Today, the Mormon Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) excommunicated Bishop Sam Young. A man whose "crime" was his "persistent aggressive efforts to persuade others to support [his cause of protecting children]".
His cause has been to ask the Mormon Church to end its policy of holding 1-on-1 interviews between untrained clergy in which sexually explicit questions have been asked of children as young as 8.
He began this protest when he learned from his adult daughters the types of things they had been asked as children. He has collected stories from thousands of people on how these interviews have caused them harm: http://protectldschildren.org/.
His request has been for the Church to simply stop conducting 1-on-1 interviews with children and to stop allowing Church leaders to ask children sexually explicit questions. That is all.
The Church's response was to excommunicate Sam for publicly opposing them.
Will you accept your children being taken into a private room with an untrained adult male to be asked questions such as:
"Do you masturbate?"
"When was the last time you watched pornography?"
"What color were your panties?"
"Did you like it?"
And more from Sam's compiled list of 29 Questions that have been asked in these interviews: https://invisiblescubit.wordpress.com/20…/…/08/29-questions/
From that list of 29 questions, I have personally been asked at least 7 of them by Church leaders at Brigham Young University while I was a student there. At BYU not participating in such interviews risks you being expelled from school by having your ecclesiastical endorsement revoked.
Read the words that Sam and his wife spoke in his defense at his excommunication hearing: https://invisiblescubit.wordpress.com/…/tribunal-testimoni…/. Tell me those are the words of an apostate, gripped by Satan.
Visit Sam's website, http://protectldschildren.org/ and tell me those are stories that can be ignored because God needs these practices to continue.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continues to require that untrained, unpaid, local leaders call children into their offices in private and ascertain their sexual purity. By their policies, only if the child demands it will a second adult be included in the room.