That brings me to another point that I find interesting: the apparent mandate from LDS authority saying that members aren't allowed to date non-members. The aforementioned girl felt that she was sinning because she was dating me. Having gone most of my school years to schools that are made up almost completely of Mormons, I know that this wasn't some mistaken belief unique to her. In fact, there were generally two reactions the Mormon kids had upon finding that I wasn't "one of them". They would either treat me as if I had some disease and stay away, or they would try to "cure" me. I still keep count of the number of times I've had the missionaries sicked on me (I started keeping count in 9th grade). The official count is 35, including last Thursday. lol. Maybe the question to life, the universe, and everything is "How many times must sortitus be given the first discussion before he decides to round out the set and join the Mormon mafia?" If that's so, just seven to go. 
Nothing against you Mormon peeps. You're just very determined. 
Interestingly enough, Sortitus, Ari was not a Latter-day Saint when we started dating. In fact, she was quite opposed to the thought of joining the Church. She was not LDS when we got engaged, either. Now, this certainly made a great many LDS people I know uncomfortable, and we're encouraged to date other Saints, but not a single person suggested that I was breaking any commandment. You see, we're encouraged to date "within the Covenant" because doing so generally saves Latter-day Saints a lot of heartache down the road. But we're not forbidden from doing otherwise.
This recommendation is not without sociological reason, either: statistically, marriages consisting of two individuals from different religions have a much higher divorce rate than those consisting of two religions from the same religion. When one (but not both) of those individuals is LDS, the number soars much higher. Most Latter-day Saints know individuals who married non-LDS folks, and regret it. In fact, my great grandmother cursed the fact that for nearly 50 years she had married my grandfather out of the temple (a secular wedding). The fact is, in every way, a marriage between a Latter-day Saint and a non-Latter-day Saint is statistically much less likely to be successful, for pretty obvious reasons. For these reasons, it's generally not a good idea for the two groups to date eachother.
All that said, I've never had an LDS girlfriend; it just never worked out for me that way. I've dated non-Saints my entire life, and now I'm going to marry Ari, who wasn't LDS when we started dating and got engaged (though she got baptized a little over two years ago). In my case, I knew who she was almost from the start, and knew she was a good woman. For her part, she took a much closer look at the Church than she previously had. But it shouldn't surprise you that Latter-day Saints are encouraged to date those of the same religion as them; sociologically, this is just smart, if they want to stay married.
