The Mormons are fascinating for many reasons and highly skilled at building a certain kind of American community. One of the things they are best at is spinning their clean scrubbed version of history, which as with many groups has as many despicable acts as heroic ones. They were indeed quite persecuted on their flight across the continent, but that traumatic origin story doesn't justify to me some of the less attractive aspects of modern day LDS culture. Some interesting reading:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/18/us/latter-day-saints-charity-...

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/years-sex-abuse-mo...

https://religionnews.com/2017/06/20/10-reasons-mormons-domin...

All this somewhat strained perfection does have a cost, however. Utah leads the nation in rates of anti-depressant use and several types of cosmetic surgery. [1]

1. https://www.healthresearchpolicy.org/top-3-most-requested-co...