As I was growing up my grandmother worked with very young children daily as part of her career, and as a result had amassed a large collection of childrens books which she would frequently read to them. Even well after I had outgrown these books, she would still encourage me to read them with her, if nothing else for the benefit of younger siblings and cousins. One such book was titled Rainbow Fish, an illustrated book about a fish that had shiny scales. All the other fish were jealous, and wouldn’t associate with him, until he decided to start sharing the scales with the other fish. Apparently they’re removable. After this they become friends.

When I reached the point of the story where the fish decides to share his scales the story took a dark turn that I wasn’t expecting. Up to that point it looked like it was going to be a heartwarming story about accepting someone who is different, and being happy about being who you are. After all, on real fish scales are part of the animal’s body that cannot be changed. When he started removing the scales like they were stickers and sharing them then they were no longer an unchangeable part of who he was, but something of a currency that he uses to buy shallow friends with.

I’m certain this was not the intended message. The author probably meant this to be a story about selfishness and sharing, and part of the audience probably did receive that message, but it does illustrate how easy it is for an otherwise positive and uplifting message to backfire.

Shortly after prop 8 I had the opportunity to interact with a number of LGBT ex-Mormons who remember all too well what messages they received. A talk that uses uplifting and encouraging words telling members of the congregation that they are children of God and same-gender attraction can be overcome may come across to most as uplifting, but to people facing that they end up in a vicious cycle of repentance, self-loathing, guilt and fighting their sexuality. When they hear a prophet or apostle say that it’s possible to “change” and they fail then they have failed God. Some have articulated that experience as feeling that God hates you. Think about the psychological consequences of that for a moment. It became clear to me why severe depression and often suicide quickly kicks in for many of these people. Unlike the scales on the fictional Rainbow Fish, homosexuality isn’t something you can just change on a whim and suddenly make things right.

This doesn’t just affect LGBT Mormons. Many individuals are affected by it, stories abound in the ex-Mormon community from people who considered suicide or have friends and family members that followed through over masturbation, premarital sex and in some cases women fell into depression for being called to repentance after being raped; and these are just the incidents I know about. Often, when bringing this up, the response is to “show me the talks. The leadership doesn’t teach that.” Of course they don’t, but what the leaders say and what the members hear are two completely different things.

Even outside of Church, the urge to share didactic stories and teach morals is a desire many of us carry out of Mormonism. But in doing that, it’s important to choose morals carefully, because an uplifting story can become destructive very quickly if it is not carefully thought through in much the same way “you can do it” can become “I’ve failed God.” This obviously doesn’t mean being didactic is bad or dangerous, I can’t imagine anyone thinking friends need to be bought because they read Rainbow Fish, but children reading that book don’t think it’s written by a prophet who speaks directly to God. It doesn’t have the power to destroy lives like a bishop’s talk or a conference talk does.

It’s one thing to say that the church is destructive, and it’s easy to point at the suicides as evidence for this claim, but it’s another thing entirely to describe how they got there.

The 1942 book The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis is an epistolary style book containing the letters of Screwtape, an experienced demon, to his nephew Wormwood who is in training. He advises his nephew on his efforts to tempt and secure damnation for “the patient.” The first time I read this book I was still thoroughly indoctrinated as a Mormon, and I remember distinctly how I felt as I read each of Screwtapes letters. It was like reading letters from your enemy, all things that he thought good were evil and all things evil he thought good. This created a bit of disdain mixed with morbid fascination as I followed his tactics, despite Lewis’ theology not necessarily matching my own.

Since losing my faith I have put a great deal of effort into being as objective and rational as possible on every issue possible (within reason), and as a result my conclusions often landed far from where I expected, sometimes with controversial results. While it is true that statistics don’t tell the whole story, they are still a relevant data point, and can direct further research. Reading that book would be a very different experience for me now because while some of my views haven’t changed, some have changed to neutrality, others have reversed entirely. But I haven’t forgotten how I felt about Screwtape the first time I read that book.

It first struck me when the church was pushing for Prop 8 in California. Being at BYU at the time, I was surrounded by people saying how important the bill was, speaking of the LGBT community as though they weren’t human beings (through frustrated remarks and attempts at humor) with no regard for whether someone who was the target of their ridicule was present. This, to me, was exactly like my first reading of The Screwtape Letters, only with the added intensity of reality that fiction can hardly mimic.

After leaving that environment it was quite tempting to ignore problems like this, but the more I’ve seen “values” being pushed into law the more obvious it becomes that doing nothing is a dangerous position. But the important thing to remember is that the people who are pushing for legislation like this truly believe that they are doing a good thing. They push for abstinence-only sex education despite such education invariably leading to higher teen pregnancy rates and rampant spread of STDs, they push for anti-abortion laws despite the availability of safe abortions saving far  more lives, they push against contraception despite it’s ability to prevent abortions or infants being born to parents that are ill prepared, they push against pornography despite the fact that making it forbidden makes it potentially addictive, they push against stem cell research despite its potential to save millions of lives, they push against the teaching of evolution despite the fact that understanding this could inform our behavior and prevent things like bacterias from resisting antibiotics or invasive plants and pests from resisting poisons, they deny global warming despite the evidence and the clear and present danger from legislating against taking action, they push against education because it might give their children the tools they need to leave religion despite putting them at a disadvantage in the workplace, and that’s before we even get started on the way they treat gays.

The above list is a bit oversimplified, but it gets my point across. The justification for all this is that they are acting on their morals. It’s the “right” thing to do. They really believe they’re the “good guys.” Understanding this will also mean that any opposing view will make them uncomfortable, in much the same way that Screwtape once made me uncomfortable.

It’s easy to pin the blame on religion. In truth, anyone sufficiently lacking in education can be easily manipulated with or without a church. In many places in Europe religion is almost a thing of the past, but a very different kind of superstition took its place.

Alternative medicine, astrology, crystal healing and other nonsense took its place. Many in the atheist community like to beat the end-of-religion drum while ignoring the fact that religion is a symptom of a bigger problem, that being a lack of education. Or more specifically, lack of critical thinking skills. This sets people up to be taken advantage of, and it’s not much of a stretch to go from there to the chain of ill-advised agendas that they stand behind.

In truth it really doesn’t matter if you believe in a deity, there are plenty of people in “liberal” churches out there. The danger is in lacking the defenses against being manipulated.

In the meantime, perhaps I’d settle for Screwtape for president. If a better society will lead to damnation, sign me up.