We need to talk about the mormons

I want to talk about another serious matter. Manny of you know I'm an exmo, aka ex-mormon. If you're unaware of the phenomenon of YouTube families, then I suggest you familiarize yourselves with the plague that they are. There's very important laws states are trying to enact to protect children. 

Most recently one of the largest families, one with a following of over 2.5 million at one point, the mother and her business partner were arrested for felony child abuse. I tell you this because they're mormon. In fact several families with a larger social media followings happen to be mormon. Why is this fact important you ask? Because while you may want to interject with the old line, every religion has bad people, this does nothing but diminish the very real problem with child abuse and domestic violence the mormon church has and diminishes the experience of countless victims that lay in the path that the mormon church has destroyed. Do not do this! I'm a product of this horrifying violence, neglect, and abuse that was sanctioned by the mormon church. This week has been particularly triggering in a way that I didn't expect it would. I thought I'd be fine watching the mess unfold, but even despite having been through a lot of very good therapy, I still found myself having flashbacks and feeling moments as if I was right back there. I have CPTSD and a whole host of permanent physical damage that was done to my body by my abusers all in the name of "Families are Forever". That PTSD can really fuck with your head and in the most inopportune time, like driving down the street, and all of a sudden you get an intense feeling of sadness that washes over you.

Every bishop, every stake president, every counselor, every priesthood leader in every location we ever lived knew this abuse was happening. They knew the right thing to do would be to call CPS/DCFS, to have us removed from the extreme violence in the home, but all they did was blame me, the child. I just had to be living in a way that was unrighteous, I had to be disobeying my parents, it was my fault. Me, a fucking child who was having the shit beat out of her by her oldest brother and her mother, even up to the week before my wedding at the age of 19, just so I could flee that miserable family, only to find a new kind of hell, was slapped across the face so hard I hoped my wedding photos weren't going to be ruined because of the welt that was left on my face. 

Thankfully my family left to take one of my abusers to the MTC the week before my wedding so I didn't worry about being hit by him again, and in one week my mom would no longer be able to hit me ever again. They sent a mentally ill abuser on a mission, because that was the "righteous" thing to do. Give that man a temple recommend and call him a good man. Send him into the homes of unsuspecting people to be manipulated into hearing the "good word" of the gospel from someone who terrorized his sister so badly she eventually needed surgeries to fix the harm he did. Send a man that terrorized a child so badly that she had to carry a weapon and threaten him with it because she was literally afraid for her life. Send a man on a mission and call him a man of god who nearly 25 years later that grown person still fears for their life over, and the life of their child. Slap a temple recommend into any man's hand because they're automatically worthy, but a girl, a girl isn't believed in the church. A girl has no worth or value, accept to the man she's beholden to, the first man being her father, the second being her husband. 

So why is it important to tie the abuse together with the mormon church and stop anyone who says, "but"? Because this is what the mormon church does. It's their history. They place no value on women or on children. They have to keep their happy family image up. If they stopped telling members that families don't have to be "Together Forever" that would be the end of one of the foundations of the church. Imagine telling abused women sure, you can leave your husband. But no, instead they throw you into a patriarchal system of oppression wherein both the husband and the wife are made to appear in a church court and only the priesthood men decide what's to happen. No mental health professionals, no CPS or DCFS, no lawyers, and no judges. Men who lord over women tell them to go back and fix your marriage. Pray to Jesus, pray to God, listen to the Holy Spirit, and those voices better be telling you what the church tells you they're saying, which is "Families are Forever". This, this is a cult. I hate the term "high demand religion". You have no control, you're being abused, the church house the abuse, they tell you it's your fault, they make you feel guilty like you need to change, but.... You're. A. CHILD. 

I don't want to hear one more person say but all religions. It's the same exact shit as "not all men", or "not all police officers". Don't do it. We're specifically speaking on one church, and the one case of one parent who EVERYONE around them knew those children were being abused, and very clearly the church did nothing, or if they did something it was so abysmal, it was clearly useless, just like it always is. The church is complicit in child abuse, domestic violence, bigotry, cutting off children, particularly LGBTQIA+, sex abuse, inappropriate sexual questioning by priesthood leaders of minors, and the list goes on. This needs to be talked about. The cost of the damage that's done goes so far and wide, and the numbers are only climbing. This is a mormon specific problem. Stay on topic and shout about it far and wide that this is not ok. WE ARE NOT OK. We suffered, we learned better, and were doing better. It's time we hold the mormon church to a higher standard, one by which in accordance to their they're own gospel they can't meet.