I may as well change the name of my blog to “Apostate Adventures in Mormon Land.” This is where I’m at in my life now, being friends with Mormons and eating their food, and I won’t fight it. I bloom where I'm planted.

So the missionaries I talked to last weekend invited me to a baptism with treats afterward. They were good treats – assorted cookies, crackers with toppings, vegetables, and little oranges. I bravely sat at a table full of girls, then felt like a creep when they all turned out to be college freshmen. Oops, I pulled a Joseph Smith. We mostly ignored each other, but I couldn’t help noticing that their mode of dress would not have flown at church when I was their age. Multiple sets of multiple ear piercings, multiple sets of bare shoulders, even a little nose stud on one and a hint of cleavage on another. Okay, maybe I am a creep for noticing that, but I am an observer of how the LDS Church’s eternal teachings and standards evolve. I think Mormon women started dressing like this first, and then the old men realized too late that they could either shut the hell up about how women dress or watch them all leave, and of course their will be some tension as hardcore Mormons like my sister still teach their daughters that multiple ear piercings and bare shoulders are evil while all their friends at church have those things.

But on this day, the exodus of Mormon women was partially offset. In her talk at the end of the meeting, she said that she grew up as a non-Mormon in Salt Lake City, and she envied the spiritual stability and friend groups that the Mormon kids had. So according to her own words, not mine, her conversion was at least partially driven by loneliness. I'm not surprised by that, I'm just surprised that she was so honest about it. I can’t imagine the LDS Church baptizes many people in developed countries who aren’t lonely or otherwise deeply dissatisfied with their lives. Missionaries are literally trained to target those people. That won’t be me because I know better, and no amount of warm feelings or even having a crush on a Mormon girl (which is possibly a topic for next time) will make me deny what I know. Still, of course when I and everyone else in attendance were asked to write her supportive messages, I didn’t invite her to read the CES Letter because that would have made me a dick.

Yeah, I threw in the “anymore,” which wasn’t strictly necessary. Sue me.

Different Mormon sister missionaries from the ones I talked to came to my house to give my landlord cookies, and he brought them downstairs to use the bathroom because his is off-limits for some reason. Cue them asking if I'm in the ward and me telling them I'm not a member because I don't lead with telling people that I've already been part of and rejected their religion, though I'm probably overthinking it because every Mormon their age knows twenty people who have left. My landlord actually isn't a member either, and he joked that he'll get baptized when he's ninety, but I took the missionaries' side and reminded him that he doesn't know if he'll live that long. They asked if he's talked to me much about the church, and I laughed, and he joked that I don't know anything about the church. They asked if I'd been to any church meetings, how long I'd been here, where I'm from, whether I was raised religious in New York, what religion I was raised in, and whether my church records are in New York, and next time I'm just going to tell them everything up front instead of looking like I have something to hide.

Because the conversation took this trajectory, these missionaries (by which I mean the one missionary who did most of the talking) asked a different question than all the other missionaries I've talked to since 2022. Instead of asking why I left the church, they asked why I had my records removed. Those questions have different answers. Perhaps I should have acted like a Mormon apologist and answered the question they should have asked, but I didn't. I gave them a brief summary of the child sex abuse scandal that broke less than three months after I had fully stopped believing, which certainly would have made me fully stop believing if I hadn't already, and in any case removed any lingering desire to be affiliated with that organization. Out of tact, I only told these innocent young women that Paul Douglas Adams "abused" his daughters, not that he frequently filmed himself raping them and uploaded the videos to the internet, which is how he was exposed by police in New Zealand seven years after his bishop in Arizona didn't report him. I can imagine the progression of thoughts that I would have had if I were them listening to the story:

Oh, you removed your records because one LDS guy abused his kids? That's dumb.

Oh, the church's lawyers told the abuser's bishop not to report the abuse because it was against the law in Arizona, which wasn't true? Um. I mean... I guess they're just lawyers... The Book of Mormon says that lawyers suck...

Oh, the church as an institution - which, to recap, claims to be led by Jesus Christ himself - fought against the abuser's victims in court instead of using a fraction of a percent of its massive wealth to compensate them for what happened under its watch, which would have been a more Christlike thing to do even if it had no legal liability?

...Shit.

In any case, I'm certain a switch turned in their brains as they realized they had no chance in hell of reconverting me. They expressed condolences, said I was welcome to come to church stuff anyway, and didn't pursue the conversation. I never wanted to cause them cognitive dissonance, but now I hope they're experiencing cognitive dissonance, because if they can just not worry about what I told them, they're not good people. I kind of wanted to be like, "Yeah, so I dare you to tell me I was deceived by Satan." Why do missionaries even ask those questions? They aren't trained to deal with the answers. I'm positive nobody has ever said, "I left because I stopped reading the Book of Mormon enough, but now that you're here, you can challenge me to read it again!"

After they left, my landlord launched into arguing with me about feminism again, which is a thing he's been periodically doing as a result of me sharing stuff on Facebook like a Salt Lake Tribune article about why women are now leaving the LDS Church at a higher rate than men. Being from India and having converted to the LDS Church, he has a more "traditional" view of gender roles and what constitutes equality, and he also keeps pointing out the ways that men get screwed. Those are valid. They should be fixed. I personally don't prioritize that. I'm aware that I get screwed in various ways because I'm a man, but the thought of what it would be like to be a woman horrifies me. I regularly walk wherever the hell I want at night with headphones on and zero anxiety, so I can live with the fact that I had to register for Selective Service before I could access some of my civil rights. So he launched back into this debate even though he knew I was in the middle of work. I tried to find common ground by expressing my disgust for the batshit insane women who support Lindsay Clancy and insist that her husband did it because female intuition and astrology told them so, but that just set him off about how the justice system is more lenient toward women. Of course I don't support that either. To me, feminism means treating women as equals in every respect.

Across these debates, my landlord - who, I want to note so you don't get an unfair and one-sided picture, mostly leans left, hates Trump, and has no problem with women having careers or being presidents of things - has sometimes brought up the same points and asked the same questions as if he thinks it's for the first time, even though he can remember something I said around 2014. The gender wage gap was one of those. I have also heard that the gender wage gap is a myth when you break down the math, and it's not something I've ever devoted energy to complaining about. I'm more concerned about women being treated differently from their male colleagues despite having equal rights on paper, e.g., being seen as "bossy" or "bitchy" if they don't preface their contribution with an apology. But the second time he mentioned the gender wage gap, he first mentioned that his friend had mentioned it, and then he'd explained to her why she was wrong. I knew this friend, but nothing about her. Now the implication that she was a feminist despite being a Mormon made me want to know more.

I thought she was my roommate's girlfriend after they came home late together on my first night here and she, startled to see me in the backyard looking at stars and assuming I was her friend, the landlord, yelled, "Don't do that!" My roommate and her are clearly close, but now I don't think they're dating because they don't do touchy stuff and he spends almost every evening at home playing computer games with his brother. Anyway, she came over on Friday morning for him to help her assemble a shelf for her fish tank, and they did that on the patio, where I was already working, and they barely talked to each other except to discuss the instructions, so I had my chance to broach the topic. She was not particularly pleased that my landlord had mentioned her in that way. Oops. But this got us talking. Yes, I virtue signaled. Normally I hate virtue signaling so much that I get embarrassed when women compliment my Ruth Bader Ginsburg shirt. In this case, though, I simply wanted to communicate that we seemed to be on similar wavelengths and could maybe get along well.

My roommate also chimed in a little, and when he said, "I don't want to sound sexist, but -" he had his back to me, and his probably-not-girlfriend looked at me with a big grin, and I cherished that moment of bonding. I didn't think what he said after the "but" was that bad, though. It makes perfect sense to suggest that a majority of women tend to be certain ways and a majority of men tend to be certain other ways, as long as we acknowledge individual variation and cultural conditioning and don't tell either group that they're not allowed to do certain things regardless of their actual qualifications. His probably-not-girlfriend pushed back a little, and he said it could even be 70-30 or 60-40, which sounds fair to me. If he hadn't been there, I would have gone ahead and asked her how she feels about being denied privileges and positions in her church due to what it claims are all women's innate eternal traits, but hopefully I'll get to that another time.

My virtue signaling worked. I was all but invisible to her before. Now she became very friendly toward me, and we also talked about her career and interests, and after she left and came back for the lunch that my roommate does with church people every Friday and has never specifically invited me to, though he has mentioned that I'm welcome to join whatever is going on, she invited me to it. Naturally, most of the conversations were related to the church in some way. I was fascinated when the guy next to me said that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lobbied the state government to let them ban firearms in meetinghouses and that it was stupid. So on the one hand, he felt a need to use the full name of the church in accordance with the recently deceased prophet's personal pet peeve, which most Mormons in this age group don't even bother with, but on the other hand, he didn't hesitate to tell a bunch of other Mormons that something the church did was stupid. I think this is an illustration of how the LDS Church is screwed because people across the political spectrum don't take it as seriously as it demands to be taken.

My roommate's probably-not-girlfriend, who is thirty, accidentally referred to the new Young Single Adult ward bishop and his wife as "the only adults there," then said that she hated how the YSAs get treated like children. If I wanted to deconvert her, I would have taken notice of that and filed it away under possible avenues of approach alongside the feminist stuff. But of course I wouldn't attempt that because it would only validate Mormons' belief that I was deceived by Satan and am now being used by Satan to deceive others. Satan isn't real, by the way.

The other day I crossed paths with a trio of Mormon sister missionaries, and instead of waving and moving on like normal missionaries, the leader tried to talk to me even though I was wearing headphones. I took my headphones off and stopped because I want them to have positive experiences and not be miserable on their missions. I call the white girl the leader because she led the conversation and was the most talkative. Her Polynesian companion talked a little less, and their Korean companion said three words to introduce herself and is probably miserable on her mission.

The leader asked if I'd talked to missionaries before, so I went ahead and told them I used to be LDS, and she, unlike most of my family, asked why I left. Of course I didn't have time to go into all the reasons, and I wouldn't want to send them into faith crises on their missions, anyway. It's possible, of course, that they would move on with their lives unperturbed regardless of anything I said, but you never know. It's even possible that one of them is already very familiar with the issues, but not likely. At best they probably got a sanitized, one-sided version of a few of the issues in Seminary and nothing at all about them in their missionary training.

So I just said "history" and "LGBT stuff," and then I said "women's roles" under my breath because that felt like an awkward thing to say to them, but really, just because they're (apparently) okay with their second-class status doesn't mean I have to agree with them or want the same for my imaginary daughter. Lots of women agree with me, anyway. Always the "more spiritual" ones in the past, they're now leaving Mormonism at a higher rate than men for the first time, which is a good sign that society is moving in the right direction despite the considerable speed bump of the Christofascist Trump regime. They can see that they deserve better. But the LDS Church is making desperate changes to keep them in, and these girls may not have even been born when the current "prophet" told them "that if you dress immodestly, you are magnifying this problem by becoming pornography to some of the men who see you," so maybe it will take them a little longer to catch on.

At least their role as missionaries is now seen as legitimate and not something for women to do if they fail to get married in their first three years of adulthood... but the church institution doesn't respect them more, it's just using them more. Everyone on the outside can see it.

"church of mormon." I love that. What a stark illustration of how little Russell Nelson's legacy matters. At least this ad is honest about which church it's for; I saw one on Facebook where the sister missionaries just invited people to "a Christian study group" or some crap like that. I will now answer the possibly rhetorical questions.

"How is a church okay with this kind of marketing?"

My dude, this is not even in the bottom fifty least ethical things the LDS Church has ever done. Its leaders believe that anything to further the church's goals or protects its reputation is justified, including but not limited to straight-up lying and breaking the law.

"Men cannot actually be falling for this, can they?"

My dude, have you seen how lonely men behave? I mean, have you? Here's a hilarious and immensely satisfying story about "Brooke America" catfishing a MAGAt for weeks to make him suffer for wishing death on a three-year-old brown girl. Of course, I don't expect that this strategy will be successful enough to reverse the LDS Church's declining growth rate, but it will work sometimes, and some lonely men will get baptized and remain lonely because the missionaries can't date them and there aren't enough women in the church.

My adblocker on YouTube keeps me from seeing these ads, fortunately. It didn't keep me from crossing paths with them in person. Fortunately, I'm not lonely enough to rejoin a high-demand religion that protects child abusers. I have reached the definitive conclusion that Mormonism is not true or good, I am not questioning, and I am not open to going back. Some Mormons would say that makes me close-minded, and I would ask them why they aren't open to joining Scientology. But I thought I had a nice opportunity to plant a seed by showing these missionaries that apostates aren't all nasty people. I try to only be nasty to those who deserve it.

I held back so much out of my desire to be respectful and not damage their faith. The white girl asked if I have faith in Jesus Christ, and I said no, I believe he's a mythologized version of a historical figure that represents the best of humanity, but I didn't go on to point out historical claims in the New Testament that don't hold up under scrutiny or explain that his divinity evolved through the Gospels in the order they were written. She asked if they could come over and share a message about Jesus Christ, and I said if they wanted to, but I didn't want them to waste their time because I wasn't really interested in coming back. I threw in the "really" just to be nice, when "at all" would have been more accurate, but I thought I got the point across. I have the luxury of time to do things like that just to be nice to the missionaries. Theoretically, I could also take the opportunity to learn from them despite our differences in belief, but I'm sorry, I just don't see myself learning much from 18-21-year-olds trying to sell a religion that I know inside and out.

The white girl asked what gives me hope. I talked about near-death experiences and how wonderful they usually are, and I took that opportunity to explain that I base my beliefs on evidence and no longer believe that feelings are a reliable source of truth, which I hoped would preempt them from asking me to pray about things. She asked how I would feel if I knew that I had a loving heavenly father, which was a loaded and complex question that got glossed over as the conversation moved on. If God was a corporeal literal father like Mormonism teaches, I would want to know it, but I certainly don't have a strong emotional attachment to the concept, which she should have remembered is not new to me, or desire for it to be true. My current belief in God as the universal consciousness from which all reality springs and of which each of us is a tiny piece suits me just fine, thanks. There are several reasons why a supreme deity stuck in a physical human body doesn't make sense, and I also feel like he's a godawful father, and they just assert ipso facto that he's a perfect father in spite of all evidence to the contrary from their own scriptures. There's the whole business of his wife/wives being silenced, too.

The Polynesian girl said something about how we have freedom to choose one path or the other, and the way she said it sounded vaguely like a threat, but I let that slide. She got my number so they could invite me to activities. The friend who owns my house said I'm always welcome at activities, but so far he hasn't told me when any are, so yeah.

Two days later, they texted me to invite me to sacrament meeting. God damn it.

This is an op-ed I recently sent to the Salt Lake Tribune, which I'm publishing here and now because, predictably enough, they didn't.

​Around that same time, in one of my Signal chats, I also suggested protesting the church's silence at General Conference. I hoped someone more experienced would run with the idea so I didn't have to do the work, but I was willing to do the work if I had to. It got some interest, but not enough to encourage me to persist after someone brushed it aside to talk about the NIck Shirley protest at the Draper aquarium instead. I kid you not, a couple of weeks later, the same guy suggested the same idea. I'm not mad. Whatever it takes is fine by me. Then some women took over the planning, made it into a protest against the church's sex abuse cover-ups, and said that the men were welcome to participate but the focus needed to remain on them. I felt that this topic would be less timely and effective than one tied into the current national political situation, but of course I still supported it. I encouraged everyone to keep it respectful, not because the church deserves respect but because triggering its members' persecution complex would be counterproductive. We were all on board with that. The other guy still backed out after he became too concerned about alienating his Mormon parents. I didn't worry about that because my Mormon parents alienated me years ago.

By most measures, frankly, the protest was a flop. We ran out of time to make signs beforehand. Some people showed up to the rendezvous point late, so the Mormons attending conference were inside by the time we reached Temple Square. We just walked up to the Capitol in Handmaid's Tale robes with no signs. It wasn't originally part of the plan for me to wear one, but we had an extra after a woman had to back out, and walking to the Capitol in it was much less embarrassing than walking to the rendezvous point in a suit on conference day and making people think I was Mormon. Waiting for the bathroom in the gift shop was a little weird, but I survived. So anyway, I don't think we accomplished much, but people took notice of us and I had a great time with my friends, and that's important too.

Oh yes, and after our protest, a woman with no shoes approached us in the parking lot, sobbing, breathing hard, and telling us that she'd been framed for murder and every cop in the city was looking for her. She wanted to go to her uncle's house so he could say she'd been there the whole time. We took her to the general area she said her uncle lived in so she could go sleep off whatever she was on. So once again, this was a very worthwhile experience.

Oh yes, I suppose today is Easter. Naturally, after another protest today against the Supreme Court legalizing verbal conversion "therapy" because First Amendment rights somehow trump professional standards of conduct, I'll celebrate in my usual manner by getting high at home by myself. Respectfully, THC has blessed my life more than Jesus ever did.

I don't feel like writing much about this because I've made my political views well known and written about the experience of protest and futilely encouraged other people to protest several times. I just want to say that, again, but for real this time, my pictures don't do the scale justice. At least 10,000 people were there. Not bad for the same weekend as the Mormons' General Conference, which I'm pleased to say I heard and cared very little about. The next nationwide protests are April 19th. Join them, for Christ's sake.