Tag Archives: Mormons

Courthouse News reports: The man who used his power as a religious leader in a small Arizona town to marry and repeatedly rape 10 underage girls for nearly two years will spend the next 50 in a federal prison. The young women once victimized by Samuel Rappylee Bateman faced him in a Phoenix courtroom for the last time Monday afternoon. …

Salt Lake City’s Fox affiliate reports: A former church bishop and mayor of West Bountiful was sentenced to prison Thursday on child sex abuse charges following incidents that dated back to the 80s. Carl Johnson was given a sentence of 9 years to life for one felony, and another sentence of 1-to-15 years for a second. The sentences handed down …

The Daily Beast reports: Samuel Bateman, a self-proclaimed “prophet” of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, had 20 wives, many of whom were under the age of 15, according to an FBI investigation. Bateman drank wine and had sex with a male follower, Moroni Johnson, in a motel room in Lincoln, Nebraska, in front of his underage …

The Deseret News reports: As the Senate considers legislation to protect same-sex marriage, a new poll shows nearly three-fourths of Utahns support legal same-sex marriage. The new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics survey found 72% of residents agree that marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages. The poll …

Law & Crime reports: The Arizona man who stormed the Capitol dressed in what he said was the garb of a figure from the Book of Mormon has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. “I’m representing Captain Moroni, Captain Moroni of the Book of Mormon,” Nathan Wayne Entrekin, 48, told another person, according to the statement of facts. “A William Wallace …

The Associated Press reports: An advertising-technology billionaire has formally resigned his membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and rebuked the faith over social issues and LGBTQ rights in an unusual public move. Jeff T. Green has pledged to donate 90% of his estimated $5 billion fortune, starting with a $600,000 donation to the LGBTQ-rights group Equality …

The Salt Lake Tribune reports: A bill that would effectively decriminalize polygamy and dispel fears of prosecution for plural marriage among consenting adults sailed through the Utah Senate on Tuesday. Sen. Deidre Henderson’s bill would reclassify bigamy as an infraction, codifying the practice of the Utah attorney general’s office not to prosecute otherwise law-abiding polygamists. An infraction, like a traffic …

The Friendly Atheist reports: The part of the Mormon Church that oversees the Pacific region has claimed responsibility for causing it to rain in Australia, saying a prayer and fasting event brought life-saving precipitation down on a country where fires have burned 12.35 million acres of land (so far). The Pacific Area Presidency, made up of an area president and …

The Washington Post reports: A former investment manager alleges in a whistleblower complaint to the Internal Revenue Service that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has amassed about $100 billion in accounts intended for charitable purposes, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by The Washington Post. The confidential document, received by the IRS on Nov. 21, …

The Salt Lake Tribune reports: A year and a half ago, FamilySearch.org projected it would include same-sex parents and same-sex couples in its genealogy website sometime in 2019 — and it has, with three weeks to spare. The site, which is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced Tuesday that FamilySearch Family Tree now …

The Los Angeles Times reports: The roadside killings of nine U.S. citizens in northern Mexico has brought renewed attention to the scattered communities of Mormons who settled in the country more than a century ago to escape persecution. The family is perhaps best known for a series of killings perpetrated in the 1970s and 1980s, in both Mexico and the …

“Religious liberty is a fundamental freedom. It deserve the very highest protection our country can provide. At the same time, it’s also important to account of other interests as well — especially those of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. “Pluralism shows us a better way. It shows us that protecting religious liberty and preserving the rights of LGBTQ individuals are …

The Salt Lake Tribune reports: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints really, truly, absolutely wants to be known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Not the LDS Church. Not the Mormon church. It made that clear Thursday — even though the last attempt to eradicate those nicknames for the Utah-based faith flopped. The new push …

Salt Lake City’s CBS affiliate reports: Former lawmaker Rep. Jon Stanard,(R-Dist. 62), who resigned from his position on Tuesday citing “immediate personal and family concerns,” met with a Salt Lake escort twice for sex. Stanard was elected to the Utah House of Representatives in 2012. He resides in St. George and is married with three children. The 43-year-old former state …

Salt Lake City’s CBS affiliate reports: Josh and Lolly Weed, viewed as proof, and used as an example, that a gay man and a straight woman can make a successful Mormon marriage, have announced their divorce. And in the same blog post where they announce their divorce, they offered an apology to the LGBTQ community. “Today, we need to let …

Salt Lake City’s CBS affiliate reports: She is a life-long member of the LDS church with the needed ecclesiastical endorsement to hold a current temple recommend — her faith’s standard of being a believer in good standing. Now she has taught her final class at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg, Idaho, after she declined to retract a Facebook statement supporting the LGBT …

The Salt Lake Tribune reports: The Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s acceptance of the invitation to sing at Donald Trump’s inauguration has spawned widespread debate among the faithful and thousands of signatures on a petition demanding the decision’s reversal. Now the choir’s participation has even more fallout: the resignation of a female singer. “Since ‘the announcement,’ I have spent several sleepless nights …

Hemant Mehta writes at the Friendly Atheist: While big-name singers are evidently saying no to performing at Donald Trump‘s inauguration, one of the only well-known acts to say yes has been the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They’re on a slate filled with Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, and an apparently divided group of Rockettes. The Church made clear that this isn’t a …

RedState’s Caleb Howe goes off: Look deeper? Lou. Buddy. That is not deep. As per our expectation from you. And the MAGA, Trump Train, hashtag word vomit didn’t help either. Unless by help you mean “made this look even more paranoid and hysterical.” People who live off ratings are sure sinking as far to the bottom as they can as …

Whoa. From the editorial board of the Salt Lake Tribune: It is time to get serious. It has been amusing, to a degree, to watch the circus that was the Republican primary process struggle and fuss and finally produce such a disappointment to be its presidential nominee. And there is no question that there are many Americans who feel lost …