The Bishop’s Interview: How The LDS Church Enables Child Predators

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

Imagine you are a 12-year-old girl, and a 50-year-old man (known as the bishop (1)) calls you into his office. Not only is this bishop about 3x your age, you are alone with him. He asks you a series of questions to determine your “worthiness.” Most of the questions have to do with whether you believe all the right things. (2)

But then, he gets to the questions: "Do you strive for moral cleanliness in your thoughts and behavior?" and "Do you obey the law of chastity?” If you just say, “yes,” he will probably move on, and minimal harm is done.

But it can be much worse. As a typical 12-year-old, you might not understand exactly what "moral cleanliness" or “chastity” mean, so you ask this 50-year-old man to explain. He turns red and mentions masturbation or necking and petting. (3) You don’t know what these words mean either, so you have to ask for further explanation. The much older man explains sexual acts in increasingly specific detail. (4)  If after this incredibly embarrassing and uncomfortable interaction, you say that you do strive for moral cleanliness and obey the law of chastity, you can move on and suffer nothing but a little humiliation.

But it can get much worse. Suppose you have masturbated. Not wanting to talk about something so personal with a 50-year-old man, you might be tempted to lie. However, you have been taught that the bishop has the spirit of discernment and will know if you’re lying. (5) So you admit the truth. He will then go into questions about when you started, when you last did it, how often you do it, whether you look at porn while doing it, etc. He might even ask you about your technique. He then might just tell you to repent and pray for forgiveness.

But it can get even worse. He might decide that you need continued counseling to overcome your sin and insist on follow up interviews in order to monitor your progress. You now have to go monthly into an office alone with an adult man and discuss touching yourself. He also might tell you that you can’t take the sacrament for a period of time. (6)

The first Sunday after this, your parents  notice that you didn't take the sacrament. When you get home, they ask you why. If you tell them that the bishop told you not to for a period of time, they will ask for details. Now you have to either lie to your parents or tell them about your masturbation habit.  If your parents suspect you are lying, they will press you on it, or they could even call the bishop who will likely tell them. You have now been shamed and humiliated for a completely normal and age appropriate activity by a 50-year-old man, your parents, and the entire congregation. You feel unclean, disgusting, and shameful. You imagine you are the only one in the ward who has done something so awful. You now obsess about your behavior and feel guilty even thinking about kissing a boy. As obsession often does, your hyperfocus on masturbation makes it even more difficult to resist, leading to you masturbating more often rather than less. The guilt and the shame can be debilitating. You decide you are a hopeless sinful person. (7)

But it can get still get worse. The above scenarios supposes a bishop with no nefarious intention. Imagine, instead, you have a bishop who is less than noble. You now face a child predator prying into your every sexual thought and action. You are incredibly uncomfortable every time you have to be alone with him, but there’s no way to escape it. If you tell your parents how uncomfortable the bishop is making you, they will probably interpret as a sign of you feeling guilty about sinning and insist you keep going. It can escalate from having you talk about touching yourself to him asking to see how you do it, etc. You can imagine how much further it can and does go. Yes, the Mormon church has covered up case after case of the sexual abuse of children through their high powered lawyers and non-disclosure agreements.

In the best case, you are like me and never have a bishop with bad intentions. I still grew up with extremely unhealthy feelings of shame about anything sexual that took me years to undo as an adult..

Yes, this still continues to happen in 2023. One might ask,  “Isn’t the church aware of how damaging this can be for children and how easy it makes it for child predators to find and manipulate victims?”

The answer would be yes, yes, they are. In 2018, Sam Young, a 65-year-old former Mormon bishop, learned of his daughters’ experiences with bishops and realized how inappropriate these interviews are. He started an organization called Protect LDS Children, (8) which collected stories of Mormons who had been victims of abuse due to these interviews and circulated a petition calling for an end to bishops asking youth sexual questions. This petition garnered 55,000 signatures, and Young personally delivered it to the Church office building in Salt Lake City. He even staged a 23-day hungry strike outside the Church office building in Salt Lake City, trying to get one of the church’s top leaders to come down and hear the stories of abuse from victims. Instead of doing so, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a press release stating, "They have received and reviewed his materials and understand clearly his viewpoint. Further meetings with him are not necessary to clarify his position on this matter.” (9)

In response to Sam’s activism, the Church did make a couple of minor changes to the process, including allowing the child to have a parent with her if she desired, but they refused to eliminate these completely inappropriate sexual questions. When Sam continued to protest, he was excommunicated. So yes, the church knows how harmful these interviews are and will relieve you of membership if you get too noisy about it.

After last week’s post, I had several current Mormons objecting to my characterizing the Mormon church as a cult. I stand by that characterization. These interviews are only one of the many reasons .

I would love to hear any of your thoughts on cults, purity culture, or Mormons. If you have a question about Mormons that you’d like answered in a future blog entry, post it in the comments. Or tell your own story of how purity culture, either within the Mormon church or elsewhere, affected you.

 

1 A bishop is the leader of a local congregation (known as a ward), and he is an unpaid, parttime lay minister chosen for the position by the church hierarchy. He could be anything from a dentist to an engineer in his profession. He has no theological training, no counseling education, no experience of any kind that would qualify him to work with youth. After being called, he is provided little additional training.

2 For a full list of questions, see https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/october-2019-general-conference-temple-recommend#questions

3 Necking and petting were archaic words 40 years ago when I was asked such questions. I didn't learn what they meant until at least college. Up at least until I left the church about 10 years ago, they were still being used by church officials.

4 There are any Mormon youth who first learn about masturbation while alone in the room with a much older man.

5 Since 12-year-olds tend to be bad at lying, he actually might know.

6 People who confess to sin are often told this. The sacrament is passed in church every week. People notice who doesn’t it take it.

7 In case, you are wondering boys have to go through this process as well.

8 See the organization's website at https://protectldschildren.org/

9) For the full press release, see https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/church-statement-on-sam-young

Purity Culture: The Cultivation of Dangerous Ignorance

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

            In deconstructing my trauma with having been raised in a cult, I have a habit was watching YouTube videos that react to Christian claims. In one I watched recently, Jimmy Snow (an ex-Mormon atheist) critiqued a video by YouTube creators who called themselves 3 Mormons. In their video, 3 Mormons promised their audience that we would never regret staying pure until marriage. One of them claimed that a married Non-Mormon friend recently told them, that he regretted having sex before marriage, but no one ever regretted purity.

            While I was somehow able to discount most of the sexist bull shit the Church (this is how Mormons usually speak of the institution to which they belong, as if it was the only one) taught me as a child, I was completely indoctrinated in its purity culture. When I married my husband, I was a virgin, and so was he. However, proving the 3 Mormons were lying, we both regret this fact. While there are many ways this purity cult harmed me, today I’m only going to talk about one of them.

            Purity culture left me dangerously naïve. Let me demonstrate how embarrassingly ignorant I was. When I was in my early teens, I came across the word masturbation in a novel. From context, it was clear that masturbation was sexual in some way, but I didn’t understand exactly what it meant. I knew it would be useless to ask my mother. Whenever sex was brought up, she grew red in the face, and her answer to every sexual question was the same.

            Me: What is a prostitute?

            Mom: Someone who breaks Heavenly Father’s commandments.

            Me: What is adultery?

            Mom: It’s breaking Heavenly Father’s commandments.

            To prevent my mother from dying of embarrassment, I learned young not to probe for a clearer answer from her. Since I was already pretty certain that masturbation was something that broke Heavenly Father’s commandments, I knew I get nothing further from her. The internet was about 25 years in the future, leaving me with the dictionary and the encyclopedia as resources. But they were about as helpful as my mother would have been. I don’t remember exactly what they said, but it was so vague that I knew no more after reading the definition than I had before. It was certainly something that broke Heavenly Father’s commandments, but just how?

            Sex education in public schools was basically non-existent in my childhood, but with as often as my church leaders talked about sex, you’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to learn. In our Sunday Young Women’s lessons, it seemed that every other week we talked about staying pure and modest. Other than don’t do it, the only thing I remember learning was about the manipulative nature of boys. I was warned that they would try to get away with as much as I will let them. It was my job to enforce the purity of the relationship. Every year the Young Women combined with the Young Men for what they called Standards Night, an entire evening devoted to purity culture. But they always used vague language or words I didn’t know. When Church leaders talked about sexuality, they always warned about necking and petting. Even at the time, these were arcane words, and I had no idea what they meant. They taught me to fear sex, not understand it. They taught me to feel ashamed of my sexual nature, not to respect my own body.

            To make matters worse, every year the bishop (what Mormons call the leader of the local congregation) interviewed every youth to make sure they were staying pure. The bishop (always a man and usually over 50) would ask if I obeyed the law of chastity, including if I masturbated or participated in necking or petting. While I didn’t know what any of the words meant, I knew I wasn’t necking or petting because they required a partner. But was I masturbating? Since I didn’t know what it was, how could I know? But I certainly wasn’t going to ask a 50-year-old man to explain masturbation to me, so I always answered that I didn’t. But I secretly feared that maybe I did. I think about sex at times, quite a bit actually. I knew having sexual thoughts was against Heavenly Father’s commandments, but was it masturbation? How could I know if I was sinning, if I didn’t know what the words meant?          

            Through continued novel reading, I did come to understand that masturbation had something to be with stimulating yourself, but I remained even embarrassingly ignorant .To illustrate just how ignorant consider the following conversation from my freshman year at Brigham Young University, the Mormon university. Among my fellow Mormon girls, I was hardly alone in my lack of sexual knowledge. During a conversation between my friends, Lisa and Carey, and I, the subject of masturbation came up. I don’t remember how. Carey, who was even more ignorant than I, asked how women masturbated. I answered that they stuck something in their vagina. (I didn’t understand the clitoris at that the time). Then she asked about male masturbation, and I hate to admit my answer. It was so embarrassing. I said they found a hole to stick their penis in, although I doubt I used such a vulgar term as penis. It was probably something more like they found a hole to sick their thing in. Lisa chimed in, “I think most of them just use their hand.” This thought had never occurred to me.

            While in retrospect, this may be amusing. It was dangerous to be this ignorant. No one ever taught me about respect and consent. No one discussed me looking at my own wants and needs or making decisions about sexuality based on my own comfort. The limits were absolute and couldn’t be questioned. Just don’t do it.

            While whether or not I was masturbating did concern me, necking or petting wasn’t an issue because I was shy and a nerd, so I didn’t date much in high school. The first time a boy ever expressed significant interest in me was during the summer between my junior and senior year of high school. My girlfriends and I (without any adult supervision) went on a two=week camping adventure throughout Southern Utah. While camping at Lake Powell, we met a local boy who had a summer job in the campground. John was a year older than me and not Mormon. He stopped by our campsite a lot, and it became clear that he was interested in me. After being ignored by high school boys, John’s interest in me was heady. I ended up staying over at his house one night. We kissed, and his hands began to roam. When he touched forbidden areas, I said no and removed his hand. As I had been warned about boys, he kept doing it. I never thought to consider if I wanted him to touch me or to assess my own needs or comfort. The only question I considered was whether or not it was sinful. In my mind, he was tempting me to sin. It never occurred to me that I was being sexually assaulted. No one ever told me that touching without consent was sexual assault. It was just something that boys naturally do. Somehow I just accepted that all males were sexual predators.

            My ignorance and the terrible sex education I had received caused me to put myself in a vulnerable position. The story could have ended much worse than it did. He didn’t rape me, but he wasn’t the only man I allowed to continue to sexually assault me without my recognizing it as assault.

            So yes, I regret how ignorant I was. I regret the lack of opportunity to explore my own sexuality while I was young. I regret that in my encounters with boys and eventually men, I never even asked what I wanted sexually. I regret that I didn’t know enough to recognize sexual assault and protect myself from it.

            So you’re wrong, 3 Mormons, many of us do regret waiting until marriage. I’ll address more about purity culture in future blogs. If you have any questions you’d like answered about growing up Mormon, post them in the comments. I’d also like to hear about your own encounters with purity culture or healthy sexual education. Did you have sex before marriage? Either way, do you regret your decision? Why?

On Biblical Morality

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

I am continuing my blog series on religion, and I plan (really hope to) make a new post every Sunday. I’m going to try to keep myself to a schedule.

Christians the United States over are calling for a return to Biblical morality. They claim that the downfall of our civilization was caused by removing the Bible and prayer from public schools. In their minds, the moral nature of the Bible is an irrefutable fact. As an illustration of this, I found the posted on one social media channel just yesterday: “The Bible must be the foundation for moral philosophy.” They see the rejection Biblical morality is a sign of moral bankruptcy. When I responded that the Bible was a terrible foundation for any moral code, the poster insisted that I “wouldn’t know immoral if it slapped [me] in the face.” The poster was convinced that I couldn’t have read the Bible, and I must just want to sin. This is the most frequent accusation they throw at non-believers.

On all accounts, the poster was mistaken. As I’ve stated before, I was raised in a conservative Mormon family. Not only did we attend church for three hours every Sunday, we had family scripture study and family prayer daily. When I reached ninth grade, I started what the Mormons call seminary. Not to be confused with seminaries that train pastors, Mormon seminary is a daily religious class for teenagers. Mormon teens the world over get up early before school to attend an hour long religious study course. However, since I grew up in Utah, getting up early wasn’t necessary for me to attend seminary. Throughout Utah, the Mormon Church builds seminary buildings across the street from every high school. Students can get release time to cross the street to attend seminary during any class period throughout the day as well as early morning or after school. In seminary, we studied the Bible and other Mormon scriptures.

Yes, I’ve read the entire Bible, more than once in fact. While I remained a believer for far too long, reading the Bible was a part of my long deconversion. The amount of cognitive dissonance the Bible caused me and the mental gymnastics it forced me to perform in order to remain a believer was a truly impressive feat. But the doubts could not be satisfied and wouldn’t go away. I eventually had to face the reality that the Bible is not a moral book nor is the god it depicts a moral being. Maybe, if you just confined your Bible reading to the Gospels, you could argue for a moral foundation, but step outside those four books, and Biblical immorality is nearly ever present.

While the examples of this immorality are nearly endless, today I will just discuss the Israelite conflict with the Midianites in the Book of Numbers. In the first two verses of the chapter, the Lord commands the Israelites to “take vengeance” upon the Midianites, and so they do, killing all of the adult men. They bring back the women and children as spoils of war, but God isn’t satisfied with this revenge.  In fact, Moses is angry that they “kept all the women alive.” He orders them to “kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately.” (emphasis added)

This foundation of moral philosophy commands the genocide of all males and all adult women in a population, but allows the men to keep the young girls as sex slaves. How is this moral? Even if you can somehow argue that the adults were bad so they deserved it (a dubious claim at best), how is ordering the slaughter of little boys the act of a righteous god? How can keeping little girls as sex slaves be morally justified?

Anyone who wants to claim that the Bible is a good guide to a moral life explain this to me.

The Comfy Blanket:

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

A Modern-Day Adaption of the Garden of Eden

            A father of two-year-old twins—a girl named Eve and a boy named Adam—spreads a big soft blanket out in the backyard. The sun is shining, and a cool breeze is blowing, making the weather absolutely perfect. Onto the blanket, he puts all the children’s favorite toys and all of their favorite things to eat. In addition, he puts a big plate of frosted sugar cookies in the middle of the blanket.

            Then he goes into the house and brings Eve and Adam outside and sits them on the blanket. He hugs them and tells them, “Since I love you so much, kids, I’ve given you all your favorite toys and all your favorite snacks so you can be happy playing here all day. You can play with anything on the blanket and eat anything, except that big plate of cookies.” He points out the big plate of cookies and brings the children over to get a good look at the cookies. “Now, kids, do not eat any of these cookies, not even one bite because if you do, I’ll have to kill you.” He gives each child one last hug and kisses them both on the head and goes in the house to do some chores.

            A half hour later, he looks out the window, and neither Eve nor Adam are on the blanket, and two sugar cookies are missing from the plate. He goes outside and calls to his children. They come sheepish out of the bushes with frosting smeared on their faces. The father asks Eve and Adam, “Did you eat any of the cookies?”

            Adam points vehemently at his sister. “Eve ate one first!”

            The father turns to his young daughter. “Eve, did you eat a cookie?”

            Eve doesn’t meet her father’s eyes, but nods. “The mean kid from next door came over and told me that the cookies were really, really good, and if I ate one, you wouldn’t kill me, so I ate one and gave one to Adam.”

            Learning of his children’s failure to obey the one rule he’d given them, the father grabs Eve and Adam by the hair and drags them into the house. He gets out his belt and beats both of them mercilessly. Then he takes the two crying children and puts them in a dank, dusty, cold room whose floor is covered in sharp spikes. “Kids, I love you, so I really wanted you to play on that nice blanket with that nice food all day, but because you disobeyed me, you will now need to spend the rest of the day in here. Rather than being able to eat all that nice food I made for you, if you want anything to eat, you’ll have to make it yourselves.” There are several cardboard books taped shut with packing tape in the corner of the room. “There are ingredients for food in those boxes.”

            He goes to shut the door, and both two-year-olds cry out in alarm. “Daddy, please, don’t leave us here.”

            He turns to them. “Don’t cry. I really wanted you to be on that nice blanket, but you couldn’t obey. It’s all your fault that you’re in this horrible room. I’ll be watching and listening to you all day. Since I love you, if you spend the day on your knees admitting what terrible, disobedient children you are and praising what a wonderful father I am, at the end of the day I’ll let you out and take you with me to a really nice place, even better than the blanket was. You will be able to live there with me telling me how wonderful I am forever. However, if you don’t admit that this is all your fault or don’t tell me how absolutely wonderful I am, I will lock you in this room forever, send scorching hot flames into here, and you’ll burn in agony forever. Now I love you, so I don’t want to be forced to torture you for eternity. I’d really like you to come to the nice place with me and tell me how wonderful I am, but if you won’t obey me this time, it will be all your fault that you have to stay in this hellish room forever.” He then closes the door. He then goes to his peephole to spend the entire day watching the kids to make sure that they are admitting how horrible they are and how wonderful he is.

            Isn’t this the best, kindest father you’ve ever heard of? There has never been a better father than this in the history of the world. He is the very definition of a good and just parent.

Disclaimer: I’m well aware that two-year-olds can’t speak in full sentences like Adam and Eve do in this fable, but since this a fable, having two-year-olds speaking in full sentences is no less realistic than talking snakes.

You Can’t Rob Grief

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

You can’t rob grief.

I don’t mean you shouldn’t, but that it is impossible to do so. One way or another grief will have its due. My father’s death when I was 21 taught me this. My mother’s death confirmed it. Since my son died a year and a half ago, I’ve had to struggle to learn it again.

I visualize grief as sharp arrows of bloody, festering emptiness. A nothingness that shreds our insides and leaves us hollow. When you feel the first sharp stabs, it’s only natural to want to run from the pain. It’s no wonder that denial is the first stage of grief. Letting all those arrows hit us once, especially when the lost one is your child, would annihilate you. But there isn’t any way to outrun grief or hide from it forever.

My junior year in college, the day before Fall semester final exams, I received a 4 a.m. phone call from one of my brothers-in-law informing me that my father had died. I had been home for Thanksgiving just a couple of weeks earlier. My dad hadn’t been sick, and he was only 54. There was no reason to suspect that would be the last time I saw my father. But on December 11, a cold Sunday morning, he had a massive heart attack and died. Not only was his death completely unexpected, he died before his time. In today’s world, fifty-four is young to die. I am now older than my father ever got to be.

I had lost previously lost three of my four grandparents, but their deaths in no way prepared me for my father’s. Not only was my relationship to them not as close as the one to my father, my grandparents had been old and sick. In many ways, their deaths, when they came, were a blessing, a comfort. They were now out of pain and at peace. But my father hadn’t been old or sick, and he was just suddenly gone.

My younger sister was a freshman at the same university. One of her friends drove the two of us the one hour from Provo to Bountiful, Utah, while one of mine drove my car down. That night I drove the two of us back to school to take our final exams. My father had been a college professor, and we were told that taking our exams is what he would have wanted. Looking back now, taking my exams at that time was a terrible idea. It may well have been what my father would have wanted, but it wasn’t good for me, and I shouldn’t have been made to feel obligated to do so. I couldn’t take exams with those arrows of festering emptiness descending on me. I had to put up a shield to hold them back.

I was young and had no one to teach me any other way to deal with grief. I took my exams and did okay on them, but I felt lost, cast adrift. My family was all caught up in their own grief, and my friends, all of whose parents were still alive, didn’t understand. It didn’t take me long to discover that most people are uncomfortable with grief. I quickly found myself pretending to be okay to make others feel better. But I wasn’t okay. I was in pain without the ability to process that pain. So even after finishing my exams, I kept the shield in place, trying to keep a barrier between me and the grief. The problem is that holding grief at bay takes an enormous amount of energy, leaving little with which to live life. What’s worse is that while you fight against feeling grief, the grief doesn’t grow smaller or easier to handle. It’s all still there waiting to ambush you if you let your guard down for an instant. I sank into a deep depression and stayed there for close to five years. Fighting not to feel my grief, I felt little of anything. Eventually, my husband got me into counseling, and I was able to work through the debilitating depression and grief and learn to truly live again. But that process involved facing and feeling my grief at the loss of my father. It was incredibly painful, but I learned how to live again.

Twelve years later, when my mother died equally unexpectedly, I was in a much healthier position. Her death wasn’t easy, but I allowed myself to feel the pain, and within a year I was mostly okay again. Still, what I remember most about my mother’s funeral wasn’t my own grief, but my mother’s mother. I’ve never seen anyone look as lost as she did that day. She seemed lost, broken. Her words to me were, “No one should have to bury their child.”

While I could see my grandmother was in great pain, I didn’t fully appreciate her grief until my son was murdered. We use the same word “love” for how we feel toward our children, but it is a completely inadequate word to describe the emotion. I have loved many people, but what I felt for Jesse, I’ve never felt for anyone but him. The arrows of bloody, festering emptiness I faced when my parents died were like pin pricks compared to what awaiting me when I buried my son.

The pain nearly destroyed me, and I seriously contemplated joining him. I still sometimes do. I did not and I do not want to feel this pain. When the arrows of grief rip through me, the pain is nearly unbearable. Who would want to feel this grief? Who wouldn’t want to hide from it?

Over the last year and a half, I’ve gone between feeling the worst pain I’ve ever felt and fighting not to feel. When I’ve allowed one of those arrows of grief rip through me, the pain is staggering. But afterwards, I can be sort of okay for a few days until I have to feel the next one. When I fight not to feel, it just gets worse.

Even though I know that grief cannot be robbed, it is still difficult not to try to protect myself from it. The first few months after his death, I truly don’t know what I did. The days passed even though I couldn’t tell you how I spent them. It took nearly a year, but I thought I figured out how to handle the pain. On Sunday, I would visit his grave, let the pain in, and sob, mourning the loss of my son who had also become my best friend. Then the rest of the week I’d be functional at least.

Then came my brother’s announcement that his cancer had returned, and they had no good further options to treat it. His life expectancy was short. His coming death on top of the continuing pain of losing my son was too much, so again I tried to hide from it, and again, it didn’t work. I sank into depression and could accomplish almost nothing. And all that pain still lay in wait for me.

Yesterday, I visited my son’s grave for the first time in weeks. I again let the pain of losing him in and sobbed. It was hard. It hurt badly. But today I managed to write over 1000 words in the book I’m currently writing. Today I am functioning. The pain isn’t gone by any means. But for today I can go on.

The problem is finding that balance–the balance between allowing the pain to rip you apart and fighting against it in order to feel nothing. I can’t yet say that I’ve achieved this, but yesterday and today proved to me yet again that grief can’t be robbed. It will have its due.

I’d love to hear your experiences with grief in the comments below, if you’d like to share them.

Land mines

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

The moment I first held Jesse in my arms, I noticed that he was perfect. I never changed my mind about that. He wasn’t perfect in the “my Jesse would do nothing wrong” kind of way. I had to pick up at the police department once because he’d been picked up for shoplifting something he didn’t need and had the means to pay for the item on him. He had his flaws, but and no mom could have ever asked for a better son than Jesse was to me. I doted on him, sometimes to the degree that it embarrassed him. When I’d praise him, he’d roll his eyes and say something like, “Well, at least my mom thinks I’m great.” I never apologized for doting on him. I always told him that children didn’t their parents to be objective, and about Jesse I never was. Still, he fit with me perfectly and became integrated with every aspect of my life. I teach freshman writing and literature at Auburn University, and when I taught, he was everywhere. When I didn’t a writing example, I’d say something about him. We talked all the time about what I was teaching, and he even recommended one of the books I taught in American Literature. When I wrote, he was there to, as my biggest plan.

I took the semester after he died off, and started back teaching in Fall of 2021. It was then I discovered how much he was a part of everything I did. I wrote the following poem to express what I felt. I’m a writer of fiction, but I’ve written few poems, and none that I’d consider good, so take the following as an offering of my heart, not necessarily a literary masterpiece.

Land Mines

October 12, 2020, I died.
A hand reached inside and tore out my heart,
Tore out my soul,
Leaving a raw, bloody, festering nothingness behind.
Yet still I breathe.

Now land mines lurk in every thing I teach.
When the smallest scab begins to form, one explodes.
How could I know they’d be dangerous?
Sentimentality seemed their own flaw.
An apostrophe lesson shattered me last month.
I love my son’s cat.
I love my sons’ cat.
For one son, for Jesse, the apostrophe before the s.
After the s for the two other sons I never bore.
But where does it go now that I have no sons?
Help me breathe.

“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” lay in wait in my literature class.
A mother, as she dies, reaches longingly for her child
Only to find her daughter isn’t waiting in heaven.
There is god, no afterlife.
Oh, no, there’s nothing more cruel than this.
I’ll never forgive it.
Like Granny Weatherall, I didn’t see the danger until too late.
Twenty-seven sets of eyes watched that one kill me.
When the mines explode, I cannot breathe.

The worst mine yet crouched in a lesson on song lyrics.
An ellipsis is used to indicate a skipped line:
“Like Rod Stewart, I know that someday my son will leave home,
but my love for him will not end then:
‘And when you finally fly away
I’ll be hoping that I served you well. . . .
Whatever road you choose, I’m right behind you win or lose.’”
But the road he chose brought him between an abuser and his victim.
How can I be behind him in a choice that took his life?
How can I breathe without him?

Jesse also lives in everything I ever wrote.
My queen holding her newborn child.
“Brianna, I’m your momma. Your momma loves you.”
But to call what she felt “love” was wholly inadequate.
She’d felt love before but this intense desire to hold, nurture, and protect?
This she couldn’t even name.
Those words differed from my own only in the child’s name.
When I read them now, I can’t breathe.

Jesse shared my love of stories.
“Mom, read to me.” |
How could I say no when my pleasure equaled his?
We started Harry Potter when he was four.
Harry Dresden took Potter’s place ten years later.
I dreaded the day that he’d stop asking.
But that day never came.
Months before his death we read Peace Talks together.
And saw Dresden again facing the destruction of his world.
That novel ended in the middle of the story.
But how can I read Battle Ground without Jesse?
I won’t be able to breathe.

If I root these land mines out, how many others lie in wait?
He was my heart, my soul, made from me, a part of me.
If I take out all the mines, will there be anything left?
Will I then be able to breathe?

Unbelieving Grief

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

I have been no stranger to grief. My father died without warning when I was 21. My mother’s death 12 years later was equally a shock. Even as I write this, my brother is dying of cancer. He is 57. While my faith in a god had been shaky most of my life, I put it completely to bed in 2015. I now call myself an atheist. Then on Oct. 12, 2020, I experienced the worst loss possible. My 24-year-old son and only child was murdered. I would have a million times preferred to die myself than to lose Jesse. Below is a picture I took of him during the our 2018 Christmas trip to Miami. In many ways, this picture demonstrates the man that he was. He was an angel, but not an innocent, rose-cheeked cherub. No, my son was a powerful, avenging archangel, who was killed trying to defend a victim of domestic abuse. The multi-colored wings represent his reverence for life in all of its beautiful, weird, and amazing varieties. Jesse’s death nearly destroyed me, and there are still many days when I contemplate taking my own life and joining him in oblivion. But I can’t do this on the off-chance that I’m wrong about there being no afterlife. If Jesse were there to greet me at death, he would be furious with me for giving up on life and on hope, so I must live on.

In order to figure out how to truly live in his absence, I’ve started this blog category, talking about dealing with grief without the comforting belief in a deity. I wanted to make a different design for this blog topic, but I lack the technical skills to accomplish this. Join me on my journal through my son’s death. I’d love to hear your comments below on either my post or your own experiences dealing with the death of a loved one.

Why Don’t Mormons Drink Coffee?

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

But why? You may ask. Why is drinking coffee such a big deal to begin with? Why did I violate this most sacred rule in front of my deeply committed Mormon family members?

Last week at my family reunion, I performed a rebellious act. I made and drank coffee every morning. Those who aren’t Mormon will not understand how defiant of everything holy and decent this act was. Obeying what Mormons call the Word of Wisdom is one of the most fundamental aspects of the religion today. Stories of turning down coffee or alcohol while under the influence of societal pressure to imbibe have formed a part of more Mormon sermons (although Mormons would call them “talks” rather than sermons because Mormons have no paid local clergy and messages are given in church from regular members rather than a minister or pastor) than I care to remember. Whether you obey the Word of Wisdom is one of worthiness questions Mormons have to answer to enter their temples. Openly violating these rules is a sure sign of apostasy.

We’ll get to both of these things. The Word of Wisdom is the Mormon health code. It is supposed to assure good health and long life. This is a picture of my siblings and me at the reunion. If you count, there are only seven of us. There should be eight. Instead of joining us, my brother Roy was at home, dying of cancer. I visited him the week before the reunion, and seeing just how ill he’d become was heartbreakingly difficult. He is only 57, two and a half years older than me, and he doesn’t have long left. Roy first got cancer of the tongue about 25 years ago. With periods of remission, he has been battling cancer of the mouth and throat ever since.

The vast majority of the time this type of cancer comes from smoking or using smokeless tobacco, but my brother never did either. Still, the cancer has so consumed his body that there is now an open wound in his throat exposing several vertebrae that the doctors have no way of treating. If a god is behind the Word of Wisdom, he has a lot to answer for as far as my brother goes.

The Word of Wisdom is a product of 19th century folk medicine that dominating some sectors of American society during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion. Not using tobacco is about the only part of it that still makes sense. Mormons like to see what is known today about the detrimental effects of tobacco, as a sign that Smith was inspired by god, since science didn’t definitely establish these until decades, if not more than a century, later. Remember Mormons see Joseph Smith as a prophet in the same way that Abraham and Moses were prophets. Not using tobacco remains the only portion of the Word of Wisdom I still follow.

The rest of the “revelation,” found in section 89 of the Doctrine & Covenants, consists of cautions thoroughly debunked by science, misinterpreted or ignored by Mormons, or all of the above. Nothing illustrates this more strongly that the Mormon prohibition of coffee and tea. First, coffee and tea aren’t mentioned specifically in the doctrine. The doctrine prohibits “hot drinks.” This prohibition was based on 19th century folk medicine beliefs that drinking hot liquids was bad for you, and it meant any hot liquid. This is, of course, ridiculous according to modern science, and later Mormon leaders interpreted it to mean just coffee and tea, no matter if they were drunk hot or iced. When I was younger, I was taught that this was because of the caffeine in these beverages. More austere Mormons wouldn’t drink caffeinated sodas either. My parents wouldn’t buy caffeinated soda, and my first major act of rebellion was drinking Diet Coke. But more recently, Mormon leaders have come out and said that caffeinated soda is just fine, and faithful Mormons, without the slightest bit of guilt or sense of hypocrisy, will even drink things like Monsters or 5-hour energy concoctions that are not only full of caffeine, but a shit ton of other unhealthy things. But still, somehow coffee and tea are bad. The doctrine in this matter went from unscientific to incoherent and just weird. Why hate on coffee and tea? These aren’t unhealthy substances, but don’t try to tell a Mormon that.

I had just been to see my dying brother. I wasn’t going to give up my morning coffee. So I made coffee and drank it, and nobody said anything because we are a conflict-avoidant family.

I’ll have more to say on the Word of Wisdom later, but I think that’s enough for now. As always, let me know what you think in the comments, and if you have any questions about Mormons, you’d like answered, post them as well.

Where Do Mormon Go When They Die?

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

Before I answer that question, I’m going to give my own perspective on the afterlife. I have long believed that fear of death and grief from loss of loved ones are the two main motivations for humans creating religion. One of the reasons I clung to belief as long as I did is I didn’t want to face the reality of never seeing my parents again. They both died relatively young. But I came to have peace with that, and I was at peace with the idea of my own death being the end of my existence. What I wasn’t prepared to deal with was the death of my son. His death nearly destroyed me. As I write this, my brother lies in the hospital dying. He has been fighting cancer for years and is now losing. He probably only has weeks. Roy is just 57, two and a half years older than me. My son was 24. The belief that my son no longer exists and that I will never see him again has been so agonizing that I’ve tried to believe in all sorts of afterlives to avoid facing it. Contemplating my brother’s death adds to this nearly intolerable grief. But despite this pain, I can’t bring myself to believe again. Since I’m a woman, the Mormon afterlife requires me to give up personal autonomy, and the traditional Christian afterlife is monstrous. So I’ve tried to come up with an afterlife I could accept. I deigned a version, which is basically a “scientifically” based version of reincarnation, that I could almost get myself to believe. But the realization that I was simply making up what I wanted to be true was too powerful to ignore. When I allowed myself to think about it, it was absurd to think my personal fantasy had any basis in reality. Part of me still wants to hang onto a belief in some sort of afterlife where my son and parents now are and where my brother will soon join them. As my therapist says, I can’t know for certain that no such place exists. I think having such a belief would make the loss easier to bear. But even to soothe my pain, I could never accept either the traditional Christian nor the Mormon version.

The traditional non-Catholic Christian belief, I find monstrous. There is heaven, and there is hell. That’s it. Heaven is a place of eternal bliss, and hell a place of eternal torture. All of humanity is headed for one of these two options. What’s worse, is that your actions have nothing to do with where you end up. Traditional Christians teach that because Eve ate an apple 6000 years ago, we are all horrible sinners. Absolutely, everyone deserves to go to hell and be tortured forever. But since god is “loving,” if you grovel appropriately before him, he will save you from this fate. If you have the faith to grovel, even if you develop this faith on your deathbed after a lifetime of heinous action, you go to heaven. If you don’t have the faith, it doesn’t matter if you’ve spent your life striving to be the best person you can or if you’re Stalin or Mao, you will be tortured forever, something I don’t think even Stalin and Mao deserve. It is an infinite punishment for a finite crime. Any god who would do this is a monster. The Catholic afterlife with provides a bit more justice, but there is still the sickening belief in eternal torture. The concept of Hell is made worse by the belief that god is all-knowing, which means that he created people who he knew would end up suffering unimaginable torment forever. What kind of monster would do that?

I find the Mormon version of the afterlife less objectionable, but I have no desire for the ultimate reward for being a good Mormon—Godhood. Yes, going to the Celestial Kingdom to become a god is what every Mormon is striving for. Lorenzo Snow, the 5th president of the church, put it this way: “As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be.” This is one of the reasons that many Christians insist that Mormons aren’t Christian, and other people think Mormons are so weird. Many find it blasphemous to believe that God and humanity aren’t essentially different. Truthfully, it is a bit on the arrogant side. My biggest objection, however, is that people become gods as a couple with the wife forever subordinate to her husband. An eternity of subordination isn’t something I find desirable.

But the fate of those who don’t qualify for Godhood is more palatable than the eternal torture of Hell. If you don’t do all the correct Mormon stuff, but you’ve been a basically good person, you go to the Terrestrial Kingdom. You don’t become a god here, but it’s a really nice place. When my oldest brother (not the one who is dying) tried to reconvert me to Mormonism, I told him in the incredibly unlikely possibility that Mormons are actually right, I was okay with going to the Terrestrial Kingdom. Truly bad people will go to the Telestial Kingdom, which isn’t as good as the Terrestrial, but it’s still better than earth.

There is a 4th place called Outer Darkness, which is basically hell. Those who end up here are called Sons of Perdition, but there are few of them. To qualify for Outer Darkness, you must commit the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. “Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men” (Matt. 12:31). What this means is vague, but I was taught to qualify to be a Son of Perdition, you have to have an absolute knowledge of the truth (something akin to god appearing to you personally) and then work to destroy it. Not something that many would do. Also, note that they are “Sons” of Perdition. With the patriarchal nature of god, he's not likely to appear to any woman. Nobody ever actually said this, but it was implied.

What do you think happens when people die? Are you at peace with this? Do you have any questions about the Mormon belief system? Answer in the comments below.

Unsettling Honesty

Jamie Marchant Posted on by

Unsettled.

Yesterday, my husband kept asking me how I was. I replied, “I don’t know.” I didn’t feel good, but I wasn’t really feeling bad either. Finally, I found the word to describe my emotions.

Unsettled.

Growing up Mormon, especially Mormon in Utah, caused me multiple levels of trauma. To be mentally healthy, I need to examine this and stop hiding pieces of myself. While I hold no animosity against individual members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the church itself is abhorrent and causes so much damage. There are reasons why the teen suicide rate in Utah is so high, and the level of depression among women is through the roof. Other conservative religions cause similar damage, but most of the others aren’t as strange, so little understood by outsiders, as Mormons are.

Explaining Mormonism to others helps me wrap my own brain around just how incredibly, flipping weird growing up in a Mormonland was. For example, they use words like “flipping” instead of the proper, curse word. I don’t recall ever hearing either of my parents utter even the mildest curse word. None of my siblings do real cursing either. (Mormon cursing deserves an entire post of its own. I promise, it’s weird.) My son once gave me quite a lecture because I called some politician (I don’t remember which one) a bitch at my oldest sister’s house. Jesse told me in no uncertain terms that my sister didn’t use that kind of language, and out of respect, I shouldn’t either when I was at their house.

A part of me is excited to publicly own my entire self. Come out, as it were, since June is Pride Month. This part of me wants to do nothing but write about Mormonism. I have dozens of topics in mind.

So why am I so unsettled? There are many reasons.

I worry about how any Mormon who comes across this blog might feel. I truly believe most of Mormons are good people. Many of the people I love are believing, faithful Mormons. I don’t want to insult or offend anyone, especially not members of my own family. One of my mother’s favorite sayings was, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” This is a rule I’ve pretty much lived by, although I’m not sure how well it has served me. The only thing I can think to say to offended Mormons is to promise honesty, to accurately portraying the church, as I experienced it.

The Mormon church also doesn’t take kindly to public criticism from current or former members. Publicly criticizing the church has a decided tendency to get a person excommunicated. The September Six are famous in the Ex-Mo world, although basically unheard of outside it.

Writing this blog is distracting me from my WIP. The Llama Apocalypse is serious business. I haven’t been this excited about something I’ve written in quite some time.

Another part of me whispers that I’m being self-indulgent. This is primarily intended to record my own personal journey, but I’m not only posting it on my blog, I’ve been promoting it on Twitter and Facebook. This voice tells me that nobody, except maybe Momma Turtle, would find any of this interesting, and she’s probably just being polite. It tells me that I should write this stuff in a diary, not post it where anybody could read it. But writing it in a diary doesn’t serve the purpose of publicly owning my full self, something I feel is necessary for my own mental health.

However, as a writer, I do also want to be read. So, if you’re reading this, please leave a comment and tells me what you find interesting or less than fascinating. If you’ve experienced anything similar, let me know. If you have suggestions on what you’d find more engaging, please tell me. Most importantly, if there’s anything about Mormons you’re curious about, ask it in the comments. Maybe this way I can produce something of value for people other than myself and feel just a bit less unsettled.