Arias, 32, converted to Mormonism when she began to date Alexander, then 29, in Though they were both outwardly devout, they immediately developed a sexual relationship. The trial has cast a spotlight on the tight-knit Mormon community in Mesa, Ariz. According to Patrick Mason, a professor of religion who specializes in Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, the trial shows the difficulty Mormons face in coping wiith the church's demand for chastity.
BU-trained scholar says uninformed prejudice abounds
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I thought I could make my double life work, until meeting a fellow Mormon on set forced me to confront my own contradictions. I met Aaron on a porn set at an estate in the San Fernando Valley. Me too! It was , and I was new to both Los Angeles and the adult entertainment industry. I started call-girling, doing massages at upscale hotel rooms in Beverly Hills, then nude modeling for magazines to make cash. From there, it was a smooth jump into adult entertainment, where I could make more doing video.
The Atlantic Crossword
Deborah Laake grew up believing that her passport to the higher levels of Mormon heaven was marriage to 'the One', her predestined marriage partner. Ms Laake is now an ex-Mormon, living in Phoenix, Arizona, and the author of a book in which she breaks the most sacred of the church's vows by revealing the marriage rites at the core of the faith. In her book, Secret Ceremonies, first published in the US last summer, she tells of the misery of donning the hideous undergarments she was supposed to wear, as protection from the Devil, for the rest of her life; the bizarre ritual of secret handshakes and passwords and the travesty of a wedding night that had her telephoning her mother the next morning, pleading to be rescued from a man to whom she was pledged not merely for life but for eternity. But I felt I was leaving behind me for ever the worlds of desirability and youth. I was a freak. Before her book, it seems, no one had ever written about the emotional impact of Mormon life on the average woman. She was astonished, though, when it reached number four in the New York Times best-seller list. One reviewer described it as 'an absolutely riveting account of marriage, mysticism, mumbo-jumbo, Mormonism and, finally, growth and wonder'. Another said: 'The first thing any religion worth its salt controls is its women, and when one of them speaks out she makes a strange and poignant sound.
In this era of leaks and hacks, secrets have been stolen from organizations as varied as the Democratic Party, the Vatican, Sony Pictures and Yahoo. Fifteen videos were posted online this week showing senior leaders of the Mormon Church in private meetings discussing issues including same-sex marriage, marijuana, Somali pirates and even whether the church could be vulnerable to WikiLeaks. The church has acknowledged that the videotapes are authentic. Unlike other hacks in which WikiLeaks was the culprit, this leak of videos from church headquarters in Salt Lake City is the work of disaffected Mormons who found one another online, in a Reddit forum for ex-Mormons. It comes not long after another leak of internal church documents. In a presentation that has provoked some criticism , former Senator Gordon H. Smith, a Republican of Oregon, shared with the apostles that he voted in favor of the Iraq War partly because he believed it could open the region for Mormon missionaries.
