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Winning by the Rules (7 unread)

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  Irreverence - Deconstrucing a Mormon Testimony

  Posted: January 1st, 2009, 5:32am EST by Mason

  Tags:    [edit]

  Irreverence - Deconstrucing a Mormon Testimony
• 

  Human Rights Revisited: My Letter to the Mormon Church Concerning California's Proposition 8

  Posted: October 14th, 2008, 4:17pm EDT by Mason

  Tags:    [edit]

  I haven't added anything new for a while, but I feel this deserves attention--more attention than I alone can give it.
  
  The LDS Church Presidency has yet again decided to step in with its bigoted political agenda. They have swayed their members to contribute a large sum of time and resources to the "Yes on proposition 8" campaign that seeks to take away the GLBT community's marriage rights.
  
  The following is my response. This response will be hand delivered this Friday, with over 200 letters submitted to the Signing for Something petition, to church headquarters in Salt Lake City. If you would like your name to appear on the delivered petition, the cut off time is October 15, 10:00 am Mountain Time. However, if you have missed the cut off, it certainly won't hurt to sign the petition late.
  
  (Yes I am aware that this letter copies parts of an earlier entry. It's just that I kind of realized that my previous thoughts were a good starting point.)
  
  
  To the Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,
  
  I wish to express my concerns over the church presidency’s recent actions against the human rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. I’m afraid that I must apologize to those offended by the dehumanizing tone that I am about to take towards the church, but given that church’s leadership has taken to dehumanizing actual human beings, I do not feel moved to offer anything but an opposing perspective. I must also apologize for not giving credence to the so-called virtue of faith, but please understand that my indignation has been provoked by the use of faith in excusing, among other atrocities throughout history, fanatic prejudice.
  
  You see, I’d like to believe that I would have been on the liberal side of the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s. However, if I was raised as a member of the LDS congregation then, I would have been as obtuse as much of the church’s current membership. That the church today chooses to impose its notion that the entire GLBT community is undeserving of equal rights is an insult to human dignity.
  
  (As a side note, I do, in every truly moral sense, regret referring to our friends and family that are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender as a separate community. This is because they are not separate. They are human. They are us. When we sting them with reckless and unfounded intolerance, we are in fact stinging ourselves. Church officials are inflicting pain on us—all of us. No amount of finger pointing or faith will make this appropriate.)
  
  When I was a believing member of the LDS church, I was no better—unquestioningly accepting the church’s position on gender identity and sexuality. “The prophet had spoken, the thinking had been done.” It infuriates me now, to know that I was used as a passive tool of discrimination and hate. Given the chance, the church could have easily swayed me into extending its harmful perspective. It was ultimately this culture of blind narcissism and bigotry that drove me to truly challenge the church’s credibility and think for myself. I quickly learned that skepticism and irreverence are crucial tools for discerning truth and making moral decisions. Now that my mind is free to think critically, I know that I will never risk becoming the equivalent of a civil rights era racist again. Can church leaders say the same for themselves?
  
  Even still, while I was an active member of the church, I was under the impression that the church’s modern political stance was to dictate prejudice towards the worthiness and privileges of only its own GLBT members (which is by itself contemptible). Why then does the church seek to take away rights from the entire GLBT community? Regardless of how voters are influenced over the issue of gay marriage, the church will still be permitted to deny a temple marriage to anyone it wishes. I do not see how this issue over civil marriage concerns the church and what business the church has in squandering its members’ time and resources to push its political agenda.
  
  Perhaps the first presidency is terrified that if gay marriage becomes legal, more and more of the church's membership will begin to see and accept gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals for who they are. Perhaps they are afraid that members will come to realize that anything called a “Plan of Happiness” has no room for prejudice.
  
  Signing for Something,
  Mason Blaylock
  
  
• 

  And One More Thing

  Posted: June 9th, 2008, 1:05am EDT by Mason

  Tags:    [edit]

  
  For those that may be curious, this is me.
• 

  Done

  Posted: June 8th, 2008, 9:59am EDT by Mason

  Tags:    [edit]

  There is definitely a lot more to my recovery than I have written here. There has been plenty of discovery and embarrassment. Some of my earlier writing confesses a hint of schizotypal thinking. It took a terrible bout of nihilism to get everything out of my system and come to terms with myself and everything. I have not begun to write my thoughts and experiences from this, but this is not the proper forum for them. I am long finished using an exmormon platform to express my ideas.
  
  I'm closing off many posts that are a bit "out there", too personal, or that are potentially incriminating. I may edit and reopen some, but probably few.
  
  And in case you're wondering where I stand now. I celebrate, praise, and revel in the progress of science, free thought, and of mankind's graduation from religion. In short, I am Atheist.
  
  Signing off,
  Mason
  
  Keepin' it real
  
  
  
  And I almost forgot. Thanks to everyone in the exmormon community, especially you bloggers.
  
• 

  Explaining My Disaffection to a Never Mormon

  Posted: May 23rd, 2008, 10:20am EDT by Mason is Free

  Tags:    [edit]

  In October last year, I briefly explained my disaffection to an old friend. This is what I wrote.
  
  I didn't exactly "decide" to leave the so-called church. Disaffection was more or less inevitable. I had become highly disillusioned after several years of observing its cultural expression of narcissism (you know, the bigotry and all that).
  
  A few months before I left, I was pushing all kinds of epistemological questions (the ones they apparently don't teach you about in a small town). It felt surprisingly good, so I kept pushing. I eliminated most of the cult mind control. I stopped going to church. Then I stopped praying. I finally reached a point where I felt the need to go "all in".
  
  The last obstacle remaining was information control. To challenge this, I spent an evening reading all kinds of exmormon material. I came across the Mormon temple endowment ritual. Everything about it was... well, vain, pointless, and a little disturbing. It turns out that most of it was stolen from the Free Masons.
  
  I added that piece of information to the other things I was actively questioning about mormonism (including epistemology, polygamy, racism, bigotry, and misogyny). It was more than enough to break the dam. I say dam because it hit me like a deluge. I hadn't felt more liberated, euphoric, or fearless in my life. I had the biggest, stupidest smile on my face for weeks. I even got dizzy with joy at times, like I was going to faint.
• 

  Hinckley Hints at Church’s Fraudulence

  Posted: August 15th, 2007, 12:36pm EDT by Mason is Free

  Tags:    [edit]

  I laid in a guest bed. A picture of a temple was hanging on the wall above me. That hideous Mormon Omen created a soreness on my composure as I tried to relax and read something escapist, but all I could do was strain in the nausea of revived memories: taking bread and water from plastic trays and cups, sanctioning years of invalidation, smothering my need to care for people. I wanted so badly to scream and tear down that picture and every piece of propaganda I could find. To be honest, I scream a lot lately.
  
  In my dream that night, I was sitting in the front row of chairs in a carpeted cultural hall. Sitting directly in front of me, facing the audience was Gordon Hinckley himself. The assembly bowed their heads as a member began to pray. With a feeling of disgust, I gazed intently at Hinckley as he opened one eye to observe the congregational herd. His facial features were more devilish from the different angle. At that moment I found myself winking at the man.
  
  Gordon winked back at me and spoke quietly with a malevolent grin, “So, you have come to understand ‘the process’?” I was awestruck that he made little effort in hiding his fraudulent cult leadership status. Just as I looked forward to sharing the experience with others, I woke up. Strangely, I was somewhat satisfied, even though the encounter was fabricated.
• 

  Cognitive Dissonance

  Posted: July 22nd, 2007, 5:21pm EDT by Mason is Free

  Tags:    [edit]

  I will finally lull away in a moment of peace and contentment when an aporetic neuron misfires in my overactive brain. All of my emotional attachments jumble and intermix yet again. My mind's lucidity is challenged as I frantically skim the history of my moods and experiences, searching for new concepts out of a storm where no one answer seems more correct than the others. Uncertainty, the rudest of awakeners, faces me, and I cannot direct myself to flee from its demoralizing presence. Attractive and devastating, we are now eternally intertwined. Damn this live reprogramming!
• 

  Apostrophe

  Posted: January 12th, 2007, 3:38pm EST by Mason is Free

  Tags:    [edit]

  For years you drenched me in it—your embryonic deceit. You fed me the devices of fear and groomed me for torture. You corroded what was meant to be MY life. You showed me the ease of defeat. I was your vainglorious martyr.
  
  Now, I live as a doppelganger. No matter how much I push, how much I scream, how much I fight, no matter how far I run, you are always there, stealing my reflection. You are in the variables of circumstance I cannot control. I am not so mismatched, but you make singularity my curse, whispering away all that matters, brutalizing me from the core. You are the nightmare in my dreamscape.
• 

  Resignation

  Posted: January 8th, 2007, 12:00pm EST by Mason is Free

  Tags:    [edit]

  No less than an hour ago, I made it final. I can feel my priesthood powers diminishing already as my resignation letter waits exultantly in the outgoing mailbox outside of my apartment. Using the excellent sample letter provided by MormonNoMore.com, I drafted my own letter. Though no one of significance in Salt Lake is likely to read it, I gave the church a message of its worth to me:
  
  “This insensible, fairytale organization of vain sacrifice has ceased to be of service to me. I can no longer will myself to deliberately invest my conviction in the establishment of disparaging lies, nor do I possess the prospective wherewithal to desire such limitations in the future. Hence, I am the sole proprietor of my mind and agency, and no religion or religious figurehead will maintain otherwise.”
• 

  Truth, Long Overdue

  Posted: December 22nd, 2006, 1:29pm EST by Mason is Free

  Tags:    [edit]

  To find happiness is to prefer to believe that there is a reason for being happy. It is a leap of faith if you will, toward what we hope is an absolute, a movement toward what we wish to be an answer (and who is to say that it isn’t).
  
  It may seem like the only option is to believe, but in what exactly? The existence of meaning? The possibility of transcending uncertainty? Do we make purpose out of ourselves, the ones we care about, altruism, strength of will, strength of reason? If a belief fails to serve its host, then that host will inevitably resume the search for a belief that it perceives to be more worthy, so does it matter where faith is vested so long as it serves the purposes of its host?
  
  Perhaps dysphoria is just the influence of diminishing faith. The dysphoria remains until the belief is either fed or abandoned. Abandonment rewards us with euphoric freedom, while the former heads a path that can lead to blissful ignorance. If we choose to abandon a belief, desire will move us toward another belief, but desire is no less dubious than its purveyors.
  
  I, myself, am a puppeteer, but there is no puppet. There is only what others perceive of me. They invent an illusory puppet. While I am merely testing the rules of the environment which I inhabit, they may try to see someone who is timid or someone who is boisterous, someone sane or someone delusional. Perhaps compartmentalizing others feeds a belief of theirs in some way, but hasty classification using incorrect criteria is a cognitive limitation.
  
  I treat others with respect so that I might associate with them easily. I wish to associate with others easily because they might have some truth or tool for finding truth. I will play their games and learn from them. As a result, I may allow sentiments, both inborn and learned, to convolute my judgment. I may let altruism extend beyond its useful purposes to get the better of me, thus turning me into a martyr. Jealousy may rise out of a lingering sentiment that people should not behave arrogantly. An instinctive need for survival and pleasure may affect my responses to stimuli, turning the development of my cognition in unwanted directions.
  
  The truth is, I don’t know.
  
  And perhaps I will meet you one day in a bookstore, at school, or on a plane. If you can see me eye to eye on the message I am trying to convey and somehow communicate it, then perhaps we can share at least one tranquil moment of mutual appreciation for lucidity. Perhaps we can share more.