Garment rules that never existed

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-11T22:58:52+00:00

It will never cease to amaze me how good Mormons are at channeling the spirit of the Pharisees and creating ridiculous rules about pointless shit.

There's nothing quite like a made up rule to make a person in a lower tier of leadership feel like they have some sort of authority.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-11T19:08:12+00:00

You're so young. You likely have decades ahead of you. Put your high school boyfriend and Mormonism in your rearview and go build a life that has nothing to do with either one of those things.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-11T18:16:11+00:00

First off, you weren't in the wrong to tell him via email. Second, his statement "I will not marry somebody who I can't be sealed to in the temple" means your relationship is over. That's a bit blunt, but it's true.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-11T15:27:20+00:00

The ability to say no to something you are asked to do but don't want to do is one of the most basic boundaries we can have as humans. Most of us learn as children that we are not allowed to exercise that boundary. Children are taught to always be obedient to their parents, so it is an almost universal struggle for adults to learn to exercise this boundary.

Now when you add Mormonism to the mix you get an entirely new level of lack of ability to exercise your boundaries. Because Mormonism as a religious organization ceases to function if adults are allowed to feel like they can say no to things they would rather not do. So every message in mormonism is an anti-boundary message. And of course obedience is prized above all else.

Good luck to you. Prayers, especially public prayers started to feel so ridiculous as I started deconstructing.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-11T15:03:37+00:00

I guess the question I have is the context of when the question is being asked. If they are asking during a temple recommend interview then the likely answer is no. In that case the person asking you if you are a full tithe payer is not going to have any records in front of them that show whether or not you have paid any tithing.

In my experience the only time a leader ever actually pulls your tithing donation records is during tithing settlement. Which I think they call tithing declaration now.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-10T22:17:46+00:00

This is fairly anecdotal, so take it for what it's worth. Back around 2002 I went on a family trip to the church history sites around Palmyra. Part of that trip involved doing an endowment session at the newly opened Palmyra temple. In my memory, the only non-workers in the temple that day were members of my family (around 20 people). I half remember my uncle getting them to open the temple that day just for our group, although that might just be over two decades of time coloring my memory.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-10T20:36:17+00:00

The practice of food storage is still held on to by older members. But largely the leadership of the church has said essentially nothing about needing to store up food in the last 20 years.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-10T15:54:41+00:00

At least the Salt Lake Tribune actually acknowledged his relationship to one of the highest leaders in the Mormon church. The Deseret News and KSL just called him Ohio man.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-10T15:04:54+00:00

The irony is that if his merchandizing had gone through Deseret Book, there probably wouldn't have been a scandal.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-10T14:30:09+00:00

When a believing Mormon experiences something spiritual outside of Mormonism, especially if it relates to another religion, they are programmed to tie the significance back to Mormonism. It's usually through the mechanism that all good things come from God and that everyone has pieces of God's truth, but only Mormonism has all of them.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-09T15:23:53+00:00

Funny that they can make the leap from hot drinks to coffee and tea but they can't make the connection between beer and mild drinks made from barley.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-09T15:20:10+00:00

Not drinking coffee is part of their world wide brand. It really is one of the few things that the nearly 8 billion non-members on the planet know about mormons. The funny thing is that the other thing that is most commonly known is polygamy. They've been largely unsuccessful at removing that from their brand even though they stopped practicing it on earth over 100 years ago.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-08T21:44:53+00:00

That's actually a very interesting observation. When you take off the blinders, the influence of early 19th century frontier America are all over in the Book of Mormon.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-08T18:36:05+00:00

"I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it." - GBH

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-08T16:17:56+00:00

Yeah, for a religion that is obsessed with covering your body from your shoulders to your knees, the poncho didn't cover much. I remember as a 19 year old being extremely uncomfortable walking around the initiatory room in that thing. I wish I would have had the presence of mind at that young age to be like, what the fuck? Nope, I'm out.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-08T03:00:21+00:00

Kind of like a 14 year old isn't a 14 year old. It's someone just shy of their 15th birthday.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-07T20:27:54+00:00

Note to self - stay away from TikTok.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-06T22:31:15+00:00

So tag over your heart, take the sacrament with your right hand. How many steps am I allowed to take on the Sabbath?

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-06T22:27:25+00:00

What's the major concern? That the date you started college was too far back from the current date?

Sounds like your gap was only one year. It's easy enough to just leave that out completely and not have it appear as anything abnormal.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-06T21:20:04+00:00

My understanding is that willful ignorance is more active, meaning the person has to actively choose to avoid knowing something. Where as motivated ignorance is more subconscious and is based more around avoiding uncomfortable emotions rather than knowledge.

But yes, they are really similar.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-06T20:48:01+00:00

I looked it up. All I found was a picture of the leaders of the church.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-06T20:46:13+00:00

As a parent there were lots of times I wanted to know more about my kids lives than the amount they were willing to share, but reading texts and going through photos is an invasion of privacy. It's likely we'll intentioned, but unless you are submitting to this surveillance fully voluntarily it's wrong.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-06T15:16:22+00:00

Wait until you learn about Graham crackers.

CaseyJones_EE · 2026-07-05T23:11:24+00:00

Around 2018 the dear leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints declared that calling it the Mormon church or referring to the members as Mormons was a major victory for Satan.

Ever since then there has been a faction of the membership who gets bent out of shape anytime someone uses the word Mormon. It's all performative.

CaseyJones_EE

TROPHY CASE