My “Court of Love”

I’m a bit uncomfortable with posting this. I guess it’s because church discipline is such a forbidden topic. Ironically, I’m more uncomfortable discussing my church court experience than I am my sexual experiences. But given that this is a blog about Mormon sexuality, and that expressions extra-marital sexuality might often lead to church discipline, a discussion of church courts seems warranted.

I won’t summarize my entire experience here, but will just offer some highlights:

1) I was pretty young when I went through a Court and it was both mortifying and intimidating to be faced with a group of older men that I barely knew. I cried almost the whole time–probably so much that I was unable to speak clearly.

2) In addition to crying, I begged the men not to revoke my membership. I didn’t want to suffer the embarrassment of excommunication (at the time I was very active in my ward and had a stake-level calling). My concern at the time was not so much about my eternal salvation, but about the very real possibility that I’d be humiliated in front of my LDS friends.

3) I didn’t end up getting ex’d, but my Bishop told me afterwards that if I ever screwed up again I would be. He intimated that the church would be closely watching me. For many years after that I assumed that my church records had some sort of an indication about my court and that every bishop I had knew about it. To this day, I still don’t know if that’s true, but I think it’s not.

4) The church discipline ‘worked’ on some level because I was far more careful about my sexual activity afterwards. But on another level, it really just confirmed to me that I was an awful person. I was so convinced of my sinfulness that I stopped listening to rock music altogether. I stopped watching anything stronger than a PG movie–not even PG-13. I read the scriptures for an hour every night Anytime anything bad happened to me I knew it was because I deserved bad things to happen to me because of my sinful nature.

5) I dwelt long and hard on the scriptures that talked about fornication being next to murder in seriousness. There were many times I thought it would be far better for me to be dead–because at least then I wouldn’t be tempted to sin again.

6) I’m not sure if there are gender differences in how men and women are treated in church courts, but I know that for me, my being female probably helped me to get a lighter ’sentence.’ It probably also helped that I had a good track record in the church and came from a well-regarded LDS family.

Mr. Deity on masturbation

“It’s like living in front of the Bellagio…”