Impact:  If I had to pinpoint one [most concerning] thing, it would be the secrecy and the lies. To get a Temple recommend, I had to say that I was honest in all my dealings, when the very church who deals out these questions does not have to live by the same standard.

Name: M.S.

Date: 15 Jul 2014

Impact Topic: Cover Up and Excommunications

Impact:  It is upsetting learning about these things because, yes, it feels as though I have been lied to. It is also extremely insulting to think the leadership was trying to “protect us” from the truth because they seemed to believe we couldn’t handle the facts. The history doesn’t bother me nearly as much as this “we know what’s best for you to know” attitude that feels so pervasive now. It now seems much of what I was told was anti-mormon propaganda wasn’t a pack of lies as I was told growing up, but rather it was more a pack of inconvenient truths.

For me, if they would just own up to being wrong where they were wrong (E. G. Blacks and the priesthood) it would lend a whole lot more credibility to the organization than these we-weren’t-wrong-really-you-just-don’t-understand explanations they like to throw out there. It’s like they want to show us they are trying to make progress, but only just enough so that we’ll see it, acknowledge it, tell them to keep up the good work, and then they can go back to the status quo because, after all, they did make an effort. 

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that if my kids had been telling fits or not the whole truth the same way the church has, I would sit down and talk to them about why it is important to be honest and then ground them from electronics and video games for a week so they’d learn that actions have consequences. If they persisted in insisting that hadn’t done anything wrong, then it would be 2 weeks, because that is unacceptable behavior and if it continues unchecked and my kids think that’s how you are supposed to operate in the world then they would be on track to become the next Mark Shurtleff. I don’t want that to happen. That guy is the worst.

Name: Spence

Date: 16 Jul 2014

Impact Topic: Cover up and Excommunications

Impact:  I am a born in the covenant, life long member, in fact my family on both sides goes all the way back to Kirtland Ohio. My father was a seminary and institute teacher and Stake Patriarch. I was the youngest of five kids, and the obedient one, who didn’t like confrontation. So I did all the things you were suppose to do. Graduated from seminary, served a mission, graduated from Institute (even thought of becoming a seminary teacher at one time, like the idea of having summers off), married a good Mormon girl in the temple, had four children, baptized them all, and worked my way up to a High Priest. My whole life revolved around the church. As the Internet became more pervasive, I started venturing looking at so-called “anti-Mormon” information or what others might call “LDS History Porn.” This research started to raise a lot of questions and raise old questions from the past that that I had just been placed on the proverbial “shelf.” The “light bulb” finally turn on for me when I read about a quote by Boyd K. Packer, where in essence he says the problem with historians is they want to tell the truth, regardless whether it is uplifting or not. When I read that quote the whole “shelf” completely collapsed. All of this stuff I had been shelving for years came gushing forth, it all made sense. The church has been lying to me and everyone else, about its history, because if they told the true history it would not be uplifting; therefore it is okay to lie. It was then I realized that the LDS church itself would not qualify for it’s own temple recommend, because it would fail the questions “Are you honest in your dealings with your fellow men?” Although we all know the Church will still get a temple recommend because they would just tell another lie so they could get their recommend.

Name: Keith

Date: 15 Jul 2014

Impact Topic: Cover up and Excommunications