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‘Hardwired’ for Hetero Marriage, LDS Tension Mounts Over LGBT Rights

By Joanna Brooks

…uraging opposition to same-sex marriage legalization featured what veteran Salt Lake Tribune religion reporter Peggy Fletcher Stack characterized as a “new post-prop 8 tone and emphasis.” A second letter read to members in Church meetings in October, as Mother Jones’s Mencimer noted, had a more militant edge. Some sources suggest the second letter reflected stronger influence from local Hawaiian Church leaders. An old Proposition 8-style view of…

The Third Party Publicity Stunt

By Sarah Posner

…top him. The group making the threat, which came together Saturday in Salt Lake City during a break-away gathering during a meeting of the secretive Council for National Policy, includes Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who is perhaps the most influential of the group, as well as Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, the direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie and dozens of other politically-oriented conservative Christians, participan…

LDS Church, US Government Swap Positions on Polygamy

By Holly Welker

…after the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844, from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Salt Lake City, Utah, to secure that and other freedoms—only to exchange them for Utah’s statehood 50 years later. The process by which the LDS Church went from affirming polygamy as one of its most important principles to renouncing the practice and excommunicating any Mormon who engages in it is told succinctly and compellingly in The Politics of American Religious Identi…

The Psychological Cost of an LDS Mission

By Holly Welker

…well and was one reason my first mission president was always asking Salt Lake City to send him equal numbers of male and female missionaries. Instead, elders outnumbered sisters two to one. I have only a few quibbles with the article. One was the rather cursory way that organizations like Ordain Women were dealt with, though the Times absolutely made up for that on March 6, with an article detailing emails from women about changes they would li…

Glenn’s at it Again, and Again

By Joanna Brooks

Oh, Glenn Beck. Earlier this month at a Mormon symposium in Salt Lake City, I spoke on a panel about how Mormons should respond to Glenn Beck. My take: don’t underestimate him, but try not to get so worked up about him. Beck wins every time we send more chatter, more attention, or more internet “hits” his way. He’s not making any converts, he’s running out of material (witness his July foray against 1960s black theology—1960s??!!), and the spin c…

Mormon Missionary Service: Now with More Service

By Holly Welker

…hree areas devote time 5 days a week to community service. Last Friday the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Mormon missionaries in San Jose, Dallas and Denver are doing less tracting-going door to door in search of people to teach-and more service. The change began three years ago, when “San Jose leaders proposed that missionaries provide two hours of nonproselytizing community service every day, five days a week—up from the normal four…

Utah’s First Same-Sex Married Couple: A Weight Has Been Lifted From Our Heart

By Joanna Brooks

On Friday, Michael Ferguson and Seth Anderson of Salt Lake City became the first gay couple in Utah history to get a marriage license. They spoke with Religion Dispatches Saturday morning. RD: You were the first gay couple in Utah to get a marriage license! MF: We are the first gay couple in the state of Deseret to get a marriage license! RD: What are you feeling? MF: I’ve been on cloud nine for twenty hours. I’ve never felt this way before. For…

Mormons Declare Same-Sex Marriage Apostasy, Deny Baptism to Children of Same-Sex Couples; Colombian Court OKs Adoption Over Church Objections; Franklin Graham Praises Putin’s Anti-Gay Policies; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…resh from playing a visible role at the World Congress of Families in Salt Lake City, announced this week that children living with a same-sex couple, whether adopted or the natural child of one of the parents, cannot be blessed or baptized. Natural or adopted children living in a same-sex household will only be allowed to be baptized once they are 18, disavow the practice of same-sex cohabitation or marriage, and stop living within the household,…

Conviction of FLDS Leader Warren Jeffs Overturned

By Joanna Brooks

…local name for the polygamous communities of Centennial Park, AZ, Colorado City, AZ, and Hildale, UT) to see what folks on the ground are saying. In the meantime, I’ll be reading whatever Brooke Adams, the Salt Lake Tribune’s excellent beat reporter on polygamy, has to say. And I’ll be looking forward to hearing all parties have their say as the judicial process continues to move forward….

A Story in Which the Gay Mormon Does Not Die

By Joanna Brooks

…e and family Thanks to her local GSA, Alex was able to connect with a Salt Lake City lawyer named Paul Burke, and through him to a national network of LGBT civil rights advocates and experts. Many experts warned Burke that given what she’d been through, including a suicide attempt, the best thing for Alex might in fact be to get her on the next bus out of her Utah Mormon contexts and into a safer environment with a foster family. But Burke listene…