Mean Girls

 I’m a Democrat, which means Utah County is a hard place for me to live in general. I also am an amateur historian. I am a Mormon, and as someone who loves history, I have some natural concerns about my religion’s history, truth claims, etc. But frankly, I’ve been able to move on and accept that my church offers a lot of good, and mistakes of the past don’t disqualify my church from still being a place of much good.

This year has been different, though. Democrats, like me, have been met with outright hostility. Getting gas in my car in American Fork, with my babies in the car, a couple guys noticed my Biden sign in the back, and took it upon themselves to deliberately block my car in and step inside the gas station. Not outright threatening, but I also couldn’t leave until they felt inclined to allow me to. (They had Trump flags, which is what makes me assume this is why it happened.) 

I have been afraid. My close neighbors, who are part of my Mormon congregation have a generous handful of Trump flags STILL flying. My mother is an immigrant, and filed for citizenship for the first time in over 30 years, last year, because she was genuinely afraid of what that man might do. I feel like my neighbors are willing to overlook the actual fear and tears that my family has shed because of Trump. But my feelings don’t matter to them. (It’s even on their flags.) 

I figured 2020 would be done soon, that I could continue to move on, and try to forgive my neighbors for turning a blind eye to the concerns of people like me, and other marginalized members of our society that have been suffering. I figured I could forgive and move on. Nobody’s perfect. Even Mormons.

But this last week FAIR Mormon released a dozen or so videos that reek of that same alt-right spirit of “screw what you think,” boasting about how “there’s an answer to everything, you anti’s!” (My interpretation.) I have never considered myself anti. But I also know they’re not correct. The facts they presented were misleading. They were not right, but more importantly, their spirit was not right. Once again, I felt like I was being shoved out, and told to leave my religion, because I’m not the same.

I’m not the same as my neighbors. I am not the same. And I’m being told over and over again, loudly, that you have to be the same, or you’re not welcome. We reject you, and you’re an idiot, and we don’t care about you or believe you, if you’re not the same. 

For the first time in my life I’m deeply considering leaving my church, because of all the bad fruits I see it bare. It doesn’t have to be perfect. I know that. But it should at least be good. And I’m not seeing that goodness.

I believe that our leaders should help people, not hurt them. I believe our leaders ought to be chosen for their ability to love, not their ability to enact influence over innocent people because of their own personal bigotries. I desire theologians, not businessmen. Leaders, not managers. 

Instead we choose to follow men who encourage us not to think. Cruelly they subscribe to the notion that “the end justifies the means,” all while assigning their own values and weaknesses to God, in essence, throwing God under the bus for the sake of their own image. 

For me, Utah Mormons have taken the ideal of “being correct” as their God, forgetting that God is Love. They seek for the comfort of being “right,” and anyone who disagrees with them can be completely ignored and discredited. Because Mormons do not seek for understanding. They choose to trust every word of the prophets. They choose ignorance over personal authority. This cultural attitude comes easily from a religion founded on truth claims of being "the only" truth, etc. It is so easy for people in this culture to assume that there is only one way to behave and believe that is appropriate, and it is whatever the current prophet teaches. But even prophets past have stirred up alt-right propaganda, doing their best to teach, from the pulpit, the evils of differing political parties and ideals. Many have failed to see the men behind those statements, seeing, instead, a prophetic political injunction. But as someone who is well aware of our church’s convoluted history, I feel no obligation to believe in only one truth, and only one correct form of belief. 

I want to move. I want my religion to work for me, but the only way I see that happening is by moving, gambling on fate to bring me to some happy, liberal, nuanced place. At this point, to move somewhere else would require so much sacrifice, however, with only a risked hope of the good outcome of being welcome in the doors of my church once more. 

It makes me so angry that I even feel forced into this choice by people of my own faith, because of their unwillingness to tolerate and appreciate differences lovingly. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like I belong, let alone like I was valued, which would have offered me some form of self-actualization here.

Instead, choosing to stay in a church I already have different beliefs about, is only choosing to be ostracized. It feels like I’m choosing to subject myself to emotional and spiritual abuse if I stay, accepting others’ condescension and assumptions that there will always be something wrong, or “less than” about me. I resent my neighbors for that, when they don’t even see the self-respect and my own self-worth being sacrificed each time I try to carve out a space for me to stay with them. It is difficult to know what to do when you want to belong, but you’re told, through action, words, and cold shoulders that you can’t. 

I am the nerdy girl approaching the Mean Girls table in the lunchroom, because some of the girls at the table CAN be kind. But the Mean Girls don’t want me, one of them is whittling and whistling, and there are other nice tables...