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Your Sex Life is None of Your Bishop's Business





When you grow up or live inside a system where your sexuality is treated like community property, you end up believing that your body, your desires, and even your curiosity belong to someone else’s judgment. It hits some people early. For others, it doesn’t click until years later, long after sitting in a small office across from a church leader asking questions no one should’ve asked in the first place. And it’s not just teenagers. Adults get caught in the same pattern, feeling obligated to confess things that should’ve stayed personal.

I need you to understand this... 

Your sex life is nobody’s business. 

It's most certainly not the business of the  man holding a calling that makes him your “judge in Israel.”

Turning your sexuality into something that needs review and approval doesn’t build integrity. It builds a culture where you learn to monitor yourself through someone else’s expectations. You stop listening to your own sense of right and wrong and start waiting for an authority to give you a verdict.

For teenagers, this creates early patterns of shame and self-doubt. You’re learning what you like, what feels safe, and how to understand your own body. Then you’re expected to report any “mistake,” real or imagined, to an untrained adult who wants details. It’s awkward, sure, but it’s also deeply shaping. You walk out of those interviews thinking your sexuality makes you guilty by default, that curiosity is corruption, and that the only path back to “clean” is through confession.

Adults don’t escape it either. Many grown members feel obligated to confess perfectly normal sexual experiences or private decisions in their own marriages, just because they’ve been taught their leaders need to know. People worry about losing a temple recommend or disappointing a bishop. So they walk into the same little rooms and hand over the same vulnerable parts of themselves, even though they’re fully grown, fully capable adults who should never need permission to be human.

You need to learn to trust yourself. Too many people feel that their worth is directly tied to their standing in the church. They start thinking they’re unworthy unless someone else signs off on them. They learn to see their bodies as legal problems instead of human ones. And the shame sticks. Long after leaving the church office, people carry that weight into their relationships, their marriages, and their sense of identity.

 If you ever walked out of a bishop’s office feeling ashamed or confused, that wasn’t a failure on your part. It was the system overstepping a boundary that never should’ve been crossed. Taking back your privacy is autonomy and dignity. And it’s the recognition that your sexuality is a part of your life, not a reportable offense.

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