SALT LAKE CITY—Remarking upon the unfair bias of those who take a dim view of his belief system, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints argued Monday that his faith community had just as much legitimate sexual abuse as any other organized religion. “People think that because our religion is only 200 years old our sexual abuse cases are somehow less valid than those of other faiths, but to our church’s members, the sexual abuse they’ve felt is as powerful as it is real,” said Elder Steven Bingham, 23, adding that even though Roman Catholics get all the press for covering up molestations, that doesn’t mean their church’s leaders are the only ones to do so. “The LDS church is often considered some odd offshoot of Christianity, but we have a rich history of men using their power to sexually violate women and children. It’s easy to get hung up on the novel aspects of our religious practice, like our sacred undergarments or our baptisms for the dead, but our version of worship also contains a very common by-the-numbers traumatization of small children. If more people took the time to study the LDS faith and gain a bit more understanding of how much sexual abuse has taken place in our church, I feel like we’d be considered a more mainstream religion.” At press time, Elder Bingham explained how his church even referred to the same Scripture passages that other Christian sects referred to in order to justify sexual abuse.