This is an edited version of my recent post to the Catbox (forum for abuse survivors) in response to a long thread started by a woman whose husband was becoming interested in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Thought it could use a wider audience -- ha! From the 5,000 or so who read the Box to the handful of people who regularly read my blog.
Screen names altered to protect privacy. Poster A told of being molested by some "good" Mormon boys when she was a girl. Poster B is the one with the husband interested in LDS.
((((((((((((((((((((((Poster A))))))))))))))))))))), I am so sorry for what you went through and understand that you are bitter toward the LDS church as a result. Sadly, though, it's not just an LDS problem. That sort of behavior can be found among the followers of just about every faith. Just look at the stories of pedophile priests, the Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard sex scandals, etc., etc.
I've had no firsthand negative experiences with Mormons. I had a Mormon boss who was cool. NiiceDuude and I are friends with a woman who met and married a Mormon man, and converted to LDS. They divorced; I don't think he was outright abusive but did have certain expectations of a good Mormon wife that chafed her. She still belongs to the church and is raising their son in it. BTW, this was her second marriage; H1 was definitely abusive.
NiiceDuude and I often get into religious discussions; he is an atheist who thinks all religious beliefs are BS. I believe in a Supreme Being/divine order and think all religions have SOME grain of truth. They all say the same thing at their core: Honor and nurture the divine, however you perceive it (as God the Father, Mother Earth, the Inner Light, whatever), and, as the great Bill and Ted preached, "Be excellent to each other."
All the other stuff -- don't use birth control, don't eat pork, don't have homosexual relations, don't drink alcohol or caffeine, tithe 10 percent, pray X times a day facing Mecca -- are MAN-made. Some are practical; eating pork used to be quite risky, and for a people that had lots of enemies and needed to keep its numbers up by having lots of kids (remember infant mortality rates back then), "wasting" one's seed on a homosexual union would naturally be frowned upon.
The best way to enforce society's rules was for the powers that be to declare that they were God's rules and there would literally be hell to pay if you broke them. That's how a lot of these rules became religious doctrine. For many people today, however, they still work. Keeping kosher, for example, may be rooted in health and sanitation principles that no longer are a concern today, but it is a form of self-discipline that for those who follow it can build spiritual muscles.
IMO the best religious teachers are those who tell you there are many ways to salvation, enlightenment, whatever you choose to call it. I was raised Catholic but today don't subscribe to any organized religion because so many of them claim to be the ONLY way, and I don't believe there is one way. I could easily become a Quaker, a Wiccan, a Buddhist or a Unitarian, or a member of Kurt Vonnegut's fictional Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.
Poster B, I'm definitely getting a red flag from your H's interest in LDS. I have no personal issues with the church, but I'm guessing its attraction to him lies in its emphasis on the man as head of the household, which could easily be turned into a weapon in the wrong hands (i.e., those of a man with abusive leanings).
Darn, I'm long-winded. I shoulda been a preacher. Can I get an AY-men!
