Mark Hofmann was a forger and shrewd observer of human behavior. Like any good con-man, he knew part of his success manufacturing and selling fake historical documents depended on willing victims – people who wanted to believe his claims.
Growing up Mormon, Hofmann realized he was surrounded by credulous people who were trained to trust those who presented themselves as authorities ...
From his years of poking around old documents and studying church history, Hofmann knew there were skeletons in the Mormon closet. Authentic LDS history is far murkier than the official version. He also knew the church was interested in acquiring potentially embarrassing documents so they could suppress them ...
So Hofmann concocted the ‘Salamander letter’, an account of Joseph Smith encountering a talking salamander that turned into an angel. The forgery neatly connected the Smith family’s occult practices with the origins of Mormonism ...
How is it that church leaders could meet several times with Mark Hofmann and never discern the dark spirit inside him? How could they not recognize the devil within their midst? And how many times before had they failed at similar challenges? How many more times would they fail? ...
What about the church’s document experts? Well, they turned out not to be so expert.
Before Hofmann started blowing up people, the church trumpeted the Salamander letter as a marvelous, wonderful new find while carefully spinning its content. After law enforcement forgery experts declared the Salamander letter a fake, however, the brethren had to spin their way back out without making it look like they had been duped and swindled. Furthermore, they resisted cooperating with the investigation out of fear their ineptitude would be further exposed.
The Hofmann case was a shameful moment of ecclesiastical bungling. I don’t imagine it’s an isolated case. The brethren work pretty much in secret, with no checks and balances, answering to no one, except each other and the still, small voices they hear in their heads. Stray Mutt, board post ‘For Newbies and Lurking TBMs – A Review of the Hofmann Case’
A Guide to Self-Control:
1) Never touch the intimate parts of your body except during normal toilet processes. Avoid being alone as much as possible. Find good company and stay in this good company ...
3) When you bathe, do not admire yourself in a mirror. Never stay in the bath more than five or six minutes – just long enough to bathe and dry and dress and then get out of the bathroom into a room where you will have some member of your family present.
4) When in bed, if that is where you have your problem for the most part, dress yourself for the night so securely that you cannot easily touch your vital parts, and so that it would be difficult and time consuming for you to remove those clothes. By the time you started to remove protective clothing you would have sufficiently controlled your thinking that the temptation would leave you.
5) If the temptation seems overpowering while you are in bed, get out of bed and go into the kitchen and fix yourself a snack, even if it is in the middle of the night, and even if you are not hungry, and despite your fears of gaining weight. The purpose behind this suggestion is that you get your mind on something else. You are the subject of your thoughts, so to speak.
… During this period of control several things can be done to make the process easier and more effective ...
19) In very severe cases it may be necessary to tie a hand to the bed frame with a tie in order that the habit of masturbating in a semi-sleep condition can be broken. This can also be accomplished by wearing several layers of clothing which would be difficult to remove while half asleep. Mark E Petersen, letter cited Missionary Guide c.1970
This little factory moves quietly into operation as a normal and expected pattern of growth and begins to produce the life-giving substance. It will do so perhaps as long as you live. It works very slowly. That is the way it should be. For the most part, unless you tamper with it, you will hardly be aware that it is working at all.
As you move closer to manhood, this little factory will sometimes produce an oversupply of this substance. The Lord has provided a way for that to be released. It will happen without any help or without any resistance from you.
There is, however, something you should not do. Sometimes a young man does not understand. Perhaps he is encouraged by unwise or unworthy companions to tamper with that factory. He might fondle himself and open that release valve. This you shouldn’t do, for if you do that, the little factory will speed up. You will then be tempted again and again to release it. You can quickly be subjected to a habit, one that is not worthy, one that will leave you feeling depressed and feeling guilty. Resist that temptation. Do not be guilty of tampering or playing with this sacred power of creation. Keep it in reserve for the time when it can be righteously employed. Boyd K Packer, Church-wide pamphlet ‘For Young Men Only’ 1976-2006
Joy McKinney, former Miss Wyoming, joined the Morg from the Appalachians. Her first devout act was to try and get off with Wayne Osmond. Rebuffed, she started a relationship with Kirk Anderson. When Kirk tried to end the affair, Joy stalked him around the US and harassed him so seriously he requested a posting overseas. The Morg’s response was to send him on a mission (where Hamlet was sent in the throes of madness) to England.
Joy hired a private detective, tracked him down and descended on London in tow with a young Keith May who seems to have been besotted with the free-wheeling Joy.
Naturally, Joy and Keith threatened Kirk with replica guns, bundled him into a car and carted him to a rented cottage, where he was held captive for three days. The London Evening News of 23rd November 1977 reported the committal proceedings at Epsom magistrates court:
A young Mormon missionary told today how an ex-beauty queen kidnapped him and then made love to him while he was chained to a bed in a lonely cottage.
Kirk Anderson, 21, said the girl, Joy McKinney, and her friend, Keith May, tied down his arms and legs with leather straps, padlocks, chains and rope, so that he was spreadeagled.
May then left the room while Miss McKinney tore off his blue silk pyjamas.
‘She grabbed my pyjamas from just around my neck and tore them from my body. The chains were tight and I could not move. She proceeded to have intercourse. I did not want it to happen. I was very upset.’
Joy McKinney was a tabloid star. Suddenly, little Britain discovered Mormon Big Love. Joy lapped the attention and London loved her. At a bail hearing, when it is not normally necessary to give evidence, Joy McKinney spilt the sexual beans. From the witness-box Joy spoke in a fabulously exotic Southern drawl and with no sense of shyness or inhibition. London 1977 was treated to the lurid details of Mormon Big Love Missionary Style.
‘Kirk has to be tied up to have an orgasm. I co-operated because I loved him and wanted to help him. Sexual bondage turns him on because he doesn't have to feel guilty. The thought of being powerless before a woman seems to excite him. I didn’t have to give him oral sex ... I did do it at his request because he likes it.’
And in her most famous phrase, she drawled: ‘I loved Kirk so much that I would have skied down Mount Everest in the nude with a carnation up my nose.’
The newspapers exploded. So did the magistrates. Joy McKinney was released on bail with a charge of kidnapping chained to her wrist (a charge of rape could not then brought when the victim, a man, seemed to enjoy being a sex slave; no-one in the country seemed to give a toss about the alleged victim).
Joyce McKinney, London’s hottest star, did a runner. The trial was set for May 1978, but Joy jumped bail, fled the country and arrived in America via Ireland and Canada. Without sub-judice restrictions the gutter press printed every salacious details including her not-so Mormon career in soft porn.
Joy McKinney was later identified by the Salt Lake Tribune in August 2008 as one Bernann McKinney, gaining further fame by buying five cloned pitbulls of her dead dog Booger. esias, board post 11th May 2009, ‘Male Mormon Missionary Kidnapped For a Sex Slave!’
We Can Prove The Book of Mormon Is Not True.
The Dodo [Jeffrey Holland] the other day declared dolorously the Book of Mormon was uncontestable, of divine origin, crafted without fault, and a construct without equal. They make the same claims for the Koran of course. But we may ask – where do Mormons keep their literary critical faculty? The Book of Mormon is an insipid dreadful doleful dollop of donkey-doo-doos crammed with clichés, full of loose ends, improbabilities, stories with a remarkable similarity to those in the Bible, whole chapters of Isaias ripped, needless repetition on seemingly gold plates where space is at a premium, and fails the first hurdle of a test of the English language – Joseph Smith and the golden bible company – are limited by their sense of the English language disguising the faults in mock-seventeenth century clichés. We know more or less what books were loaded in the local library, to which manuscripts they had access, who influenced to a high degree of probability which sections. I would call brothers and sisters from this Board to appear for the prosecution and the evidence for the prosecution would go on for weeks. So let’s play the dodo-deterrent guide to randomly spotting the plagiarism, the oddism, the anachronism, tautology, repetition, or just plain insanity when Brother Joseph loses it. Uncontestable? You’re having a Turkish bath. Here’s verses at random awash with tautology, plagiarism ... For the most perfect course read a cluster-frack of the English language. (see end of section for full directory of linguistic problems)