my issues with the ward started when I was handed a pamphlet by Vegan Outreach. I felt sorry for what factory farmed animals go through.I started cooking vegan meals. I started telling all the ward members about their unhealthy meals, and how many animals could be spared pain if they switched their diet. It really ticked them off because they all loved meat. I started to campaign for animal rights, and a higher minimum wage. Quickly, I realized that my values were not their values. It began my descent out of Mormonism. When I told my bishop I wanted out of the church, he had a Thank God look on his face and was eager to process my resignation.

Good job on all accounts. You care about people and animals? You make a lousy Mormon.

I'm laughing about the payback in this statement... treating the ward the same way they treat others (with no boundaries) is amusing (although also hurtful to the vegan lifestyle cause).

Me too. The irony.

Q: how do you tell if a person is a vegan ?

A: Don't worry. He/she will tell YOU.

I agree that there are some benefits to the Vegan diet. However, I don't thinking preaching the activism part about how you feel the pain and suffering of animal slaughter should be anyone else's concern but your own. If people like meat, will let them eat it. Continue buying your vegetables and eat the way you want to. There is always salad available at most big group dinner and potlucks.

No need to spoil someone else's experience in eating meat.

A friend of mine commented on his trip to a health food store. He observed that not one customer looked happy or had a smile.

He found it very telling.

I am not a vegan or vegetarian but eat "greener" and healthier than I ever did 30 years ago....but the fact you piss off a whole bunch of Mormons means YOU ROCK!!!

Ron Burr

A vegetarian Sister Mishie (back in 1970 in France) got up in front of the whole zone (at a zone conference), when Apostle Marion Romney was visiting.

Said said vegetarian, to Romney: I believe that the Word of Wisdom directs us to eat little meat, and I think it's a good thing to go the next step and just eat only vegetables and fruits, and I wonder what the church thinks about that.

Replied Romney (I remember this word-for-word): "Well, you can not eat meat if you want to. But I like meat and I eat a lot of it. Next question?"

If we don't eat chickens, who will?

Anyway, my twins were vegetarian when they went off to UVSC and lived with some Mormon guys. They got bullied about that and were told (incorrectly, as it turns out) that as a Mormon you had to eat meat.

Still, who would eat the chickens, I ask? I eat the free-range ones. Mm. Mm-mm. Them's good eatin'. So's bacon. I could form my whole life around eating bacon. And I'm experimenting a bit with making sausage and may invest in equipment for it. I'm just saying that meat has its place. Like in sausage. I eat but a very little meat, however. But when I do, I prefer bacon. Or sausage. Or chicken. Or chicken bacon. Made with sausage.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2014 03:19PM by cludgie.

Thanks! Good to have friends. Don't forget to pay me some tithing on the way out.

Get Zaycon bacon.

Oh my holy lord it's good. Best I've ever had.

You could have been the lady in the New Yorker cartoon: "I've only been gluten-free for a week, but I'm already really annoying."


https://www.google.com/search?q=gluten+free+for+a+week+but+i+m+already+really+annoying

Hey, I have to be gluten free because of Celiac (diagnosed in 2001, before it was cool) and I really try not to be annoying or overboard with it. My Mom's wheat bread made with her own dear hands did not do me much good when I was young!

I knew I'd fish somebody with Celiac out of the water with this joke. Still, it's a good joke because so many people do the gluten-free thing for no particular reason other than some fad. I made the people at Angeline the Baker in Sisters, OR, mad because I didn't know that all their stuff was gluten-free. Damn hippies. I told them that, dammit, I wanted gluten, and I wanted it now. So we left and went to a better bakery on the main street. I had a maple bar. The taste of the gluten with the maple icing washed over me as I dunked it in coffee and bit off the soggy ends of it. But I don't have Celiac. If it makes you feel any better, I am a bit lactose intolerant.

With no rancor intended, I'd just like to gently point out to the original poster that proselytizing for conformance to some idealized standard (veganism) appears to many of us as a very mormon-like thing to do...so you'll probably find little support for it here. Since leaving the mormon version of that attitude, many of us have little tolerance for it :)
Your "mistake" was in trying to use the mormons' own tactics on the mormons, for something other than mormonism. A major "sin!"
Only belief in the true church should be proselytized that way!

Glad you got out.

babylove ,go to utahkrishnas.org look under Latter Day Saints and Concern for Animals it will blow your mind what LDS prophets have said about the killing of animals and eating of meat

I'm not a vegan, not even a vegetarian, but I eat so many vegetarian meals at work new colleagues often think I am a vegetarian. They also ask me for my recipes since they notice I stay in a very good shape while eating enormous amounts (during my 8-hour working day, I eat two hot and one cold meal at the office) and they also notice that what I eat looks delicious. A new colleague recently was told, "Mateo doesn't eat. He dines."

As for a vegan diet, it is too strict for me (I love cheese and eggs occasionally) but I know a vegan restaurant where I go several times a week. And the vegans I know aren't pushy or preachy. If they were, you can bet I would be avoiding them. But go ahead and preach among the mormons. Give them a dose of their own medicine.

One thing vegans/vegetarians don't consider is that if every one gave up meat it would mean the extinction of cattle, chickens, pigs and such. No one will raise them if there's no money in it.

That doesn't sound right to me. Cows still make milk, and chickens still lay eggs, both of which many vegetarians eat. I have known of people who keep pigs as pets. I also know people who raise chickens as a hobby (without ever eating them). So, while it's true that there would be far fewer chickens and cows and pigs, I don't really see actual extinction as a threat.

Plus, I would think that many people who are concerned about animal welfare would say that it's not exactly a tragedy if there are fewer animals who are born, only to then suffer through a short existence and eventual slaughter. Fewer animals suffering is a good thing, no?

Of course, it's a moot point, because the world is not turning vegan any time soon.

Beef cattle are different breeds than milk cows. Pet pigs are different breeds than eating pigs.

But wouldn't all those spirit pigs get trapped in the pre-existence if we didn't bring them into the world . . . even if we eat them and send them right back.

They are already having to give up all sorts of other stuff - I'm sure it's really annoying to have someone pushing even more guilt and self-denial.

A non-priesthood-holding woman no less. And it might sound just a little too liberal too.

Proselytizing is pretty well always bad form in my book. Basically when you do that you are telling other people they are wrong and you are right in one of the most dickish fashions available. While I enjoy that the OP used one of the mormons weapons against them, doing that to normal people is not cool.

I seen a bumper sticker recently

If God didn't want us to eat animals, he would not have made them out of meat.

He ain't lyin'.

If I was god, I would only want my children to sacrifice pigs to me. slow roasted in the ground covered in banana leaves.

People don't want someone preaching to them, even if it's just about their diet.

I guess anything "to tick off the whole ward" is good enough in my book!

Everyone has a good reason to leave the cult, and your reason was
a good one too!

But the whole vegan thing would not work for me...I gotta have my meat.

Congratulations on leaving the cult...I'm very happy for you!

What a great story babylove!

That may have been mine had I not left physically & geographically (attending-"activity") just before finding health and vitality through food, diet and generally ("meat" treatment & production, while the animal is alive) vegetarian lifestyles- and I even thought then that's like the WOW!

Nobody wants to hear it though. Nobody wants the truth... hardly.

We (can) live happily, freely and prosperously outside the Mormon Church [and they can eat all their chickens, pigs and cows]

So glad you found out. It is always a beautiful day when you tell the church to fo.

Welcome to love.
Keep posting baby.

M@t

I've been vegan for a couple years now. My husband is vegetarian. I hate when he eats dairy or eggs, but it's his choice. I might cringe when a family member eats beef, but it's their choice. Hell last week I bought my mom a rotisserie chicken and tried not to gag sll the way home, but I did call and ask if she needed anything. And to be fair, she said only get it if you feel like you can.

People will always have different beliefs and philosophies. The key is when we stop shoving it down everyone's throats.

I don't think your values are my values either. I'm in favor of eating meat and how we process animals. Also, I don't like prostelytizing. We don't all have to be the same, but my assumption is that most people might have been more angry at the preaching than they were at the difference in your values.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2014 09:02PM by snb.

I was not "preaching" per se. The truth has to be revealed somehow. Would the civil rights law have passed if people had kept their mouth shut? Meat consumption is one of the biggest causes of environmental destruction. I am always friendly when I point out the benefits of a vegan diet. If I had not had been given a pamphlet, I would not have changed.