"Neil L. Anderson [told members at] church conference in Salt Lake City that the religion has hundreds of thousands of children who live with only one parent or whose parents aren't Mormon.

Anderson, a high-ranking leader with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said the religion will continue to advocate for families led by married men and women who belong to the faith. But he said the religion should embrace other children too.

Anderson didn't mention children of gay parents. The church came under fire last November when it announced new rules banning baptisms for children living with a gay or lesbian parent."

He admonished them to be more thoughtful and sensitive toward children of all backgrounds, many of whom don't come from 'picture perfect" families.'"

Well, the fallout is clear. The damage may be irreversible. Hindsight being 20/20 vision, they were not visionary with their prophetic policy statement last fall, and are now trying to recoup some of the damage done.

Too little too late to reverse the tide? One can only hope.

After all, Stepford Wives and Norman Rockwell got nothing on the picture perfect Mormon caricatures - mythological creatures that they are.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/latest-mormon-leader-says-religion-only-true-church-172257098.html?ref=gs

I had always had the impression that a close family member had the perfect family. Large number of children, now all grown with large families of their own. Very devout LDS. Welllllll, it turns out, not so much. 3 couples in marital distress with 2 actually divorcing. One in process of leaving the church.

No one knows what really goes on within families and for years this one tried to paint a very rosy picture of happiness that was not the case at.all.

I remember families like that from church.

Some seemed so stellar that when they got divorced, no one saw it coming. And when a LDS couple gets a divorce, all their former friends scurry away in fear it may be contagious.

Not much, if any support system from the church they gave their lives and allegiance to, if you ask me. My parents left church activity following their divorce. It was probably just overwhelming what they had to cope with on a personal scale and church at the same time.

Sometimes 'perfect' families just look that way.

Maybe it's time to redefine perfect families as families that provide for and nurture their kids with love, give them the structure to learn to work and be responsible, and educate them how to live in the world.

I married into these perfect Mormon family. 20+ years later - train wreck. TRAIN WRECK I said! The whole gang.

My son and his wife have a great loving marriage, three beautiful children and both have great jobs with benefits....and they are......LUTHERANS!!!

rb

I once knew one- a handsome professional with beautiful wife and 8 really good looking kids. but eventually stuff comes apart, and a kid or two leave the church or somebody gets pregnant out of wedlock or refuses to go on a mission, or turns out to be gay and stuff like that. So in the end the vision of a perfect Mormon family (so called) is not sustainable. But these friends are still the perfect family in that they are all still really nice and really smart people. i think that Mormons lose track of what a perfect family is. Maybe a perfect family is just one that stays together no matter what the challenge is.

I like to see family portraits where dad, sweet mom, and the three kids are all holding a favorite weapon.

It has to be comforting, when dad yells "Watch my back!", that he has some hope that they can actually do so.

I've trained La Saucie (combo of whips and treats...) what her job is when I say, "Watch my six, watch my six!" ...not kidding.

I miss those whips.... but yeah. When he says "watch my 6"... I'm on it. We are the perfect couple. Picture perfect if I say so myself



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2016 01:21PM by saucie.

Unfortunately I find most real families--Mormon or not--less than inspirational.

That's why, when I'm seeking tips on how to be a better father, I'll turn to fictional TV families for guidance: the Simpsons, the Griffins from "Family Guy," Roseanne, the Bunkers...

Do the Duggar's and Bates count?

Paper Roses
Paper Roses
Oh how real those roses
Seem to be.

But they're only
Imitation
Like a perfect
Mormon Fam-i-lee!

Why if you were on facebook much, you would think every family was simply perfect. And you know what they say, a person's perception is that person's realty.

Mormon facebook is like a never ending Christmas letter that gives the yearly family report.

madalice Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mormon facebook is like a never ending Christmas
> letter that gives the yearly family report.


LOL! That's true.

Perfect!!

My first thought was "Yes, of course they exist!!!"

but, then again my idea of a picture perfect family isnt coloured by the church, and my picture doesnt have a big frame

My idea of a picture perfect family - the ones I know personally - have 1 or 2 children.There is Love all around.

Formal Marriage and traditional mommy-at-home-daddy-at-work roles are nothing to do with my idea of picture perfect

Life is like a bed of roses, including the thorns. I will say that some outsiders are so impressed that they think we have the perfect family (with the exception, of course, "the apostate"). We do take a good picture, except that some don't like my beard.

Mine is "picture perfect."
As in picture perfectly normal.
We usually get along great, but sometimes we don't.
We're usually quite happy people, but sometimes we aren't.
Most days are quite ordinary, some aren't.

It's that way with all families. Even families with two gay parents.

Some have more "sometimes" moments than others. But the only "imperfect" thing is to try and pretend (or claim) that the "sometimes" moments don't exist. Especially if you claim they don't exist in only certain *kinds* of families.

It doesn't require a mormon white male father, a mormon white female mother, and 8 children to be a "picture perfect" family. It just takes people who love each other enough to put up with human foibles, and to support each other come what may. And honestly, I'd be there are far more "non-traditional" families in THAT category than there are mormon ones.

I know and have known some who KNOW they fit that bill.

Most are in the Mormon Sphere. And, they know they fit the mold because, gosh, they do not smoke or drink, they attend church every Sunday dressed appropriately carrying the quad (who knows if they ever open it?), and will gossip right on cue if asked about so and so by the bishop. Their kids are raised very strictly and, when young, seem to toe the line. However, things quickly change when those kids hit the teen dimension. Suddenly, the parents claim, Satan is trying extra hard to get at 'their' kids because they are members of the true church and have been raised to know what is right.

Thus, as the stories unfold, these "Picture Perfect" Families join the ranks of regular-run-of-the-mill-families that have, can you believe it?, downs as well as ups.

Isn't it amazing?!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2016 12:55AM by presleynfactsrock.

Some of the most whacko kids emerge from some of the most stellar families in the church. Rank and file is no harbinger of insuring the kids would follow in their parents footsteps. Not at all. Sometimes those kids just went the opposite direction like rubber bands flipping from one end of the room to the other.

Picture perfect only relates to a photograph!

And nowadays those photos are often photo shopped, touched up, etc.

Though not where Neil Anderson is concerned.

It's all about the presentation. As long as someone looks good, they must be good. If a family looks like they have it all together, then by George they do.

Until the cracks begin to show and the paint begins to wear thin, no one is any the wiser. That's just how the church decrees.
.
If you're a family in Zion, with two heterosexual parents and 2.6 children, holding ward or stake positions, paying tithes, temple attendance yada yada, that is what he means.

In Mormonism the picture postcard perfect image is what I associate with as the Stepford Wives. The more robotic, the better.

There really is little/no room for individuality or creative expression outside of the indoctrination and dogma. Image over substance, in other words.

Isn't it sad that there's this untenable standard the LDS church still holds its members to, as in "picture perfect" families?

Just very, very sad and troubling when you consider all the damage and harm it has inflicted on those who don't measure up to the picture perfect stereotypes it sets as the bar. :/



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2016 10:13PM by Amyjo.

the generations before mine was somewhat picture perfect. They grew up in Logan, happy-happy-valley 1950's, no diversity, no divorce, everyone went to church even apostates, booming economy. Never read anti, always in church, 5 kids, two boys who were lucky enough to get into white collar work, three girls that could play around in college in the humanities. All married tbm and so the grandkids all came. Really big pioneer inheritances. Excellent property bought for free back in the day, or less than $10 an acre.

My generation came, and not so prosperous, changed careers a few times. Complex job market, singlehood lingering. church less relevant.

Good insights, here.

In my pioneer family the first generation to arrive from Wales to Ogden (1860's) that I carry the surname, was the most successful monetarily. Great great grandpa did very well with his tailor business, and had 20 children in total, spread out over two successive marriages. My great granddad, his firstborn, was a pioneer and sent by the Mormon church to help colonize a rural community in Wyoming, after my grandfather was born. His children were all farmers and ranchers who either stayed there in the Wyoming Basin or moved away staying nearby in the intermountain west.

My grandpa was a rancher/farmer for most of his life. That was the only life he knew.

Education as in college didn't begin with his children, it did with some of his grandchildren. The more education, the less relevant LDSism became from my experience. Single parenthood kind of clinched it for me in the end. :)

"Life *is* what happens when we're making other plans." (John Lennon - the greater visionary by far!)

One just needs to look at heavenly fathers family to see that perfect families don't exist.

Mother is never talked about.
1/3 of his children kicked out of the house.
lets bad thinks happen to his children.
keeps secrets from family.
Can't control his children.
demands respect without question.
Doesn't own up to his own faults cuz "he's perfect".

Likewise, the bible. All the big heroes and superstars in the bible came from totally messed up, dysfunctional home lives. Were less than stellar in their communities and most lacked material wealth.

God uses the weak things of the world to confound the wise, it's said in scripture.

When I see how screwy my family was, that brought me hope. Only the Mormon god on the other hand, seems to demand perfection from his children.

The God of the bible, not so much.

When first married and raising a "proper Mormon family," we moved into a new Utah subdivision where everyone was about the same age. All TBM, all having lots of kids like the Prophet says. How did it all turn out? Well, as for me and mine, we got divorced after 19 years of marriage and 7 kids. Fortunately, they all survived and are successful. Here's what happened to the other TBM neighbors. Two men turned out to be gay and divorced their wives, three women had affairs and left, one guy was boinking his daughters and ended up in prison, another guy became a polygamist and his wife left him. The bishop's wife had a mental breakdown, set her own house on fire and severely wounded herself and her own children. Probably a very typical Mormon neighborhood, actually.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/2016 08:45PM by rationalist01.

Okay, after reading this, I give it the Triple A award!

Whew! Glad you made it out of there as well as you did, with children intact.

rationalist01 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "...one guy was boinking his daughters and ended
> up in prison...."


Raping, sexually assaulting, molesting--but don't trivialize it by saying "boinking."

When I first lived outside Utah in my young teenage years I discovered a powerful lesson in this. "Gentile" families didn't contain the "gospel" in the way I had been taught that my own did but yet, overall, they really didn't seem to be doing any better or worse. Some were happy and some were not. Rarely I'd encounter a family, Mormon or otherwise, who was either living the dream or, just as often, running away from a nightmare. There was simply no apparent difference in their numbers. People lived like people do regardless. In hindsight this is a reality that shouldn't have surprised me when I first moved to a different state. I mean, what exactly was I expecting? Sodom and Gomorrah? Pitchforks and horns? If there's a way to 'Picture Perfect' families I just can't see where the LDS Church has any special knowledge to bear on the subject that meaningfully adds to what's already out there. They seem, to me, to put greater organizational emphasis and thought much of the time into dead families rather than living ones. I have to wonder if we're only meant to sort out the ramifications of these apparent priorities for our current lives, the ones over which we truly have some meaningful control, later...

Two very handsome men on the youngish side of 30-40sh, a couple of very proud papas with their fraternal twin sons, babies not more than a couple of months old at the most, were at synagogue today showing off their newborn sons.

The boys were just adorable. Proud pappies taking them up to be on the bemah during the children's portion of the service. Rabbi got to hold up one of the babies, cuddling him as if he were his own son during the "Ein Keloheinu" song.

It was one big Kodak moment. The fathers in their kippas with tallits, while their baby boys wearing kippas would fall off their little heads and be scooped right back up to be placed on them again. It didn't really matter either way as to their cuteness factor.

They were very much a part of the larger Jewish faith community we call "home," as part of the same tribe. Fully accepted. Fully embraced by the community. Fully members, participating the same as anyone else and their children.

Now, compare this to the chasm found inside Mormonism. If you're gay, don't bother going or sending your children, because you won't be accepted into the body of Christ as part of the Mormon tribe, nor will their children.

In the Jewish family they are fully 100% accepted just as they are.

What a difference a faith makes!

It is love that makes the world go round. Just love. In the end, it's all that matters.

It is just one of the key features that marks a huge difference between a fully "functional" faith community, and a totally "dysfunctional" one, as the LDS demonstrates so ardently.

And another distinguishing aspect of what makes LDS a cult, rather than a faith community by practicing exclusion instead of inclusion.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2016 02:05PM by Amyjo.