That picture is actually inside the Visitor's Center. That ceiling paint job would never fly in the temple.

I'm so sorry that you had to walk away from something so important, but I'm gratified there are people in the world like you who stand on their own principles. I also have to thank you personally for sticking up for us gay folks.

But did I have WORDS with the visiting home teachers as they were trying to get me back to the Church.

No dice, guys. This is the last straw, and quite frankly the most UnChristian act I can think of.

Good for you for having the courage to stand up for your beliefs.

Supposedly, Prop 8 was the last straw... but then in the second to last paragraph you claim that you spent most of the 90s "in love with women."

I'm curious as to why you mention this fact--in what is otherwise a very personal account-- as an after thought. I'm not sure if you're still ashamed of your apparent bisexuality or if you were somehow worried that it would somehow distract the focus of your article, which is about your journey of faith and ultimate rejection of Mormonism. Still, I think there are a lot of underlying reasons that you haven't included.

God bless you for quitting the Mormon Church. I hope you find spiritual fulfillment elsewhere. Thank you for having the courage to write this article.

I'm proud of you for sharing this with us. I've known and admired some of the Mormons I've met in my life, but I also struggled with some of the same issues you were dealing with. After a lot of wrangling with the aspects of the Mormon and Catholic churces, I find they are very similar: Controlling, Sexist, racist, anti female and narrow minded. Time to rethink the whole religion thing I believe. You are a free spirit, brave and kind. The world need you.

I did not have one great defining moment that made me decide to quit the southern baptist church. Instead, as I became more educated, I realized that I really could not continue living for something I did not believe. I just gradually drifted out of it.

I respect your decision to quit the church and I wish you the best of luck overcoming the residual guilt you will feel because of your upbringing. It is hard to reconcile the adult truths with the "truths" that were pounded into your head as a child. This has been a long and hard battle for me, but I have finally found peace with myself and my lack of faith. My beliefs are not for everyone, but good luck in your search.

Too bad you didn't grow up with thinking but salt-of-the -earth people like my parents, who, besides splurging on an Encyclopaedia Britannica set one evening when my cultured father was a bit buzzed on beer and the salesman knocked on our door, had volumes upon volumes of books they had actually read - everything from the Iliad to Jude the Obscure to abstruse mathematics. Sounds "elitist" nowadays but it has served as a life-long antidote in its way to simple-minded intolerance, among other things. Too bad we also had to move to the suburbs.

I will start by saying nice job JODI. I was bron in ogden as a hispanic. As you know it was not at all a great time for us in the early 60's and all the way through mid 90's. When i got fed up tring to make a good life for myself in utah. I mean it took me so long because i was always told by my people do not let it get you down. I really gave it all i had. Then one day on a saturday morning i was standing on the corner of 17th and state st. waiting on a bus. When a cop drove past and as he past he looked at me as though i had just done something wrong. I knew at that point he was going to come back and mess with me. Sure enough here comes mister cop. He said to me you look like this guy in this wanted poster. I was beside my self, here i have done everything i could my whole life to live right. I mean never in jail, went to the U of U. and all the good stuff. I felt like because i was brown this LDS cop just wanted to be hateful. Live your life jodi and be happy.

This article was fantastic! Thank you for your insights and your support of equal marriages rights for gays and lesbians. In LA there is a protest at 7 pm on 11/13 in front of El Coyote Mexican restaurant because one of their owners is a Mormon and made a donation to "Yes on Prop 8." This morning at a press conference she said that she refused to take any action to correct her donation, despite the loyal gay customers who have spent their hard-earned dollars at El Coyote for years.

This is only the beginning! Mormons will one day wish Prop 8 had failed b/c this only makes the gays more organized. First it was Stonewall, then it was the AIDS crisis... and now this. This is the 3rd wave of a National Gay Civil Rights movement.

It was good to read your post. I spent a year and 1/2 involved with a Mormon woman who needed her church and her family more then her integrity or to live as the lesbian she can't choose not to be. After spending as much time as I did with her family and experiencing her betrayal of our love I have not had much tolerance for the LDS or it's umm, idiosyncratic beliefs, or the people who practice them. I also watched her family's particular church cover for and support her adult pedophile brother, even though he went to jail for his behavior. The Aaronic priesthood is one powerful lobby. I extricated myself feeling very sickened by the depravity and dishonesty in the name of the LDS "Heavenly Father" and the "prophets" teaching.

I did come away with a fairly good understanding of LDS doctrine, rituals, and basic intentions. I studied all of it because that's the way I roll, even though I confess I was holding my nose most of the way. It was difficult to hear the teachers talk about how the church of LDS was the only one who believed certain things. I was appalled at the deliberate renunciation of outside believe systems and information. The church's behavior well fits the accepted definition of a cult. Although I am not being cavalier about the pain of your decision, I was glad to read of another example of how the very thing the leaders fear, descension follows knowledge, keeps occurring. Viva the freedom of knowledge!

I was also aware in the 70's about the LDS involvement in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution. As a result the women's movement has been set back decades. I was more personally radicalized by that painful defeat. I find it particularly galling when a church teaches young woman to belief that their oppression is really their freedom. It is the same convoluted process those who oppose civil rights for gay people use. A particularly brave woman, Sonia Johnson, was excommunicated from the LDS church during that time because of her resistance to being used in the awful way that the LDS works to discriminate at a national level. I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Sonia back in the early 80's.

So it was with trepidation and some bitterness that I read as the LDS, once, again interfered in the lives of men and women in such a coldly, systematic, and hatefilled way. My plan is to work as much as I can to end the LDS church's tax exempt status because it works at such a huge level in the political arena. I believe the LDS are a political and social organization with a veneer of religious sanctity. I would like to see all religious organizations in the U.S. put on notice that constitutional campaigns of discrimination is prohibited and that they will lose their tax exempt status if they participate. It pleases me to think that a minister, under power of a church, who uses a bully pulpit, against our secular laws, will be S t o p p e d. And I say that as a minister myself. There is no room in a democracy for these despicable attempts of a church to take such power. The dark and middle ages were enough weren't they?

I hope and pray that you will find peace with a higher power and spiritual community you can believe in and that you find joy in the life you are free to live. Until the 8ate is reversed and is no longer an issue in every state of this beautiful country of ours I will work to make my life, and every queer persons life, free as well.

Blessings and Peace.