Today Utah’s largest employer, which happens to be The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), announced layoffs in its Publishing Services and Information Communication Systems departments.

Describing the up to eight percent reduction in those departments as “relatively small,” spokesman Michael Purdy explained that the “… action is based solely on the need to be sure that resources are being used wisely to meet the evolving needs of a global church,” which we think bears a strong resemblance to explaining nothing at all.

We give Purdy credit for adding, “We are keenly aware that behind the numbers are individuals and families.”

In October 2012, the Mormon prophet lowered the minimum age for full-time missionary service from 19 to 18 for men and 21 to 19 for women.

Applications for missionary service have skyrocketed since the change, mostly from within the newly included age range. More young people leaving for missionary service means fewer of them enrolling in a college. Hence Utah’s colleges face lower enrollment and less revenue. Click here to read The Salt Lake Tribune article.

Kody Brown of Sister Wives fame is trying overturn Utah’s anti bigamy laws. You can read about it here, in this article by Nate Carlisle and Jim Dalrymple II in the Salt Lake Tribune.

In Ontario Canada, polygamy charge isn’t the half of it

In a harrowing Vancouver Sun article, Daphne Bramham reports allegations that Fred King, prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ Restored, married and had sex with a ten-year-old and an eleven-year-old girl. Click here to read Bramham’s article.

We’re not for criminalizing polygamy provided it takes place among informed, consenting adults. Crimes that happen to be coincident with polygamy should be prosecuted on their own merits.

Where child abuse is involved, we are all for throwing the book at the goddammed perverts. The bigger, heavier, and harder the book, the better.

Members of the mainstream Mormon Church shouldn’t be smug. Early Mormon polygamist history is rife with child brides. Founder Joseph Smith took Fannie Alger, his first “plural wife,” when she was 14 or 15. And, no, that was not the customary marriage age at the time, and no, Smith did not take merely “spiritual” wives.

KSL.com reports that the State of Arizona has placed foster children in Colorado City, home of the infamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). Church prophet Warren Jeffs is serving life plus 20 years* in prison for sexually assaulting two girls. His defense? They were his “spiritual wives.”

Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson also raised concerns that one foster parent is a former member of the FLDS church.

A past in polygamy doesn’t ensure an unfit foster parent,** but we concede the concern. Combined with plopping foster kids in the backyard of a polygamist cult known for child sexual abuse, it definitely raises concerns. It establishes the opportunity, arguably the likelihood, for bad things to ensue. That alone may be sufficient cause to place the kids elsewhere. The purpose of foster care is to move kids from a bad situation to a better one. Not to a fire statistically likely to be as hot as the frying pan.

You can read the KSL.com story by clicking here.
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Outsiders may have difficulty appreciating the act of courage it is for Mormons to publicly support the LGBT community. Not long ago it could have meant excommunication. Today it continues to stir controversy and bring social consequences. No wonder The Salt Lake Tribune, and, as it turned out, the majority of its readers, named Mormons Building Bridges as 2012’s “Utahns of the Year.”

From the Tribune article by Peggy Fletcher Stack:

In the midst ... came 300 straight Mormons in their Sunday best, marching in Utah’s 2012 Gay Pride Parade, right behind "Milk" screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and before the drag queens. They called themselves Mormons Building Bridges. They were not out to debate politics or doctrine, organizers said, but to promote love and listening. Still, their simple yet potent gesture echoed around the globe, setting an example for fellow believers who then took up the style, if not the name, in 15 other Pride parades. They also attracted national and international media attention, well-known enough even for spoofing in the satirical magazine The Onion.

You can read the Salt Lake Tribune article by clicking here.

From today’s The Salt Lake Tribune: The Jeffs polygamist clan’s United Effort Plan “... trust holds most of the Hildale and Colorado City property on which many FLDS have lived and worked. But so many people have left or been evicted from the sect, it will be tough to determine who has a rightful claim to UEP property or assets, which have an estimated value of $110 million ...” Read the Tribune article by clicking here.

Mainstream Mormons should think carefully before disdaining the communal living concept. The Book of Mormon extolls it and the Doctrine and Covenants commands it. Mormon founder Joseph Smith and his successor Brigham Young strongly advocated it. That is one reason why, upon his death in 1877, separating Brigham Young’s personal from church property presented a major challenge.

Our thanks to Judith, of Philadelphia, who posted this review on Amazon.com. We especially appreciate her observing that “It’s Not About the Sex” My Ass is “not just another book by an unhappy ‘sister wife.’” Avoiding that genre was precisely our intent when we set out to write the book.

Xactware Solutions, Inc., has convinced the Lehi, Utah, city council that “Morning Glory Road” is too naughty a name for the address of their planned facility there.

Kudos to The Salt Lake Tribune for its wonderful headline, “Lehi scraps Morning Glory Road name due to erection connection.”

According to the Tribune, Xactware and the Lehi City Council have made certain that locals heretofore blissfully unaware of the unsavory connotation no longer are. Click here to read The Salt Lake Tribune article by Cimaron Neugebauer.