As with any story the best place to start is at the beginning. Thousands of billions of years ago I was an intelligence who lived in nothingness, till Elohim gathered me and my brethren and sisters up and then had physical sex with one of his physical wives whereupon I was then granted a spiritual body (ahem). Then one of my elder brothers in spirit rebelled against Elohim and took 1/3 of my spiritual family with him while the rest of us remained in the presence of god and our other spiritual elder brother Jesus. Jesus then went down to earth and did papa's will by dying on a cross cause apparently Dear old Dad just didn't have enough power and influence to save the rest of us from our natural carnal tendencies (sniffle). Then after Jesus died and was resurrected, he took all that priesthood authority with him.... Aw, I just can't do it anymore.

 

I don't know anything about what happened before I was born, nor, frankly, do I give a rats ass. I know that when I was born as the only boy of five girls that the ward heaved a collective sigh of relief for my poor father, who happened to be their bishop at the time. My story is relatively simple, there is nothing sordid about my youth in St. George-although there was that one time that I... never mind.

 

I like to think of my simple childhood as self-preservation incarnate. I was the only boy of six. Do you know what that meant? It meant a constant stream of dresses, makeup, tampons (wonderful spy equipment if you have a good imagination), girly magazines, girly 80's music, musicals, theatre, advice on how to act on or not act on a date-this is great for a seven year old, and on and on. By the time I reached dating age I was so terrified of girls that I just bypassed that milestone in my life and watched my popular friends with their girlfriends and shook my head at their idiocy for even desiring to be with a girl.

The church was a huge influence on my life and childhood. My earliest memories, besides the ones involving ants, gasoline and matches, were of dinners, ward functions, and of walking out the front door of our house with the St. George Temple staring me in the face. We used to run around the temple and as soon as we saw one of the temple patrons approaching we'd take off, the slick concrete sidewalks were perfect for roller-skating or for skidding out on my BMX.

We'd also go hang our across the street at the stake center while dad did his bishoply duties. It was great having a bishop for a dad, so I thought anyway, cause we could go hang out in his office and eat all the snacks he had left over from the annual Christmas shindig when various members would dress up as Santa and knock on all ward members doors (those who had kids anyway), they'd sit you on their laps, mom or dad would take a picture and he'd ask what we wanted for Christmas; "transformers, and Garbage Pail Kids" I'd say.  Then he'd give us each a bag of peanuts with hard candy and chocolate mixed in it and leave. They stopped doing this after my dad was released. But the left over bags in the file cabinet while he was bishop? Priceless. I'd usually take my best friend in and we'd beg dad for a bag. He'd give us one and we'd immediately run off to the dark little corner of the stage (the one that has the door that leads to the roof) and we'd sort through all the good stuff and then throw the peanuts away.

 

The downside of having a bishop for a dad was that he was a bishop and he took his calling seriously, add to that the hours he put in at his job and dad was a scarce character in my life. He tried, and he tried damn hard too (at least with me) and I have wonderful camping, deer hunting, and fishing memories, but dad... yeah, he was gone a lot, and we all blame the church.

Mom felt the same way. Well how would you feel if you had to raise 5 girls and 1 boy all by yourself? It's a wonder the woman didn't have a mental breakdown. I credit her and my sisters for my wonderful empathetic sensibilities, my ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, my limitless love for life, and my ability to be comfortable with my own sexuality-some might call it ‘gay factor' basically it means that I have no homophobic fear and can wear any color, especially pink, and make it look good.

We were transplants to St. George from Indiana. The story goes that my mom and dad drove out to St. George to visit her older sister and they woke up the morning to go home and the car wouldn't start, and the tires were flat. Mom's brother-in-law offered my dad a job to help him pay for the repairs, and twenty years later my dad quit that job and moved to a better job. The story usually had some Faith-promoting "and we knew then (sniffle) that GOD wanted us to be in St. George..." slant to it, but I think everyone knew better. If only all the signs were that cut and dry.

Of my five sisters (this is where the story gets interesting) none have stayed in the church, although there is the one in Idaho who likes to go to Relief Society and Sunday School so she can stir the pot and point out doctrinal inconsistencies, but she doesn't count.

Oldest sister is a lesbian living with her wonderful life partner up in the rainy northwest. She used to scare us young-uns by telling us macabre stories about bloody eyed bears mauling and eating campers, and she'd bring over her High school friends and we'd all watch soap operas like "Santa Barbara" (Cruz was a bastard) or VH1, and MTV (when there was only one MTV), and then when she was watching us she'd call all her friends up and they'd rent rated R movies. Since I was five or 6 I wasn't supposed to partake of these movies, but she did let me watch Terminator with them. It was fun.

Second Oldest sister lives in Idaho with her hubby and kids and goes to church every so often just to stir the pot. She belly dances, sews amazing quilts and has a phenomenal head for food. The other sister does/did a lot of swinging with her RM husband. They love life and they intellectually left the church before anyone else in the family.

The other two sisters are closer to my age so we hung out more. One, who WAS molly mormon, is NOW a practicing Sikh. She left the church because of the intense amount of pressure she felt to be perfect. Her husband still goes, but he's a nice guy nonetheless. The youngest is a self-proclaimed "Green Witch."

Mom's an accomplished artist and dad, well he's dad. He still a major TBM, but he's the kind of major TBM that all TBM's should try to be. Open, accepting, exceptionally funny and Christ-like incarnate; he deserves everything good that's happened to him and that will happen to him in the future.

Why did I leave the church? I was addicted to internet porn, plus I loved to drink and carouse with women in all manner of lasciviousness. (that was just in case my bishop reads this, so he can say, "aha! I knew it.") No, I started having serious doubts when I tried to teach a lesson in Young Mens that incorporated what I thought was beautiful Buddhist theology. The Young Men's president asked me what I was teaching and I told him and he said, "that's not church approved... you shouldn't be teaching that." That was my very first "WTF?" moment. Everything up to that point was shelved on the "oh that's not important for you salvation" shelf.

After that my lessons to the YM were... gosh how do I describe them? They were us all sitting around bullshitting about life, guns, girls, school and we even once talked about bestiality. More than once the adjoining classes were forced to knock on our doors and tell us to be quiet, the Relief society even told us to shut-up once. I'm pleased to announce that only 4 of those 12 kids went on missions. I saw one of those four the other day as he was waiting for a ride to the singles ward and he had a huge cowboy sized Masonic belt buckle on. I laughed at the irony and oddly enough he did too, because that was exactly why he bought it.

Why did I leave the church? Why was that one moment with the YM's president the catalyst for me to start questioning the church? Beats me, I'm also a student of literature, especially the theory behind literature. My favorite thing to do in my literary classes was to systematically break down a text and try and figure out why it was created, for what purpose. I started applying those same deconstructive lessons to the mormon church as a whole and did NOT like what I was coming back with.

What I eventually found was an ideological machine that had turned into a greedy monster who's sole purpose was to obtain that which it preached against; filthy lucre. The mormon church hid its true self from me, it re-created itself time and time again, all the while saying, "all that crap that people say happened in the past? Yeah, that didn't happen, they're just anti-mormon and hate the church. Now pay your tithing, or you can't go to the temple."

Which brings up something else. The temple. God, what a waste. My first experience in the temple was a huge surreal let down. It was kind of like going to the bathroom only to realize you don't have anything to go to the bathroom with; "where are my holes for evacuation? Augh!" When I married my wife in the temple it wasn't special. Hell, all I wanted to do was (insert wonderfully descriptive swear word here) her. The alter wasn't special, the guy doing the ceremony was old and decrepit, but a nice guy, I still don't know what he said. All I could stare at were those eye's of hers and those nice full lips that would soon be around my..... too much info. But it sucked. Then she was disappointed cause someone forgot to tell her that since she was now endowed (graugh, very "well endowed" I might add) that she had to have special underwear. So screw the hundreds of bucks she just spent on sexy underwear (we just ignored the garment thing for a while). Four of my five sisters couldn't join us for the sealing, and her entire family couldn't join us for the ceremony. Real special.

I have to say, however, that the most positive thing about my LDS church life was my mission. I sincerely had a wonderful time, but not because I was preaching and teaching the word. I started my mission with one goal and one goal only, have fun. We taught a few people here and there, tracted here and there, learned an obscure Asian language, met my soon to be wife (cough cough, and we didn't do anything, nope, not a thing), I broke my neck, nearly strangled my mom-do you realize what it's like to be home while you are a missionary and have you MOM as your companion? She's lucky she's still alive after those two weeks of hell. I loved my mission. I learned a new language, fell in love with a group of people I'd never heard of before, fell in love and saw that the world was much bigger than Utah. I hated proselytizing, and I can say with pride that most of our referrals went to the trash. I think I went on my mission for the right reasons, I didn't go to baptize the world, I went to grow and experience life outside of Utah.

My mission president, when I first arrived, took me aside and asked, "so what do you want to do? What are your goals?" I looked him straight in the eyes and said, "to have fun and make people happy." I could tell he wasn't too impressed, so I quickly added, "...with the gospel." I learned how to be a good liar. Thanks Mormon church!

So I left. The church, even though we still show up occasionally, is a thing of the past. It was a nice little stepping stone on my path through life. My wife is starting to see those "WTF?" things here and there and soon we're gonna be back on cruise control, watching our life go by and enjoying every moment of it. Our kids, four soon to be five (unless Crissy's revelation comes true about twins), will be fine. They're talking about baptism and other stuff, but I'd rather they be old enough with enough background and life-experience under their belts to make an informed decision on what they'd like to do with their lives, or what organization(s) they'd like to join.

I ran across a saying a while ago that I liked. I don't know who said it, or in what context, but it sounded kind of like a prayer. It goes "help me to see things as they truly are, and not as I believe/want them to be." I'm an agnostic Buddhist who likes breaking down the nuts and bolts of life to see what really makes ‘em tick.