This month I marched with over 1000 former and current members of the LDS faith against the practice of one on one Bishop worthiness interviews. For reference, worthiness interviews begin around the age of 12 for most members, and are continued throughout the lifespan as "preparing" to attend Temple ceremonies.
The speakers of the event included a female protestant pastor and survivor or sexual abuse during her youth interviews in the church, the regional director of SNAP (Survivor Network Against Pastoral Rape), an LDS sex therapists who has worked with dozens of survivors of sexual abuse in the church, and a Sexologist who calls the abuse occurring in the church "psychosexual abuse." Behind them, stood 6-10 silent individuals that I assume could not muster the words to tell their stories, but whose rage and courage were loud and clear. I stood in the crowd, a lump in my throat, my chest burning. A man holding a sign began to weep as the speakers condemned the shame that is literally killing children in the LDS church. He later shared he had considered suicide as a teenager due to the shaming of a Bishop against him for masturbation as a teenager. In Utah the teen suicide rate is 4x the national average. A mother wrapped herself around her young adult daughter, sitting and holding back tears from her wheelchair, whose sign read, "I'm done with being silent." I walked alongside a man whose sister had taken her own life as an adult, unable to cope anymore with the repercussions of being sexually abused by her Bishop as a child.
My experiences with worthiness interviews began at age 12, and culminated in the most absurd shaming and victim blaming when I was 19. It was surreal to be surrounded by people who knew the pain. Every story I heard was uniquely horrifying, and somehow braided with very similarly twisted threads: of abusing power, obsessive and voyeuristic focus on youth's natural desire to pleasure themselves, shaming sexual desire, blaming and silencing survivors who come with reports of outside sexual abuse, and grave nightmares of sexual assault, all behind these Bishop's doors. I am beyond my potential to feel the amount of grief and shame that has taken lives, and has been silently crushing so many individuals, and little ones that have been victimized by this practice.
From an (exclusively male) clergy that draws much of its message from the old and new testament, it is ironic they dangle a promise of worth and peace as bait for union with god, and "cause any of these little ones to stumble in coming to Jesus," since if you follow the same verse "it would be better for a millstone to be strung around their necks and they be drowned into the sea." That was definitely a paraphrase for which I do not care to approach a bible to check, but you understand.
In a place where some will never question the teachings of their leaders, it was a powerful moment, to be with a group in such solidarity, marching five blocks through SLC, to the thallic building that is the church headquarters, roaring with signs.
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