At this point, I've deconstructed so much from the LDS Church that I barely remembered General Conference was going on this weekend, and I wasn't interested enough to put much effort into finding out what happened. I put on a recap of the first session during lunch yesterday and promptly zoned out for most of it. I'm so proud of me. Three years ago, I was still so entrenched in my Mormon upbringing that I watched General Conference to keep up with the church even though I'd already resigned from it.

I've only heard three things about this one. First, that Ronald Rasband gave an awful talk about the Family Proclamation where he doubled down on gender roles and heteronormativity - you know, the things that Mormon God is concerned about instead of real problems like climate change, fascism, school shootings, and genocide. This is the Family Proclamation's thirtieth anniversary. The church still peddles the fiction that it was prophetic about the social changes that have happened since 1995, when in reality, it was not only reactionary to the social changes that were already well underway, but also clearly inspired by the right-wing evangelical "Family Manifesto" published in 1988. The LDS Church has really painted itself into a corner with its myopic social views, but since the Family Proclamation hasn't been canonized, future prophets and apostles can still quietly phase it out and hire scholars to quietly publish an anonymous essay explaining that it was never doctrine. Doubling down on it now just because the US is temporarily going backward on women's rights and queer rights is very unwise.

Second, I heard that there was increased security and a veiled reference to the shooting at a Mormon chapel in Michigan last week by an evangelical Trump supporter. In case it doesn't go without saying, I am appalled and disgusted by violence against people in any place of worship except the Westboro Baptist Church. Some Mormons are blaming "anti-Mormon" podcasters for inciting the hate that led to this act. Baloney. I've watched several podcasters who are critical of the LDS Church, and not one of them has said anything that would lend support to a violent act like this. Beliefs are not people. Just because you feel personally threatened when someone criticizes your beliefs doesn't mean that person wants you dead. Anyway, if "anti-Mormon" podcasters are responsible for this violent act, then Mormons are responsible for every anti-LGBTQ hate crime.

Third, I heard that prophet-in-waiting Dallin Oaks - who, by the way, is not the kind of person I have the slightest interest in emulating or spending eternity with - didn't announce any new temples. No surprise there. I used to get so excited about temple announcements because they were a tangible measure of the church's global growth. Then Russell Nelson came along and started announcing temples in random places where the membership is too small to even staff them, let alone use them on a regular basis, just because he had a grudge against Gordon Hinckley and wanted to beat his temple announcement record. Congratulations, Nelson, you won your pissing match, and Mormons who don't do any research outside of what they hear from you probably believe that the church is growing and really needs a temple in Belgium. Oaks, at least, seems to be more pragmatic and less concerned about appearances. Oh yeah, Nelson died a week ago, in case that wasn't clear. I think he was a self-absorbed tool, but I didn't hate him, but I'm not sad that a 101-year-old man died in his sleep. It was just a thing that happened and wasn't important enough for me to mention at the time.

And that's all I know about General Conference, and I'm not going to learn anything else about it on purpose. I'm so proud of me.

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.

Yesterday, in response to Israel breaking the ceasefire and murdering hundreds more Palestinians, a group called Mormons with Hope sponsored a protest in which I participated. Turnout was very small, I'm guessing because most Mormons support genocide and war crimes. This group is obviously run by progressive Mormons, as attested by the opening prayer to "heavenly parents," which would probably get them in trouble in an actual church setting. "I'm a leftist because I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," one speaker announced. Respectfully, I don't believe that. I believe most people choose their values independently of their religious beliefs, and Mormons on both sides of the aisle choose which parts of their church to accept and which to reject. For example, the church has been unambiguous for decades that same-sex relationships are sinful, but I know nobody in this group believes that (as they shouldn't). Of course the church has progressive roots and undertones that one could point to for validation, but we all know its actual track record as an institution has been anything but. I think progressive Mormons have to do even more mental gymnastics than conservative ones. I think their worldviews make little sense. Still, I really like them as people.

Some ex-Mormons came because Mormonism is their culture or their heritage. For me, that didn't factor into it at all. When I first left, I tried to cling to it as my culture and my heritage so I would feel less like the first three decades of my life were wasted, but I've drifted further away now. If I'd grown up in Utah, things might be different, but I identify less and less with Mormonism in any capacity. Still, it is my heritage on my mom's side, and I still knew from memory the hymns that we sang. This was my first time singing Mormon hymns in almost three years. I don't remember if I sang at my niece's baby blessing, but if I did, they were just Christmas songs. Anyway, I went to a pagan event last weekend. I'll fight alongside anyone who agrees with me on what's most important. I don't care if they're pagans, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Rastafarians, Scientologists, etc.

The jackass who wore a Pope costume and tried to disrupt the pagan event with a megaphone was back, interrupting the speakers and yelling stuff like "Palestinians don't exist!" I tried to be a good boy and ignore him, but at one point I snapped and asked "Where's your Pope costume" and then added "asshole" to the end of that sentence without even thinking. I don't think I've ever called someone an asshole in person before, and it felt really good. Of course it didn't bother him because his entire purpose was to get reactions out of people. It really rubs me the wrong way that the onus is always on us to be the bigger people and ignore counterprotesters while they behave like consummate shitbags just because they can. As far as I'm concerned, it should be legal for us to kick their teeth out when they disrupt us. (This particular jackass is big enough to flatten me with ease, but we outnumbered his group.) I'm not talking about an infringement on their constitutional rights; if they just stood next to us quietly with their counterprotest signs, I wouldn't care. It never ceases to blow my mind how people whose entire purpose in life is to bully others call themselves followers of Jesus without a trace of cognitive dissonance. I guess they just don't have the mental capacity to experience cognitive dissonance.

A lady whom I recognized from several protests because she's very loud announced that she wants to do a quiet, respectful protest during the Mormon General Conference to call out the church's silence on Palestine and urge it to divest from Israeli investments. I'll take a break from the nationwide April 5th protests to do that with her if we can gather more people. We'll just stand outside with signs. Unlike the Christian protesters that the attendees are used to, neither of us has any desire to antagonize them or attack things they hold sacred.

I really want to talk about things besides politics. This week I discovered an old TV show (1947-1957) called "Kukla, Fran and Ollie." In my eternal search for new and diverse music on Spotify, I found one of their albums and assumed from the title that it was from a Finnish show. It wasn't. This TV show, one of the earliest ever, was wildly popular with kids and adults alike, but it's now mostly forgotten. Its pace is probably too slow for modern kids. I won't likely take the time to watch all the hundreds of episodes, but I watched a few and enjoyed the cute puppet characters. This is the earliest one that's survived.

In the week since posting just a couple of things about the LDS Church's General Conference, I've become aware of church president Russell Nelson's closing talk, and like those other things, it pissed me off, and I didn't have much else in mind to write about this week. I'm not criticizing his remarks just for the sake of being negative or disrepecting my friends and family members who believe he's a prophet, but because I sincerely believe that these remarks and others like them are toxic and manipulative, and that's a lot easier to recognize from the outside and I wish I had been able to recognize it a lot sooner. So without further ado:

"​Here is the great news of God’s plan: the very things that will make your mortal life the best it can be are exactly the same things that will make your life throughout all eternity the best it can be!...

"The Lord has clearly taught that only men and women who are sealed as husband and wife in the temple, and who keep their covenants, will be together throughout the eternities."

These quotes are a few paragraphs apart, but I juxtaposed them to highlight the absurdity of the first one. According to the church's teachings, in order to qualify for the eternities, gay people need to either marry someone of the opposite sex whom they aren't attracted to or remain alone and celibate until they die, at which time God will presumably fix them and let them marry someone of the opposite sex. Both of these options demonstrably make most gay people miserable, even suicidal. They do not make mortal life the best it can be. But I don't think Nelson is being disingenuous here, just thoughtless.

"​Thus, if we unwisely choose to live telestial laws now, we are choosing to be resurrected with a telestial body. We are choosing not to live with our families forever."

The mention of telestial bodies reminded those who are familiar with obscure historical Mormon weirdness of Joseph Fielding Smith's assertion in the January 1962 Improvement Era that men and women who go to the telestial kingdom will probably lose their genitals to prevent them from having sex in defiance of God's eternal marriage requirement. "Is not the sectarian world justified in their doctrine generally proclaimed, that after the resurrection there will be neither male nor female sex? It is a logical conclusion for them to reach and apparently is in full harmony with what the Lord has revealed regarding the kingdoms into which evidently the vast majority of mankind is likely to go." Because of this hypothesis, the phrase "TK Smoothie" has entered the ex-Mormon lexicon.

"​So, my dear brothers and sisters, how and where and with whom do you want to live forever? You get to choose."

I certainly don't want to live with the LDS version of God for any length of time.

"As you think celestial, you will find yourself avoiding anything that robs you of your agency. Any addiction - be it gaming, gambling, debt, drugs, alcohol, anger, pornography, sex, or even food - offends God. Why? Because your obsession becomes your god. You look to it rather than to Him for solace."

I wonder how many eating disorders this quote exacerbated. I wonder how many addicts now hate themselves even more. I wonder why God is offended by so many things. Maybe he should have listened to David A. Bednar, who taught, "To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else."

"​When someone you love attacks truth, think celestial, and don’t question your testimony. The Apostle Paul prophesied that 'in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.'

"There is no end to the adversary’s deceptions. Please be prepared. Never take counsel from those who do not believe. Seek guidance from voices you can trust - from prophets, seers, and revelators and from the whisperings of the Holy Ghost, who 'will show unto you all things what ye should do.' Please do the spiritual work to increase your capacity to receive personal revelation."

So this is the part that I really and truly hate. For the sake of civility and precision, I've tried to refrain from calling the LDS Church a "cult," but quotes like this make it really hard. Anyone not already indoctrinated into the church would see it as a massive red flag. If you went to buy some kind of expensive product, and the company told you to disregard all the negative reviews and lawsuits because those people are deceived by Satan, you would run the other way. If you knew that the directors of the company had made several grievious errors of judgment that called their competence into question and been caught in multiple lies and scandals, and instead of apologizing or making restitution of any kind they just acted like that didn't happen and told you to trust them anyway, you would run even faster. Russell Nelson, with the rest of the First Presidency, knew about and approved the church's dishonest and illegal behavior that got it in trouble with the Securities Exchange Commission earlier this year. He's also misrepresented or stretched the truth a few times in his public utterances.

Reducing arguments against the LDS Church's truth claims to "the adversary's deceptions" is especially ludicrous to me because the most damning ones are literally just quotes from its own "prophets, seers, and revelators" that we're supposed to trust. Is the adversary the one who inspires them to say those things then? Is the adversary the one who inspired Brigham Young to say on multiple occasions that Black people were cursed by God and unfit to hold political or eclessiastical power, that mixed race couples and their children should be put to death, that Adam was God, and that polygamy was the true order of marriage and a requirement for the celestial kingdom? If God's prophet can't tell the difference between God's voice and Satan's, he's not very trustworthy, even if he's honest. And I want to give Russell Nelson and the other LDS Church leaders the benefit of the doubt that they really believe in it, but now it sure seems like he's aware that it can't hold up under scrutiny. If it could, it would welcome criticism from all sides. This quote is a far cry from J. Reuben Clark saying, "If we have truth truth, [it] cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not truth, it ought to be harmed." (Though that quote was actually a bluff, because before he made it, Clark had abandoned his intellectual pursuits after they almost turned him into an atheist.)

As far as the Holy Ghost, the jury's still out on that as far as I'm concerned. I want to believe that God will direct my life. There have been times when I believed that God directed my life. I now know, however, that people in every religion, including suicide cults, receive "spiritual witnesses" of the correctness of their religion that, to an outside observer, look essentially the same. And I've learned for myself that feelings are not a reliable guide to truth. Russell Nelson isn't a prophet just because some people get powerful emotions when he speaks. He would be a prophet if he ever did anything prophetic.

Six months ago, I didn't watch the LDS Church's semi-annual General Conference for the first time in my life, and I experienced some anxiety over the disruption of routine and loss of comfort. This time I just enjoyed doing other things with those ten hours and almost forgot it was going on. Progress! A friend who had to watch bits and pieces because she hasn't yet told her parents she's an atheist filled me in on what I missed. Pay your tithing, wear your temple garments, use the full name of the church, stay on the covenant path. You know, fresh new revelation to address the real issues that people are facing.

The tithing part really pisses me off. My friend sent me this.

I testify that this promise, at least the way the LDS Church takes it out of context, is bogus. I received no blessings for paying tithing and I lost no blessings when I stopped. Notice, however, the caveats that Andersen adds to make it unfalsifiable and set up the church's ever-popular blame reversal game: spiritual, subtle, easy to overlook, Lord's timing. In other words, when I paid tithing and nothing happened, the problem was with me for either failing to notice or being impatient. I was supposed to just keep giving my money to the church indefinitely regardless of whether God ever got around to keeping his end of the bargain. That kind of defeats the purpose of the promise in the first place. "[P]rove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." What part of that sounds subtle or easy to overlook? How am I supposed to "prove" God if he's too sneaky for me to notice?

But as I said, the LDS Church takes this verse out of context anyway. The preceding chapter begins thus: "And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you." Lacking any indications to the contrary, it would seem that the rest of the book of Malachi is addressed to these priests, and that the verses about tithing are actually a rebuke of religious leaders who hoard wealth. Hmmm. The LDS Church has hundreds of billions of dollars, and was fined by the Securities Exchange Commission earlier this year for breaking the law to hide that obscene wealth so its members would keep paying tithing, and of course it hasn't apologized or so much as acknowledged that incident in General Conference. Andersen has a lot of gall to exhort anyone to "be honest in their tithes" when he knows damn well that church leaders up to and including the First Presidency have not. He has a lot of gall to pretend the church still needs any donations when it could fund its operations indefinitely off the interest generated by its obscene wealth. And if tithing was really about personal consecration and putting the Lord first and whatever, it wouldn't be a flat rate for all members. Ten percent of my income was a sacrifice. Ten percent of Jon Huntsman's income is not.

​This is the other thing I read about that pissed me off. Ex-Mormons on Twitter are not happy about it.

I really hope my parents are too smart to buy into this manipulative, emotionally abusive garbage. I left the LDS Church because it's not true and it's not good. I never questioned their faithfulness or their commitment to the principles that it teaches but doesn't live up to. For example, they taught me to be honest. The LDS Church is not honest. I have a problem with that. The problem is not with me or my parents. I don't see eye to eye with them on a lot of things, but they don't deserve to be guilt-tripped over their son making a choice that he has no reason to be sorry for. I won't likely have "a whole chain of descendants," but I kind of want to just so I can not raise them in the LDS Church, especially if they're female and/or LGBTQ. The "covenant path" is hardly worth staying on when the covenants and the supposed authority behind them are based on lies. I'm not interested in perpetuating "a legacy of faith" in a system based on lies. And I'm not interested in living with the monstrous LDS God for five minutes, let alone eternity. I guess my dad's going to be really lonely in the Celestial Kingdom. His dad and his five siblings and another of his kids were already "lost" long before I was. He did everything right to have an eternal family, but as usual, the LDS Church can't and won't keep its end of the bargain.