In Response to Matt Walsh : Yes, Religion Hurts Me Personally

In my last post I went over one of Matt Walsh’s articles entitled “Yes, Gay Marriage Harms Me Personally”. I am of the opinion, and I’m sure there are those out there who agree with me, that gay marriage does not harm anyone. But I contend that religion harms me personally. As it does everyone else who has had the misfortune (whether they see it that way or not) of being within its clutches.

I had no choice in whether I would participate in a religion or not. I was born under the “covenant”, as Mormons love to say. This is their way of saying that I was born with privilege, because I was already within the grasp of the “one true church” and that much closer to achieving eternal exaltation. I was blessed as a baby by my father and baptized at 8. I attended Achievement Days and Young Woman’s. In my mind, I tried valiantly to like my Single’s Wards and to believe that my made-up callings in these wards were indeed inspired of God. I read the Book of Mormon through at least once, but after all the stopping and starting, I’ve probably read the majority of the BOM 3 times. I prayed; fervently. I wanted to know that the Church was true; that I was a Daughter of God; that I had a place in this world and that God had a plan for me.

I tried. That’s what I’m getting at.

Despite my sincere efforts, I was frequently plagued with doubts and ill-feelings, most particularly with the position of women in the Church, as I’ve addressed in previous posts. A constant battle waged within me as I tried to accept my secondary place in a religious society despite feeling the injustice of it all quite keenly. I was told that I had a divine purpose, but I could visually see the differences in the way I was treated versus my guy friends, and the way my mom was treated versus the way my father was treated. I ultimately rejected attending the Single’s Ward because the majority of lessons and talks revolved around the sanctity of marriage and the joys of womanhood. I was disgusted by the displays that girls my age put on in an effort to ensnare a man into marriage and I was bored to death of weekly activities that centered around “Date Night”.

Growing up in Young Women’s, I received countless lessons and “advice” on modesty because boys existed. I couldn’t wear anything that came above my knees. All of my shirt sleeves needed to be at least 3 finger lengths down from my shoulder. I could only have one piercing in my ears. Sandals were frowned on. Tights and Nylons were encouraged. Tight clothing was heavily hinted at as being undesirable. Coloring of the hair should appear natural, not outrageous. All of this was because a young man’s libido was too unpredictable. Did guy’s ever receive admonishments from the 1^st Presidency that they should check the way they dress? Not to the same extent, which led me to believe that young men were overly sexual beings that objectified women and would only be satisfied once the woman was sufficiently deflowered. I believed that I was unusual for having sexual desires, so I repressed them as best I could. At the very least, I didn’t divulge them to anyone. Not even my closest girl friends. Women were not supposed to have desires. Sex was a guy thing. If a woman desired and enjoyed sex, she was virtually a whore.

For 25 years of my life, and even occasionally in my 26^th year, I lived in a near constant state of guilt. I felt guilty for thinking unkind thoughts about anybody, whether they were decent to me or not. I was constantly berating myself for not having a more Christ-like attitude towards everyone. I felt guilty for random things like not giving money to pan-handlers with signs that said they had a family of 4 and desperately needed help. I bore a pressing feeling of guilt whenever I woke up from a dream in which my dream-self would try to masturbate just to relieve my real pent up sexuality. The only explanation I had for these dreams was that I had opened up my life to Satan and was unable, and unwilling, to completely shut him out. In reality, I had never tried to masturbate. I wasn’t even sure it was a thing that women could do. All the talk of masturbation in the Church revolves around men. I felt an excessive amount of guilt after engaging in some heavy petting with a former boyfriend who was about to leave on a mission, mostly because I felt some of my sexual pressure release and enjoyed that relief. I felt guilty for never receiving firm confirmation that the Book of Mormon and the Church were true. I felt guilty for not wanting to go to church and trying to get scheduled on Sunday’s so I would have a “valid” excuse for not attending. I hated spending time with my family whenever Church was involved, so things like Monday night Family Home Evenings were torture. I felt guilty for not wanting to get married and for not having this overwhelming desire to have children and become a mother. I wanted to travel. I wanted to write. I wanted to focus on me, which only added to my guilt.

I wanted to know that the Book of Mormon was true. I wanted to know that the Church was true. I wanted to be happy with my callings and I wanted to want to be a wife and a mother, but I could not honestly convince myself of any of them, and I felt inadequate and guilty for it.

All of this guilt created a disharmony within me. I tried to distance myself as much as I could from my family and from Church without outright avoidance. I couldn’t, and still don’t, trust my family completely enough to ever tell them of my doubts or opinions that might have disagreed with the stance of the Church. The first instance of this, that I can recall, is when Gordon Hinckley came out and said that girls should only wear one pair of earrings. I bit my tongue because I was supposed to be obedient, without question, to the prophet and my parents, and I absolutely detest confrontation, so I never got that second piercing that I desperately wanted.

All of this led to a serious repression of my feelings and thoughts, making me less social than I might have been, less at ease with people I should have felt a kinship with and untrusting of people who had views different than the ones I was told I should have, even when they made sense.

I became more judgmental as I grew older, especially once I went to college. I was no longer living with my family, but I was terrified of straying of the straight and narrow. It had been drilled into me that I needed to surround myself with those influences that would make me a better person. I had a roommate who, at the best of times, I tolerated. We were complete opposites. But what I didn’t realize, was that her over excitement about everything was quite often what masked her depression. Because she didn’t know how to deal with it, she decided to get drunk one night. It was only once, and yet in my mind, I judged her as a weak individual and a person I should further distance myself from because she was now a “bad influence”. I didn’t know she was depressed and never tried to understand what would have driven her to do this.

College was also the first arena in which I had a boyfriend. It was never serious relationship. We had a lot of fun together and it was great to be kissed and to hold hands, but we were not romantically suited to each other. He had a roommate, who was Jewish, and by Mormon standards, he was a weird individual. My ex used this roommate to cover up the fact that he was drinking by making fun of his roommate for drinking. I didn’t find out about this until a year later, when I randomly received a text from my ex in which he confessed to me that he had lied about not drinking. I was incensed. How could he have done such a thing to me!? I more or less refused to have any contact with him after that, although we did later become friends on Facebook. I look back on that moment now and wonder how his hiding the fact that he was drinking actually hurt me, because in reality, it didn’t. I see his posts now and wonder what kind of friends we could have actually been. He’s changed a lot now that he’s left the church and no longer hides his life from the world.

I had another roommate whom I thought I was rather close to. In our first year of school, there was a group of boys next door that we got together with a lot. One of them had a huge thing for my friend, but he was an inactive Mormon and wasn’t shy about talking about his lifestyle at the time. I was not very subtle in my dislike for him. Over the summer between our first and second years at school, he and my roommate finally hooked up, but I was not aware of this at all. I still didn’t know once school started, and we were well into our second week before anyone broke the news to me. My roommate told me outright that they hadn’t told me because they knew I didn’t like him. It was a slap in the face. I wasn’t fully aware of my dislike for him, or the fact that I had let it show. But when it comes down to it, I wasn’t fully accepting of him because, at the time, he didn’t want to have anything to do with the Church. I had been taught from a very young age that I must marry someone who was a member of the same Church, and to not do so would be to deny myself and my offspring eternal blessings and salvation. I’m sickened now by my behavior towards this boy. I eventually confessed to them and apologized for my lack of acceptance a few years later when they were married in the temple.

I share these experiences because I feel like I lost out on some solid friendships because of my lack of understanding and willingness to accept everybody for who they are. I learned from attending Church and listening to lessons and General Conference talks that if I allowed a “negative influence” to stick around in my life (i.e. a friend or friends that drink, a friend that isn’t LDS, a friend who is gay), I would be inviting Satan into my life and the chances of my straying from the straight and narrow would be exponentially enhanced.

It was only after the first month of my non-attendance to any kind of Church meeting that I finally felt my unreasonable guilt begin to dissipate. Sunday’s were days I suddenly looked forward to. I could participate in activities that had previously been denied me because it was against the reverence of the Sabbath Day. For the first time, I was confronted by ideas contrary to the ones I had been raised on, and while they were extremely uncomfortable at first, eventually even that guilt filtered away to the extent that I could begin doing my own research. I was no longer being told what to know or what to read in order to “understand” what I was supposed to know. I could research whatever I wanted whenever I had a question or an issue with either Church doctrine or some idea introduced by an atheist. I am learning on my own. There is an incredible sense of freedom that has come with that revelation. I’m no longer a sheep in a pack blindly following the sheep in front of me. I am not a lemming, as Matt Walsh so eloquently put it.

But even now, religion still harms me, or at the very least, it has a negative effect on my life. The majority of my immediate family are still LDS. I am not comfortable, nor do I feel welcomed to discuss or just express what I feel about religion and why I think it’s harmful. I feel like it will be harder now to have a closer relationship with my siblings, especially my youngest brother as he is only 14 years old and still very much under the influence of my parents.

I don’t feel free to express opinions on social media because the majority of my acquaintances are either LDS or Christian and I fear the backlash. This was evidenced by a conversation that took place on my fiancé’s Facebook feed after he posted a picture of a General Authority with the rainbow overlay. He lost 10 friends over that and had to endure comments against his character because someone else was “offended”.

Even my Sunday activities are limited now because the majority of businesses in Utah County close on Sunday. Even the mall closes. I have to arrange my life to accommodate the Mormon influence on the society that surrounds me.

Conservatives that are against same sex marriage and who declare that their lives are affected because of its recent legality are full of shit. They do not have to rearrange their lives around the lives of the gay couple down the street that just got married. A gay marriage does not inflict unwarranted guilt on a straight couple. It does not prevent a straight couple from participating in activities or from living a religion.  

Religion quite often inhibits an individual’s ability to think critically. I recognized that in myself once I started to research things for myself. I realized that throughout my High School and College days, especially with all of my English classes, I did, in fact, know how to think critically. I had to apply it every day in those classes if I wanted to write a decent paper and understand class discussions. But I had a wall installed around my religion. I would not think critically about the doctrine because I was terrified of what I would learn. Unconsciously, I think I understood that my religion was a bunch of hog-wash, but I couldn’t fathom a life without it. I believe that the majority of congregation goers, in any religion, experience the same thing. They are smart people. Many of which of college educations and who have learned to think critically, but they won’t apply those skills whenever religion is concerned because they’ve been taught not to.

Gay marriage does not inhibit an individual’s ability to think. If anything, it stimulates thinking. People are suddenly confronted with a change in the world around them that could potentially affect their world view. But does this harm a person? No. It helps a person grow. People like Matt Walsh are afraid of changing their world view because it means they will no longer be able to stare at the sheep’s butt in front of them for guidance through life.

Not everyone’s experience with religion is the same, but there are far too many stories like mine to say that it never happens and to say that religion does not harm people, because we see evidence of it every day. I have yet to see the evidence of gay marriage adversely affecting anyone in society, despite the childish whining of people like Matt Walsh.

Just for fun! 

(This is one of the tactics that the leaders of the Church employ in an effort to communicate the importance of church doctrine to the young men and women. Despite their cheesy nature, they are effective.)