Secret Ceremonies: Mormon Woman's Intimate Diary of Marriage and Beyond - Softcover

Born and bred in the Mormon faith, Deborah Laake grew up convinced that her only chance of eternal happiness was through marriage to "the One" - the predestined partner who would guide her through the portals of the Celestial kingdom into the highest level of Mormon heaven. But finding "the One" proved much more difficult than she had imagined. Misguidedly settling for the diminutive Monty, she endured nine months of repression, sexual dissatifaction, nylon ritual underwear and priggish rigidity in the name of Mormon matrimony before finding the courage to divorce him. But freedom from Monty only brought her into conflict with the church itself, and its enduring obsession with the sexuality of the fallen woman. This is Deborah's story, an indictment of one of the enduring bastions of male privilege, and an affirmation of identity and self-worth.