Hey, welcome to not so Molly Mormon podcast. I'm Katie, and I have a new story for you today.

Hi, Sarah and Katie.

I have caught up on your podcast, and it has been very cathartic

as I have started to mentally unravel the mind fuck that is the Mormon church.

Officially, my records were removed last fall,

but I was also in a very toxic relationship at the time,

so I couldn't really process it fully until I got out of the relationship about four months ago.

There are a lot of experiences I've had that, listening to you to speak, were brought up, but I figured I would just tell you about a couple of the most pivotal ones.

As a little background, I grew up in the church. I was raised in a small

town in Utah, baptized into the church at eight, did all the normal Mormon things. By all accounts,

I was the perfect little Peter priested. I was quiet and unassuming and pretty scared of doing

anything wrong. When I was 16, we moved to another small town, but in southeast

Idaho. I graduated high school at 17 and went to Utah State in Logan, Utah for a year before

I served a mission in Florida. In hindsight, I always knew I was gay. I would watch gay porn.

I had crushes on guys. I lied my ass off in Bishop's interviews in order

to do all the things that I was expected to do. It was easy to believe because I was such a clean,

cut, quiet, and unassuming guy. I had a crush on my trainer on my mission. It was never explicitly

said to me that I needed to pray the gayway. It was always

just understood that reading scriptures and prayer was the way to overcome anything. I never once

admitted to any of my quote-unquote sins to any church leader. I was too afraid of consequences

and what people would think. It's silly to think of that now.

The shame and guilt laid on church members for doing the slightest wrong isn't always verbal.

...