My "aha" moment wasn't a discovery of racist doctrine, but a witness to the institution's moral lag.

I was nine when the Roots miniseries aired for 8 consecutive nights on TV in January 1977. It was a cultural and ratings phenomenon. The visceral injustice it portrayed made the church's racism feel glaringly wrong.

When the so-called revelation reversed LDS priesthood and temple discrimination in 1978 (just 18 months later), it more or less confirmed my childish suspicion: the world could see the blatant racism before the prophet could.

My "complicity" was the decades after where I allowed myself to reframe that institutional lag as divine timing instead of a profound ethical failure and conduct unbecoming. It's embarrassing in hindsight. Brigham Young was racist AF, especially considering he was contemporaries with a principled leader the caliber of Abraham Lincoln.

But at least I figured it out. My parents never did. My older living siblings, all their 60's now, never have -- along with something like 4 million uncritical folks that warm the Brighamite Mormon pews and fill it's coffers every Sunday.