Mormon Quotes

Psychological trauma

Spencer W. Kimball
Among the most common sexual sins our young people commit are necking and petting. Not only do these improper relations often lead to fornication, pregnancy, and abortions — all ugly sins — but in and of themselves they are pernicious evils...
Spencer W. Kimball, The Miracle of Forgiveness, p. 65
Spencer W. Kimball
Also far‑reaching is the effect of loss of chastity. Once given or taken or stolen it can never be regained. Even in a forced contact such as rape or incest, the injured one is greatly outraged. If she has not cooperated and contributed to the foul deed, she is of course in a more favorable position. There is no condemnation when there is no voluntary participation. It is better to die in defending one's virtue than to live having lost it without a struggle.
Spencer W. Kimball, Prophet Spencer W. Kimball, LDS Prophet, The Miracle of Forgiveness, p. 196
Ezra Taft Benson
Recently some parents paid for space in a newspaper to run an open letter to the school principal of their son. The letter in part stated: "You are hereby notified that our son, [insert name], is not allowed by his undersigned parents to participate in, or be subject to instruction in, any training or education in sex, human biological development, attitude development, self‑understanding, personal and family life, or group therapy, or sensitivity training, or self‑criticism, or any combination or degree thereof, without the consent of the undersigned by express written permission . . . "
Ezra Taft Benson, Strengthening the Family (Ezra Taft Benson, 1970 Semi‑Annual General Conference, Improvement Era)
Gordon B. Hinckley
I know what my mother expects. I know what she's saying in her prayers. She'd rather have me come home dead than unclean.
Gordon B. Hinckley, Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley, Conference Report, April 1969, pp. 52‑53
Gordon B. Hinckley
Well, we're not anti‑gay, we're pro‑family. Let me put it that way...and we love these people [gays] and try to work with them and help them. We know that they have a problem. We want to help them solve that problem.
Gordon B. Hinckley, Gordon B Hinckley, interview with Larry King
Richard G. Scott
The victim must do all in his or her power to stop the abuse. Most often, the victim is innocent because of being disabled by fear or the power or authority of the offender. At some point in time, however, the Lord may prompt a victim to recognize a degree of responsibility for abuse. Your priesthood leader will help assess your responsibility so that, if needed, it can be addressed. Otherwise the seeds of guilt will remain and sprout into bitter fruit. Yet no matter what degree of responsibility, from absolutely none to increasing consent, the healing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ can provide a complete cure.
Richard G. Scott, General Conference, May, 2009
Dallin H. Oaks
Another way to seek a testimony seems astonishing when compared with the methods of obtaining other knowledge. We gain or strengthen a testimony by bearing it. Someone even suggested that some testimonies are better gained on the feet bearing them than on the knees praying for them.
Dallin H. Oaks, 'Testimony,' in Ensign of May 2008
Julie Hamilton
Now the new assault on science comes in the form of the equally fallacious argument that attempts to help those with unwanted homosexuality are "dangerous". This is completely false! This is particularly exasperating coming from a media totally unwilling to acknowledge the tremendous health and emotional toll that homosexual activities exact on those caught up in the lifestyle. They will spend thousands of hours searching for one individual who claims to have been injured by therapy, but seldom mention the thousands of broken lives that are the legacy of homosexual behavior.
Julie Hamilton, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Julie Hamilton
We believe the reason reorientation therapies are under attack is because the campaign to deceive society into believing that people are "born that way" is beginning to fail. The science won't support the rhetoric, and even the American Psychological Association has had to modify their position to reflect the research. The small but persistent voice of NARTH members and our allies has made a difference.
Julie Hamilton, Standard of Liberty ‑ Stephen Graham and Janice Graham
Vern Bullough
Obviously, members of the society would take exception to the attempts of the LDS Church to claim scientific backing for their stand on masturbation; their science is about 80 years out of date, and it was questionable even 80 years ago.
Vern Bullough, Dr. Vern Bullough of State University College at Buffalo, New York
Kip Eliason
I know immorality is a very serious sin. I really want to repent and be free of this terrible and degrading burden of masturbation. I am willing to do anything I have to do, even excommunication, to be able to repent and be free of this sin. I would rather go to hell and suffer there than be unworthy.
Kip Eliason, Journal of Kip Eliason
Connell O'Donovan
The longterm effects of the electric shock "therapy" these men were subjected to has been crippling. Two of the men committed suicide soon after completing this torturous study. Every survivor I have interviewed has suffered life‑long emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical damage. In 1999, John Cameron, one of the 14 men who went through this horrific experience in 1976 when he was a 23 year old BYU student and member of the Young Ambassadors, wrote to me, "For 22 years now I have lived with the scars of the experience ‑ unable to articulate a personal suffering and longing that have almost crippled me....I didn't completely come out of the closet until I was 34, and only after much angry, pissed‑off therapy. I spent a lot of money just so I could yell at my psychologist and break things in his office for an hour every week for two years. But it was a hell of a lot more fun than Ford McBride and the electrodes."
Connell O'Donovan, The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature
Connell O'Donovan
On September 5, 1935, New York University professor Dr. Louis W. Max informed a meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA) that he has successfully treated a "partially fetishistic" homosexual neurosis with electric shock therapy delivered at "intensities considerably higher than those usually employed on human subjects," the first documented instance of aversion therapy used to "cure" homosexuality. (Note that the APA's 2007 Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation has concluded that "efforts to change sexual orienation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm.") As far as I can tell, the earliest experiments with aversive therapies at BYU to "cure" homosexuality date to the mid‑1960s and were spearheaded by D. Eugene Thorne, head of BYU's Psychology Dept. By 1968, he had gained enough information to report his findings from BYU in a paper given in San Francisco that year for the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. Then in 1969, school administration became more careful in its use of controversial therapies for treating "sexual deviancy" as they put it. The administration publicly claimed that use of such therapies had been curtailed but unofficially they continued unabated. BYU's Academic Vice President, Robert Thomas, advised college deans to alert those who were using aversive therapies to be "particularly cautious in utilizing them" ... out of fear for law suits.
Connell O'Donovan, The Abominable and Detestable Crime Against Nature
Jack Annon
It is my firm professional opinion, based upon information that I have at hand, that the LDS Church attempted to teach very stringent and difficult standards to a boy who was vulnerable to emotional conflicts, and that the counseling was inadequate and appears to have contributed to the boy's suicidal ideations.
Jack Annon, Affirmation, Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy, April 1986
Jack Annon
Based upon my review of even a limited amount of literature and on documentation specifically pertaining to Kip Eliason, it appears clear that the LDS Church promoted and engaged in behavior‑modification counseling in the specific areas of masturbation.
Jack Annon, Affirmation, Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy, April 1986
Jack Annon
It is my professional opinion that the LDS Church has gone a step beyond propounding a certain viewpoint that masturbation is a sin, and has actually instructed its leaders, teachers and bishops to provide counseling and to utilize behavior‑modification skills that can have very dangerous and adverse effects.
Jack Annon, Affirmation, Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy, April 1986
Helen Mar Kimball
[He explained] the principle of Celestial marrage [plural marriage]...After which he said to me, 'If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation [and] exaltation and that of your father's household [and] all of your kindred.['] This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. None but God [and] his angels could see my mother's bleeding heart ‑‑ when Joseph asked her if she was willing... She had witnessed the sufferings of others, who were older [and] who better understood the step they were taking, [and] to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth summer, following in the same thorny path, in her mind she saw the misery which was as sure to come...; but it was all hidden from me.
Helen Mar Kimball, Mormon Polygamy: A History
Curtis R. Canning
In Mormondom, there is a social expectation‑‑particularly among the females‑‑to put on a mask, say 'Yes' to everything that comes at her and hide the misery and pain. I call it the "Mother of Zion" syndrome. You are supposed to be perfect because Mrs. Smith across the street can do it and she has three more kids than you and her hair is always in place. I think the cultural issue is very real. There is the expectation that you should be happy, and if you're not happy, you're failing.
Curtis R. Canning, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 20, 2002, "Study Finds Utah Leads Nation in Antidepressant Use," by Julie Cart
Julie Cart
Doctors here have for years talked about the widespread use of antidepressants in the state. But there was no hard evidence until a national study that tracked drug prescriptions came to an unexpected conclusion: Antidepressant drugs are prescribed in Utah more often than in any other state, at a rate nearly twice the national average.
Julie Cart, New York Times, February 20, 2002
Mark A. Taylor
He loved the Mormon Church — which has 5.5 million members worldwide — and was devoted to its teachings. His father, Eugene Eliason, a non‑Mormon, believes that in some ways the church may have played a substitute‑mother role for the boy. (For clarity, Eugene Eliason will be referred to as Eliason throughout this report; his son will always be called Kip.) Kip was not the kind of youngster you'd think would commit suicide, but when his church told him that he'd find guilt, depression and self‑hate if he masturbated, he believed so. When it said he'd go to hell if he didn't stop, he believed that too. And when he was told that masturbation was a "building block of suicide," he took the church at its word. Kip's death rocked the predominantly Mormon agribusiness community of Boise, Idaho, where he was a high‑school senior at Capital High School. Of course, there were the stories that occasionally filtered through the congregation about young people who, like Kip, committed suicide because they couldn't live up to the church's stringent anti‑sex doctrines. But they were just stories and, if they were true, they didn't happen in Boise; they happened some 300 miles southeast, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
Mark A. Taylor
While the number of teen suicides in America has tripled in the past decade, Utah has consistently been 3.5% higher than the national average.
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
Mark A. Taylor
After a while suicide looked like the most honorable thing to do. Many Mormon gays do it. I had it all planned, an automobile accident on a certain curve in the mountains; it was a way my children and family would be spared.
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
Mark A. Taylor
On Valentine's Day, February 14, Kip made another attempt to end his life by again drinking a mixture of iodine and alcohol. He was taken to the psychiatric unit of the St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center, where he was diagnosed as suicidal. (The medical facility is a codefendant in the Eliason suit.) Eight days later Kip was released to his father. Eliason recalls picking his son up at the hospital. "He seemed happy to be going home. Before we left, he introduced me to a 16‑year‑old girl he had met there. She had told him she was there for the same reason he was. Kip seemed very taken by his new friend and, when they said goodbye, he took her into his arms and kissed her. I'll never forget it." On March 2, 1982, Kip was home alone while his father made an overnight business trip, About 9 p.m. Eliason called him from his hotel. "Kip seemed all right. I asked him if he'd taken his medicine, and he said he had. I told him I'd be home soon, and that was about it." Sometime after the call, Kip wrote a suicide note. He went to the closed garage, started the family car and went to sleep. Dead at 16, Kip Eliason had but two "vices," masturbation and telling the truth. He was unable to stop masturbating and too honorable to lie.
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
Mark A. Taylor
After Kip's death, Eliason moved to Salt Lake City. He was angry and hurt. There he met parents who had stories like his ‑‑ youngsters ending up in mental institutions or worse, committing suicide. Eliason worked through his grief and anger by talking to anyone willing to listen and by going to the library and researching teen suicide and the Mormons. In October 1983 he filed a $26‑million wrongful‑death suit against the Mormon Church, alleging that the Latter‑day Saints went a step further than just providing his son with spiritual, moral and personal guidance when they subjected him to sex‑ and masturbation‑counseling. The suit accuses the church of negligence for providing counseling that fell outside the realm of religious teaching and for not requiring or providing training for its counselors. The suit charges that this counseling, combined with the church's harsh anti‑masturbation indoctrination, were the direct cause of Kip's depression, self‑hate, suicide attempts and eventual death. Moreover, it alleges that the church knew or should have known that its attempts to indoctrinate and provide sexual counseling for Kip were having a severe and adverse reaction on him; yet they continued. The suit charges that this failure to exercise a proper standard of care was negligent. The suit also contends that the Mormon Church subjected Kip to what amounted to an intentional attempt at mind control by using brainwashing techniques under the guise of spiritual teaching.
Mark A. Taylor, Affirmation: Sin & Death in Mormon Country: A Latter‑day Tragedy
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