This American Life

[mfbukowski]

26 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

It doesn’t always happen that way because that’s how power works.  And yes....not everyone with power is bad.  

Yes we have read that scripture.

And it says "Amen to the priesthood of that man".  That's why you go to the next level "up" to complain.  And if no action, you go above that or take it to the press.  You have to stop it, and not let it continue

[Calm]

21 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

It doesn’t always happen that way because that’s how power works.  And yes....not everyone with power is bad.  

I don't see what is so surprising that some women and youth (and likely some men have been victims as well and stayed silent) won't say anything.

There is the problem with it being unexpected and freezing and then being ashamed of not doing anything or even fearful you will be blamed.

There is the problem with feeling threatened...if he is willing to say that, how much further is he willing to go? Even if nothing happens here, he knows where I live.  What if he decides to get physical?  

There is the problem of not wanting to hurt someone you care about...and their family.

There is the problem of fear of being ridiculed for making a big deal over something little.

And then there is the huge problem of wondering if you will be believed if he denies it, you have no clue if he has tried it with others and if they complained or if leadership would risk having a man's reputation damaged by making it public enough to see if other victims come forward.  If they won't, it is your word against him unless you want to risk getting in trouble for spreading gossip/attacking a good man by asking others yourself. And people trusted him enough to call him as a bishop, so you know you have a huge bias hurdle to overcome in challenging him if he won't confess unless you have a similar personal relationship with stake leadership....which most women probably don't.  What if he claims you are lying because you told him something (maybe a porn addiction, impossible to prove you didn't confess) and then got angry he was pulling your recommend because of it or was going to go talk to your spouse?

I don't think it is common, but on the rare occasions it happens I can understand why members stay quiet if they do.

[Tacenda]

42 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Same thoughts as me.....   this ain't real.

And if it is the whole stake/area leadership needs to be ex'ed.

Not believable that it has only happened to this guy otherwise everyone in the stake would be up in arms.   Doesn't add up.

This isn't anything sexual, but I remember being in a Primary Presidency around 20 years ago, and the president and I were talking at her home one day and she mentioned that her Stake President told she and her husband right before they married that they should wait a couple of years before they have children. This upset her and her husband so much because they were married when both were quite a bit older and wanted to get started right away. Sometimes leaders need to refrain from saying things that are so out of left field.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Tacenda

[Calm]

53 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Call the area Seventy

And how would a typical female member get that number?

[Calm]

46 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Same thoughts as me.....   this ain't real.

And if it is the whole stake/area leadership needs to be ex'ed.

Not believable that it has only happened to this guy otherwise everyone in the stake would be up in arms.   Doesn't add up.

She said it was different areas, not the same man or stake each time.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Calm

[Calm]

19 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Those are common sense.

Yes I suppose we have to teach them.  Some have had no parents to do so I suppose.

I suspect it never occurred to my parents their daughters might get treated that way.  My parents good members, good people, never had a talk that even came close to that.  They certainly taught us to be self sufficient in many other ways.

[Hamba Tuhan]

3 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

Are those your real breasts?  Do silky garments turn you on?

If this happened once to any woman in my stake, the entire stake would explode.

[Calm]

15 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

If this happened once to any woman in my stake, the entire stake would explode.

Would they automatically believe the woman?  What if she couldn't prove it and he denied saying anything like that?  Curious as to how you think it would be handled.

People seem to be assuming in their posts that women in this scenario would be believed by the other leaders in their responses or the women could somehow prove it so no brainer.  But I think it is reasonable to consider the possibility they are lying.  I don't see it as any more likely that a man would say that as a woman might lie about it (iow, in both cases I think it would be quite rare).  I can't imagine any leader put in that position who wouldn't consider the possibility unless they knew the woman very well, especially if they had personally chosen the bishop, which means they had trust in him to begin with.

[Hamba Tuhan]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

Curious as to how you think it would be handled.

Hopefully not in the car park, but that would be an option if she were to tell her husband or a brother ...

[mfbukowski]

53 minutes ago, Calm said:

And how would a typical female member get that number?

The same way anyone else would get it.  Investigation.  We have a name and there is this thing now called "the internet".  There are property records, ancestry records and no more privacy any more.  There are websites that will get you any info you want pretty much for a few bucks.  There are sympathetic leaders who would help.

It's not necessary to pull the "female" card.  At least 50% of the smartest people I know happen to be "typical female members" and I certainly do not denigrate their intelligence and wisdom OR their ability to handle such situations.

My wife has been harassed at work - once.  And it won't happen again.

I bet I could find that address in about 5 minutes without asking anyone in the church or any special connections.

Edited November 14, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

8 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Hopefully not in the car park, but that would be an option if she were to tell her husband or a brother ...

Exactly!!  

Try that with my daughter and I would be...... unhappy.

[mfbukowski]

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2018/08/area-presidency-assignments?lang=eng

Area Presidencies  - Southwest

I found his voting records and home address --5 minutes.

If it happened in this area I would camp on his lawn until he talked to me

 

Edited November 14, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

She said it was different areas, not the same man or stake each time.

Uh, somewhat revealing I would say.   Just a random victim in different areas and different men?  Seriously?

Why did she stay in the church?  None of this adds up

[bsjkki]

40 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2018/08/area-presidency-assignments?lang=eng

Area Presidencies  - Southwest

I found his voting records and home address --5 minutes.

If it happened in this area I would camp on his lawn until he talked to me

 

And then they would call you crazy and not believe you.

[bsjkki]

28 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Uh, somewhat revealing I would say.   Just a random victim in different areas and different men?  Seriously?

Why did she stay in the church?  None of this adds up

Why do you have such a hard time believing her? People do stay in the church even when they see leaders falter. I do not have a testimony based on my Bishop.

[mfbukowski]

34 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

And then they would call you crazy and not believe you.

First of all that would not bother me if it happened, but it would not happen.

You are projecting.

Edited November 14, 2018 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

36 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

Why do you have such a hard time believing her? People do stay in the church even when they see leaders falter. I do not have a testimony based on my Bishop.

Huh?

I have a hard time imagining that the same girl would have the same problem with every bishop in many areas.

Who would have a testimony based on a Bishop?  The point is that if there are so many Bishops attacking the same girl one would think that she would leave the church.

But quite honestly I do not believe that.

[Hamba Tuhan]

3 hours ago, bsjkki said:

And then they would call you crazy and not believe you.

As I've mentioned before on this forum, we have two sisters in our stake who made accusation of impropriety against two men in our stake, one a leader and one a new convert. Both accusations were immediately referred by the stake president to the police for investigation.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Hamba Tuhan

[bsjkki]

I was talking to him mfb about the tactic of camping out on the Seventy’s yard. In my area, I think a lot would depend on who made the charges. Predators usually pick their victims carefully. I would hope my Stake would react like yours but I don’t have full confidence they would.

Edited November 14, 2018 by bsjkki

[Calm]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Exactly!!  

Try that with my daughter and I would be...... unhappy.

Lots of women out there without a supportive male relative or friend to appeal to.

[Calm]

 

14 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

First of all that would not bother me if it happened, but it would not happen.

You are projecting.

You aren't even believing MustardSeed here.  Why do you think leaders would be more believing?

As far as having a hard time believing it happened to the same woman... 

Maybe it would help if you read her more carefully.  She said three different friends had shared different experiences with her, not that it was her own personal experience.  Two of them told her their leaders responded appropriately when they reported it.  The third had passed away so she didn't know in that case.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Calm

[Calm]

39 minutes ago, bsjkki said:

I wa talking to him mfb about the tactic of camping out on the Seventy’s yard. In my area, I think a lot would depend on who made the charges. Predators usually pick their victims carefully. I would hope my Stake would react like yours but I font have full confidence they would.

And if someone is not familiar with stake leadership to be able to know they would be supportive as many women and youth are not in my experience, that uncertainty can lead to reluctance to report.

If a leader was a true predator and not mostly clueless and acting on impulse, carefully picking victims with a troubled background and few friends and relatives to appeal to for support, he would have a pretty strong position in a he said/she said scenario.

Thankfully there are better procedures in place, though .I think having a hotline listed and encouraged to be used on the abuse website just recently is a major step in letting members know leaders are serious about abuse being reported and not kept so inhouse as it once was (both for protection of victims and accused, since there was significant social stigma attached to being a victim in the past...hopefully we have moved past that).  Unfortunately many victims don't look on sexual comments without physical assault as abuse and may therefore not go looking for such help.

Edited November 14, 2018 by Calm

[MustardSeed]

I am done here on this topic.  I spent 24 hours processing my thoughts and feelings.  I don’t feel need to repeat myself to help clarify. 

I happen to be a mandated reporter and attract a lot of folks who are willing to open up to me.  Reporting sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t , for lots of reasons.  

Thank you to those who spent the time to help me process, particularly those who also listened to the podcast and those who accepted me where I am. 

Be well.  MustardSeed 

Edited November 14, 2018 by MustardSeed

[BlueDreams]

On 11/12/2018 at 5:31 PM, MustardSeed said:

Wow thank you Calm.  I have no agenda or need to control the direction of this topic, I just need an anonymous place to put my thoughts and feelings out there in the world.  

For point of reference I’ve been a member my whole life and I am in my 50s now. I have always been active and I carry a temple recommendBut I am also a independent thinker. I find myself to be a little bit different than the standard  In that I tend to be accepting of people who are different than I am. I’m usually the first to welcome folks who come to church smelling or looking different than everyone else.  

I am an avid follower of This American life, the program. Or the podcast. I am fascinated by the topics and honesty of the program. 

This morning after listening to Sunday’s broadcast I was very upset.   I see huge value in hearing “the other side” ‘s point of view in most things so kept an open mind to this topic. 

I am having a flurry of thoughts as very little time right now but top of mind here is where I go.

1. Do I trust the involvement the bishop has right now in my teen aged sons journey?  My son hasn’t been deemed worthy to take sacrament in 2 years.  I worry for him.  My son is an avid rule follower but has had some chastity rule breaking that doesnt involve any other person.  Frankly, I think he is normal.  He is also extremely honest and has high expectations of himself.

2.  I’m a counselor in the young women’s program and I am thinking about having a conversation with a young woman after standards night And offer if anyone has appointment with the bishop at any time and is uncomfortable meeting alone or uncomfortable involving their parents that I would be willing to go with them. I know for a fact that when I was a teenager I would never have wanted my parents sitting in on my bishops interview.

3. It is very disturbing to me when women talk about   Priesthood leaders crossing the line when doing interviews with them. I have heard many of these stories over the years. Wouldn’t be so terribly wrong for priesthood leader to simply ask are you living at the law of chastity, and leave it to the person to resolve that with God on their own?  Bishops our laypeople they are not counselors and most of the time I believe that they are really poorly trained to be interviewers. I’ve never had anybody cross the line with me but I’m told I can be pretty intimidating so I would be surprised if anybody ever would but I have many friends with some pretty heinous stories. Just like in this podcast. I was surprised at the percentage of the results that they received Reporting inappropriate questioning in temple recommend interviews and youth interviews.

4.  I think the Interview with the church representative (I think it is a media guy,I can’t recall ) was absolutely embarrassing.I can only hope that the interview was cut and pasted.

5.  It appears as though the questioning about the law of chastity began in the 1970s around the president Kimball/I would say President Packer era. I don’t know what else to say about this but I do have a lot of feelings about President Packer on a personal level. They aren’t good.

6.  It was very interesting to hear about the women talk about how sex as a married woman is confusing and not as satisfying as they believe it would have been had they been raised either at home or in the church with the healthier view of sexuality. Action is more than interesting it was just really really sad. Really really sad and depressing.

7. I’m not particularly interested in the bishop who got excommunicated recently over the stuff I’m talking about. I think anyone who carries a torch tends to have a bit of imbalance and perhaps I do as well.  But I know nothing about him and wish him well. I just know that I feel really icky after having heard the point of view I the podcast and I know it hit something deep inside of me that I already believe personally and now I just can’t ignore it because it affects my children, my grandchildren, my sisters in the gospel the young women I Have charge over presently. And last but not least, it affects me.

Thank you for listening, I feel lighter already.  No one can fix this for me but at least I can speak. 

Hi Mustard Seed, 

I can't respond to all of this point-by-point and I haven't read the thread at all...but I wanted to give you my perspective as a sex therapist who works primarily with LDS clientele. At least half of your concerns are basically my bread and butter to some extent.  I say this partially in jest, but these are themes that occur fairly frequently in my office. As a forward, I've learned when talking about these things on this site, i need to censor terms in order for my post to not hit the firewall. So ignore all the astricks

First of all, with your son I find it personally ridiculous that he hasn't been able to pass the sacrament in 2 years for what I assume is nothing more than P*rn and/or M*sturbation (P+M) issues. But I'm also not surprised. A similar issue happened to my brother for several months. I find the behavior shaming instead of helpful in most cases for teens, especially. I kept telling my brother that he wasn't the only one, he was just the only one who'd been honest and open about a concern. But he couldn't believe it, seeing the proof in his problems with being the only one who couldn't participate in priesthood ordinances. That is, until my encouragement and normalizing helped him to finally open up to a friend and he learned his friend also had struggled with it as well. What I've found is that the reactions and discipline deemed necessary are influenced by the bishop's own cultural baggage and expectations. I've had clients where I  thought they should probably be on probation of some sort who had nothing happen to them. And I've had others that I wouldn't consider their concerns all that serious who were having some form of informal discipline. This cultural inconsistency and at times overreaction can lead to other problems. For example, they can become confused or miss the whisperings of the spirit. When they feel the influence of the spirit, they may question whether they really are because they've learned that "serious sins" cut them off from the spirit. They may believe what they're doing is irredeemably evil, or so terrible that it puts them on Corianton-level sins (I've actually sat and read those scriptures in Alma 39 with them in my office more than once to point out that they don't fit the degree of wrong doing Corianton was at...just did so as recently as a week ago)....so they can't hear or believe God/others who may speak of their goodness and worthiness of love, etc. 

One note though, I haven't heard enough to find that the tendency to probe in interview questions about chastity concerns is super gender oriented. Both men and women have come in telling me about interviews that I would have deemed wrong. On that note, culturally, we're relatively egalitarian. Chastity sins as a guy or a girl are concerning. The one big cultural difference is probably tied to the shock value when they find our a woman is struggling with P or M. Culturally, we treat Chasity issues as more grave than any other sin. I point out that if you pause and say "I try to be honest with my fellow men" at an interview v. "I try to follow the law of chastity"....its the chastity question that bishops and others may likely hone in on and ask follow-up questions. There's no scriptural edict to say that lying is more permissable than fornication. When people try to say such, I point out that "liars are thrust down to hell." When people point to the added degree of importance of Chastity to our temple covenants I point out the Law of Consecration is even moreso. We simply don't have a level of discernment and mercy tied to chastity as we do other covenants and commandments given. I don't know where this comes from entirely. I think Packer and the 60's-70's added institutional umph to the focus of sexual issues...but I also think that it was largely stating what most people already believed in the predominant mainstream US culture. This isn't something that can be laid solely at the feet of LDS culture. I've seen issues amplified by hollywood, family ideals, peer groups, sports teams, etc. LDS beliefs taken out of a holistic gospel context  often are used to legitimize personal or family reactions to specific chastity concerns or s*exual development. 

Just as I wouldn't lay this solely on the feet of Packer, I wouldn't lay this solely at the feet of bishops either. This is a cultural phenomenon. I find that people have often placed a heavy dependence on the Bishops calling to oversee several issues they likely need to work on more with themselves and God. In short, several people inadvertently supplement Bishop for deity. Nothing in the gospel says that's appropriate....but how they interact with bishops (or other male authority leaders....usually male) looks like it. Its common for people, after doing something they feel is wrong, to not spend time praying or pondering out the issue and instead running to bishop ASAP...even before parents or spouses etc. So instead of taking first private and sacred counsel with God, they use Bishop as a prolonged intermediary to figure out what they should do.

I find this concerning on a number of levels.

1.) instead of making an agentic people who live up to Moses' ancient hope that we would all be prophets of sorts, it creates a dependent people. It stunts spiritual development. I remember talking to my bishop about this and stating my method throughout my single years was to seek counsel with God in my s*exual expressions (for definition, I think of anything that fosters physical connection a form of said expression) to make sure it was alligned with where I was in a relationship. Sometimes it didn't, I would pray and ask what He would like me to do and I'd do that. If he'd ever said, "go see the bishop" I would have done so. He never did. So I never did. My bishop stated that is a rare trait to have. I pointed out that it shouldn't be. That that's the sort of relationship with God we should be helping others to foster. 

2.) Many don't actually know the purpose and meaning of the LoC. They focus on actions they should or shouldn't do at any given time than the actual spiritual purpose to it. I've asked people, more than once, what the purpose of the LoC is and they stared at me blank-faced or admitted they had no clue. This comes from our focus on specific acts as opposed to focusing on principle in the way we teach and interact with the LoC. If it were up to me, I would first define the spiritual law of the LoC and its purposes on a spiritual level. From my study, it is to help master and point our s*exual desires to our marital partner as God would intend and to be a means to then grow and foster our deepest covenants of marriage. Pre-marriage is to help us learn to practice, master, and point our desires towards this Godly covenant. In pragmatic language, it would mean that "practicing" would entail having ones s*xual expression match with the degree of commitment, love, and respect you have with the other person. THat you're practicing showing love toward the person in several avenues where physical expression matches up with these. When it comes to interviews or meetings with the bishops, instead of poking and prodding about what they did or didn't do as indications of worthiness, I'd focus on being a facilitator for them to understand their own degree of culpability and the gravity of the situation. I would re-explain the principle of the LoC and then ask them to search out for themselves if what they were doing (without asking for details) matched their degree of love and commitment towards each other. In short I would put it heavily in their court to discern whether what they were doing was in need of a stronger repentance process than usual....pointing out stories of mercy and care first to help ease their sense of panic about what they've done. Bishop would be facilitator and the Spirit, ideally, would be the teacher.   

*** of course to do so, would also mean teaching correctly not only the LoC, but ideas about consent, respect, love, equity in relationships, s*xual maturation and developmental stages, etc. In short we need a cultural face-lift that stops confusing "innocence" with "Ignorance" of s*xuality.

Last thing: there are positive things within our faith and the gospel especially. I'm running out of time, but they do exist....i use a number of those also in therapy to combat some of the negative beliefs we've fostered.

 

With luv,

BD

Edited November 14, 2018 by BlueDreams

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

Lots of women out there without a supportive male relative or friend to appeal to.

But feminists would not like that comment.  Who needs men to fight battles for them?  Sounds quite "Patriarchal" to me.  Consistency is important. I was just commenting on what MY personal reaction would be- not that that was the only possible reaction- in fact my reaction was probably not the "best" in a gospel sense anyway