Jana Riess: Who is leaving the LDS Church? Eight key survey findings.

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

And undoubtedly the many suicides that occurred from listening to those that called it vile or next to murder, etc. 

I know there have been some. I don’t know if it would qualify as “many”. We had a suicide in our ward by a teenager a while back with no clear explanation. I do wonder.

[Tacenda]

5 hours ago, bluebell said:

If I remember right, that interview was from 2008, so we are getting pretty close to 20 years ago, which is a good thing.

And yes, Pres. Oaks' beliefs about homosexuality being acceptable to God do not seem to have changed.  But hopefully his ideas about showing love and acceptance to gay family members has.  To me, how we treat each other, especially those we don't agree with, is paramount.

 

Which is sad since he has a gay grandson and Elder Gong's son is gay as well.

[Tacenda]

5 hours ago, bluebell said:

If I remember right, that interview was from 2008, so we are getting pretty close to 20 years ago, which is a good thing.

And yes, Pres. Oaks' beliefs about homosexuality being acceptable to God do not seem to have changed.  But hopefully his ideas about showing love and acceptance to gay family members has.  To me, how we treat each other, especially those we don't agree with, is paramount.

 

Which is sad since he has a gay grandson and Elder Gong's son is gay as well.

 

Edited March 13, 2024 by Tacenda

[OGHoosier]

Visiting Reddit pages is always an interesting anthropological exercise. I don't think I understood McLuhan's commentary about the medium being the message until I spent time on Reddit - leaving Reddit was the best thing that ever happened to me.

[california boy]

40 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

Visiting Reddit pages is always an interesting anthropological exercise. I don't think I understood McLuhan's commentary about the medium being the message until I spent time on Reddit - leaving Reddit was the best thing that ever happened to me.

If you would have just clicked on the link, you would have found that it is a link to an actual talk by the grandson of Elder Oaks, not some random commentary.  And the second link is link to a  Tribune article quoting Elder Gong's son.  

But hey, I guess you need some excuse to ignore what you don't want to hear about.  Probably better to just ignore it rather coming up with some lame and disingenuous excuse.

[OGHoosier]

8 hours ago, california boy said:

If you would have just clicked on the link, you would have found that it is a link to an actual talk by the grandson of Elder Oaks, not some random commentary.  And the second link is link to a  Tribune article quoting Elder Gong's son.  

But hey, I guess you need some excuse to ignore what you don't want to hear about.  Probably better to just ignore it rather coming up with some lame and disingenuous excuse.

Did I say that I didn't, @california boy? I clicked both links and saw both. You know what else I saw? I saw the comments, and I was once again reminded why Reddit makes the investigation of the universe worse. 

Marshall McLuhan, in coining the phrase "the medium is the message", wanted to draw attention to the way that a message is more than its content. The way the medium changes the way we interact is also part of the message. In McLuhan's thinking, a lightbulb is an example of a content-less message - it changes the possibilities of how we interact without any content at all. The radio set might give us news of a murder, but by the act of turning it on and listening over dinner, we change the way we consume and relate to the information space around us. The medium frames and extends the impact of the content - in some cases it can be more important than the content itself. You can see this with the rise of infinite scrolling - the content of the messages is not anything particularly new, but the medium shortens attention spans and enables information saturation, which greatly impacts the way we evaluate and process information. 

Reddit, as with most social media, is a miserable medium., but Reddit worse than most because it was intended as an argumentative space and has drawn people who enjoy verbal combat. It is structured to be rhetorically gladiatorial and enables and rewards dogpiles and the usage of coercive rhetorical techniques. It is functionally mob argumentation, and one is reminded every time one dips one's toes in. 

Edited March 13, 2024 by OGHoosier

[Analytics]

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

Okay.

I don't think I disputed the reasons people state for leaving the Church.  My point was that many of the LGBT people who are saying "the church doesn't work for them are being constantly inundated with messaging that the Church and its members hate them...

You came across as saying that self-identified LGBT people leave the Church because they are constantly inundated with messaging that the Church and the members hate them. That claim is both at odds with what they say, and doesn’t make sense. Members of the Church, regardless of whether they self-identified as LGBT or not, are inundated with messages like how Jesus wants them for a sunbeam, Jesus died for their sins, Joseph Smith is a true Prophet, the first four principles of the gospel are faith, etc. etc. This narrative that at some point they are “inundated" with the message that their parents, siblings, spouses, children, bishops, Elder Quorum presidents, home teaching companions, friends at Church (and themselves? After all, they are members of the Church, too) all hate them doesn’t make sense. First of all, with the possible exception of California when the Church decided to get involved in politics, nobody anywhere is “inundated” with this message. And even then, if somebody felt genuinely loved by their own family and their own community, why would they pay attention to antagonist allegations that their own family and own community somehow secretly hated them?

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

It is hugely relevant to this discussion.  "Sexual identity" is the central premise of your argument. 

No it isn’t. A survey asked people if they self-identified as LGBTQ, and asked if they were current or former believers. It turns out there is a correlation. My argument is that to understand that correlation, we should ask the people who self-identify as LGBTQ. That’s my entire point. Why they self-identify as LGBTQ and whether anybody should identify as LGBTQ, and what is the historical context of this identification are beyond the scope of the question. The central premise of my argument is that when people self-identify as anything, if we want to know why we should ask them. 

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

You differentiate Latter-day Saints using a concept that, historically speaking, is about five minutes old...

That is false. I haven’t differentiated anybody. They differentiated themselves in their responses to the survey.

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

As Hamba put it: "The notion that people have innate, fixed, gendered 'sexual orientations' and therefore can be classified (and bound) by such constructions is less than 150 years old and is completely unique in human history, a fact even gay historians acknowledge."

This, in your words, is "totally irrelevant" to discussions about people who adopt these constructions.

You are reading a ton of stuff into what I said that is way beyond the scope of my actual words and actual point.

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

If Hamba is right in stating that the Church's position is "far more in harmony with the paradigm that has existed for nearly all of human history and which remains the dominant paradigm around the world in areas least subject to Western colonisation of the imagination ... {and} with the work of all serious historical scholarship on this topic" (and I think he is right), then "when our Church leaders encourage us not to identify people as homosexual, they show themselves to be astutely historically aware."

Going beyond my original point to this broader conversation you want to have, this comment is ironic because from a historical perspective, Mormonism and many of its core doctrines are new and novel, and historically speaking are less than 5 minutes old. The specific one I have in mind is the claim that in order to make it to the top level of heaven you have to marry somebody of the opposite sex. There have always been single people. As far as I can tell, Mormonism is the first religion that says being single prevents you from going to heaven. This new, novel teaching is certainly wonderful to some people, but it isn’t to others. If somebody doesn’t want to be married to somebody of the opposite sex after they are dead, your religion just isn’t going to be very appealing. That’s what I think.

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

I dispute your presupposition about sexual identities. 

My presumption about sexual identities is that some people do in fact identify themselves that way. Why in the world do you dispute that?

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

That you summarily and conclusorily dismiss my dispute as being "totally irrelevant" to a discussion about sexual identities tends to validate, in my view, Hamba's statement that your presupposition "spread slowly at first but started to become ascendant in the West in the second half of the 20th century, when it was adopted for its political utility." 

I think you are unable and/or unwilling to examine the merits of your presupposition because it is too firmly engrained in your worldview, such that you've never been bothered to examine it, and perhaps you've never been challenged on it before.

You have quite the active imagination about what I think and why. 

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

Yes, you are.  You are foisting "sexual identity" onto a community that, per Hamba, has "{never} embraced this new discourse of sexual identities." 

Stop telling me I’m foisting something onto your community. I’m not. I’m merely acknowledging the fact that some people in your community self-identified that way on a survey.

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

Oh, brother.  You are constantly speaking for the Latter-day Saints.  You are constantly telling us what we believe.

You are projecting. You are the one who is here telling me what I believe and why.

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

I do listen, and I've never said "they are lying about why they left."

I don’t think you listen.

On 3/11/2024 at 1:36 PM, smac97 said:

Which brings us back to my original point.  A big part of why the Restored Gospel doesn't work for others is because they are inundated with messaging from opponents of the Church who, presuming to speak for the Church, tells them that the Church and its members "hate" them.  This is in contrast to other groups who likewise must constrain their behaviors to the parameters of the Law of Chastity, but who aren't being targeted for such malignant messaging.

(I wrote the above in an airport lounge yesterday, and wrote the rest in a hotel today.)

Last night I found myself in a one-hour Uber trip in Los Angeles, and I was having a pleasant chat with the driver. Unexpectedly, my sister face-timed me. My nephew received his mission call earlier that day, and there was a big event that was being shared in a group video of the mission call reveal. After the open-the-mission-call ceremony concluded I apologized to the driver for the interruption and explained what just happened. He said “oh yea, I know all about that.” I quickly found out he was a fellow exmo. I asked him why he left, and he said because he was gay. That made me think about this thread, and I asked him if I could ask some questions to understand what he meant by that and why it caused him to leave the Church. He gave me permission to share his story on this thread.

He said he knew he was “different” since he was 5. He was raised a baptist. In the mid 80’s he was about 30, and a close family member died. Immediately after the funeral the pastor callously asked whether everybody thought the deceased was in heaven or hell. That really pissed this guy off and didn’t seem right. When he met the missionaries shortly thereafter, the message resonated and he got baptized.

I asked him if he was ever inundated with the message that “Mormons hate gays.” He immediately said “Oh yea!” He then rolled that back and said “hate” was a strong word, but he said that this inundation only happened during Prop 8. I asked him if that had anything to do with why he left. He said no, he left the Church before that began. I asked why. He said, “because there isn’t a place for single adults in the Church.” He talked about how he always felt like a second-class person at church because he wasn’t married and never would be. He said he was called to be the musical director of some big annual extravaganza, and he really liked that. He had a degree in music and drew on excellent music from the broader Christian world for his productions. He said everybody loved his shows. But after about 6 years he was released from that calling. He suspects it was because somebody at the stake level didn’t approve of non-Mormon music being played, and he also thought him being single had something to do with it. He said he felt people talked and gossiped about what was wrong with him for not being married, and he imagined them debating about whether having a single man in charge of this musical production was setting a bad example for the kids.

Organizing that annual musical production was his favorite thing about Church, and when they took it away he thought it wasn’t worth it, so he left. He said he likes and admires many members and is happy for anybody who is at home there, regardless of their life circumstances, but said it didn’t work for him. I asked him if he thinks in general “Mormons hate gays.” He said no of course not. He said he is now a non-denominational Christian and isn’t affiliated with a Church (note: that is what he told me, and I’m passing it along. I’m not making any assumptions about the historical and religious validity of “non-denominational Christianity.” I’m just relaying how he self-identified.)

Note that this guy was living his life and was never “inundated” with messaging from outsiders. His feelings about the Church was driven by his experience in the Church. And I think that is typical. 

Edited March 13, 2024 by Analytics

[ZealouslyStriving]

The things I've seen here, and in other topics and places, have shown me that this is happening again in our day:

"1 Now it came to pass that there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of king Benjamin, being little children at the time he spake unto his people; and they did not believe the tradition of their fathers. 2 They did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of the dead, neither did they believe concerning the coming of Christ. 3 And now because of their unbelief they could not understand the word of God; and their hearts were hardened. 4 And they would not be baptized; neither would they join the church. And they were a separate people as to their faith, and remained so ever after, even in their carnal and sinful state; for they would not call upon the Lord their God. 5 And now in the reign of Mosiah they were not half so numerous as the people of God; but because of the dissensions among the brethren they became more numerous. 6 For it came to pass that they did deceive many with their flattering words, who were in the church, and did cause them to commit many sins; ..." (Mosiah 26)

[MustardSeed]

44 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

The things I've seen here, and in other topics and places, have shown me that this is happening again in our day:

"1 Now it came to pass that there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of king Benjamin, being little children at the time he spake unto his people; and they did not believe the tradition of their fathers. 2 They did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of the dead, neither did they believe concerning the coming of Christ. 3 And now because of their unbelief they could not understand the word of God; and their hearts were hardened. 4 And they would not be baptized; neither would they join the church. And they were a separate people as to their faith, and remained so ever after, even in their carnal and sinful state; for they would not call upon the Lord their God. 5 And now in the reign of Mosiah they were not half so numerous as the people of God; but because of the dissensions among the brethren they became more numerous. 6 For it came to pass that they did deceive many with their flattering words, who were in the church, and did cause them to commit many sins; ..." (Mosiah 26)

That is an important scripture. It’s hard isn’t it to know what principles get applied where. I’m sure racists were returning to this scripture 40 years ago as well.

[ZealouslyStriving]

11 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

That is an important scripture. It’s hard isn’t it to know what principles get applied where. I’m sure racists were returning to this scripture 40 years ago as well.

Case in point ^

[MustardSeed]

1 minute ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Case in point ^

Make your point, because it sounds like you are justifying racists who were displeased with changes. Please correct me. 

[ZealouslyStriving]

11 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

Make your point, because it sounds like you are justifying racists who were displeased with changes. Please correct me. 

Racism was never church doctrine or the teachings of the scriptures. 

Proper relationships between the sexes has always been taught in the scriptures and by the Church. Differences between genders has always been taught in the scriptures and the Church. It is only recently that members, trying not to offend their kids, have begun to "reevaluate" whether eternal truths are really truths at all- and have started to buy into the idea of relative truth changeable by the whims of society. I think we did a poor job teaching at home and the bitter fruits of that neglect are being harvested. But instead of repenting too many are partaking of the bitter fruits hoping that it will taste sweet.

Wickedness never was happiness.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

13 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Differences between genders has always been taught in the scriptures and the Church.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

Edited March 13, 2024 by SeekingUnderstanding

[Teancum]

14 hours ago, rodheadlee said:

That may be true but I still recognized her from before. Nothing anyone can say will change that.

If you feel your dear wife and you had some other world connection go for it. I think it a lovely sentiment. I feel like my wife and I were destined to be together as well. It is romantic and sweet.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

15 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

19 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Proper relationships between the sexes has always been taught in the scriptures

 

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. ¹⁸ But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves.

[ZealouslyStriving]

4 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

You know the proper interpretation of the first verse you quoted- it meaning no one is preferred over the other.

The second quote has been clarified through modern revelation - and even Christians (see: Lee Strobel and recentish articles in New Oxford Review) are beginning to reevaluate the traditional Christian interpretation of that verse and are beginning to believe that marriage endures into Heaven.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 minute ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

the proper interpretation

 

1 minute ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

has been clarified through modern revelation

Exactly. You have decided in advance how you want to read the scriptures and you interpret them to mean what you want them to mean. Not the other way around. 

[ZealouslyStriving]

Just now, SeekingUnderstanding said:

 

Exactly. You have decided in advance how you want to read the scriptures and you interpret them to mean what you want them to mean. Not the other way around. 

As have you- so discussion is pointless.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

9 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

As have you- so discussion is pointless.

I’m not the one saying scriptures are clear and univocal on the matter. You are. I’m not the one asking others to live their life based on a sexist / racist / homophobic reading of scripture. You are. Though to your credit it sounds like you have renegotiated the text along with the modern church to exclude the racist views of the past, so I applaud you for that. One down. Two to go. 

Edited March 13, 2024 by SeekingUnderstanding

[teddyaware]

1 hour ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

The things I've seen here, and in other topics and places, have shown me that this is happening again in our day:

"1 Now it came to pass that there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of king Benjamin, being little children at the time he spake unto his people; and they did not believe the tradition of their fathers. 2 They did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of the dead, neither did they believe concerning the coming of Christ. 3 And now because of their unbelief they could not understand the word of God; and their hearts were hardened. 4 And they would not be baptized; neither would they join the church. And they were a separate people as to their faith, and remained so ever after, even in their carnal and sinful state; for they would not call upon the Lord their God. 5 And now in the reign of Mosiah they were not half so numerous as the people of God; but because of the dissensions among the brethren they became more numerous. 6 For it came to pass that they did deceive many with their flattering words, who were in the church, and did cause them to commit many sins; ..." (Mosiah 26)

No surprise here. The scriptures clearly warn us that in the last days there will be a 50/50 split between the wise and unwise virgins who constitute the active membership of the church. The same warning is reiterated with the solemn warning that the righteous wheat and the unrighteousness tares of the church are going to be allowed to mature side by side ]until both groups are fully ripe in either righteousness or iniquity. But it must be understood that if this split between the humble followers of Christ and the self-willed rebellious were not allowed exist, there isn’t any way that the last days  prophecy of divine retribution against unrighteous members of the church found in Doctrine and Covenants 112 could be fulfilled.

But the Lord is wisely allowing the wheat and the tares of the church to mature side by side, and this as a test to determine who among the active members of the church will succumb to the deceiving mists of darkness conjured by the devil, and who will tenaciously hold fast to the iron rod and remain true and faithful to the Lord and restoration until the end of their mortal probations. But no matter who we are and no matter what our present status and history in the church might be, it’s imperative to realize that those who seek to be sanctified must remain genuinely humble, prayerful and diligent because the warning has gone forth that before the end comes the powers of deception, and all the alluring and beguilingly crafted roads to apostasy will become so great that even the strongest members might very well be deceived unless they keep their hearts single to the Lord and his righteousness.

24 Behold vengeance cometh speedily upon the inhabitants of the earth, a day of wrath, a day of burning, a day of desolation , of weeping, of mourning, and of lamentation; and as a whirlwind it shall come upon all the face of the earth, saith the Lord.

25 And upon my house shall it begin, and from my house shall it go forth, saith the Lord;

26 First among those among you, saith the Lord, who have professed to know my name and have not known me, and have blasphemed against me in the midst of my house, saith the Lord. (Doctrine and Covenants 112)

Edited March 13, 2024 by teddyaware

[Smiley McGee]

2 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

The things I've seen here, and in other topics and places, have shown me that this is happening again in our day:

"1 Now it came to pass that there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of king Benjamin, being little children at the time he spake unto his people; and they did not believe the tradition of their fathers. 2 They did not believe what had been said concerning the resurrection of the dead, neither did they believe concerning the coming of Christ. 3 And now because of their unbelief they could not understand the word of God; and their hearts were hardened. 4 And they would not be baptized; neither would they join the church. And they were a separate people as to their faith, and remained so ever after, even in their carnal and sinful state; for they would not call upon the Lord their God. 5 And now in the reign of Mosiah they were not half so numerous as the people of God; but because of the dissensions among the brethren they became more numerous. 6 For it came to pass that they did deceive many with their flattering words, who were in the church, and did cause them to commit many sins; ..." (Mosiah 26)

Yikes. Didn’t you say you’re just back from a 20-year hiatus from the church? You wasted no time accusing the church of deviated from the “true” Benson/McConkie era Mormonism in your other thread. You then accuse those who struggle reconciling their lived experience with the teachings of the church of being “carnal and sinful”? Good for you bro; such an inspiration and light to this wicked world. 

[Smiley McGee]

20 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

No surprise here. The scriptures clearly warn us that in the last days there will be a 50/50 split between the wise and unwise virgins who constitute the active membership of the church. The same warning is reiterated with the solemn warning that the righteous wheat and the unrighteousness tares of the church are going to be allowed to mature side by side ]until both groups are fully ripe in either righteousness or iniquity. But it must be understood that if this split between the humble followers of Christ and the self-willed rebellious were not allowed exist, there isn’t any way that the last days  prophecy of divine retribution against unrighteous members of the church found in Doctrine and Covenants 112 could be fulfilled.

But the Lord is wisely allowing the wheat and the tares of the church to mature side by side, and this as a test to determine who among the active members of the church will succumb to the deceiving mists of darkness conjured by the devil, and who will tenaciously hold fast to the iron rod and remain true and faithful to the Lord and restoration until the end of their mortal probations. But no matter who we are and no matter what our present status and history in the church might be, it’s imperative to realize that those who seek to be sanctified must remain genuinely humble, prayerful and diligent because the warning has gone forth that before the end comes the powers of deception, and all the alluring and beguilingly crafted roads to apostasy will become so great that even the strongest members might very well be deceived unless they keep their hearts single to the Lord and his righteousness.

24 Behold vengeance cometh speedily upon the inhabitants of the earth, a day of wrath, a day of burning, a day of desolation , of weeping, of mourning, and of lamentation; and as a whirlwind it shall come upon all the face of the earth, saith the Lord.

25 And upon my house shall it begin, and from my house shall it go forth, saith the Lord;

26 First among those among you, saith the Lord, who have professed to know my name and have not known me, and have blasphemed against me in the midst of my house, saith the Lord. (Doctrine and Covenants 112)

I’m not so sure that you and @ZealouslyStriving aren’t the same person…

[ZealouslyStriving]

2 minutes ago, Smiley McGee said:

Yikes. Didn’t you say you’re just back from a 20-year hiatus from the church? You wasted no time accusing the church of deviated from the “true” Benson/McConkie era Mormonism in your other thread. You then accuse those who struggle reconciling their lived experience with the teachings of the church of being “carnal and sinful”? Good for you bro; such an inspiration and light to this wicked world. 

The Church, not the Restoration or the scriptures.

One thing I've learned - trying to go by my own thoughts, desires is bitter. That's where all the second guessing of the Prophets and Apostles will land anyone.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

32 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

Behold vengeance cometh speedily upon the inhabitants of the earth, a day of wrath, a day of burning, a day of desolation , of weeping, of mourning, and of lamentation; and as a whirlwind it shall come upon all the face of the earth, saith the Lord.

25 And upon my house shall it begin, and from my house shall it go forth, saith the Lord;

26 First among those among you, saith the Lord, who have professed to know my name and have not known me, and have blasphemed against me in the midst of my house, saith the Lord. (Doctrine and Covenants 112)

Your dad sounds like a great guy. Good luck with him. 

[Tacenda]

6 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

Did I say that I didn't, @california boy? I clicked both links and saw both. You know what else I saw? I saw the comments, and I was once again reminded why Reddit makes the investigation of the universe worse. 

Marshall McLuhan, in coining the phrase "the medium is the message", wanted to draw attention to the way that a message is more than its content. The way the medium changes the way we interact is also part of the message. In McLuhan's thinking, a lightbulb is an example of a content-less message - it changes the possibilities of how we interact without any content at all. The radio set might give us news of a murder, but by the act of turning it on and listening over dinner, we change the way we consume and relate to the information space around us. The medium frames and extends the impact of the content - in some cases it can be more important than the content itself. You can see this with the rise of infinite scrolling - the content of the messages is not anything particularly new, but the medium shortens attention spans and enables information saturation, which greatly impacts the way we evaluate and process information. 

Reddit, as with most social media, is a miserable medium., but Reddit worse than most because it was intended as an argumentative space and has drawn people who enjoy verbal combat. It is structured to be rhetorically gladiatorial and enables and rewards dogpiles and the usage of coercive rhetorical techniques. It is functionally mob argumentation, and one is reminded every time one dips one's toes in. 

Wait, you do know this isn't exmormon reddit? Pretty sure you probably caught that. I like reddit in cases where people discuss things such as a medical condition or surgery they've had, to understand from the horse's mouth what to expect. 

ETA:

But just now I went to my reddit links, and understand how you would say that. I read more comments or topics and it doesn't seem LDS friendly. 

So I can see how you'd feel reading these comments. But I understand you mean in general, social media. I'm actually happy for you not to be stuck in that environment reading. How different is this medium, MDDB?

Edited March 13, 2024 by Tacenda