
‘MormonWikileaks’ website launched, seeking transparency in LDS Church - gscott
http://fox13now.com/2016/12/19/mormonwikileaks-website-launched-seeking-transparency-in-lds-church/
======
zeroer
The beliefs are batshit crazy, but in my personal experience, Mormons are
consistently the nicest most welcoming people you'd ever meet. It makes me sad
that the church leadership doesn't reflect that. :(

~~~
wavefunction
"Meekness" is encouraged among the faithful corpus.

I would agree that I have met many kind and decent members of the LDS church,
but I have also seen how the Church urges families to threaten or enact
shunning of their relatives who choose to leave the Church, and their forays
into political activism are inhumane.

~~~
patch_collector
I come at this as an active Mormon, but I see a consistent effort on the part
of the leadership to make it clear that shunning shouldn't happen. I
definitely see individuals with issues on this, but I haven't seen it as
institutional, even though I've had a number of family members leave the
church.

~~~
xou4ieZi
Well, as long as you don't count BYU...

~~~
cookiecaper
All universities have codes of conduct and expel students who violate them.
Everyone who enrolls at BYU knows that BYU students are expected to behave in
accordance with the Church's values while they're students. No one has a right
to go to a specific university, much less a private one like BYU. Getting
kicked out of BYU for breaking rules you'd explicitly and knowingly agreed to
is not the same thing as shunning. I'm not seeing a problem here?

~~~
kupiakos
It's a tad more difficult when one realizes they don't believe in the church
when they've already gone through most of BYU. Or break the Honor Code by
coming out as gay or transgendered (and expressing themselves).

These individuals are not far enough to get a degree, but far enough so that
they'd lose years of effort if they were to be kicked out. Depending on the
situation, BYU doesn't allow you to keep your transcript for transference to
another university, which is difficult enough as it is. Maybe they believed in
the church when they joined. Maybe they didn't and they were simply pressured
in by family or friends (all of your Mormon friends are going to BYU, so why
shouldn't you?) I've seen the "kicked out and can't transfer" happen on two
separate occasions, one of which was a good friend, from these policies and
for differing reasons.

I'm aware that's simply how the rules work. I'm saying the rules suck. To
these people, it seems like they're saying "You decided to be who you are and
stop lying to everyone that you believe? Well good luck with life, because
we're going to make it as difficult for you as possible." Whereas, if they
continued lying and went to church every week, and told the bishop "Yeah, I've
paid full tithing. Yeah, I still believe in the Church.", they'd not have any
of these problems. Dishonesty is being rewarded. It's not just the going to
church. It's the requirement of belief, which can change over time and can
screw people over that none of these other universities' codes of conducts
would otherwise do (barring extreme circumstances).

Apparently there have been some recent changes, though, for people who leave
the church while at BYU:

[http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865660524/BYU-adjusts-
hon...](http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865660524/BYU-adjusts-honor-code-
policies-for-students-who-leave-LDS-Church.html)

So that's better. Not great, but better.

~~~
cookiecaper
In Mormon doctrine it's not a sin to come out and be honest about your
experiences with sexuality and gender identity. It is sinful to _engage_ in
homosexual behavior. One does not risk Church discipline (including expulsion
from BYU) merely by discussing his or her feelings/"being honest".

You also don't have to be a believing Mormon to go to BYU. Non-members do have
to pay a different rate for tuition and you do have to have a valid
ecclesiastical endorsement from a bishop and stake president and be willing to
adhere to the Honor Code, but otherwise it shouldn't be a problem to admit
that you no longer believe (and IMO it's much healthier for everyone if people
are honest about this). Resignation from the Church is a different matter than
lost belief.

Whether one continues to believe or not, he/she should be willing and able to
see through the contractual commitment made to the university when his/her
beliefs were different. Commitments are not worth anything if you can just say
"my beliefs changed; ergo, I am exempt."

We all have to put up with things that we've agreed to and no longer feel are
beneficial to us, at least until the term of the agreement expires. I'd say a
college student experiencing this is a good opportunity for character
development that will serve the student well after graduation.

------
torgoguys
They've released 4 rather minor documents so far. It's a fine start.

However, they don't seem to even link to the documents from their website! You
have to go to Facebook / Twitter and scroll until you find links...and the
documents those links go to aren't self-hosted, making it easier for them to
be removed by LDS complaints... Maybe not such a good start.

I wish them well in their goal of more transparency for the LDS church.

------
Flammy
There were a significant number of leaks recently posted to the "ex mormon"
subreddit
[https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/](https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/)

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/545v5n/leaks_mega...](https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/545v5n/leaks_megathread/?ref=search_posts)

[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/552yzo/update_on_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/552yzo/update_on_the_leak/)

------
innocentoldguy
@henrikschroder - Would you mind giving a citation that links Utah's issue of
depression with Mormonism? After all, there are a lot of non-Mormons living
there too.

The last I read, scientists believed that the mountain states suffered from
depression due to altitude and thin air
([http://www.livescience.com/50813-low-oxygen-increase-
depress...](http://www.livescience.com/50813-low-oxygen-increase-
depression.html))

Also, I couldn't find any statistics on just teen suicides, but according to
CBSNews, Utah ranks 15th in suicide rates in the U.S. Alaska is #1
([http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/suicide-20-states-with-
highe...](http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/suicide-20-states-with-highest-
rates/)). If you have better citations, could you please provide them?

Finally, I have several extended family members who are gay, and two of my
best friends are gay (and active Mormons). My wife is Japanese. Several of my
cousins are black, and I have two cousins who were adopted from India. I also
have other relatives who are hispanic. In spite of all this non-white, non-
straight, and non-male stuff going on in my life, I've never witnessed this
"terrible environment" that you're talking about. Could you offer citations
for that as well?

~~~
henrikschroder
Ask the fine people here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/](https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/)

You'll get a lot of answers.

~~~
innocentoldguy
Perhaps you could help me understand how a bunch of anonymous rancor on Reddit
acts as a citation that proves your previous commentary. I'm looking for a
scholarly citation. Not opinion and blither.

~~~
henrikschroder
It's funny, you just see anonymous rancor, but I see people finally breaking
free from their shackles and stepping out into the light. It's truly
beautiful.

~~~
dang
Please keep religious flamewars off HN.

~~~
innocentoldguy
OK.

------
fintler
Why not just use wikileaks.org? Is there something here that the regular
wikileaks.org won't cover for some reason?

~~~
treebog
wikileaks.org is now a propaganda arm of the Russian government

~~~
rudolf0
They definitely had an agenda in the last election, but that's a huge stretch.

------
innocentoldguy
As a Mormon, I have a hard time imagining this site being very interesting.
Between fairmormon.org, lds.org, all the anti-Mormon sites, and the missionary
duos, just waiting to knock on a door near you, I think the world already has
a pretty clear view into the workings of the Mormon church, their history, and
their beliefs.

Sure, the Mormon church "hides" things, but most of that stuff has to do with
disciplinary councils, excommunications, when people were baptized, etc. I
can't imagine knowing that Edgar Jones was baptized in 1953, or Deloris
Canflap cheated on her husband, is going to make for a compelling web
experience; but who knows?

~~~
goda90
I've often seen people get worked up over the for-profit businesses linked to
the Church. Carefully structured leaks can make such businesses look shady,
and inspire knee jerk reactions of people claiming tithing is used to build
malls, and that somehow tax exempt status is magically extending to the
businesses.

~~~
innocentoldguy
Yeah, that happens. People like to have their boogiemen to blame for
everything in life that doesn't suit them. I do it too. Personally, I blame
everything on Orrin Hatch.

------
rokosbasilisk
Wow cool. I hope the future is more wikileaks sites forcing transparency.

~~~
riebschlager
Hmm. You sure? Leaks are a funny thing. Someone could "leak" your last year of
emails and forge a few incriminating messages about your coke and hookers
habit. The damage would be done before you get a chance to prove the forgery.

~~~
rokosbasilisk
That is a good point. I didnt think about bad actors.

------
henrikschroder
Of course they are nice, every salesman is nice to future prospects. They want
you to join their cult.

In reality, the people of Utah consume the most anti-depressants in the US,
teen suicide rates are among the highest in the country, and if you're not a
straight, white, male, mormonism is a terrible environment.

~~~
dang
You've posted more than one religious flamewar comment in this thread. We ban
accounts that do this, so please don't do this on HN. Literal religious
flamewars are the last thing this site needs.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13224646](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13224646)
and marked it off-topic.

