Mormons and magic underwear

Wow, the things you discover on the Internet. It all started out so innocently. I was just trying to locate a photo I saw once before. It was of a one-lane road, in Germany I think, with a security arm. There were no barricades on the sides of the road though, not even a curb, and you could see in the photo a well-worn path in the grass median next to the arm where cars had simply driven around it. A great metaphorical image.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember where I saw it. It was a couple of years ago. So I resorted to just trying whatever keywords I could think of in Google and hoping for the best. No luck. I was thinking it might have been on a Demotivators poster, so I added that word to my search. I still didn’t find it, but I did find a page devoted to testimonials from “recovering Mormons” regarding their former church’s practice of requiring its members to wear special undergarments at all times (even in the intimate company of their spouses). This is the kind of seemingly ludicrous (to an outsider) practice that you occasionally hear about regarding “other” religions and think they must be jokes concocted by detractors. And yet, it turns out to be true.

Now, I can certainly understand the church’s (less than noble, in my opinion) motivations for imposing this kind of restriction on its members. I just can’t believe anyone would actually go along with it.