New and Everlasting Curiosity

In LDS theology they preach the new and everlasting covenant through eternal monogamy that leads to omniscience and omnipotence.  How boring.

Almost a week ago, the LDS Church removed Kate Kelly’s covenants by excommunicating her in absentia. What a chicken shit move.  Instead of holding the hearing where and when she could attend, they did it behind closed doors and without her present.  Sure, she could have sprung $798 in airfare to attend.  Sure they could have postponed until she returned or moved it to where she was currently living.  They didn’t want to actually allow her to defend herself because the conclusion of excommunication was a necessary foregone conclusion.  The LDS Corporation can’t allow dissent to run rampant, and Kate is an example to “Morwomans” not to challenge the patriarchy of whom they solemnly covenanted in the temple to not speak evil.   Kate, I will tell you in a minute how you’re better off. Letting the LDS Sanhedrin move behind darkened doors in surreptitious manner is just the kind of history we needed to keep pointing at, so Kudos to you. 

Kate Kelly has called out the sexism in the LDS Corporation like no one has since Sonia Johnson.  The very fact that only a male can head the actual financial corporate empire topping $60 Billion in assets and liquid cash flow is financial and corporate sexism of class action suit status.  What I mean is, the Sole Corporate owner (Currently Tom Monson) of the Corporation of the President (and of the Presiding Bishprick) of the COJCOLDS (the equivalent of two Fortune 500 empires or a single Fortune 100) can ONLY BE A MALE because of the patriarchy of the men-only club of priesthood authority.  The best a woman can hope for in the financial empire is to possibly head up branch companies like Deseret Book.  A woman will not, under current policy and doctrine, ever reach CEO of the Sole Corporation.  This is complete and bold-face financial and corporate sexism that is illegal under any other US company of equivalent size.  

Another area of sexism in the LDS Corporation is how they treat the gays.  A gay or a lesbian can never experience with full acceptance of membership the same benefits of a heterosexual member in the church.  Why?  Do they engage in a different kind of sex?  Not really.  LDS heterosexual couples can (only recently without reprisal or temple-worthiness questions) engage in oral and anal sexual activities.  Do gays and lesbians love each other less?  Hardly.  Do they love their neighbors less?  Not even (my gay neighbors are the best on the block).  They can’t have children together?  Sure they can—adoption, in-vitro fertilization and more, which are all acceptable in LDS Social Services. Do they make worse parents?  Not according to the latest, accepted research.  So what is the difference?   The difference is gender.  Both members of a gay couple are the same gender.  That’s the difference.  The LDS Church discriminates against them because of gender. It's sexism of another kind.

Now to John Dehlin. They’re pulling a shit move on you buddy.  They are killing you softly.  They know to pull a bold move against you is to invite more fame and fortune for you. They want you and the public to believe that your folly is about your hype in favor of gay marriage. This is yet another tie between John and Kate—The LDS Corporation is disciplining them both over gender issues.  And while I applaud both, John’s stance is being used under false pretense by the LDS Corporation.  Fears that Dehlin’s stance on gay marriage will lead more members out of the church is not really the impetus behind their disciplinary action.  His Mormonstories elucidating the actual experience of many many members learning the actual history, revealing second anointings, showing how top CES educators cannot answer basic questions of thinking members…all of this is far more damaging to the LDS church members than John’s brave stance with same-sex couples.    The LDS corporate leaders do not want anyone realizing this.  They will work with you, John, and let your membership die a slow unacknowledged death.  That’s their best move.  And I hope you, John, don’t fall for it.  I was a nobody, and decided to take the personal empowerment path of resigning publicly and boldly at the exmormon foundation.  I hope that John is invited someday to speak at such a conference on the merits of his scrupulosity and great work in helping so many of us make a smoother transition across the PTSD incurred by leaving a cult.

When the LDS Corp removes your new and everlasting covenant, or if you resign it yourself, you will find that there is something much much better:  New and Everlasting Curiosity.

To know everything, have all power, glory and what not is boring.  The golden moments are the discovery moments and the pursuit of satiating our curiosity.  Take that away and most of us are in boring hell.  Heaven, according to the LDS, is a hell where you watch from your eternal throne while your children live the golden curiosity moments.  But you know, according to their teaching, all that will befall your spirit offspring.  This excoriating performance whose conclusion you know intimately is infinitely long and as boring as sitting through most Sacrament meetings.  That’s Mormon heaven. Or Hell.

You know that moment when you learn something profound for the first time?  Reading a well written blog or novel that fires off all kinds of new thoughts?  When you get a new app for your phone or tablet?  The Newness of the Everlasting Curiosity is exciting.  Love your wristwatch but want the excitement of a new one? You get a new band.  Love your pendant, but love to show off new style? Get a new chain.  Tired of your boring friends at church?  Find new ones.  Seeing the limitation of your inherited, family philosophy?  Search for a new one.

Leaving the LDS cult is like becoming a child who is merging into adulthood again.  All the fascination of a whole world opens to your exploration, of choosing new directions, of seeking new friends, learning new insights—it’s the candy store that continues to give when you remove the abundant limits placed on you by Mormondom.

John, Kate, celebrate your new lives.  Kate—yours was pushed on you.  John, take a bold step and go into the world on your own terms.  The respect you will earn outside is something you can never get inside the LDS church now.  They will never trust you with non-disclosure agreements and “eternal” corporate secrets to make you a general authority.  Why would you stay there when you can grow your rock-star status outside.  The flux of members is away from the church.  You should be there holding open the door now.

We greet both of you happily among our ex-mormon ranks.  We expect great things from you both, as you explore the candy with us.  There’s more than enough sweets for everyone.

If you enjoyed this blog, see this one from 2015 for a new take on everlasting curiosity.   

A model who shortly after posing, took her life due to depression, and yet, she was full of beauty and life, but besoddened by so many cultural expectations on her.  How deeply troubling.

Paying Trons Revolt!

...the trichotomy of Dehlin, Kelly and Phillips...

It's been a while since I wrote here, but current events dictate that I write at least a short blog.  Most of you know from the New York Times and other newspapers that John Dehlin and Kate Kelly have been threatened with excommunication by the LDS theocorpocrisy for their views on cultural and political issues.  

I can empathize.  The LDS Church came after me in September 2012 for my writings, including political discussions, also reported in the New York Times by the same writer.

The LDS Church is caught in a hard place. If they excommunicate vocal members, they get negative press.  But can they afford not to discipline members of opposing viewpoints?  More and more members are breaking their temple covenant of "evil speaking against the Lord's anointed".  If they tolerate it, it will catch on like the internet and spread to a large majority of members.  These members will question policies like modesty, drinking tea and coffee, full tithing during economically difficult times, intolerant views against gays and atheists, and more.  

The more members vocalize their "disrespect" the less power the Church Office Building has over the lives of their patrons--paying trons. (Tron is a "tool or device" by some definitions.)  Temple patrons "donate" heavy dues for the privilege to attend a ceremony where they covenant to give all they own, all their talents and devotion to the church, to promise not to criticize the men receiving their devotion and payment.  Patrons are beginning to see that they're mostly tools and paying for the privilege is not worth it.

As more members see the LDS Church pressure Kelly and Dehlin to shut up about opposing views or else, I hope they also take note of another member who has done far worse than these mostly mild mannered activists, yet who remains untouchable by the LDS Church.

In February through March of 2014, Tom Phillips, still managing editor of Mormonthink, acting as an individual filed a summons in the UK Magistrate Court against Thomas S. Monson, Corporate Sole owner of the LDS Franchise, and 'prophet'.  Talk about "evil speaking of the Lord's anointed".  What John and Kate have said pales in comparison to the many things Tom filed in court against the highest official of the LDS Corporation.  Did they issue a disciplinary court for Tom?  No.

I'll repeat here what I wrote in February:  

Tom Phillips, a Mormon prosecuting the Mormon Prophet for fraud in UK, is claimed by some to be “bulletproof” against LDS Church retaliations because he received “a rare and secret ritual called the Second Anointing.”
...
According to Phillips, he is one of the very few people known to have received this secret ordinance and then speak about it openly.

If members thought much about it, they would realize that the LDS Church only goes after members it thinks it can bully into submissive silence when they begin speaking out against their church.  I don't think either Kate or John will go away silently.  Tom is a whole'nother matter.  The LDS Corporation is caught with its hypocrisy pants on fire as it ignores Tom because it can't really speak to the truth on the Second Anointing.  

In an online LDS instruction manual they prompt members: "Do not attempt in any way to discuss or answer questions about the second anointing."  Why?  Because the entire ordinance is meant to create secret elites who are even more invested to keep quiet everything they learn about top management within the closed halls of the church offices.  

Tom just didn't buy it, and the church is hoping everyone ignores him and his second anointing.  But they have pulled back the curtain again with their action against the latest critics.

When will they learn that even patrons can only be bullied so much?

The light is shining on the real reason for the temple ceremonies.