Article Re: Mental Health of Latter-day Saints

[Couganova]

On 6/21/2023 at 8:49 PM, Tacenda said:

Very apt quote from reddit about the article:

“Research” is completely useless if you already have an end result in mind and ignore all things contrary that come up. That is true for every study, especially ones from the church that can’t be wrong…..

Yeah, Reddit! Damn peer-review.

[Teancum]

On 6/24/2023 at 4:45 PM, mfbukowski said:

But note it says EVERY study, also tainting their own alleged "evidence".

Complete objectivity is very rare, and in my belief, it doesn't exist in the social sciences.

Just even picking a topic even in hard science, for a study, has purpose behind it.  Want to cure cancer?  Perceived dead ends lead to REAL dead ends- studies are usually dropped on new discoveries if they don't help the desired goal.

Honestly, I think you live in an alternate reality.  Or maybe the Matrix.

[Teancum]

On 6/27/2023 at 7:08 AM, gopher said:

Or you could also recognize that President Kimball used extra harsh language about mostly gay men as a warning of the impending epidemic that killed millions of gay men. 

Yea no. Not really.  Do you apply that premise to other diseases that have killed so many? I guess the disease the Europeans brought to the Americas were likewise something that someone should have warned about?  Meh.  Not really. Yet millions died because of this. Don't like disease?  Don't keep goats our cows. But no.  Your comment is dumb.  And based on false religious assumptions/

On 6/27/2023 at 7:08 AM, gopher said:

 

 

Those who heeded the prophet's counsel had a good chance to survive.  Now that AIDS is no longer a death sentence, prophets have cooled their rhetoric towards gay men.  It's still a spiritual death sentence for many in the LGBT community and their supporters so that seems to the bigger focus now to encourage them to not abandon their faith and testimonies.  So I think the case could also be made that LDS leaders have been inspired.

I love life without having to overlay my thoughts on such superstitious false religious ideas.  

Edited June 28, 2023 by Teancum

[Kenngo1969]

7 minutes ago, Teancum said:

... I love life washout having to overlay my thoughts on such superstitious false religious ideas.  But stay happy in your bubble. [sic]

Mmm-kay!    (Speech-to-text strikes again??? )

Sorry.  Couldn't resist.  Don't mind me!  Carry on!

[Teancum]

4 hours ago, california boy said:

This is really messed up.  

Yes it is.  This is what religions does to us. Especially religions that claim God is leading their leaders.

 

4 hours ago, california boy said:

 

Read again what he wrote.  It wasn't a message about health concerns.  It was outright lies.  Masturbation does not turn you gay.  It doesn't lead you to want to have sex with animals.  To someone who is gay it is normal for them and not a perversion.  It is not curable.  It can not be prayed away.  

Yes and yes!

4 hours ago, california boy said:

“Therefore to those who say that this practice or any other evil is incurable, I respond: ‘How can you say the door cannot be opened until your knuckles are bloody, till your head is bruised, till your muscles are sore? It can be done.’”  

This one quote caused me so much agony and feeling worthless because no matter how much I followed this advice, no matter how much I prayed.  How much I fasted.  How much I pleaded with God, I was still gay.  God didn't keep the promise that was offered.  It was a LIE.  It was a lie that my family believed.  They blamed me for not becoming straight because, well Spencer W. Kimball offered that solution.  

 

And that is why it is a good thing to ignore what these LDS leaders teach.  They have no special insight or provision to some God that may not even exist.  Just ignore them.  Like @smac97said, just let Kimball's book and teachings sunset.  What a nice way to run away from garbage past LDS leaders have taught.

[The Nehor]

 

7 hours ago, gopher said:

yeah, I guess I don't understand your dumb response.  Are you saying it's dumb to recklessly and irresponsibly claim that many closeted gays committed suicide because of comments made by church leaders but it's not dumb to recklessly and irresponsibly claim that the suicide rate for LDS is due to the damning comments made by anti-mormons?

Since Nehor isn't known for using abrasive or dismissive language with those he disagrees, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was using a definition of "dumb" where it means "smart, insightful, or thought-provoking".  Kinda like how "bad" can also mean "good".

I didn’t say any of that. I pointed out the real-world differences from having terrible things said about you by outsider people you don’t interact with that often and having those terrible things said about you by your parents and relatives and religious leaders.

You are the one who made this stupid comparison so go ahead and defend it if you want. I don’t think you’ll have much fun.

[Teancum]

7 minutes ago, Kenngo1969 said:

Mmm-kay!    (Speech-to-text strikes again??? )

Sorry.  Couldn't resist.  Don't mind me!  Carry on!

Thank you kind sir.

[The Nehor]

7 hours ago, gopher said:

Or you could also recognize that President Kimball used extra harsh language about mostly gay men as a warning of the impending epidemic that killed millions of gay men.  Those who heeded the prophet's counsel had a good chance to survive.  Now that AIDS is no longer a death sentence, prophets have cooled their rhetoric towards gay men.  It's still a spiritual death sentence for many in the LGBT community and their supporters so that seems to the bigger focus now to encourage them to not abandon their faith and testimonies.  So I think the case could also be made that LDS leaders have been inspired.

The Prophet was inspired by God to repeat popular lies to the people for their own good?

How often does God take this approach?

Was the Brother of Jared just naive?

“Yea, Lord, I know that thou speakest the truth, for thou art a God of truth, and canst not lie.”

Do you seriously want to take this approach?

Edited June 27, 2023 by The Nehor

[Calm]

8 hours ago, gopher said:

Or you could also recognize that President Kimball used extra harsh language about mostly gay men as a warning of the impending epidemic that killed millions of gay men.  Those who heeded the prophet's counsel had a good chance to survive.  Now that AIDS is no longer a death sentence, prophets have cooled their rhetoric towards gay men.  It's still a spiritual death sentence for many in the LGBT community and their supporters so that seems to the bigger focus now to encourage them to not abandon their faith and testimonies.  So I think the case could also be made that LDS leaders have been inspired.

Are you actually claiming this as what happened or using it as an example of poor quality speculation and reasoning similar to something else someone is doing?

Edited June 27, 2023 by Calm

[Kenngo1969]

2 hours ago, Teancum said:

Thank you kind sir.

Hey, at least somebody thinks I'm at least a little bit useful!  

[california boy]

6 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

This makes me physically sick to read.  I’m already sick, but it makes me feel more sick. 
 

it reminds me of the dramatic matron who instructed me on the garment: Can’t touch ground EVER.  Reminds me of bishop who refused recommends for open mouth kissing- that talk was so damning.  Reminds me of BYU grad school professor who insisted we were “sinning” if we were postponing any procreation for school (that’s a very different message for a 22 year-old woman than it is for a 25 year old man btw- try going to grad school while you’re nursing a baby and raising a toddler) - I have a lot of resentment for spiritual manipulation that was delivered by -unbeknownst to me at the time- folks who were JUST PROJECTING THEIR PERSONAL FEARS OF THEIR OWN CHALLENGES.   As a result, I have always believed I am going to hell, and I don’t quite know how to shake it. I do know in my maturity that I now have the right to have a conversation with God to determine whether or not somebody’s pulpit  pounding actually applies to me or not.

I am sure my experience is weak compared to yours but if my experience is any indication of your resentments, I don’t blame you at all.  What a retched piece of literature for gay people to have had to live through. It was hard enough for a teenager who’s boyfriend had hands (and hardly did much with them). I’m actually embarrassed now about the conversation I thought I had to have with my bishop over that and how long I fretted about it. I seriously would like to go back to 1979 and scoop me up and hold her tight.  

I honestly thing those horrible views by Spencer W Kimball instilled this distain for the LGBT community molded what Mormons think about gays.  It is probably why bestiality often comes up in this discussion board often when members talk about the LGBT community and this distain for those of us that are gay.  That book was widely read and very popular at the time.  I can see how it was easy to attack gay marriage.  It is an outgrowth of SWK views on the evils of being gay.

 

Quote

 

Clearly it is hostile to God's purpose in that it negates his first and great commandment to "multiply and replenish the earth." If the abominable practice became universal it would depopulate the earth in a single generation.”

 

We have certainly heard this ridiculous argument before on this board haven't we?  Have people stopped having children because of gay marriage??  How can we punish those gays that choose to marry?  Maybe not baptize their underaged children???  Oh and let's toss in calling them apostates.

Quote

How Serious Is the Sin of Homosexuality?  Of the adverse social effects of homosexuality none is more significant than the effect on marriage and home.

The book may be out of print, but its contents is still deeply embedded within the Church culture.  Spencer W Kimball's legacy.

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Teancum said:

Honestly, I think you live in an alternate reality.  Or maybe the Matrix.

From your POV, that's progress.

Try to live in a world of human awareness, a realization about how you interpret everything you hear as hear-say,  constructed by other humans, or as constructed by a human brain, especially yours, like the view that YOU are the one living in a matrix WE cannot break out of, and you may one day realize that EVERYTHING you know, think, or perceive is a construction of a human brain, one way or another.

YOU are creating your world minute by minute.

It can't be otherwise.

You cannot read this or walk on the floor without constantly being connected to a human brain.

You could not think, hear, or perceive, or believe anything without a human brain.

Objectivity is the agreement of two or more human brains, nothing more or less.

Two brains agreeing on a HUMAN EXPERIENCE is tha best "reality" we can know.

Is that color blueish, redish or purpleish?

Ask a few human brains, talk about it and suddenly you will create the "objective" answer, which says NOTHING about the world, but WILL teach you how "reality" is created.

[gopher]

5 hours ago, The Nehor said:

 

I didn’t say any of that. I pointed out the real-world differences from having terrible things said about you by outsider people you don’t interact with that often and having those terrible things said about you by your parents and relatives and religious leaders.

You are the one who made this stupid comparison so go ahead and defend it if you want. I don’t think you’ll have much fun.

And I never made the stupid comparison between those "who have terrible things said about you by outsider people you don’t interact with that often and having those terrible things said about you by your parents and relatives and religious leaders."  I think President Kimball and all other prophets would be appalled at anyone justifying abuse of others based on any remarks they have made in the past. I do think we can be suspicious of any claims that something as complicated as suicide can be blamed on remarks made by church leaders (some made many decades ago).  We got burned a few years ago by false claims made about teen LGBT suicides increasing due to the Nov 2015 policy.

[gopher]

5 hours ago, Teancum said:

I love life without having to overlay my thoughts on such superstitious false religious ideas.  But stay happy in your bubble.

I do live in a happy bubble, thanks. Sometimes it's tough living next to a place full of liars, cheaters and adulterers, but it gets better when Congress is out of session.

[gopher]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

Are you actually claiming this as what happened or using it as an example of poor quality speculation and reasoning similar to something else someone is doing?

Well, my comment was in response to him calling President Kimball a liar. Since President Kimball isn't around to defend his remarks, we are all free to make whatever wild interpretations we want.  But then he later deleted that accusation from his post so my post is no longer in response to his current edit.

Some forums don't allow you to edit your posts so you can't erase your past comments. I did edit one of my posts in this thread to pay Nehor a compliment (in invisible ink of course)
 

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, gopher said:

I think President Kimball and all other prophets would be appalled at anyone justifying abuse of others based on any remarks they have made in the past.

So what? Being upset at the logical consequences of the things you say actually happening is not a virtue or any kind of exoneration.

The most pervasive problem caused was the vicious abuse these words encouraged against people to inflict on themselves. If you are gay it is your fault. You chose it (which is confusing when you don’t remember such a thing). If you aren’t cured of it you must repent and pray harder. If it is not working you don’t have enough faith and you aren’t desperate enough (talk of pounding on God’s door until your fists bleed sure makes God sound like a huge jerk). Masturbation may have made you gay so if you did that, even innocently, definitely your fault. And if you continue on this path you may well be attracted to animals next.

Wait, they are killing themselves? Why? The gospel is all about hope! They must not have understood it! No, they got the message loud and clear.

Right behind that problem is probably the idea that it is a contagion that spreads. In other words isolate them from everyone. This teaching is why families routinely cut off their lgbt kids. And yeah, it got some of those kids abused. Pretending this is a general principle that applies to all LDS children because a baptist preacher down the road says Mormons are going to hell is just insane.

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

From your POV, that's progress.

Try to live in a world of human awareness, a realization about how you interpret everything you hear as hear-say,  constructed by other humans, or as constructed by a human brain, especially yours, like the view that YOU are the one living in a matrix WE cannot break out of, and you may one day realize that EVERYTHING you know, think, or perceive is a construction of a human brain, one way or another.

YOU are creating your world minute by minute.

It can't be otherwise.

You cannot read this or walk on the floor without constantly being connected to a human brain.

You could not think, hear, or perceive, or believe anything without a human brain.

Objectivity is the agreement of two or more human brains, nothing more or less.

Two brains agreeing on a HUMAN EXPERIENCE is tha best "reality" we can know.

Is that color blueish, redish or purpleish?

Ask a few human brains, talk about it and suddenly you will create the "objective" answer, which says NOTHING about the world, but WILL teach you how "reality" is created.

@Teancum

To deny this concept is to deny evolution.

Do you really want to insist that humans can know anything about a world they CANNOT perceive limited by a human brain and its intellectual constructions?

 

[mfbukowski]

8 hours ago, Teancum said:

 

I love life without having to overlay my thoughts on such superstitious false religious ideas.  But stay happy in your bubble.

Imo, you are the one pretending to see what you cannot experience: some "reality" you think of as the "real world" which lies beyond human experience - while religious experience is common among humans.

You deny actual human experience while affirming a world about which we can know nothing.

Very odd.

luv ya dude.

you are where I was 50 years ago.  😉

Edited June 28, 2023 by mfbukowski

[Calm]

8 hours ago, california boy said:

is probably why bestiality often comes up in this discussion board often when members talk about the LGBT community and this distain for those of us that are gay.

Does it not elsewhere among groups who believe homosexual behaviour is wrong or mentally unhealthy?

[Calm]

4 hours ago, The Nehor said:

talk of pounding on God’s door until your fists bleed sure makes God sound like a huge jerk

It is not particularly scriptural either as long as you have faith…

Quote

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 

 

[Calm]

6 hours ago, gopher said:

Well, my comment was in response to him calling President Kimball a liar. Since President Kimball isn't around to defend his remarks, we are all free to make whatever wild interpretations we want.  But then he later deleted that accusation from his post so my post is no longer in response to his current edit.

Some forums don't allow you to edit your posts so you can't erase your past comments. I did edit one of my posts in this thread to pay Nehor a compliment (in invisible ink of course)
 

Would you be okay if he had accused Pres Kimball of spreading falsehoods?  

It is unfortunate that unintentional falsehoods can do as much damage as would happen if someone spread them knowing they were false (making them a liar).

I believe it is a good idea not to try and defend the indefensible. That part of the book was inaccurate and fed into prejudices and fears.  According to his son, it sounds like Pres Kimball himself wouldn’t defend it.  I don’t believe he would have once he found out what he said wasn’t true.  He was a good man with a good heart.***

I have a brother in law who died of AIDS.  I never talked to him personally about that part of his life, he withdrew from any involvement with my family once he admitted it, but from what my sister says he married her because of what he was taught at church and home in line with that book.  She was going to save him from hell. The desperation and shame it created in him did not protect him and may have contributed (though I would never claim that was the sole cause or even a major cause of self destructive behaviour as humans are too complicated to make such claims based on anecdotes) even as he responded to those feelings of shame by acting out in dangerous ways since at times he saw himself as worthless, though I do not know when he was infected, pre or post coming out.

Quote

The book's tone, tougher than Spencer's in-person counseling, reflected his belief that people rationalize sin too quickly and consider repentance easy," writes the Mormon leader's son, Edward L. Kimball's in a popular 2005 biography of his father, "Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball."

Indeed, writes the son, "Miracle" was a book "more on sin and repentance than on forgiveness."

Kimball "later seemed to wish he had adopted a gentler tone," Edward Kimball writes.

In 1977, the Mormon leader said to Lyle Ward, his neighbor, "Sometimes I think I might have been a little too strong about some of the things I wrote in that book."

Some members wrote to say the book's "stiff medicine was rightly prescribed" and brought them "to their senses," Edward Kimball writes, but when others "became discouraged by a standard that seemed to them unattainable, he wished he had communicated more understanding and encouragement."

https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=2762815&itype=CMSID

Edited June 28, 2023 by Calm

[Tacenda]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

Would you be okay if he had accused Pres Kimball of spreading falsehoods?  

It is unfortunate that unintentional falsehoods can do as much damage as would happen if someone spread them knowing they were false (making them a liar).

I believe it is a good idea not to try and defend the indefensible. That part of the book was inaccurate and fed into prejudices and fears.  According to his son, it sounds like Pres Kimball himself wouldn’t defend it.  I don’t believe he would have once he found out what he said wasn’t true.  He was a good man with a good heart.***

I have a brother in law who died of AIDS.  I never talked to him personally about that part of his life, he withdrew from any involvement with my family once he admitted it, but from what my sister says he married her because of what he was taught at church and home in line with that book.  She was going to save him from hell. The desperation and shame it created in him did not protect him and may have contributed (though I would never claim that was the sole cause or even a major cause of self destructive behaviour as humans are too complicated to make such claims based on anecdotes) even as he responded to those feelings of shame by acting out in dangerous ways since at times he saw himself as worthless, though I do not know when he was infected, pre or post coming out.

https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=2762815&itype=CMSID

My husband has a picture with Pres Kimball and Camilla Kimball on his mission in Mississippi. My husband and his companion had baptized a well known Baptist minister and Pres Kimball was visiting their mission and wanted to meet them so they were invited to I think Camilla's birthday party. I read his biography and really liked him. I even read the Miracle of Forgiveness in my youth and still liked him. I must have skimmed over a lot of it though. I do think others that didn't skim but read it thoroughly took it to heart and I can imagine the harm it caused many. Later when I was going through my faith troubles, I had read things about it I must have skipped. And when I saw a brand new book on the counter that my son had been given by either the bishop or ? I chucked it in the garbage. Luckily my son had no clue and hadn't even cared to know what happened. 

[Teancum]

14 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

From your POV, that's progress.

Try to live in a world of human awareness, a realization about how you interpret everything you hear as hear-say,  constructed by other humans, or as constructed by a human brain, especially yours, like the view that YOU are the one living in a matrix WE cannot break out of, and you may one day realize that EVERYTHING you know, think, or perceive is a construction of a human brain, one way or another.

YOU are creating your world minute by minute.

It can't be otherwise.

You cannot read this or walk on the floor without constantly being connected to a human brain.

You could not think, hear, or perceive, or believe anything without a human brain.

Objectivity is the agreement of two or more human brains, nothing more or less.

Two brains agreeing on a HUMAN EXPERIENCE is tha best "reality" we can know.

Is that color blueish, redish or purpleish?

Ask a few human brains, talk about it and suddenly you will create the "objective" answer, which says NOTHING about the world, but WILL teach you how "reality" is created.

I really do struggle to get my head around this but I am inchin along on it.  Reading some articles and some You Tube Videos.  Some podcasts as well where Same Harris interviews some professors on this and discuses their books-people and topics like Andy Clark and predicting reality and Shamil Chandaria on constructing self and the world.   But this stuff does make my head hurt.

[Teancum]

10 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Imo, you are the one pretending to see what you cannot experience: some "reality" you think of as the "real world" which lies beyond human experience - while religious experience is common among humans.

Yes I understand that.  But the question is what do the religious experiences really mean.  Are they simply created by our brain and thus become part of an individuals reality?  r are they from an outside force or influence-what you would call the spirit, or the Holy Ghost.  I know we have been over and over this but what I struggle with on such experience is finding them reliable since they are so diverse and lead people to believe and assert their experience is "truth" but those "truths"conflict.

10 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

You deny actual human experience while affirming a world about which we can know nothing.

Well I do not deny the experience.  I just am skeptical these experience are from a higher power.  I think they are likely created our own brain and chemical reactions. Plus I think in devolution and social aspects religion had been a useful tool but I believe it is becoming less so as we know more about ourselves, our world and our universe.  And I think in many ways, religion can be harmful.

10 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Very odd.

luv ya dude.

you are where I was 50 years ago.  😉

Well thank you.

[Rain]

8 hours ago, Calm said:

Does it not elsewhere among groups who believe homosexual behaviour is wrong or mentally unhealthy?

It does happen elsewhere.  Years before I came to this board I heard it from non lds sources. It has been in a lot of places. I suspect many have come up with it on their own as well and hearing it from authoritative sources strengthened it.