{"id":11,"date":"2010-08-06T23:06:19","date_gmt":"2010-08-07T05:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exmohomo.com\/?p=11"},"modified":"2011-01-30T19:35:39","modified_gmt":"2011-01-31T02:35:39","slug":"my-letter-of-resignation-from-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/?p=11","title":{"rendered":"My Letter of Resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints"},"content":{"rendered":"
To Whom It May Concern:<\/span><\/div>\n

Consider this my formal resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints effective immediately. Upon receipt of this letter, I am no longer subject to the rules, discipline, beliefs, policies and ordinances set forth for active members of your organization. I do not request, but DEMAND that my name be completely and permanently removed from the membership rolls of the church.\u00a0 This is not a decision I have made lightly.\u00a0 It comes after years of prayer, debate, heartache, anger and tears. While I appreciate what you consider to be the \u201cgrave consequences\u201d of my decision, the bottom line is I am no longer under any obligation to live in fear of these so-called repercussions.\u00a0 To be perfectly clear: this letter is to be processed immediately, without delay. A waiting period is completely unacceptable and I\u2019m not going to tolerate having to participate in one.\u00a0 This is not a local ecclesiastical matter, either. Considering I have never even\u00a0met the bishop of the ward I am currently in the boundaries of (after living there for five years), he has absolutely nothing to do with this situation, as he does not know me or anything about me. I will ignore and deny any and all requests to meet with him or communicate with him or any other\u00a0local church\u00a0leaders in any fashion. The only communication I will receive is a letter from your office confirming my resignation.\u00a0 Once my membership has been removed, you will promptly mail me confirmation informing me that my resignation has been processed.\u00a0 I should also inform you in no uncertain terms that any delay, unsolicited communication, contact or anything resembling a violation of my privacy concerning this situation will be met with RELENTLESS LEGAL ACTION, and I will not hesitate to involve the media as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re at all interested in finding out why I made this choice, feel free to continue reading. If not, that\u2019s okay too. My feelings won\u2019t be hurt. With that said, let\u2019s get to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am gay. Simple sentence, right?\u00a0Ah, not so. \u00a0While I am not a resident of California, I legally married my partner of almost 9 years in Los Angeles on the first day it was legal to do so back in June of 2008. What should have been a period of celebration for not only the gay community in California, but all over the country, was defecated on by\u00a0 the LDS church\u2019s underhanded, subversive, evil, corrupt, and not-so-cleverly-clandestine political backing of Proposition 8.\u00a0 This is beyond reprehensible. For an organization that touts honesty, love, fellowship, love-thy-neighbor blahblahblah, the fact that the LDS church hierarchy used such sneaky tactics to make this proposition pass completely negates this so-called doctrine of love. By supporting this piece of legislation in the name of \u201cprotecting the family unit\u201d I cannot even begin to imagine how many families you have ripped apart in the process. How dare you be so arrogant as to belittle the family I have made with my husband? Your definition of the word \u201cfamily\u201d is anything but all-inclusive. What amazed me most about this whole Proposition 8 debacle, was to see that ultimately not even the overpaid, Ivy \u2013League-educated public relations professionals the LDS church employs could gloss over how inherently evil this act was and is.\u00a0 The attempts at damage control were and are pathetically transparent. Evidently the leadership of the LDS church underestimates the intelligence of the general public. <\/span><\/p>\n

Whether you believe that being gay is a choice or something genetic or what have you, any \u00a0religion\u2019s definition of what is moral and immoral should not have any bearing whatsoever on legislation. Particularly here in Utah, separation of church and state is virtually nonexistent. The laws of this state are enacted primarily by middle-aged, white Mormon men, and there is little to no consideration of the non-Mormon population.<\/span><\/p>\n

The LDS church has always said that most apostates leave the church because they were offended in some way, as if this isn\u2019t a legitimate enough reason for wanting to leave. I can\u2019t think of a more appropriate reason to sever ties with the LDS church. I have been offended by your church in every way imaginable. My family was very nearly torn apart because a bishop in our ward decided my mom was a drug addict, that our house was unfit for human life, and that there were devils living there. He used extortion tactics to force my brother and me (very young children at the time) into emotionally blackmailing my mom into going to rehab for an addiction she didn\u2019t have. He recruited the Relief Society to come in and \u201cclean\u201d the house, which meant a group of twenty or more women coming into our home, going through every private drawer, cupboard and closet and taking what they wanted. All because of the mandated \u201c1000 hours of service in every ward\u201d decree handed down by Gordon B. Hinckley. This had nothing at all to do with service or charity, it was so the harpies in the Relief Society and the bishopric could come in and air out all my family\u2019s dirty laundry, as was a common practice in that ward.\u00a0 All this while my dad was in the hospital recovering from triple bypass surgery and my mom was conveniently stashed away at a rehab facility in Washington State. My mother has since passed away from a congenital heart defect.\u00a0 When I relay this story to anyone who is an active member, the typical response seems to be, \u201cWell, the church is perfect, the people in it aren\u2019t.\u201d While I agree that no one is perfect, the men and women who are \u201ccalled\u201d into leadership purportedly represent the church and its beliefs.\u00a0 There is no justification strong enough to dismiss or explain away this kind of behavior from anyone, let alone people who are supposedly representatives of God.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps you remember the story of Stuart Matis? Probably not, so I\u2019ll refresh your memory. Stuart Matis was a FAITHFUL member of the LDS church living in California. He abided by all the mandated chastity rules, prayed, paid his tithing, went to church and the temple, everything he was supposed to be doing.\u00a0 And he was gay. He could never reconcile his sexuality with his love for the church. He ended up shooting himself in the head on the steps of the stake center near his home. He hated himself so much, and couldn\u2019t understand why the church he had devoted his life to hated him too and viewed him as evil and unclean. He felt there was no other way out than to end his own life.\u00a0 One of his close relatives described seeing Stuart\u2019s knees rubbed completely raw from the hours he spent kneeling in prayer, pleading with God that this \u201caffliction\u201d would be taken from him. If that isn\u2019t bad enough, his parents proceeded to write Stuart\u2019s story in the book \u201cIn Quiet Desperation\u201d. They had the gall to say that even though Stuart killed himself, they were so happy that he died with his temple covenants intact. That statement is disgusting.\u00a0 If he had been able to be true to himself and live the life he should have lived, I know in my soul he would still be with us today.\u00a0 How can you as a church justify that? There is blood on the church\u2019s hands, and not just Stuart\u2019s. The blood of every LDS gay kid who has decided to end his or her own life because their church told them they were an abomination (for the record, Utah has the highest rate of gay teen suicides in the nation. Coincidence? I think no.) For every LDS gay person, whether adult or adolescent, who has been kicked out and ostracized by their family because of what gender they were attracted to.\u00a0 Every kid that was ever called a faggot, queer, dyke, lesbo, fudgepacker sissy, or any number of derogatory anti-gay slurs\u00a0by their so-called \u201crighteous\u201d Mormon peers because they didn\u2019t fit into what the LDS church deemed as \u201cnormal\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

This issue was very recently thrust back into the spotlight in October, 2010 by Boyd K. Packer and his now infamous General Conference talk. In the wake of the highly publicized gay youth suicides throughout the country at the time, there was no excuse for Mr. Packer to make the highly defamatory and downright ruthless statements he made about the gay community, inferring that it is a condition that can be \u201cchanged\u201d despite massive evidence to the contrary. We were referred to as evil, dark, wrong, immoral, that we are perverts, sinners, unworthy, harmful, just to name a few things. \u00a0\u00a0If that wasn\u2019t bad enough, after the backlash from that talk, it was \u2018edited\u2019 to \u201cclarify [Mr. Packer\u2019s] intent.\u201d No, it was edited because the LDS church received so much negative press about Mr. Packer\u2019s comments. He didn\u2019t stop for a moment to think that possibly his words would fall on the ears of a young man or woman who struggles to reconcile their religious upbringing and their \u201cabnormal\u201d sexuality? Did he give pause as he was writing his talk and think for just a\u00a0brief second\u00a0that maybe his words would cause irreparable damage to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Mormon kids and adults who are already on the ledge, wondering how they will ever be able to exist in their church and their own families because of who they love? The\u00a0most disturbing\u00a0thing is, I\u2019m quite sure Mr. Packer indeed thought about all these things and knew exactly what he was doing. It was very calculated and I\u2019m sure he chose his words very carefully. He had an agenda, and damned if he\u2019d stray from it. This man is next in line to be the prophet of the LDS church. That, to me, is utterly terrifying. For a church that goes out of its way to make sure everyone knows they follow the teachings of Christ, your leaders do a great job at making Him an afterthought. <\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking of editing and backpedaling, the history of your church has been glossed over and rewritten so many times; I don\u2019t think anyone really knows the truth of it anymore. Drawing from the very substantial amount of research I have done over the past two years, I can only be left to believe that Joseph Smith was a lying, philandering, conniving, perverted, pedophiliac con-man who manipulated and used women and underage girls to satisfy his depraved sexual appetites, then had the audacity to cite revelation from God as justification for his actions. Even his wife, Emma, knew what kind of man he really was. He \u201ctranslated\u201d ancient texts (i.e.The Book of Abraham, which was actually nothing more than a very common ancient Egyptian funerary text) fraudulently claiming they were the words of God, and he had been chosen to\u00a0translate them and give them to the world. \u00a0I guess maybe he figured no one around him would be educated enough to be any the wiser. \u00a0Going even further, Joseph Smith plagiarized the entire LDS temple ceremony from the ancient\u00a0rites of\u00a0the Freemasons. Ah, but\u00a0of course,\u00a0there was an excuse for this, too: Joseph Smith learned the ceremonies and because God told him to, returned them to their original and \u201cperfected\u201d state, as they were in the days of King Solomon. Sheer arrogance. Joseph Smith kept numerous wives, much to the chagrin of his first wife, Emma. Among Smith’s wives were underage girls (Helen Mark Kimball, May 1843. She was 14 years old at the time), as well as women who were already married to other men. This\u00a0information is generally unacknowledged by the\u00a0LDS church, or explained away as anti-Mormon propaganda, however, most of these things are historically documented.<\/span><\/div>\n
Despite all the evidence that Joseph Smith was not a good man by most peoples’ standards, he\u00a0is the man you base your entire religion and view of eternal happiness on, and claim that his every disgusting and vulgar action and word is\u00a0flawless and ordained by God, and yet, because I\u2019m gay, I\u2019ve fallen out of favor with God.\u00a0I don\u2019t know whether\u00a0following a man like Joseph Smith is\u00a0based on denial, stupidity or just downright na\u00efvet\u00e9. The bottom line is, I\u2019m done staying around and trying to figure it out. It\u2019s become vastly apparent to me that the LDS church will only change when said change suits the church\u2019s purposes, or when the issue is a matter of political correctness as it was in the 1970\u2019s when the church received revelation that black people were fit to receive the priesthood. <\/span><\/div>\n

The way women are looked upon and treated in the LDS church disgusts me. They are viewed as commodities and trophies. They are taught to be subservient, homemaking baby machines that should not have jobs, outside interests or anything else that detracts them from serving their husbands and taking care of their families. \u00a0In fact, they are required to covenant in the temple to do these things, otherwise they are breaking God\u2019s law. It\u2019s the spiritual equivalent of having a gun held to their heads. <\/span><\/p>\n

The moral of the story is, you\u2019re damn right I\u2019m offended. Nothing good has ever come out of my experience with the church. I was born in the covenant and an active member for almost twenty years, and in that time I witnessed things that would make any person cringe, and never once received any kind of apology or show of remorse for any of it. And why? Because not one person believed they were doing anything wrong. How can the supposed \u201cone true church\u201d condone these things, and yet disfellowship or excommunicate wonderful, bright, loving and accepting people because of who they love?<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m tired of the lies you tell. I\u2019m tired of the backpedaling on doctrine. I\u2019m tired of your presumptuous definition of who God is and what He wants. How can the so-called \u201cprophet, seer and revelator\u201d be so arrogant as to claim that his word is God\u2019s word?\u00a0Your\u00a0“prophet” is only a man, after all. \u00a0How can the leaders of your church use extortion and threats to get members to donate money they don\u2019t even have to a political referendum that denies a group of people their constitutional civil rights because it goes against your shortsighted definition of what family means? How can you claim to be a church based on love, service, forgiveness and fellowship when no one, including the leadership, demonstrates any of these qualities? How can you continue to treat women like cattle? The hypocrisy is epic and wholly unforgivable.<\/span><\/p>\n

I will state this clearly and plainly once more: Remove my records immediately. Do not refer me to my local bishop or stake president. Do not send missionaries or other members of the church to my home. Do not call me.\u00a0 Do not contact members of my family concerning this matter; it is to remain completely and unequivocally confidential. I expect a confirmation from your office in my mailbox no later than thirty days from the receipt of this letter.\u00a0 If it is not received within this time frame, or any unreasonable delay occurs, I will have my attorney be in contact with your office.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you for your time.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To Whom It May Concern: Consider this my formal resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints effective immediately. Upon receipt of this letter, I am no longer subject to the rules, discipline, beliefs, policies and ordinances set forth for active members of your organization. I do not request, but DEMAND that my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lds-church","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105,"href":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exmohomo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}