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The Trustworthy Don’t Support Abusers

TW: child sex abuse, suicidality

PILAR: My thoughts are a jumble of memories and feelings and flashes of things I’d rather forget but cannot because everyday the Epstein files remind me of my past. The current world has become an absolute dumpster fire, and, as we watch, Trump, an adjudicated rapist, continues to sow chaos and denial by pursuing ever more violent distractions to keep the American public from looking at his role in Epstein’s world of power and pedophilia. Some of us–the victims of childhood sexual abuse–will not be distracted.

When I was a kid, I was molested by an older male relative. He was also a minor (though almost 5 years my senior), and he sexually experimented on my young body for years. I internalized the religious teachings I had heard at church.  Pres. Spencer W. Kimball’s vitriolic messages about fighting for your chastity included that a woman should lay down her life rather than lose “her virtue.” My own mother, though well meaning, always stressed to me just how much she agreed that she would much rather die than be sullied. 

These teachings were so deeply ingrained into my psyche that, as a teenager on the cusp of puberty and well into my twenties, I was often suicidal because I was harboring a deep secret. Too terrified to ask for help, I hid my abuse and harbored self-loathing for not having died defending myself. I hated myself for surviving. As a college student who was still grappling with my secret, I went to my bishop and told him what had happened to me. I was hoping that he would offer me counseling. I had spiraled into depression and a deep suicidality that scared my roommates. 

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Forgiveness Doesn’t Require Submission: A Response to the General Conference Address on Abortion

TW: Abortion
READER POST: Over the General Conference pulpit this last weekend, a male religious leader once again spoke to women, telling us how to handle incredibly private and deeply personal choices, namely abortion.

He told stories of women who “sinned” by having abortions. He didn’t talk much of what their reasons might have been. He then shared a story of a married man who cheated on his wife, got his girlfriend pregnant, and didn’t want her to have the abortion she was considering. Instead, he convinced the girlfriend to give birth and his wife to raise the baby.

There are so many problems with this line of thinking that I don’t know where to start, so instead of trying to capture my reaction, I decided to rewrite his talk. If I, a woman, was inspired to give that same talk as Neal Andersen, this would be my version:

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Embracing the Masculine and Feminine to Become One in Christ

READER POST: Ever since the inauguration, my social media feed has been filled with arguments trying to prove two very different sides of an extremely polarizing issue: 1) every human is either male or female as determined at birth; or 2) enough biological variations exist to prove that gender is not a simple binary. (To better understand the complexities of this debate, read the Columbia Law Review here.) However, no matter how many facts are presented or how eloquently either side argues, I’ve noticed that this discussion often doesn’t lead to any further understanding. I believe that may be due, in part, to an underlying issue that we often ignore: each of us possess traits that are traditionally considered masculine and each possess traits considered feminine.

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What I Don’t Understand about Religious Women’s Support for Trump

TABITHA: I recently reread Pilar’s post about her reaction to the election results. It made me think about boundaries in friendships, particularly in the context of one friend voting for Donald Trump while the other could not comprehend remaining friends with someone who supported putting a sexual predator in the White House. Over the past decade, I have established my own boundaries regarding friends and family whose values lead them to enthusiastically support Trump. However, Pilar’s post prompted me to consider other aspects of his supporters, especially women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints community, that I find difficult to understand.

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The Value Difference Between Trump Voters and Non-Trump Voters and Why It Matters

DEBORAH: I’m writing this on January 7, 2025. Four years and a day ago, I stared at my television all day, watching the events of January 6th, 2021 erupt at the U.S. Capitol. One day ago, I watched Kamala Harris, the candidate I voted for, peacefully certify the 2024 electoral college results in favor of the man who defeated her. As I watched her fulfill her duty as vice president, I thought of a woman I’ve known most of my life, someone who is in her 80s and helped plan my wedding day nearly 40 years ago. From 2016 on, she has pledged her life to the MAGA agenda. Shortly after this past November’s election, I found her clutching her  proverbial pearls and looking ahead with grave concern to Jan. 6th. 2025–to yesterday. She felt certain that “the she-devil and her cohorts on the left” were plotting to overturn the election “again” by refusing to certify the results. It was too much for me and I replied, “No, that’s what your side does.” For that I was unfriended and blocked, something I find sadly amusing in light of a more recent conversation I had with another Republican woman, this time in my LDS congregation, about a month after the election. In tears,  she asked if I would intercede with a mutual acquaintance, a lifelong Democrat who had told my emotionally fraught friend that she didn’t think their decades-long friendship could continue because her Trump vote demonstrated a clear difference in their value systems. 

The woman had been flabbergasted. “How could she say our values are different?” she exclaimed. “She’s known me for decades!” 

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“Plural Marriage: Faith to Obey…” Gets It All Wrong

READER POST: I teach my children to honor our ancestors and to respect all those with whom we share our world–which includes honoring our polygamous Mormon ancestors and respecting those who continue the practice today. Just this week, I listened proudly as my four year old explained to someone else that some types of Mormons practice polygamy and some types of Mormons don’t. While we don’t believe it was ever commanded by God, polygamy (both historical and modern) is a topic which comes up at our dinner table regularly. We aren’t afraid to discuss it. 

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Post-Election Thoughts of an Abuse Survivor

PILAR: Ever since the presidential election, I have been having a lot of flashbacks about how, when I got divorced from my extremely abusive ex husband – the man who beat and raped me and had numerous extramarital affairs – I lost so many of my friends because they picked the abuser over me. So it’s not really a surprise to me that so many Americans who consider themselves Christians have no problems supporting a rapist and voting him into office. Their entire experiences at church have taught them to excuse and ignore the sins of men (especially their crimes against women) and shrug them off in the name of forgiveness because the man gives great speeches, or is a good leader, or whatever. Literally any excuse will do.

I understand that lots of people want to separate Donald Trump’s policies from his personal life. I don’t want to talk about that, I want to talk about the trauma here. To women like me with past trauma who viscerally cringe at electing a man like him, I see you. I feel it, too. 

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Keep Sweet and Wear Your Sleeveless Garments (or Don’t)

ATHENA: Last week the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sort of accidentally on-purpose announced a change to the style of LDS temple garments – the sacred underwear that faithful Mormons are expected to don when they first attend the temple and then continue to wear throughout their lives.

This isn’t the first time the LDS church has changed the garment design. It’s not even the first time in my lifetime such changes have been made. But this change is an even bigger deal than other previous changes have been. In each prior instance, the changes have had the effect of making the garment less obvious, less obtrusive, less inconvenient to wear, relative to earlier versions. They’ve still been obvious, obtrusive, and inconvenient, though, even in their scaled-down iterations. This latest one is the “skimpiest” version yet. It’s – gasp – sleeveless! There’s even a version for women that appears to accommodate going commando in hot climates. (Sorry, fellas, you don’t get the commando option unless you want to wear the women’s “slip” or “slip skirt” version. That’s up to you. Don’t ask, don’t tell.)

The Church’s garment designs no longer affect me personally. I was PIMO (physically in/mentally out) for several years before I stopped wearing garments completely, and that was decades ago. I’m not going back to them now, sleeves or no sleeves. This new change is hitting so many people, especially women, so hard that I can’t help thinking about my own experience with garment-wearing.

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A Memory on the 5th Anniversary of the LDS Policy Shift on Marriages and Sealings

DINAH: I remember when, at age 12, I spent Young Women’s activities cutting wedding dresses out of magazines and making lists of all the qualities I wanted in the man who would someday “take me to the temple.” As a child of the 90’s, my girlhood was filled with movies and stories of Happily Ever After. The princess always find their prince – and the Mormon girl always finds her Returned Missionary. In the movies, the heroine’s adventure would end (or begin?) with her wearing a big, beautiful dress during her big, beautiful wedding which, of course, took place in a big beautiful castle. That would be me. Someday my castle would be the Temple of the Lord.

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Her Shoes Told Me She Didn’t Belong at Church

LAURA: In late 2021, I started attending church again. It is not an LDS church, but another one in my Mountain West area. Covid had left me feeling isolated from the kind of rituals and corresponding social-spiritual connections that feed my soul, and, while I’m tentative about organized religion, I found that Sunday services at a low-demand congregation helped fill that need.

One Sunday soon after I began attending, I noticed something about the family sitting near me. The four of them looked a lot like the families in the ward I attended when I was growing up: mom, dad, and two young kids with a bag full of activities to occupy little hands. Like all of us, they wore their masks and were dressed for church, although, because this was not an LDS church, they were not in the “church clothes” of my youth. But neither was I.

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