving the Saints," by Martha Beck, is an interesting window on the Mormon religion.

While religion is a choice, and I don't have a lot of sympathy for bigots, I don't like this. So now gay Mormon kids are going feel rejected by their church because they've gay and rejected by others because they are Mormon. We should be reaching out to these kids in ways that do not attack something that is likely more important to them at this point in their lives than their sexual identity.

If you look at the top states, Utah actually has the lowest suicide rate for its geographic area. All the other Western non-coastal states have higher suicide rates (Oregon too). Also this data is really old.

@23 Any cult that indoctrinates youth into believing in a literal Hell, a place where they will suffer eternal torture if they won’t stop it with their silly questions and conform, is definitely child abuse in my book. That can really mess a person up if they actually buy it.

OMG, Steve the ex-Mormon is awesome! That video is the best thing I've seen in a long time.

What was the LW's point about gender? How does it play into the gay-vs-mormon issue that more Utahn boys/men kill themselves than do Utahn girls/women?

..remind me to tell you about the time i bedded an ex mormon..it involves..a miniature darth vader and a full sized talking cookie monster puppet..
..and no.. he had just turned 30...

Video is hilarious! He seems like a great guy!

I have absolutely no direct experience with the LDS church, I've never been to Utah, I don't have any Mormon friends... so I find it difficult to judge. The information in the post and in some of the comments above is appalling.

And yet, the few experiences I had with Mormons -- those who came to my house with a free copy of the Book of Mormon (in Portuguese, my native language) and who talked to us about their beliefs, etc.; and some of the same guys' friends who we met later on -- seemed quite meek and harmless. More or less like the Mormons in that South Park episode (the dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb one), though a little less energetic and a little more boring.

I mean, when I compare them to the Protestant missionaries I've met, they seem ... almost acceptable. Nice, not very pushy, willing to accept that neither I nor my wife are going to become Mormons without throwing a tantrum or 'feeling so sad'. Yeah, that's basically it: the Mormon missionaries we met were actually more 'normal' than the Protestant and the Catholic missionaries alike.

How come? Should I be afraid of Mormons, or go on (as I did so far) thinking of them as "meh Christianity"?

@31: you should consider them repressive fucktards with beleifs half a step away from scientology that decided to toss their mormony hat into the ring of political power by contributing tens of millions of dollars to marginalize and discriminate agains gays and lesbians w/ california's prop 8. don't make the same mistake i did of thinking these bitches are basically harmless: http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/01/oh_m…

I have no sympathy for any kind of organized religion. At all. Full stop. Religion is something that should be practiced quietly, at home, behind closed doors. Dictated only to yourself, not to anyone else.

Meh.

@ 13, so did I. (Well, it was at 14, after confirmation, but still.) Fortunately, I had parents who respected my choice and understood that true Christianity is voluntary.

Not every kid has that kind of support at home, nor does every kid have the self confidence necessary to take such a step. Maybe, because of your precociousness, you've never thought that what you could do, others couldn't. Good for you, but the others aren't fairly subject to your judgment.

@ 31, Mormons are pretty well spread around Utah's neighboring states, including Colorado, so I've had a fair amount of experience with them. One thing about the missionaries - once they've realized that you are not, at all, in any way, interested in joining their church - once that's become crystal clear - they will no longer have anything to do with you.

What's worse is how many of them treat family members who turn their backs on the church, for whatever reason. They truly turn their backs on people they've nurtured and loved, and if they have the temerity to stick by these family members, then these relatives are ostracized.

Example: About three years ago I was working with a girl, in her early 20s, who was Mormon and finally coming to grips with her lesbianism. Her upbringing (brainwashing) had kept her from accepting, and perhaps even understanding, her true nature for at least a decade. But she was ready and she came out, and stopped going to church.

Her younger sister, who also worked at the same place, later reported to me that she (the sister) and their mom were at some women's service - some kind of midweek thing all Mormon women are expected to do, as I understood it - where they have to be silent but passing notes is accepted. And someone passed a note to mom saying that not only was her lesbian daughter condemned to hell, but so was she and her other daughter for supporting her.

Well, these women understood the true meaning of family, and knew that they could choose the church or their blood, but not both. So they left.

That might sound like it wasn't a big deal, but for Mormons, their church is EVERYTHING. It's not something you go to once a week (and you better go once a week or you'll hear all about it). It's in nearly every social aspect of your life. It's truly a cult that doesn't require all its members to live in a compound. You have to wrap your head around that in order to comprehend what it means to leave. It ain't like quitting the Catholics or Baptists or Lutherans.

As far as regarding Mormons as "meh, Christianity," their beliefs are a bit weirder and depart enough from the dogma that all other Christians believe in that you can legitimately NOT regard them as Christians. But that's only if you care about the dogma of religion.

@34: Not precociousness. As I mentioned, I knew several other people who got the hell out at around the same time. Someone told me that roughly 1/3 of any given confirmation class doesn't make it, so I have no delusions about being a trailblazer.

Hell, the whole point of confirmation is that you're deciding whether to follow the religion that was thrust upon you right after birth. It stands to reason that for many adolescents, the choice is "no."

@15 Yeah. I kind of figured others did to, just I only know about the Mormon one from personal experience. But also it's what makes the claim of "if you read the bible you'd believe it" so fucking funny to. Penn said "please read the bible, we need more atheists", paraphrased, and he's right. The more you look at the religious materials the less sense it makes. The problem is that most people in the world are really stupid, and easily manipulated into such nonsense, it's a tough call, you can't make it outright illegal without losing your own rights but something has to be done to stop this form of abuse. I just really have no solid answer to how to fix these problems.

Dan - thank you for posting this. I love this guy.

As a child, I was mocked, ridiculed and beaten-up for being LDS. The local baptist church showed anti-mormon films on a semi-regular basis, which inevitably lead to repercussions for me at school. But, due to the nature of the mormon religion in particular, and the depth of indoctrination, it never occurred to me that it was a choice. Even when I began to 'struggle' with my sexuality, leaving the church was never an option. Most of my friends were mormon, as was *all* of my family. It wasn't until I was 17 that I started to come to terms with the contradictions between my professed beliefs, my sexuality and my internal life (and it took another decade after that to truly de-program).

Target the mormon church all you want. They fucking deserve it... but for a child growing up in *any* fundamentalist system, religion is never a choice.

religulous. I like that - "that's so religulous". Combines religion and ridiculous.

@42: There's a film by the same name, a documentary (of sorts) that stars Bill Maher going around pissing off religious people of different stripes by simply asking logical questions. He's most definitely biased, but it makes for some good entertainment.

I see a stronger correlation between suicide and living in the Southwest than suicide and being Mormon, given that the suicide rates for New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada are all higher than Utah. If anything, being Mormon seems to have a mitigating effect on suicide rates, though that can only be generalized to areas with large Mormon populations, and there could be (likely are) thousands of confounding factors I'm not considering. However, I can say with confidence that the report linked provides no support for the idea that being Mormon is linked to higher suicide rates. This report either shows nothing or the opposite of what the LW was trying to demonstrate. Mormon-bait away!

@25 and @44. YES! YES! You saw it. Utah was 10th highest out of 50 but by far the LOWEST suicide rate out of the Mountain West. AZ/NM north to ID/MT have the highest gun ownership, most isolated families in small towns, and hold up independence and stoicism as virtues.

And if you could pull out the gay Mormon (which must be higher than for other religions / non-religious teens), Utah's suicide rate would plummet even more.

Dan was right, that extensive Mormon support system works - AS LONG AS YOU TOE THE LINE.

Faithful Mormon kids can tolerate "It's so Mormon" much better than gay kids can. And gay Mormon kids NEED to hear, "It's so Mormon" to start their breaking away process.

Mormonism isn't just hard on the gay kids. One of my good friends from elementary school through high school killed himself shortly after graduation. Not gay, just madly in love with a girl and he wanted to marry her instead of going on a mission. His family and "community" would NOT accept that. Ah, Southern Idaho.

My only direct experience with Mormons were the two missionaries who came to our house in the Netherlands to explain their faith (we had met Mormon missionaries in our honeymoon in Barcelona, they asked for our address so that they could 'send their messages', we thought what the hell so we gave them our address... and some six months later, there they were.)

They looked very calm and peaceful in a non-freaky way (they even told jokes). I asked them about some stereotypes ('polygamy'? 'nooo, that's the past, there's some crazy guy who does that but not us', etc.). They gave us copies of the book of Mormon -- in our languages, Portuguese and Russian, as well as in English -- and promised to come back later to talk to us about it. We read it in bed together. Frankly, we couldn't stop laughing. Golden tables? Nephites and Lamanites? Jesus in the Americas? It sounded funny; or, on second thought, it sounded like an attempt to make the US not only a world power but also a "holy place", something that often happened to local and world powers throughout history...

They came back to our house to explain things. I told them what the book of Mormon said was very difficult to swallow in view of scientific evidence, and I asked them how they could be sure it was true. One of them answered, "I also had doubts when I was younger, so once I prayed to god at night, asking that he tell me directly whether or not I should believe in what I read in the book of Mormon. I was really in doubt. But god did give me a sign, he did tell me that yes, it was true. So I believed."

He said I should try the same. I said, fair enough. So that night I did stay awake till way past midnight, praying to god (which I hadn't done for over a decade) and asking for a sign about the book of Mormon. No answer.

So I told the Mormon missionaries (there were two more -- four now, rather than only the original two) when they came back. "I tried, but got no answer. So I don't think I can honestly believe that." They said, fair enough. And they left. And they never came back.

Cool, I thought. At least they don't insist. (You should see the Pentecostals in Brazil...).

After that I never again worried about Mormonism. Reading what you guys wrote here, I think maybe I should have; it sounds appalling. But I don't know... the missionaries in question did look like good-natured young men, without anything creepy about them (and I've seen my share of creepy missionaries). Maybe at least among themselves, for those who happen to be able to follow LDS orthodoxy, they can be nice people?

How do Mormons usually relate to non-Mormons, by the way? Except in Utah they're everywhere a minority; what attitude do they take? Do they tend to be holier-than-thou, or are they OK with having friendships with people who don't share they belief? Is it OK for them to marry non-Mormons?

@47, Ankylosaur: It's interesting to hear a non-American's take on Mormons. You're right, it's like they're trying to reimagine America as the now Holy Land. I hadn't thought of it in those terms before.

In my experience, Mormons, as individuals in society, even where they are a minority, are not creepy. I'd even say, among main-stream religions, they probably are higher functioning, more friendly, and well-assimilated AS INDIVIDUALS.

When you hear liberal Americans freaking out the LDS Church, it is because, even more than the Catholic Church, they spend their considerable wealth (=influence) on social issues in elections about gay rights, marriage equality, abortion, racial issues not long ago, etc. And, for all the reasons they are a great support network for Mormons in good standing, they are horrible to ex-Mormons.

Unlike Witnesses, Mormons seem to have friendships outside the church, but marriages are almost always within the church. They don't come across as holier than thou, until you start to point out some of their little secrets - how, until 1978, blacks couldn't be in the leadership of the church, etc. And today's missionaries like to deny that. Are they lying, or just misinformed? I don't know. But they aren't as receptive to new-to-them information as they want you to be.

@48, my wife was the first to make me think of that, while we were reading the Book of Mormon in bed, and the idea stuck to me afterward. I imagined Joseph Smith as this man of great faith who felt -- maybe unconsciously? -- a bit disappointed that the Great Land of America is simply entirely left out of holy history; that all those great things that Jesus did happened thousands of miles away in a land most Americans never saw. Surely god couldn't have made America so powerful and beautiful without giving it also some metaphyiscal greatness? Surely Jesus would have to have come to America, so that we could rejoice over the fact that his feet touched our land and made it holy, as holy as Palestine and Israel?

The way you describe them, it seems that Mormons are "nice" social conservatives who try to keep even non-Mormon society as close to Mormon rules as possible (You wonder why, in principle? Most of the people they're trying to influence aren't Mormons. Why do they care? Primitive Christians didn't care about changing the ways of non-Christian Romans -- only about converting them to Christianity, which would then entail a change in their behavior.)

Are they OK with friends who just say they don't believe in the truth of the Book of Mormon? Can they take a friend's lack of belief and still be friends, or does it "feel them with sadness and revulsion" (words I heard from a Pentecostal once; the kind of attitude I also saw from Witnesses)?

How about "That's so Rick!"?

That's so Rick: An expression indicating a weak or ineffective gesture or concept. Derived from the name Rick Santorum, because of his famous inability to rise above the capability of a frothy mixture...

Peace.

Hey Dan, I recently ended a 3 year relationship with an ex mormon, in part because she was practically incapable of talking about sex. She was willing to admit that was in part because of this practice of older church members questioning her when she was young about her sexual habits and fantasies. How in the hell is it not sexual abuse for an adult man to coerce a 12 year old child into telling him about her masturbatory habits and what she thinks about when she touches herself? Just because there is less penetration than in the Catholic church doesn't make this right!

@49: While America's Founding Fathers can take some credit for trying a totally new, government-by-and-for-the-people idea and making it fly (for, you know, white, property-owning, men); ever since there been a holier-than-thou attitude. Manifest Destiny is one aspect. That somehow an all-knowing, infinitely old, God who is the God of all humanity must somehow favor the USA is one of our more bizarre national beliefs. I can understand the religious praying to do their own best work, but does anyone other than Americans pray for their high school football to win?!? "God likes my sports team more than yours" - an Onion T-shirt.

And why does any religion try to influence non-member's behavior? Okay, abortion has an innocent party involved if you see it as murder, but gay marriage, porn, etc? Why care? The explanation I keep coming back to is they're afraid of the unfamilar and the new. It's certainly a social thing, maybe a instinctial one, to fear those who are different than you. They WOULD be happier if they're weren't openly gay people, people of color, etc. And if they write enough rules, maybe those people or at least those behaviors will go away. That's how they live their own life, supposedly.

"It's morally wrong!" = "I'm not comfortable with it."

I am LDS, and I won't make any apologetics at this moment regarding church doctrine. I will however underscore that the doctrine and the consensus of the church *members* are oceans apart. It's unfair to make sweeping generalizations about an entire faith group. Somehow it is unacceptable to do this against people of the Jewish faith, for example, but it is completely appropriate to do so regarding Christians.

I know Dan in the past has said something along the lines of "Yes, I get that you individual Christians aren't to blame BUT your dipshit leaders, bla bla bla, tell them to knock it off, bla bla bla." It doesn't work like that, dude.

Our church is excessively resourceful. The foundation of our faith is essentially to help everyone, regardless of any status in society, gender identification, race, creed, color, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, etc. This is excluding our missionary program; that is entirely separate from our humanitarian services which is the vast majority of what our 10% tithing goes towards.

Sooooooo... I guess I could go on and what not, but I won't try to justify the parts of the doctrine that are unfair. But again, it's unfair to slander millions of people who basically live day to day to serve others in a selfless manner. My faith has helped me in so many ways, and actually it's made me far less judgmental and prejudice against others. But that's just me.

I am LDS, and I won't make any apologetics at this moment regarding church doctrine. I will however underscore that the doctrine and the consensus of the church *members* are oceans apart. It's unfair to make sweeping generalizations about an entire faith group. Somehow it is unacceptable to do this against people of the Jewish faith, for example, but it is completely appropriate to do so regarding Christians.

I know Dan in the past has said something along the lines of "Yes, I get that you individual Christians aren't to blame BUT your dipshit leaders, bla bla bla, tell them to knock it off, bla bla bla." It doesn't work like that, dude.

Our church is excessively resourceful. The foundation of our faith is essentially to help everyone, regardless of any status in society, gender identification, race, creed, color, gender, sexual orientation, abilities, etc. This is excluding our missionary program; that is entirely separate from our humanitarian services which is the vast majority of what our 10% tithing goes towards.

Sooooooo... I guess I could go on and what not, but I won't try to justify the parts of the doctrine that are unfair. But again, it's unfair to slander millions of people who basically live day to day to serve others in a selfless manner. My faith has helped me in so many ways, and actually it's made me far less judgmental and prejudice against others. But that's just me.

It probably doesn't matter to any of you, but I'll state it regardless: I do nothing but take heaps of shit about my faith on the daily. I avoid talking about my faith. I was terminated from a job because of my faith. Explaining to my current employer that I do not work Sundays was nerve wracking. I do everything in my life striving to follow what Jesus did - selflessly serve others, live a purposeful life and it's helped me feel that I can have a life worth living. I am so appreciative of missionaries and my church community.

Don't lump all Mormons together, please. And please don't start attacking Mormon teens. They are actually fighting their parents and their church authorities on gay and lesbian issues to a large extent. My daughter is being raised Mormon by my ex when she is with him, though I no longer believe. She was among those who rallied around a boy at her high school who came to school devastated because his evangelical parents told him if he didn't stop being gay, he was going to hell, telling him they probably believed that but they were wrong and there was nothing wrong with him. She had all her friends (she's pretty popular) shun a kid in one of her classes who refused to sit next to a bisexual boy. Her Mormon friends who come from Prop 8 supporting households admitted to her that they were embarrassed by their parents putting Prop 8 signs in their yards because they think the church is wrong about Prop 8 and were happy to join the shunning. So, don't make these kids your enemies by ridiculing the religion they were born into. Huge numbers are leaving the religion as soon as they reach adulthood and can't be forced by their parents any longer. Mormonism is an extremely controlling religion and those teens might be going to church weekly and looking on the outside like the next group to spout hate while actually being allies. If they spout hate, target them, but don't target all Mormons, especially not the kids who don't have the same choices, over the idiocies of the old farts who run the church and the stranglehold they have on some kids' parents.