The Tragedy of Kip Eliason
I created this page for two reasons - first, because Kip Eliason deserves to be more remembered than he is, and second, because when he is remembered it's almost exclusively to weaponize his story against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I've since left the church and have little interest in defending it, but I still think it's worthwhile to discuss this story in a nuanced way. It involves personal matters that in most cases would be best left private, but which in this case are necessary to tell it at all.
Kip Eliason was born December 27, 1965 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Eugene Chesley Eliason and Patricia Joyce Breen Eliason. His family later moved to Boise, Idaho. Eugene recalled, "Kip was almost a perfect son. He was a four-point student, Capital High School, he was involved with the track team where he got 'Most Inspirational Track Team Member'. Kip was my best friend and partner since his mother passed away when he was five years old." After her death, he became more quiet and thoughtful. Patricia had been LDS, but Eugene was not, and Kip didn't join the LDS Church himself until age eleven at the urging of his grandmother. He quickly immersed himself in it with great zeal. Eugene believed that it may have filled a surrogate mother's role in his life.
Kip's devotion to the church soon created a problem, however. Eugene recalled, "Initially, Kip came to me and said he'd begun to have nocturnal emissions. He asked if I thought it would affect his church priesthood. I said, 'No way! It's normal, and every man goes through it.'" But at some point, he also started to masturbate. "I really don't know how I got started, but it doesn't matter," he wrote to his father. The LDS Church in the 1980s took a strong stance against masturbation, but Kip found himself unable to stop. For five years this dissonance filled him with guilt and an increasing measure of self-hate. He wrote, "My life was downhill all the time. I felt horrible inside, and it showed. I didn't have many friends. I felt too humiliated to see the bishop. I tried a million times to stop on my own. But it was an obsession. A hideous habit that I thought to be totally impossible to quit. I knew Satan had me twisted on his little finger. I thought I would never be able to lose the chains that held me fast."
When Kip confided in his father, Eugene tried to convince him that the practice was healthy and normal and not something to feel guilty about. Kip wrote to him, "Now I know you are going to say it's good, it's natural, and 99.9% of the human population does it. Dad, I have read the statistics; I have read the sex books; I know the author are professionals with all the 'facts.' But for me, it is wrong! For others it may be right, but not for me." When he confided to his Aunt Janice, an active Latter-day Saint, she "told him not to worry, that all young boys probably do it. He seemed very relieved." Eventually he did manage to confess to his bishop, who set up counseling sessions to help him stop. Relapsing again after a few months, he wrote, "It seems I have tried to stop a billion times, but it's the same old feelings. It affects every part of my life. If I could only get rid of this one sin, I know I could be a better person. I know I will run into a lot more problems in my life, but I think having a good self-image will help a lot through those times. Being rid of this ugly immoral sin will save my life and make it worth living."
On December 10, 1981, and again on February 14, 1982, Kip attempted suicide by drinking a mixture of iodine and alcohol. After the latter attempt he spent eight days in the psychiatric unit of the St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center. On March 2, while his father was away on an overnight business trip, Kip successfully asphyxiated himself with carbon monoxide. The note he left behind read:
Dear Dad,
I love you more than what words can say. If it were possible, I would stay alive for only you, for I really only have you. But it isn’t possible. I must first love myself, and I do not. The strange feeling of darkness and self-hate overpowers all my defenses. I must unfortunately yield to it. This turbulent feeling is only for a few to truly understand. I feel that you do not comprehend the immense feeling of self-hatred I have. This is the only way I feel that I can relieve myself of these feelings now. Carry on with your life and be happy. I love you more than words can say.
—Your son, Kip
Eugene Eliason filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the LDS Church and the Medical Center for $28 million, asserting that the counseling provided by the Church "amounted to an intentional attempt at mind control through intimidation and brainwashing techniques under the guise of spiritual teachings. Kip took the teachings literally and became increasingly concerned, worried and depressed with the church's indoctrination. But being a normal adolescent, he became increasingly less able to reconcile his sexual desires." Psychologist Dr. Jack Annon wrote in a pre-trial affadavit, ""It is my professional opinion that the LDS Church has gone a step beyond propounding a certain viewpoint that masturbation is a sin, and has actually instructed its leaders, teachers and bishops to provide counseling and to utilize behavior-modification skills that can have very dangerous and adverse effects." The case was most likely settled out of court. The only record of the outcome I can find is that LDS psychiatrist Cantril Nielsen was made to pay a malpractice settlement for recommending that Kip follow his bishop's counsel to stop masturbating, instead of basing his treatment on empirical medical evidence.
Kip Eliason was born December 27, 1965 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Eugene Chesley Eliason and Patricia Joyce Breen Eliason. His family later moved to Boise, Idaho. Eugene recalled, "Kip was almost a perfect son. He was a four-point student, Capital High School, he was involved with the track team where he got 'Most Inspirational Track Team Member'. Kip was my best friend and partner since his mother passed away when he was five years old." After her death, he became more quiet and thoughtful. Patricia had been LDS, but Eugene was not, and Kip didn't join the LDS Church himself until age eleven at the urging of his grandmother. He quickly immersed himself in it with great zeal. Eugene believed that it may have filled a surrogate mother's role in his life.
Kip's devotion to the church soon created a problem, however. Eugene recalled, "Initially, Kip came to me and said he'd begun to have nocturnal emissions. He asked if I thought it would affect his church priesthood. I said, 'No way! It's normal, and every man goes through it.'" But at some point, he also started to masturbate. "I really don't know how I got started, but it doesn't matter," he wrote to his father. The LDS Church in the 1980s took a strong stance against masturbation, but Kip found himself unable to stop. For five years this dissonance filled him with guilt and an increasing measure of self-hate. He wrote, "My life was downhill all the time. I felt horrible inside, and it showed. I didn't have many friends. I felt too humiliated to see the bishop. I tried a million times to stop on my own. But it was an obsession. A hideous habit that I thought to be totally impossible to quit. I knew Satan had me twisted on his little finger. I thought I would never be able to lose the chains that held me fast."
When Kip confided in his father, Eugene tried to convince him that the practice was healthy and normal and not something to feel guilty about. Kip wrote to him, "Now I know you are going to say it's good, it's natural, and 99.9% of the human population does it. Dad, I have read the statistics; I have read the sex books; I know the author are professionals with all the 'facts.' But for me, it is wrong! For others it may be right, but not for me." When he confided to his Aunt Janice, an active Latter-day Saint, she "told him not to worry, that all young boys probably do it. He seemed very relieved." Eventually he did manage to confess to his bishop, who set up counseling sessions to help him stop. Relapsing again after a few months, he wrote, "It seems I have tried to stop a billion times, but it's the same old feelings. It affects every part of my life. If I could only get rid of this one sin, I know I could be a better person. I know I will run into a lot more problems in my life, but I think having a good self-image will help a lot through those times. Being rid of this ugly immoral sin will save my life and make it worth living."
On December 10, 1981, and again on February 14, 1982, Kip attempted suicide by drinking a mixture of iodine and alcohol. After the latter attempt he spent eight days in the psychiatric unit of the St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center. On March 2, while his father was away on an overnight business trip, Kip successfully asphyxiated himself with carbon monoxide. The note he left behind read:
Dear Dad,
I love you more than what words can say. If it were possible, I would stay alive for only you, for I really only have you. But it isn’t possible. I must first love myself, and I do not. The strange feeling of darkness and self-hate overpowers all my defenses. I must unfortunately yield to it. This turbulent feeling is only for a few to truly understand. I feel that you do not comprehend the immense feeling of self-hatred I have. This is the only way I feel that I can relieve myself of these feelings now. Carry on with your life and be happy. I love you more than words can say.
—Your son, Kip
Eugene Eliason filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the LDS Church and the Medical Center for $28 million, asserting that the counseling provided by the Church "amounted to an intentional attempt at mind control through intimidation and brainwashing techniques under the guise of spiritual teachings. Kip took the teachings literally and became increasingly concerned, worried and depressed with the church's indoctrination. But being a normal adolescent, he became increasingly less able to reconcile his sexual desires." Psychologist Dr. Jack Annon wrote in a pre-trial affadavit, ""It is my professional opinion that the LDS Church has gone a step beyond propounding a certain viewpoint that masturbation is a sin, and has actually instructed its leaders, teachers and bishops to provide counseling and to utilize behavior-modification skills that can have very dangerous and adverse effects." The case was most likely settled out of court. The only record of the outcome I can find is that LDS psychiatrist Cantril Nielsen was made to pay a malpractice settlement for recommending that Kip follow his bishop's counsel to stop masturbating, instead of basing his treatment on empirical medical evidence.
Kip's Legacy
I first heard Kip's story in the pseudo-documentary "The God Makers". A statement about this film by the National Conference of Christians and Jews reads in part: "The film does not - in our opinion - fairly portray the Mormon Church, Mormon history, or Mormon belief. It makes extensive use of 'half-truth,' faulty generalizations, erroneous interpretations, and sensationalism. It is not reflective of the genuine spirit of the Mormon faith.
"We find particularly offensive the emphasis in the film that Mormonism is some sort of subversive plot - a danger to the community, a threat to the institution of marriage, and is destructive to the mental health of teenagers. All of our experience with our Mormon neighbours provides eloquent refutation of these charges."
So when I finally got around to watching it, I was surprised to hear a story that wasn't laughably incorrect or something I'd ever heard before.
"We find particularly offensive the emphasis in the film that Mormonism is some sort of subversive plot - a danger to the community, a threat to the institution of marriage, and is destructive to the mental health of teenagers. All of our experience with our Mormon neighbours provides eloquent refutation of these charges."
So when I finally got around to watching it, I was surprised to hear a story that wasn't laughably incorrect or something I'd ever heard before.
But how does "The God Makers" frame the story? It begins with professional LDS critic Sandra Tanner saying, "Utah has a higher than the national average rate of divorce. It has higher than the national average rate of suicide. Especially teen suicide, is much higher in Utah than it is nationally. This is partly due to the fact the Mormons emphasize perfection. As many of these young people feel defeated in their striving for godhood, they can't measure up to everything the Church is asking of them, and it just so demolishes their self-esteem, that they can't go on and so then they take their life [sic]." The film then corroborates these sweeping assertions about Utah by talking about one suicide in Idaho.
Such an indictment of LDS teachings on sexuality is rather hypocritical coming from evangelical Christians like Decker and Tanner. Allen D. Roberts noted, "It is doubtful that the moral advice given LDS teens is significantly different than that given by other conservative Christian clergymen. Kip's letter could have been written by any boy in any church. There is no reason to believe his experience was uniquely attributable to Mormonism. The Godmakers conveniently fails to mention that the main reasons for adolescent suicides are pressure to achieve academic success, declining participation in religious activity, and difficulty in acquiring a stable personal identity." Evangelical pastor Randy Alcorn wrote in his 1985 book Christians in the Wake of the Sexual Revolution, "Too many Christians, especially young people, allow the masturbation issue to become the focus of their lives. A female Bible college student sent me a lengthy letter in which she described her agonizing struggle with masturbation. Like countless other Christians, this sincere Christian girl suffered from nagging guilt and a constant sense of spiritual defeat because of this ongoing problem. I wrote back that while she needed to work on the problem if it involved lust, I simply could not believe God has no plan for her until she stops masturbating forever."
For that matter, according to the filmmakers' theology, Kip is burning in hell now and for eternity, as will all Latter-day Saints and billions of others who chose the wrong religion (regardless of whether the correct one was even an option during their lifetimes). One hopes they didn't share this message of comfort with his grieving father. According to LDS theology, everyone will have a chance to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ in the next life if not in this one, and virtually everyone will inherit a kingdom of glory, with only a very few of the most evil consigned to what most would consider "hell" for their open and deliberate rebellion against God. In an absolute worst-case scenario (which I don't think most would even consider a legitimate possibility), Kip would inherit the telestial or lowest kingdom, which is still a paradise far better than this Earth. Which version of Christianity offers a more loving God and a more hopeful view of the afterlife? Which sounds less conducive to anxiety and depression?
The most detailed account of Kip Eliason's story yet available, in which I found most of this information, comes from an equally reputable source: the pornographic magazine Hustler, for which journalist Mark A. Taylor wrote a more progressive, secular hit piece on the church in 1986.
Such an indictment of LDS teachings on sexuality is rather hypocritical coming from evangelical Christians like Decker and Tanner. Allen D. Roberts noted, "It is doubtful that the moral advice given LDS teens is significantly different than that given by other conservative Christian clergymen. Kip's letter could have been written by any boy in any church. There is no reason to believe his experience was uniquely attributable to Mormonism. The Godmakers conveniently fails to mention that the main reasons for adolescent suicides are pressure to achieve academic success, declining participation in religious activity, and difficulty in acquiring a stable personal identity." Evangelical pastor Randy Alcorn wrote in his 1985 book Christians in the Wake of the Sexual Revolution, "Too many Christians, especially young people, allow the masturbation issue to become the focus of their lives. A female Bible college student sent me a lengthy letter in which she described her agonizing struggle with masturbation. Like countless other Christians, this sincere Christian girl suffered from nagging guilt and a constant sense of spiritual defeat because of this ongoing problem. I wrote back that while she needed to work on the problem if it involved lust, I simply could not believe God has no plan for her until she stops masturbating forever."
For that matter, according to the filmmakers' theology, Kip is burning in hell now and for eternity, as will all Latter-day Saints and billions of others who chose the wrong religion (regardless of whether the correct one was even an option during their lifetimes). One hopes they didn't share this message of comfort with his grieving father. According to LDS theology, everyone will have a chance to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ in the next life if not in this one, and virtually everyone will inherit a kingdom of glory, with only a very few of the most evil consigned to what most would consider "hell" for their open and deliberate rebellion against God. In an absolute worst-case scenario (which I don't think most would even consider a legitimate possibility), Kip would inherit the telestial or lowest kingdom, which is still a paradise far better than this Earth. Which version of Christianity offers a more loving God and a more hopeful view of the afterlife? Which sounds less conducive to anxiety and depression?
The most detailed account of Kip Eliason's story yet available, in which I found most of this information, comes from an equally reputable source: the pornographic magazine Hustler, for which journalist Mark A. Taylor wrote a more progressive, secular hit piece on the church in 1986.
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www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2020/08/how-when-and-why-talking-to-your-children-about-sexuality?lang=eng#p28Taylor claims, "Mormons are taught that only by achieving perfection on Earth will they reach 'godhood' and find eternal life in heaven" - a statement so inaccurate that it can best be classified as a lie. "For most Latter-day Saints, including Kip," he claims, "the constant battle to become 'worthy' is a hopeless struggle." Being a resident of Salt Lake City was apparently sufficient to give him clairvoyance into the minds of "most Latter-day Saints." And what exactly were they hopelessly struggling for? According to Taylor, "Becoming 'worthy' and ultimately reaching 'perfection' means living up to the church's 4,300 commandments - including those condemning natural sex acts." Again, virtually every other Christian denomination taught the same things about "natural sex acts." The seemingly arbitrary figure of 4,300 turns out to be from the book version of The God Makers, which cites as its source the book Commandments and Promises of God, which cites over 4,300 verses of scripture to explain 120 commandments. Small world.
The LDS Church has often fostered a toxic culture of perfectionism, but Taylor's article both attributes this culture to a nonexistent doctrinal foundation and exaggerates its scope. Kip's death, according to him, "wasn't the isolated incident the church would like its brethren in Boise to believe." Utah, according to him, was "quietly fighting a sex-related mental health epidemic among Mormon men and women." Why? "Kip and countless others have fallen victim to guilt, self-hate, mental illness and suicide created by their inability to control healthy sexual desires as mandated by the Mormon Church." Astute readers could then be forgiven for wondering why, like "The God Makers," his article focuses only on one supposedly typical incident, not in Utah, with no corroboration or discussion whatsoever of the "countless others." The closest he comes to that is briefly quoting one anonymous woman who claimed that "By the time you're 20, you've got more sexual hang-ups than you can deal with. It's crazy." Who was she to speak for anyone but herself?
(He does go on a tangent for several paragraphs about the struggles and suicidality of gay men in the LDS Church and the unsuccessful conversion therapy that Salt Lake psychologist Robert Card had stopped doing well before this article was published. This is a legitimate subject of discussion and criticism, and I applaud him for bringing it up years before most straight people cared about gay people, but its relevance to the story of Kip Eliason or all the supposed others whose lives are ruined by being told not to masturbate or have extramarital sex is pretty flimsy. It feels like a red herring.)
While I, unlike Mark A. Taylor, make no claim to be able to read minds, it's self-evident that Kip Eliason had a mental health problem far beyond religious guilt imposed on him by anyone else. It's self-evident because his suicide over his inability to stop masturbating was, in fact, an isolated incident. It's self-evident from the lack of similar stories flooding the news then or now. It's self-evident because the overwhelming majority of Latter-day Saints - even those who, like him, feel inadequate and hopeless - do not kill themselves over the church's worthiness standards or the pressures to follow them. His own half-brother Perry said in "The God Makers" clip, "I know what Kip was going through; I went to the same type interviews that he did. The pressure was great, to strive for worthiness, to be perfect all the time. The only problem is Kip took it a little too seriously."
Both of these sources and many others like them paint a picture of the church from the outside that, even when almost accurate, would feel alien to most on the inside. Taylor writes, "The church demands absolute faith in and conformity to all its teachings and doctrines, and it attempts to govern all aspects of its congregation's lives, including their sex lives." Of course, like most people who believe that the purpose of life is to do whatever you want, he couldn't comprehend why anyone would ever want to live like this. Members who do emphathize with his harsh, draconian portrayal tend not to stay participating members very long, while others stay because by following these "demands" they find joy and fulfillment that Taylor obviously never tried to understand because he was too busy portraying all of them as repressed and suicidal. He might have asked himself once or twice why the church grew rapidly throughout the 1980s instead of imploding on itself if it was really so universally toxic. (It is kind of imploding nowadays, but more for other reasons like its historical problems and its treatment of LGBTQ people and women.)
Kip's story seems to have been largely forgotten for nearly thirty years. In 2014, Jonathan Streeter of the blog "Thoughts on Things and Stuff" resurrected it for a new audience, mostly depending on the previous two sources. In the post "A Latter-day Tragedy," he contends that the pressures leading to Kip's suicide could be traced all the way back to the controversial teaching of "blood atonement," where Brigham Young and other nineteenth-century church leaders using hyperbolic rhetoric to push for moral reform stated that certain grievous sins could only be atoned for with one's own life. At no point did they suggest that masturbation was one of these sins, and exactly zero nineteenth-century suicides have ever been attributed to this teaching. Though the teaching had long since ended, Streeter ties it into quotes from twentieth-century church leaders to the effect that virtue or chastity is worth more than one's life. He asserts, "The parallels between the 'better dead clean than alive dirty' idea and blood atonement are chilling. The[y] represent an example of how a pernicious doctrine can seemingly disappear and yet be revealed to have woven itself into the fabric of the church." This is a legitimate point but I don't think it quite applies in this instance.
Kip would likely never have even seen some of these quotes in the pre-internet age, but Streeter correctly points out that he was thirteen years old when he would have heard Marion G. Romney in the April 1979 General Conference recall these words from his father: "My son, you are going a long way from home. But your mother and I, your brother and sisters, will be with you constantly in our thoughts and prayers, we shall rejoice with you in your successes, and we shall sorrow with you in your disappointments. When you are released and return, we shall be glad to greet you and welcome you back into the family circle. But remember this, my son, we would rather come to this station and take your body off the train in a casket than to have you come home unclean, having lost your virtue." Yes, this is a toxic teaching that entirely disregards repentance, forgiveness, and Jesus Christ. Yes, it has harmed people. But while masturbation does fall within the realm of chastity, it should have been obvious even to a thirteen-year-old that President Romney's father was talking specifically about actual extramarital sex, often referred to as "loss of virtue." It would be absurd to associate a young man leaving home with a parent's concern about him possibly masturbating for the first time.
In fact, Boyd K. Packer devoted an entire sermon to young men's budding sexual desires in the October 1976 General Conference (priesthood session) that was reprinted as the pamphlet "To Young Men Only" for bishops to use beginning in 1980. We know Kip had this pamphlet in his possession because his father quoted from it in the lawsuit. Of masturbation, Packer said, "First, I want you to know this. If you are struggling with this temptation and perhaps you have not quite been able to resist, the Lord still loves you. It is not anything so wicked nor is it a transgression so great that the Lord would reject you because of it, but it can quickly lead to that kind of transgression." Of nocturnal emissions, which Kip also felt guilty about, he said "When it does [happen], you should not feel guilty. It is the nature of young manhood and is part of becoming a man."
In the very same General Conference as President Romney's warning against loss of virtue, Marion D. Hanks offered a somewhat contradictory message of hope to Kip and others who felt wicked and unworthy in the eyes of God. In part he said, "The Lord has promised that he will forgive and remember no more when the process of repentance is complete. If the Lord will do that for us, why should we not so do for ourselves? Mistakes can be forgiven. Habits can be changed. One more roadblock to progress can be removed.
"I am one who believes that God loves and will never cease to love all of his children, and that he will not cease to hope for us or reach for us or wait for us. In Isaiah it is written:
'And therefore will the Lord wait, that he may he gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you' (Isa. 30:18).
"And yet over the earth, across the years, I have met some of God's choicest children who find it very difficult to believe in their hearts that he really means them. They know that he is the source of comfort and pardon and peace and that they must seek him and open the door for him and accept his love, and yet even in their extremity they find it difficult to believe that his promised blessings are for them. Some have offended God and their own consciences and are earnestly repentant but they find the way back blocked by their unwillingness to forgive themselves or to believe that God will forgive them, or sometimes by a strange reluctance in some of us to really forgive, to really forget, and to really rejoice."
In March 2018, the activist group Protect LDS Children reposted the clip from "The God Makers" with bookends claiming, "Mormon Bishops regularly interview children about their private sexual habits. These interviews demonize normal sexual development and induce self-loathing[,] increasing the risk of suicide. This has been going on for decades. This is the story of Kip Eliason[.]" So by this point, critics were reaching back thirty-six years for one example of a problem that "has been going on for decades". Are you noticing a pattern yet? I agree that overreaching bishop's interviews have caused problems for some children, but suicide does not appear to be one of them.
The LDS Church has talked about masturbation a lot less forcefully and a lot less often in recent years. An August 2020 Ensign article simply said, "Masturbation is often a child’s first experience with sexuality and is done in ignorance. Even young children are prone to self-touching, and how parents respond to these early behaviors can set the stage for how young people feel about themselves and their sexuality. It is important for parents to find a balance between helping children understand the why behind God’s commandment that sexual behavior occur within a marriage relationship, while also not reacting with disgust or anger when children engage in self-touching or youth admit to masturbating." Packer's aforementioned pamphlet, which was widely mocked both for its actual message and for its use of euphemisms (especially calling the prostate a "little factory,") was discontinued in late 2016. A popular Twitter personality has asserted that this was a direct result of Kip's death over thirty-four and a half years earlier.
The LDS Church has often fostered a toxic culture of perfectionism, but Taylor's article both attributes this culture to a nonexistent doctrinal foundation and exaggerates its scope. Kip's death, according to him, "wasn't the isolated incident the church would like its brethren in Boise to believe." Utah, according to him, was "quietly fighting a sex-related mental health epidemic among Mormon men and women." Why? "Kip and countless others have fallen victim to guilt, self-hate, mental illness and suicide created by their inability to control healthy sexual desires as mandated by the Mormon Church." Astute readers could then be forgiven for wondering why, like "The God Makers," his article focuses only on one supposedly typical incident, not in Utah, with no corroboration or discussion whatsoever of the "countless others." The closest he comes to that is briefly quoting one anonymous woman who claimed that "By the time you're 20, you've got more sexual hang-ups than you can deal with. It's crazy." Who was she to speak for anyone but herself?
(He does go on a tangent for several paragraphs about the struggles and suicidality of gay men in the LDS Church and the unsuccessful conversion therapy that Salt Lake psychologist Robert Card had stopped doing well before this article was published. This is a legitimate subject of discussion and criticism, and I applaud him for bringing it up years before most straight people cared about gay people, but its relevance to the story of Kip Eliason or all the supposed others whose lives are ruined by being told not to masturbate or have extramarital sex is pretty flimsy. It feels like a red herring.)
While I, unlike Mark A. Taylor, make no claim to be able to read minds, it's self-evident that Kip Eliason had a mental health problem far beyond religious guilt imposed on him by anyone else. It's self-evident because his suicide over his inability to stop masturbating was, in fact, an isolated incident. It's self-evident from the lack of similar stories flooding the news then or now. It's self-evident because the overwhelming majority of Latter-day Saints - even those who, like him, feel inadequate and hopeless - do not kill themselves over the church's worthiness standards or the pressures to follow them. His own half-brother Perry said in "The God Makers" clip, "I know what Kip was going through; I went to the same type interviews that he did. The pressure was great, to strive for worthiness, to be perfect all the time. The only problem is Kip took it a little too seriously."
Both of these sources and many others like them paint a picture of the church from the outside that, even when almost accurate, would feel alien to most on the inside. Taylor writes, "The church demands absolute faith in and conformity to all its teachings and doctrines, and it attempts to govern all aspects of its congregation's lives, including their sex lives." Of course, like most people who believe that the purpose of life is to do whatever you want, he couldn't comprehend why anyone would ever want to live like this. Members who do emphathize with his harsh, draconian portrayal tend not to stay participating members very long, while others stay because by following these "demands" they find joy and fulfillment that Taylor obviously never tried to understand because he was too busy portraying all of them as repressed and suicidal. He might have asked himself once or twice why the church grew rapidly throughout the 1980s instead of imploding on itself if it was really so universally toxic. (It is kind of imploding nowadays, but more for other reasons like its historical problems and its treatment of LGBTQ people and women.)
Kip's story seems to have been largely forgotten for nearly thirty years. In 2014, Jonathan Streeter of the blog "Thoughts on Things and Stuff" resurrected it for a new audience, mostly depending on the previous two sources. In the post "A Latter-day Tragedy," he contends that the pressures leading to Kip's suicide could be traced all the way back to the controversial teaching of "blood atonement," where Brigham Young and other nineteenth-century church leaders using hyperbolic rhetoric to push for moral reform stated that certain grievous sins could only be atoned for with one's own life. At no point did they suggest that masturbation was one of these sins, and exactly zero nineteenth-century suicides have ever been attributed to this teaching. Though the teaching had long since ended, Streeter ties it into quotes from twentieth-century church leaders to the effect that virtue or chastity is worth more than one's life. He asserts, "The parallels between the 'better dead clean than alive dirty' idea and blood atonement are chilling. The[y] represent an example of how a pernicious doctrine can seemingly disappear and yet be revealed to have woven itself into the fabric of the church." This is a legitimate point but I don't think it quite applies in this instance.
Kip would likely never have even seen some of these quotes in the pre-internet age, but Streeter correctly points out that he was thirteen years old when he would have heard Marion G. Romney in the April 1979 General Conference recall these words from his father: "My son, you are going a long way from home. But your mother and I, your brother and sisters, will be with you constantly in our thoughts and prayers, we shall rejoice with you in your successes, and we shall sorrow with you in your disappointments. When you are released and return, we shall be glad to greet you and welcome you back into the family circle. But remember this, my son, we would rather come to this station and take your body off the train in a casket than to have you come home unclean, having lost your virtue." Yes, this is a toxic teaching that entirely disregards repentance, forgiveness, and Jesus Christ. Yes, it has harmed people. But while masturbation does fall within the realm of chastity, it should have been obvious even to a thirteen-year-old that President Romney's father was talking specifically about actual extramarital sex, often referred to as "loss of virtue." It would be absurd to associate a young man leaving home with a parent's concern about him possibly masturbating for the first time.
In fact, Boyd K. Packer devoted an entire sermon to young men's budding sexual desires in the October 1976 General Conference (priesthood session) that was reprinted as the pamphlet "To Young Men Only" for bishops to use beginning in 1980. We know Kip had this pamphlet in his possession because his father quoted from it in the lawsuit. Of masturbation, Packer said, "First, I want you to know this. If you are struggling with this temptation and perhaps you have not quite been able to resist, the Lord still loves you. It is not anything so wicked nor is it a transgression so great that the Lord would reject you because of it, but it can quickly lead to that kind of transgression." Of nocturnal emissions, which Kip also felt guilty about, he said "When it does [happen], you should not feel guilty. It is the nature of young manhood and is part of becoming a man."
In the very same General Conference as President Romney's warning against loss of virtue, Marion D. Hanks offered a somewhat contradictory message of hope to Kip and others who felt wicked and unworthy in the eyes of God. In part he said, "The Lord has promised that he will forgive and remember no more when the process of repentance is complete. If the Lord will do that for us, why should we not so do for ourselves? Mistakes can be forgiven. Habits can be changed. One more roadblock to progress can be removed.
"I am one who believes that God loves and will never cease to love all of his children, and that he will not cease to hope for us or reach for us or wait for us. In Isaiah it is written:
'And therefore will the Lord wait, that he may he gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you' (Isa. 30:18).
"And yet over the earth, across the years, I have met some of God's choicest children who find it very difficult to believe in their hearts that he really means them. They know that he is the source of comfort and pardon and peace and that they must seek him and open the door for him and accept his love, and yet even in their extremity they find it difficult to believe that his promised blessings are for them. Some have offended God and their own consciences and are earnestly repentant but they find the way back blocked by their unwillingness to forgive themselves or to believe that God will forgive them, or sometimes by a strange reluctance in some of us to really forgive, to really forget, and to really rejoice."
In March 2018, the activist group Protect LDS Children reposted the clip from "The God Makers" with bookends claiming, "Mormon Bishops regularly interview children about their private sexual habits. These interviews demonize normal sexual development and induce self-loathing[,] increasing the risk of suicide. This has been going on for decades. This is the story of Kip Eliason[.]" So by this point, critics were reaching back thirty-six years for one example of a problem that "has been going on for decades". Are you noticing a pattern yet? I agree that overreaching bishop's interviews have caused problems for some children, but suicide does not appear to be one of them.
The LDS Church has talked about masturbation a lot less forcefully and a lot less often in recent years. An August 2020 Ensign article simply said, "Masturbation is often a child’s first experience with sexuality and is done in ignorance. Even young children are prone to self-touching, and how parents respond to these early behaviors can set the stage for how young people feel about themselves and their sexuality. It is important for parents to find a balance between helping children understand the why behind God’s commandment that sexual behavior occur within a marriage relationship, while also not reacting with disgust or anger when children engage in self-touching or youth admit to masturbating." Packer's aforementioned pamphlet, which was widely mocked both for its actual message and for its use of euphemisms (especially calling the prostate a "little factory,") was discontinued in late 2016. A popular Twitter personality has asserted that this was a direct result of Kip's death over thirty-four and a half years earlier.
More likely, this is just another case of the church quietly distancing itself from embarrassing and/or harmful teachings long after it should have repudiated them. Sexologist Dr. Vern Bullough told Hustler in 1986 that "their science is about 80 years out of date, and it was questionable even 80 years ago." The LDS Church is not without culpability. It should never have categorized masturbation as a sin, and it certainly should never have defied the medical consensus by treating masturbation as an addiction.
But even now, I'm reluctant to weaponize this story as other critics have. It would be like if I claimed that atheism is unhealthy, and cited as my sole piece of evidence one atheist who died by suicide decades ago because he believed that life is meaningless. Most Christian denominations have had to balance condemnations of what they consider sin against the good news of Christ's mercy and boundless love. It's possible, even likely, that Kip couldn't help fixating on the more negative statements from church leaders while glossing over the positive ones and thus found them more stressful than the average Latter-day Saint. Over thirty-six years after his death, Steve Densley Jr. noted, "A substantial body of research exists that demonstrates that anxious people, whether they have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or whether they simply have an anxious disposition, are drawn to threatening information, tend to dwell on threatening information longer than others, and tend to interpret information in a threatening way when the information is ambiguous.... When the future is unclear, people who experience anxiety and depression tend to expect the negative and tend to expect the results to be more costly when compared to those who are not anxious or depressed."
Religion, including the LDS Church, has been shown in several studies to have strong beneficial effects on mental health. But it's not a magic cure-all and there are always exceptions because everyone is different and has a different experience. Perhaps Kip would have been better off severing his unhealthy relationship with religion, or perhaps something else would have just taken its place. Perhaps with the right therapy and/or medication, which may not have even existed in the early 1980s, he could have overcome his guilt and gone on to lead a long and happy life. That he didn't is very, very unfortunate. But even after leaving the church I have hope that God will make this tragedy right, compensate him for his suffering, and reward him for the obvious goodness and righteous yearnings of his heart. That's why I want him to be remembered. And I have hope that wherever he is now, Kip Eliason has learned to love himself.
But even now, I'm reluctant to weaponize this story as other critics have. It would be like if I claimed that atheism is unhealthy, and cited as my sole piece of evidence one atheist who died by suicide decades ago because he believed that life is meaningless. Most Christian denominations have had to balance condemnations of what they consider sin against the good news of Christ's mercy and boundless love. It's possible, even likely, that Kip couldn't help fixating on the more negative statements from church leaders while glossing over the positive ones and thus found them more stressful than the average Latter-day Saint. Over thirty-six years after his death, Steve Densley Jr. noted, "A substantial body of research exists that demonstrates that anxious people, whether they have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or whether they simply have an anxious disposition, are drawn to threatening information, tend to dwell on threatening information longer than others, and tend to interpret information in a threatening way when the information is ambiguous.... When the future is unclear, people who experience anxiety and depression tend to expect the negative and tend to expect the results to be more costly when compared to those who are not anxious or depressed."
Religion, including the LDS Church, has been shown in several studies to have strong beneficial effects on mental health. But it's not a magic cure-all and there are always exceptions because everyone is different and has a different experience. Perhaps Kip would have been better off severing his unhealthy relationship with religion, or perhaps something else would have just taken its place. Perhaps with the right therapy and/or medication, which may not have even existed in the early 1980s, he could have overcome his guilt and gone on to lead a long and happy life. That he didn't is very, very unfortunate. But even after leaving the church I have hope that God will make this tragedy right, compensate him for his suffering, and reward him for the obvious goodness and righteous yearnings of his heart. That's why I want him to be remembered. And I have hope that wherever he is now, Kip Eliason has learned to love himself.
