I ONCE THOUGHT I WOULD CHOSE TO BE MORMON

I have never chosen to be gay

It is true, in my late teens I was undergoing some very intricate sexuality issues. I knew I was gay and since I was told repeatedly by my peers and those in my Cuban culture that being homosexual somehow was some horrible, and immoral illness that could be prevented, I fought and fought hard against it.

As my denial grew, so did my resolve not to be gay. I read and I researched, I looked into every imaginable religion in order to see if it was true that accepting Jesus and the fucking prophet Moron Moroni would “cure” me of my affliction.

What I did find out instead was that LDS adherents were religious fanatics, prudes, hypocrites and totally devoid of compassion, particularly for their own who had fallen on hard times. I observed how they would treat these they considered misfits…(Mormons have to have riches to have validation among themselves) sure they would give them food and financial aid but they were made to feel like shit and the humiliation was unfathomable.

Then there was the question of sexuality itself, dealing with the guilt that was within my culture and adding to it the imposed one from the Mormons until it became a nightmare. There wouldn’t be a week that passed without some fucking sermon that condemned homosexuality and then it happened…one of those spewing this inflammatory rhetoric of anti-gay venom from the pulpit was the Bishop of the Hollywood 2^nd Ward who had come that Sunday as a guest of the 1^st Ward to which I belonged and give a sermon.

I was devastated after his rant and I felt like pure unadulterated shit. Then I went about my week to my job in Beverly Hills at Mariani Tailors on Rodeo Drive and on my way back I sat waiting for the bus when the Bishop who had given that speech came to a stop waiting for the traffic light to change. He looked my way and motioned with his hand to come into the car. I thought that he had recognized me and that was the reason he was giving me a ride. We didn’t even travel more than two blocks when I felt the hand of this dirty old man in his late sixties cup my crotch. I panicked and got out at the next light.

I guess I was wrong, he didn’t recognize me nor was he trying to be helpful by giving me a ride…he thought I was a hustler and I learned what the word hypocrite meant.

All the while I was in the church and prior to my dunk in their stinky Jacuzzi wearing some ridiculous white cotton long robe I was finding out things about other members, their relationships with one another and their interface with the fucking Mormon religion. I learned of a guy named Gene who had been not just excommunicated by the elders but also his family kicked him out of the house and it was because when he signed up for the draft he checked the box.

I also learned that these people have no spare time…it is all spent in their fucking church in some kind of activity or another. It is a relentless attempt to keep them focused and it works. These people have no time for hobbies, entertainment, the pursuit of the arts or reading other than what the church tells them to read.

Joseph Smith was a delusional man with a very vivid imagination, a charlatan and con artist

I felt the racism burning through my flesh…even if I was just as white as they were, I was born 90 miles too far South for their comfort. I could detect their disdain for the Blacks whom they classified in those days as “those cursed by God” as if being black also meant being inferior.

Magic underwear. Baptizing dead people. The lost tribes of Israel, a parallel civilization in the American continent, Celestial marriages. Private planets. Racism. Polygamy. “By any standard, Mormonism is more ridiculous than any other religion,” asserted the famously non-believing comic who skewered the “fairy tales” of several faiths in his documentary “Religulous.” “It’s a religion founded on the idea of polygamy. They call it The Principle. That sounds like The Prime Directive in ‘Star Trek.’ ” says Christopher Hitchens, who wrote about it in Slate.

Look, I am troubled enough when I see somebody running for office who thinks the world is 6,000 years old but when I hear the crap the Mormons believe in I can only think that yes, one should not have faith as a prerequisite for people running for office; but I seriously question their intelligence and given the fact that these people put their religion ahead of family, job and even country…how are they going to perform their duties as public servants if their primary endeavor is to serve their religion?

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/opinion/dowd-anne-frank-a-mormon.html?_r=1