This is a guest post written by Justin, a blogger at Secular-Reality.com.

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Dear LDS Church,

It is amazing how much you’ve changed since my early Mormon upbringing. So many of the teachings have evolved over time.

For example, when attending Church:

That last revelation was the straw that finally prompted this long overdue letter.

Although I have found other policies of the LDS Church to be hurtful, ignorant, and bigoted, this last policy change seems so malicious. So full of hatred. And I won’t be a member of a hate group, even in name only.

I received many odd and certainly unique lessons on sexual morality, and was frequently told in oblique ways that homosexuality was a sin, but I was never taught that this kind of sexual immorality would damn the salvation of my children.

The LDS Church claims to be a loving, knowledgeable, and charitable representative of a just and loving God, but the leaders’ actions speak louder than their empty words.

Potential converts to the faith are asked to commit to baptism in the first discussion, then rapidly pushed through a superficial version of the Church’s doctrine and history in a mad dash to get them under the water and onto the membership rolls.

Eight-year-old children are expected to make lifetime commitments they can’t possibly understand to a Church that continues to deny its own history and doctrines. Heavenly Father wants everyone — and quickly — before they start looking too deeply into the closet.

Except, apparently, children raised by same-sex parents.

Even if those children are raised in this fraud of a Church by those loving parents. Even if those children believe with all of their tiny, pure hearts that there is a Heavenly Father, and that Jesus knows and loves each of his beloved and innocent children. Even if all those kids want for their eighth birthday is to be washed clean of their supposed “sins.”

The LDS Church will now tell them, “No. You are lesser in the eyes of Jesus and Heavenly Father.”

“Though you have done nothing wrong, your parents are the worst kind of sinners. Jesus does not want you as a member of His Church, nor will He take you until you are old enough to curse the names of those who loved and raised you and shake the dust off your feet at their doorstep.”

As of the writing of this letter, I am an atheist and an ex-Mormon. Yet if Mormon members took my young child to be blessed into their twisted organization, he would be accepted and blessed without question.

This hate-filled policy is designed to cause injury to an already injured population: the same-sex-attracted people whom the Church still consider the loved children of Heavenly Father, who are doing their best to make it through this life while still maintaining some measure of belief in the deceitful message of eternity and love that Church leaders throw at them between vicious jabs at their supposedly wounded souls.

It cannot and does not serve any other purpose.

This manipulative “guilt by association” is revolting behavior from anyone, let alone an organization that spends so much time talking out the side of its mouth about the importance of love, acceptance, and eternal families.

I have not claimed membership in the Church’s collective deception for years but have never felt the need to make it official. I do now. I cannot and will not allow you to continue to count me among your hateful, heinous, and hurtful number any longer.

I hereby resign my membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

(Image via Shutterstock)



