But we decided to make it official, and sent in the letter last week. I am glad they will no longer offically be able to include me and my family amongst their ranks, and maybe by sending in the letter amongst this backlash will make it a little more meaningful.

A different way of looking at resignation is to sever official membership with the church to (1) publicly declare as a matter of record that you are not affiliated with the organization and (2) to cut off any chance that in the future they may decide to excommunicate you for some frivolous reason of their own.

I see resignation as removing power from the Mormon church. You’re effectively telling them that they no longer have any power over you. I see sending a letter to them as a very minor effort.

Especially since there was a Supreme Court decision in the 80’s in which a member sent in her resignation letter and then they tried to excommunicate her post facto. The court said that the church has zero power in that regard. If you send them a simple little letter, then they can’t even try to discipline you in one of their kangaroo courts. The U.S. Justice system knows this, we now know this, and it’s high time the church realized that it has NO POWER when people stand up to it and say, “NO!”

Well, you certainly have a point, but then again, the only way you can make your resignation public is by talking about it, which is something I can do just as well. It’s not like the church is going to advertise the fact that you bailed.

And I don’t care if they excommunicate me because I don’t think any of their rituals have any validity to begin with (which includes my sealing ceremony, but that memory I just want to repress). Besides, I can always summon the avenging unicorn to smite them: http://www.mcphee.com/items/11554.html
It has way more powers, and you don’t need to wear magic underwear to have it as an imaginary friend, which is a huge plus in my book. And, it has four different kinds of horns. Jesus doesn’t even come close.

Speaking of imaginary friends, my husband and I went to today’s Salt Lake Join The Impact rally, which was an amazing and very positive event. But we were disappointed by the amount of God talk and theism there. You’d think being persecuted would force one to see the flaws of irrational beliefs more clearly. We got handed a flier about the struggles of gay Mormons who still “have a testimony”, and it just broke my heart that people experience this needless suffering over a cynical lawyer-run cult while realizing full well that the “kindness” of members is usually only outwardly. So while I’m glad that Salt Lake has so many tolerant people (there were quite a few straight allies there, too) who value separation of church and state, I’m a little depressed that I couldn’t relate to a significant portion of what was being said there.

Marzipan Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 9:37 pm

I know a lot of people have been resigning over this, but to me resigning just means buying into the cult’s procedures. I was out when I said I was out, and it’s not worth it to me to go to a notary and follow a protocol that Mormons made up just to show you they’re in control.

A different way of looking at resignation is to sever official membership with the church to (1) publicly declare as a matter of record that you are not affiliated with the organization and (2) to cut off any chance that in the future they may decide to excommunicate you for some frivolous reason of their own.

I see resignation as removing power from the Mormon church. You’re effectively telling them that they no longer have any power over you. I see sending a letter to them as a very minor effort.

Especially since there was a Supreme Court decision in the 80′s in which a member sent in her resignation letter and then they tried to excommunicate her post facto. The court said that the church has zero power in that regard. If you send them a simple little letter, then they can’t even try to discipline you in one of their kangaroo courts. The U.S. Justice system knows this, we now know this, and it’s high time the church realized that it has NO POWER when people stand up to it and say, “NO!”

It seems to me that leaving the Mormon’s just because you don’t agree with a particular dogma of the church is hypocritical.

Sean: why so, exactly?

(Yep, crazily enough, I’m still officially a member since I never bothered to resign my membership before.)

I think the biggest collection of letters is on Signing for Something. That site started as a collection of petitions from LDS church members to the church leaders to get them to change their stance on proposition 8, and lately has taken to gathering up information on how many people have resigned the LDS church membership over this fight.