LDS North Star Community. Conversion Therapy Rebranded
***Trigger Warning***
For whatever reason, I’m still connected to the North Star page. Some of you may be familiar with them. They have been affiliated with conversion therapy in the past. These days they don’t send people to conversion therapy necessarily but the beliefs are still similar to conversion therapy. I have mentioned before that just being in the LDS church is a form of conversion therapy and here’s why. They talk about gender identity and sexuality as if they are addictions. You can be a fully active believing member of the LDS church if you continue to suppress the part of you that straight mormons deem sacred for themselves. Their heterosexuality is sacred. It defines their eternal existence. Your gayness is fake though. Your queerness is a trial given to you to overcome so please turn it off like a light switch and live a sad lonely existence, so Mormon God can be happy with you. I can’t imagine still being involved with that page like I was back during my “pray the gay away phase” At one point I almost had my own Voices of Hope video put on their website! I hope that LGBTQ people begin to see the writings on the walls sooner than later and dip out. The psychological warfare is strong in organized religion. I’ll put it this way, they love to say that all are welcome. Some even preach that you can be gay and Mormon. The fact is, if you are gay and want to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, you have to believe that marriage is only between a man and woman. You must believe in the law of chastity ( no sex before marriage, and no sex with the same sex because that is not real love in the eyes of god. Sex is sacred to god and gays are spitting in his face). So no, the church is not accepting, the gospel is not accepting. You continuously trying to make it work for you is not healthy. I hope the LDS LGBTQ community stops chopping themselves down in order to be accepted by this organization. Stay whole and let them choke on you. Please queens, leave like your life depends on it, because it does. Too many have died by suicide already.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk, and please don’t try to be an apologist for the LDS church. I’m past the point of even pretending to give a shit about the justifications and gaslighting. People are dying because of the toxic beliefs. Fix it.
❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
Forever your heathen,
Zachary 🖤
Thank you, Zachary, for your Ted Talk, reminding us about the tacit support LDS church leaders have given over the years to organizations such as North Star (and its predecessor, Evergreen International), which were heavily invested in touting conversion therapy as an effective ‘cure’ for same sex attraction. But also check out Anti-Homosexual Policies at BYU in Connell O’Donovan’s History of Homosexuality and Mormonism, 1840-1980, to see what role ‘the Lord’s University’ played in promoting the use of electric shock and other aversion therapies to treat homosexual students outed by BYU Security and thereafter required to report to the University Standards Office. (Just look up Connell O’Donovan’s Home Page online to find this and many other related materials.)
ReplyDeleteYour mention of Stockholm Syndrome caught my attention; I think it’s spot-on-target: the LDS church, its General Authorities and proxy organizations are engaging in spiritual abuse by demeaning their gay members as sexual deviants who will be committing an abominable sin if they act on their same sex attraction. If we accept their judgment, as we have been conditioned to do without question, they seem to hold all the power, and the price for us to remain in the church is to abandon all hope of ever experiencing a committed, loving, romantic relationship with another human being. In so doing, we ally ourselves with our abusers.
But, we can instead reject their judgment, resign our church membership, and live our lives on our own terms, as the persons we were born to be, and someday find and fall in love with the man we were meant to be with. I can say from personal experience, that is a much more joyful outcome than the fear and loathing and alienation that will be our lot if we choose to stay. Life is short: we need to get the most of whatever time we have left!
Gary Spittal, Indianapolis