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Pope Francis Says Teaching Gender Is Nasty; Far-Right Religious Groups Helping Mexico’s Anti-Equality Movement; Colombia’s Peace Deal Killed by Anti-LGBT Campaign?; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…esistance is led by Brian Camenker, who told an anti-gay gathering in Salt Lake City last year, “I think there is a place for being insulting and degrading, and I think I can back that up by scripture,” he said. “I think we have to look at this as a war, not as, you know, a church service.” Cyprus: Same-sex couple married on British naval base A British Army sergeant married a local civilian on a British naval base in Cyprus, “the first same-sex w…

The Year in Mormons: Top 7 Stories of 2012

By Joanna Brooks

…hunch, not a scientific observation: we’re still waiting for the Pew Forum numbers on this one. But can you really talk Mormons in 2012 without saying the names Jimmer Fredette, Manti Te’o, and Jabari Parker? Te’o, a linebacker from Laie, Hawaii, finished his senior season at Notre Dame as the most decorated defensive player in collegiate football history. Shooting guard Fredette finished his senior season at Brigham Young University as the leadin…

Politics Threaten Utah Compact on Immigration

By Joanna Brooks

…ly supported by LDS Church officials and backed by a bit of muscle on Salt Lake City’s Capitol Hill from LDS Church lobbyists. Resisting strong anti-immigrant sentiment among the most conservative sectors of the Anglo Mormon Utah base, a broad coalition of religious, business and law enforcement officials laid the groundwork for reform when they devised the Utah Compact—a statement that acknowledged the contributions of immigrants and expressed su…

Pittsburgh Paradox: A City Haunted by God and Steel

By Ed Simon

…t of the Iroquois Confederation and the revelation of the Code of Handsome Lake; from the arrival of the German utopian visionaries known as the Harmonists and the founding of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to the drafting of The Pittsburgh Platform which established Reform Judaism; there are Max Vanka’s communist murals painted in St. Nicholas Croatian Church and the icons Andy Warhol saw in St. John Chrysostom’s Byzantine Catholic Church; and the talle…

Conviction of FLDS Leader Warren Jeffs Overturned

By Joanna Brooks

…Arizona community of Short Creek, as well as with the movement of a select number of FLDS members to the faith’s remote compound in Eldorado, Texas. Jeffs will stand a new trial in Utah scheduled to begin on August 23, and he faces extradition to Texas. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is also being pressured to review state rape statutes to better deal with the situation of arranged underage marriages in polygamous communities. Two days after…

Mormon-Born Daya Mata Typifies American Yoga

By Andrea R. Jain

…to Yogananda as her guru. A member of a prestigious Mormon family in Salt Lake City, she was seventeen when she first heard Yogananda speak, and she knew immediately that she wanted to follow him as her spiritual guide. She moved to Los Angeles and joined his Self-Realization Fellowship, took vows of renunciation and became one of the first nuns in its monastic order. Having been renamed Daya Mata (Mother of Compassion), she would be one of Yogan…

“I Chose Esther”: Elizabeth Smart Testifies

By Joanna Brooks

…l marriage, as well as forays into the strange urban subculture where Salt Lake City’s ravers, absinthe-drinkers, street people, and mental illness sufferers mix. What’s so important about her testimony is this: until the 1970s or 1980s, it was not uncommon to hear LDS leaders advise women that their “virtue” or virginity was more important than their life. Our culture is slow to change, and it’s possible to encounter the remnants of that attitude…

How NOT to Investigate Mitt Romney’s Mormon Ties

By Joanna Brooks

…paign connections to found a private equity firm. Just last week, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that an LDS Church official with the same last name mistakenly used a church email account to fundraise for Romney 2012. Pay attention to the names. Mormons do. I cite these two recent stories not to suggest any kind of wrongdoing. What I am saying is that to understand the Mormon world that Mitt Romney moves in, the world that has shaped his perspecti…

Brexit Boosters: Why the Religious Right Hates the European Union

By Peter Montgomery

…ojan horse” of the sexual revolution. At last year’s WCF gathering in Salt Lake City, Okafor denounced “the West” for pressuring African nations to legalize abortion and “yield to sexual orientation and gender identity and what-have-you.” Conservative Catholic and Orthodox church officials and activists find common ground in their opposition to international agreements that support a woman’s right to abortion or legal equality for LGBT people and…

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…