Source: Black Mormon Leader Says He Received a Chilling Threat in Utah ! Channel: Mormon Discussion Inc. Published: May 18, 2026 | Archived: May 24, 2026

Video: Black Mormon Leader Says He Received a Chilling Threat in Utah !
Channel: Mormon Discussion Inc.
Published: May 18, 2026
Duration: 2:17:24
Views: 9,481
Category: Nonprofits & Activism
Video ID: 5BshnjoI5Ag

Description

Tonight on The Mormon Newscast: A troubling story involving race, faith, and the experience of Black Latter-day Saints in Utah. The president of the Genesis Group, an organization supporting Black LDS members, says he was the target of a racist threat while hiking in Utah County. But this story goes beyond one disturbing encounter. Is racial prejudice and hostility increasing in Mormon corridors? Is this an isolated incident, or a reflection of larger cultural issues that still linger both inside and outside Mormon spaces? Tonight we examine the story, the reactions, and the harder questions it raises.

We also cover a packed lineup of stories across Mormonism and Utah culture:

• Church leaders reportedly organizing letter-writing campaigns in support of defendants • A new update on Jeff Strong’s ongoing research into LDS membership numbers and what the data may be revealing • The Church enters a dispute with an insurance company over abuse litigation coverage • The leader of a Black LDS organization says he was targeted by a racist threat while hiking in Utah • A new update on the Bakersfield Temple • Plastic surgery continues to rise in Utah and we ask why • New Church property ambitions emerge in Florida and Australia

Join Rebecca Bibliotheca, RFM, and Bill Reel as we break down the stories, ask difficult questions, and sort through the details.

Support The Mormon Newscast: https://donorbox.org/mormonish-podcast https://donorbox.org/the-mormon-newscast

If anyone needs support dealing with spiritual trauma, 1-on-1 coaching and support groups are available at https://awakenandthrive.org/

#Mormon #LDS #MormonNews #ExMormon #Mormonism #LDSChurch

Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)

0:03 Good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Mormon Newscast. I’m Radio Free Mormon. This is Bill Reel, and that is Rebecca Bibliotheca. Today is May eighteenth, two thousand and twenty six. Good evening. How are you two? Great. Fantastic. I am celebrating the forty sixth anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, which I was a part of because I lived in Washington state. You celebrate all the major eruptions, don’t you? I try to. It’s important. But you were actually in Washington State. Mount St.

0:36 Helens was in Washington State. And you were on the lured side, if I’m using that phrase correctly. But you were the size that the wind was blowing toward and all the ash and debris. Is that right? Yep, absolutely. And I do have a funny memory. I made a short about it today, but it happened on Sunday morning. We were sitting there waiting for church to start and the bishop’s wife ran in and said, it’s exploded. You know, people were anticipating it.

0:57 Fill your bathtubs, fill your washing machines. We’re going to need fresh water and everyone go home. That’s why it’s memorable to me. I never got to miss church and I got to miss church on that day. So it was very exciting. And what were you doing outside? Were you, I mean, were you outside? You were probably indoors and your parents. One of the more interesting things as I made my way home, there were two missionaries. I wish I could find these guys.

1:21 They were standing on a wall that surrounded my church and they were holding Book of Mormons up against the sky, which was, you know, just horrific colors of dust and clouds. And they were taking pictures, you know, fire, brimstone, Samuel the Lamanite. I wish I could find those guys back, you know, because I thought that was a really fun moment. But yeah, we danced around. We caught the ashes.

1:40 We still have some of the ashes, you know, in mason jars. Are they worth a lot of money today? You know, I do not know, but it probably was not healthy for me to be dancing around in it. Did your mom think they might be worth something today? Yes. My mom told us if we captured the dust that someday we could sell it. I mean, there was no eBay, but she said there’ll be a way to sell these girls someday.

2:00 Do you know what the difference is in legal parlance between a hostile witness and a witness who’s not hostile? I don’t know. It’s the same difference between Rebecca Bibliotheca before the show and after the show has started. Then I have to really pull the information out. Of course, I told a longer version to you before the show. I know that we’re conscious of time now. So I’m trying to be a little abbreviated.

2:25 But it was an interesting moment. And I’m curious if any of our listeners or viewers were there in Washington State when the volcano blew up in nineteen eighty. It was a magical moment. I’m from Washington. I was in Japan at the time. And I actually, if memory serves, and I think it does correctly in this instance, I found out about the Mount St. Helens exploding in May of, when my dance teacher from the studio sent me over copies of the front pages of various newspapers. I found out by snail mail. After the fact.

3:04 Should I be feeling as old as I’m feeling right now? Yeah, I know. You would find out immediately on this thing you have in your pocket that you can pull out and look at. Yeah. It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it? But it was an amazing eruption. Okay. So are you celebrating anything today, Bill? Mike, first off, I wanted to say just another eruption, Mormon history. Joseph Smith Sr., the family farm, failed because of Mount Tambora, which erupted and caused a major issue with the skies, and hence crops failed and collapsed.

3:40 That’s the way God worked to get the Smiths from Vermont to Palmyra. And then I’m not really sure how this, how God worked to get Moroni from Mesoamerica to Palmyra, but he did, he does those kinds of things. It’s miraculous. And then I’ll just very dramatic. God’s a very dramatic character. He does. He could have just had everybody born in the same place, but he works in mysterious ways. Who am I to question him?

4:03 The one piece of good news is my Cleveland Cavaliers are in the Eastern Conference Finals. They were the number four seed. They knocked off the Detroit Pistons, the number one seed, and tomorrow night at six p.m. begins the Eastern Conference Finals with my Cleveland Cavaliers versus the New York Knicks. We don’t have a real superstar superstar. Donovan Mitchell is our best player.

4:24 I’ll just say really quickly before we move on. The cool thing about the Cavs is like the top seven players on the team all score double digit points. So it’s like one of these teams where everybody contributes, everybody plays a part and they’re all important. So go Cavs. Well, you heard it here first. Go Cavs indeed. You know, what’s great is just to see you so enthusiastic about it. Yeah, they’ll lose. It’s a Cleveland team, so it’ll go wrong. It’s the enthusiasm that’s important.

4:53 It cheers my boyish heart. Do you have money on it? No, but within a week, you’ll just hear me say there’s always next year. Yes. Okay, well, guess what? We’ve got some news to get to tonight and an hour and a half to get to it in. Here is the lead story for tonight. As black LDS leader received chilling threat, stop racism. This is the May eighteenth, two thousand and twenty six edition of the Mormon Newscast.

5:20 We’re putting this up here in the front like we do at church when we make announcements before the sacrament. The Mormon Newscast. Happy Memorial Day because we’re not going to be here. Is that right, Rebecca? Apparently some of us have places to go. I made this, of course, on AI and I didn’t tell it what to do, but somehow it knew I was going to Disneyland and it put all of you guys in Disney gear.

5:45 You, RFM, are holding a giant turkey leg. So yes, I will be at Disneyland, the happiest place on earth, trying to get ideas to help them with Temple Square. That’s why I’m going. And I’m guessing you guys have other fun things to do. And I’m guessing our audience has tons of fun family things to do. So we’ll be back on June first. Well, I’m not going to Disneyland, I can tell you that. Well, you probably shouldn’t. Yeah, it’s going to be a nightmare.

6:07 Well, it’s an easy decision to make since I received no invitation. Did you receive an invitation, Bill, to Disneyland? No, I did not. But I was going to go to Temple Square, and it sort of is like Disneyland almost at this point. So pretty much the same thing. Okay. Not quite as good parking, but okay. Okay. All right, so let’s get on to top news stories tonight. Black LDS leader, this is from the thumbnail, says he received a chilling threat in Utah.

6:39 LDS leaders writing on behalf of defendants in abuse cases. That’ll be my story. Why do faithful LDS members think people leave the church? The LDS marriage conveyor belt? Utah is a plastic surgery hotspot, data shows. More LDS land purchases. They really are buying the world. You can get anything you want in this world for money, including the world, as it turns out. Church gives away all its excess funds.

7:12 Not this church, surely. Not the LDS church. Well, we’ll see. Man uses AI to call and threaten. an LDS congratulation. Now, I don’t know if that’s a congregation or a congratulation. It’s a typo. It’s a cheerier story if it’s a congratulation, don’t you think? No, it’s congregation. Sorry about that. Oh, okay. And then Bakersfield, I’m in charge, so it’s my fault, and I left it there on purpose. I admit it.

7:39 Bakersfield pushes back hard on LDS temple height and brightness. And I think that’s going to be a Rebecca story. Am I right about that, Templars? Oh, yes. It’s Heights and Brights. But here’s the first story, our lead story tonight, and I believe this one will be covered by Bill Reel. Yeah, so tonight a difficult story out of Utah. Ronnell Hugh, president of the Genesis Group, says he was the target of a racist threat while hiking in Utah County.

8:09 For those unfamiliar, the Genesis Group was created to support Black members of the LDS Church and has a long history stretching back Sorry, it should be to the figures such as Eugene and Letha Orr, Ruffin Bridgeforth Jr., who I think was its first president, and Darius Gray. So Hugh isn’t just some random commentator on the sidelines. He is someone actively trying to build community and support within Mormonism.

8:35 Yet, according to the report, he found himself facing something ugly and deeply personal while on the hike. So here’s what happened. And unfortunately, it’s got one of those really bad words in it. On May second, Genesis Group President Ronel High says he was hiking alone on the Highland Trail near Lehigh. By the way, I know you live in that general region, right, Rebecca? Yeah, I know just where this is, yep.

8:59 Yeah, I’m sure much of our audience lives there too. I’d love to know if anybody out there, put it in the live chat, if you’ve been out there on this trail or know where we’re talking about. He said that a passing driver leaned out of a truck window and yelled a racial threat at him. According to Hugh, the man shouted, all, and then the N-word, will hang. Hugh said he interpreted the statement as a reference to lynching.

9:24 He later explained that after the shock wore off, which I think just took a second or so, he instinctively took off running after the truck hoping to capture a photo or license plate number, but the vehicle was gone before he could get the identifying information. Hughes says he reported the incident to local law enforcement and then went home and told his wife what had happened.

9:48 He also contacted his fellow Genesis leaders as well as local LDS leadership, wanting to document it while his emotions and details were still fresh in his mind. He also shared his experience publicly on social media. Then the next day, he brought the experience into the spaces where he serves and leads. He discussed it with members of his Highland Fortieth Ward and later spoke about it during the monthly Genesis meeting.

10:15 Addressing the mostly Black audience, Hugh used the moment to make a larger point. He said, racism exists. And he added, we can choose to move forward and try to eliminate it, but we are never going to change actions until we change attitudes. And he concluded what may be the biggest takeaway of the entire story. We have to talk about it. This should not happen in this day. And he’s right.

10:37 It’s twenty twenty six, folks. For you, this was not just about one ugly interaction on a hiking trail. It became a conversation about whether people are willing to confront hard realities rather than pretend they no longer exist now. Despite repeated statements from church leaders condemning racism, some black members, and this was in the article, some black members say they feel prejudice is becoming more visible rather than disappearing. This is not occurring in a vacuum.

11:06 Longtime conversations around race in Mormonism carry a lot of historical baggage. Priesthood and temple ban, folklore around skin color, decades of difficult teachings that leave scars that do not instantly disappear because an institution changes policy. Now, add to that The LDS Church’s reluctance to apologize and acknowledge the ban was man-made rather than blame God only adds heat to the issue as far as I’m concerned.

11:34 When you make God racist rather than blame your colleagues from the past, you may be giving tacit approval for members to cling to their racism as well, no matter what you say otherwise, even though Elder Oates at the B-One conference told all of us that it was God’s fault. and that the church leaders weren’t responsible for the ban itself. One quote that stood out was the concern that racism may actually be, and this was in the article, on the rise in the state, unquote.

12:03 And that’s no small claim. Again, we’re in twenty twenty six. And yet we still have people who hold views about human beings based on the melatonin in their skin. And that makes absolutely no sense to me, especially coming from a religion, as I’ve said numerous times, that if they did. Twenty three. Is it twenty three and me? Is that what it is? Twenty three and me on all of the past leaders.

12:29 We’d find that the very leaders who said that the ban was from God and that black people were cursed and less valiant would have some African DNA in their own genetics. And so this church at some point has to come to terms with this. Um, because if it doesn’t, then we’ll continue to find these kinds of things. And again, they’re going to happen anyway, but there’s a few stories tonight where I think Mormonism contributes to the significance of how often these things happen.

13:00 And I think this is one of those instances, your guys’ thoughts, and then we can move on to the next story. Rebecca. Yeah. And I’ve talked about this before, that I have been a part of Genesis. It is a congregation, like Bill said, that started in seventy one to support the black members of the LDS church. And then even when the ban was lifted, it continued after that and thrives today.

13:23 And it has an amazing choir that actually goes out and performs independent of once a month. They meet every first Sunday. I believe they’re in Draper right now is where they meet in a building there. But I was part of that choir. I got to go out and tour and sing and I would attend their meetings. And it was fantastic. amazing and rewarding and extremely eyeopening. You know, it was something that I hadn’t really experienced before understanding a little bit about what these members of the church are going through because they attend their regular wards, but then once a month they gather at Genesis, you know, so that they, and they have, it’s a sacrament meeting.

14:02 They have primary and they have young men, young women for the teenagers. So, So, you know, they’re able to commune, to meet, to gather, to support each other. And like Bill described what the president shared with the congregation, there were stories like that. There were people that would get up and talk about, you know, well-meaning people in their ward. but what had happened, some racist things, just kind of an undertone.

14:28 So they were kind of trying to educate and to work it out because Genesis is open to anybody. Anybody can attend. There were all kinds of people that were there just trying to gather with the saints. And so it’s a fantastic group and they’re doing what they can. But like you said, Bill, there’s an undercurrent because of decades, centuries of these racist teachings and ideas. And the B-One Concert, I have to bring it up again. I was there and that did not help. It was a beautiful celebration.

14:59 Gladys Knight was there. The Genesis Choir was singing. I was not singing with it that time. And it was all fantastic. Lifting of the Priesthood Band until President Oaks got up and said, God doesn’t like you so much. Sorry, it wasn’t us. I mean, I’m paraphrasing, but there was an audible in the audience because they could not believe it. Talk about taking no responsibility. So until that goes away, until there’s something from the top, I think it’s always going to be a trickle down, just this undercurrent.

15:28 You know what I mean? Just this subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, like in this case, racism. So it’s really, really sad. But Genesis is fantastic. If you guys have a chance to attend, it is in Draper every first Sunday, and it’s wonderful. Hmm. I have rarely seen a performer capture an entire arena the way that Gladys Knight did that arena that night. It was incredible when she sang a place for us. Oh my gosh.

16:00 But going back to earlier in the evening, which is what we’re talking about, yeah, I think that’s an interesting point. And it may be two parts to it. The first part is that President Oaks definitely did stake out the position in his B-I address that God was behind the priesthood and temple ban, that President Oaks doesn’t know why. He knows a lot of reasons why it wasn’t, all the reasons everybody else was talking about, but… But he doesn’t know why.

16:31 He knows that there was a why and that that why, whatever it is, would justify God in his racism because God wouldn’t do anything that was sinful. So he must be justified somehow. That is the position he has staked out for the priesthood and temple band. So perhaps it is confusing and a mixed message. when he and others also talked to the saints today and discouraged them against being bigots and saying you should not be prejudiced against people because of their race, because of their nationality, all these other things.

17:03 When we’ve already gone on record as staking out a position that there apparently are at least some instances, at least one big one, Where being as just as God can be justified in being discriminatory based on race. I do think that’s a shaky moral high ground to hold. Yeah. If the church leadership justifies its racism as coming from God, then you’re giving members the space to justify their own racism.

17:36 If God can be a racist, then I can too. All right. Is that the end of that story, Bill? it is thank you very much for covering that the next story is one that was for may seventh it’s when i skipped last week because it was not really time sensitive but it has to do with this uh this theme this consistent thing that’s going on and has gone on of church leaders usually bishops or state presidents not specifically in this case it’s a dean over at byu but writing letters on behalf of individuals who are members of the church and are charged in the criminal justice system usually with something execrable, and usually it’s child sex crimes or something related to it.

18:18 That’s what makes it come to the headlines. The headline of this article is, a BYU dean wrote in support of a man charged with child sex abuse crimes, It’s not an isolated case. This is Jessica Schreifels, Salt Lake Tribune, May seventh, twenty twenty six. And that is a picture of Jessica Schreifels. A defendant had been behind bars for twenty three days when he got his first chance to ask for bail last summer.

18:47 Can I just start by explaining that there are only two times really when you’re going to want to get letters on behalf of your client as a defense attorney. It’s the same thing for the prosecutor. You know, they’ll have statements from victims and will have statements from other people on the defense side. But those are mainly at an early hearing, which would be for release of the defendant after being arrested and usually shortly after being arrested.

19:15 or bail being set by the judge so we want to impress upon the judge that this person this person who’s charged with this crime has contacts to the community is not a risk of flight from the community and that’s what those contacts were there to describe And also the other thing at a bail hearing is that they’re not a risk to the community if they’re allowed out in the community, that there are sufficient conditions in place to keep them from being a risk to the community.

19:45 Those are the two things that are being addressed there. You can see why letters from people who know your client might be useful there. And the second time when you would be using letters is at the sentencing hearing, because these are not facts that the judge is considering in terms of, you know, whether this person is guilty or whether they’re not guilty. They are facts that the judge is looking at in terms of, should I release this person?

20:10 What bail should I set in the first hearing? And at the subsequent hearing, if there’s a sentencing hearing, what is an appropriate sentence that I should sentence this person to? So you’re looking at all these facts that are not relevant to the case, but are relevant to the person as an individual. All right. So this person, this defendant, whose name they’re not releasing, believe it or not, over there at the Trib, a defendant had been behind bars for twenty-three days when he got his first chance to ask for bail last summer.

20:38 That’s his first hearing that I was talking about. Charged with forty-one felonies tied to allegations that he possessed child sex abuse materials. The forty-four-year-old Utah County man had submitted letters to the court from those who knew him. Very common. and who assured a Utah County judge that he would be no risk to the community. Remember, that’s one of those two prongs.

21:03 He would be no risk to the community if he were released, despite the serious charges he was facing. This is all very, very common. It happens every day in courts throughout the country. One was written, though, by a Brigham Young University dean. So this guy happens to know another guy who’s willing to vouch for his character, but this other guy happens to be a dean at BYU. And here’s the dean, I believe, Grant Jensen, began his letter by introducing himself as the dean of the College of Computational, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences at BYU, the university-owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

21:45 He wrote about how he had known the defendant for sixteen years, beginning when the man’s wife worked as his administrative assistant. So apparently that’s how he knows this guy. And I don’t know if it’s a close relationship. It could have become such, but he’s writing a letter. They’re scouring around trying to find letters to give to the judge. to hopefully get him to come down off of his bail sum and let the guy out in the community while he’s pending trial. So that’s the deal.

22:14 And that’s the letter he wrote. And he’s a dean. He’s not this guy’s bishop. He’s not this guy’s stake president. So it’s a bit of a different situation than usually gets the public’s eye. However, they’re going to use this in order to segue into something else that is, I think, very important. And that’s been going on behind the scenes. First, do either of you, Rebecca or Bill, have any comments about this so far? I remember this story.

22:40 I’ll just note, forty one felony charges. I’m sure one of those are going to stick as long as the law enforcement followed all the rules, read the Miranda rights, all that stuff. One of those is going to stick. This is a guy who had allegedly child material. And yet here we are pleading for mercy for these people. And that makes no sense to me. That’s what Jesus is going to do for each and every one of us, my friend Bill, on that great and glorious Judgment Day.

23:12 That’s why Jesus is the closest thing in the world to a defense attorney. Maybe they’re available to me. Maybe he’s available to babysit certain people’s children. I don’t know. Oh my gosh. I just say, show me one time when the church leadership or leaders or anybody in the ward is sitting on the side in the courtroom with the victim. You will not see it. They all support the repentant perpetrator. And I think it’s sort of virtue signaling. It’s something.

23:44 They care more about that repentance and supporting and fellowshipping that person than than they do about the child and the child’s family. This is when you see families step away because they cannot believe that their child isn’t being believed, their child isn’t being supported. You see this over and over. By the way, I ran this by another attorney that I know who’s not familiar with Mormonism or this entire issue just to get his take on it.

24:09 And the fact is that the church does have it in their handbook that church leaders are not supposed to be writing letters on behalf of their congregants. And I don’t know if it goes into exactly why, but the why is that why. At least that’s one why as to why you shouldn’t do it is because now victims or people on the other side of the V are maybe members of the ward two or members of the church and what are you doing when you do that and is that a good thing to do separate and part of the whole issue about you know trying to hide child abusers in your ward but that makes sense and this other attorney said well that makes sense as a policy and i thought yeah it does too this story goes further because this story ends up being something that i am personally very exercised about so let’s see what goes on here Um, in addition to, I should say exercise in addition to this whole thing about protecting child molesters, this is something that is happening in the courtroom.

25:12 All right. And it involves the law, which is why I’m taking it so personal. For as long as Jensen had known him, he wrote, the man had gone to church every Sunday and followed all the teachings of the LDS church, avoiding all alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, smoking, drugs, etc. So that’s what’s in his letter, right? It’s very Mormon-centric. Well, the judge also, of course, is a Mormon.

25:38 I believe, at least he’s graduated, I think, from BYU Law School. It will say, I have no reason to believe he was not completely faithful to his wife, Jensen wrote. I believe he contributed generously. A full tithe. I’m not sure if that was there originally, that parenthetical statement, or if that was added. But a full tithe, we know what contributed generously means, a full tithe.

26:05 Plus, he accepted many assignments and served well. In our interactions, he was always honest, kind, and trustworthy. You know, I’ve got to say, If a full tithe is in the letter, then it suggests that he at some point may have had an ecclesiastical responsibility over him like a bishop. I don’t know why he would know to say that in his letter otherwise, but regardless. What unfolded in that Utah County case reflects a broader practice in which Latter-day Saint bishops and other people connected to the church have vouched for defendants accused of serious crimes, even as the church itself has discouraged such interventions as potentially harmful.

26:56 And behind the scenes, a Salt Lake Tribune inquiry revealed some Utah County prosecutors have taken an unusual step when letters like these appear in their court cases on behalf of defendants from church leaders. They contact Curtin McConkie, the outside law firm which represents the LDS church, in spite of their denials, to the contrary, where they say they don’t represent the LDS Church.

27:38 The Salt Lake Tribune says they do. They basically do. They’re a law firm. They might represent a few other people on other things, but they’re basically the church’s law firm. So they contact these prosecutors, Curtin McConkie, the outside law firm, which represents the LDS Church, whose lawyers then… Instruct the bishop to withdraw the letter that was submitted on behalf of the defendant in court.

28:05 The office confirmed. So I think that’s the Utah County prosecutor’s office that revealed that. Okay. Now this is what I’m somewhat exercised about. Let’s go through the rest of the story and I’ll tell you why it is I’m exercised. Okay. Okay. That practice raises its own ethical concerns, you think? One legal expert told the Tribune it is wholly inappropriate for prosecutors to try to limit this type of material from a judge making a weighty decision about whether to grant bail or how long someone should spend in prison.

28:45 Those are the two kinds of hearings I mentioned, grant bail or how long to spend in prison at the sentencing hearing. I’ve got a picture of a person putting their finger on one side of the scales. It should be much bigger than a finger. It should be a whole body put on one side of those scales. While these types of letters are meant to attest to a person’s character, experts say this support can cause victims or other church members to feel betrayed when they see a leader supporting an alleged perpetrator rather than encouraging accountability.

29:20 That’s why the LDS Church instructs its local leaders to not become involved voluntarily in court cases involving members of their ward or stake, it said in a statement to the Tribune. It confirmed that when it learns that a leader, when it learns, from whatever source, I guess, when it learns that a leader has not followed church policy and submitted a support letter, quote, the church contacts the leader and ensures he is aware of the policy and its purpose, which may or may not sound a lot like get him to withdraw the letter.

30:06 Sharing information in legal proceedings can be misinterpreted and may cause harm, the church’s statement reads, particularly to victims and their families. At a bail hearing last August, defense attorney John Easton highlighted the BYU’s dean’s letter that when we’re talking about The letter several times when he argued to Fourth District Court Judge Casey Wright, himself a BYU alum, that his client should have the chance to bail out of jail.

30:41 So this is going back to that letter we read portions of from the dean of that mathematics school and some other things like physics and words I can’t remember. But the dean who wrote it on behalf of that guy. And this is his attorney. John Easton, and he highlighted the dean’s letter. Of course he would. He’s got a dean’s letter. I’m going to show this to the judge and talk about it as much as I can if I’m representing the guy to get him to lower the bail or let him out.

31:07 That his client should have the chance to bail out of jail. So that happened last August. And this is quoting from Easton. They got the transcript, obviously. I look at some of these letters, particularly a dean of a significant program at BYU College. That’s here willing to support him. Easton said, according to a recording of the hearing, he goes on scout masters that have watched him interact with children. Very appropriate.

31:34 There’s been no allegation of any personal physical touching. That’s inappropriate in any way. Okay. But, and this is the other side. But the allegations against the man are serious. See, they got the transcript in front of them, so they’re going to quote this guy, who’s the prosecutor. Deputy Utah County Attorney Adam Pomeroy. Is it just me, or does this guy look like he just got out of high school? Not to mention law school.

32:07 But the allegations against the man are serious. This guy, the prosecutor said in the same hearing, he is accused of not only possessing child sex abuse materials, but police also alleged he had graphic chats online about his preferences in videos of young children and shared illegal materials he had obtained with others. Okay. Now this is, I’m going to break in. I’m going to interrupt myself.

32:34 Just to say this is the kind of argumentation that is supposed to go on in cases like this. This is a very good response to the letters that the defense attorney presented to the judge. And these arguments get made so often that, I mean, the judge knows them. The judge has heard them a million times, probably from the same people. We all know what they are, okay? But we go through them and we make them anyway because we’re doing the best that we can.

33:01 And what I’m saying is, is that what this prosecutor apparently thinks is that the proper way to deal with this is to not allow the information that’s in that other letter, if it were from a church leader, to even be admitted in evidence before the judge for the judge to consider it in making the judge’s determination. Because this fellow, according to this article, Adam Pomeroy has a habit of contacting Curtin McConkie If he gets a letter that’s from a bishop or a state president, this one is just a little bit outside the normal because it’s a dean.

33:44 Speaking about the letters that the defendant gave the judge, Pomeroy, this guy right here, Adam Pomeroy, also a BYU Law School alum, said he noted that none of them acknowledge these serious allegations. By the way, this is part of his argument, and this is also standard argumentation from the prosecutor’s point of view on these things. And you’re talking about deeply religious people people involved in our community, people involved with youth, and there’s no actual indication that they truly understand what the defendant is charged with here, right? That’s what you would say.

34:16 That’s why if I’m doing a declaration on behalf of my client, I want to make sure that if the person knows about the charges against them, that it starts off with, I’m aware of the charges against him, and I’m going to say this anyway. Okay. So once again, this stuff is very standard. Here’s Adam Pomeroy again. Pomeroy told the Tribune, in a statement that he did not alert Curtin McConkie to Jensen’s letter because, and I underline the because, because the dean was not the defendant’s church leader, which indicates to me that he would have if it had been the church leader.

34:52 In fact, other things he says indicate the same. The case he conceded was unique in that a BYU dean name-dropping the school wrote in on the defendant’s behalf. Now, here’s this guy, Bruce Green. I don’t think this is the first time I’m seeing that picture before. I think I’ve encountered his writing sometime in the past. Bruce Green, who teaches legal ethics at Fordham University’s Law School, said that those who know a defendant and have truthful information should be encouraged to bring that information to a judge, including church leaders.

35:35 Utah County Attorney Jeff Gray agreed. that this specifically raises concerns about a defendant’s ability to present information to the sentencing court. According to his office’s statement, now that he is aware of the issue, my understanding is that Jeff Gray’s new to the job, now that he is aware of the issue, the statement reads, Mr. Gray is considering how to best address it. In another Utah County case where a father was sentenced last December, for sexually abusing his young daughters?

36:31 His one-time bishop wrote to the sentencing judge that the defendant was active in their church and served in whatever capacity he was asked to participate in. The former bishop did not ask for leniency, but told the judge that he’d be praying for the judge’s discernment for the right sentence. I believe he is a good man at his core, he wrote about the father. Jennifer J. Frade is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Oregon who first introduced the concept of institutional betrayal in the nineteen nineties.

37:11 She said these letters supporting an accused defendant or perpetrator can feel like a second concussion, another wound on top of the harm from being victimized. Nicole Badera, a sociologist and researcher of sexual violence, said that the criminal justice system also engages in a type of institutional betrayal when it allows for admissibility of character evidence like support letters in cases involving sexual violence.

37:52 Here’s the final slide. In the child sexual abuse materials case where the BYU dean wrote a support letter, the judge ultimately allowed the defendant to post bail. But he said he did not consider Jensen’s letter or others like it when making that decision. Instead, he said the law required him to wait whether the man posed a danger to the community or was likely to flee. Just like I said, those are the two things you look at as a judge.

38:19 In the end, the judge said the letters, no matter who wrote them, were not part of the decision he had to make, period. And I can see that as being completely valid because really what was written didn’t address either of those things that he has to decide, whether he’s a danger to the community or whether he’s a likelihood to flee, which is why I, as an attorney, when I would get letters and declarations like this to submit to a judge, would try and focus on things that related to those two issues. Okay, so that’s the end of the story.

38:50 What do you think about this, Rebecca? And then Bill? I just think that over and over you see this sort of naive attitude from members and leaders in the church where a person, he seems to be a good person. It’s all superficial. He pays his tithing. He serves. I think in the LDS church, we are taught very quickly to size people up based on actions, righteousness, how they dress, how they look, how they sound.

39:17 We’re not good at looking deeper, right? So you see someone who looks like a good guy, looks like he’s active. How could any of this other stuff be real? It’s a cognitive dissonance. And I don’t think their brains can comprehend that the father is at home abusing his daughters. He’s such a good guy at church, at his core, right? And I really think they can’t allow themselves, I swear it’s cognitive dissonance, to go there and think of those little girls at home. or anybody else.

39:44 And I think that’s why they focus on what they can comprehend. And it’s a little bit of virtue signaling and they can go, you know what? We can, we can help this guy repent. He’s a good guy. We can work with him. They don’t know what to do with the victims. They can’t even comprehend that that is happening. It’s sort of just like this childlike attitude where they don’t understand.

40:04 And I think that’s encouraged in the church, superficial determination of somebody’s character and, And then just a la la la. I don’t want to believe it or hear it. Very good, Bill. It reminds me of the interactions that you had in with the BYU Police Department. In that the BYU Police Department is supposed to be independent. It’s not supposed to be influencing the church or being influenced by the church.

40:34 And yet BYU’s Police Department would work behind the scenes to help the church to find things out or to handle things that the church wanted it to handle. to the point where you had discovered such and had taken such to mediation and appeals. Also, the Salt Lake Tribune was chasing down the BYU Police Department at the same time over similar things. Here you have this moment where the prosecutors are reaching out to the LDS church to prevent what is allowed in the system, which is people to write character statements of those who have charges against them.

41:12 For the prosecutors to step in and try to make that not happen seems like a manipulation of the case. Again, I don’t want those letters to have any effect in these kinds of rulings. but the rules are those letters are allowed to be. And for the prosecutors to reach out to the LDS church seems to me like something highly unethical. The next thing I’ll say is that you have multiple people in the stories you shared, multiple church leaders or people high up in church places, such as the Dean at BYU or BYU-Idaho.

41:48 And what they all seem to be saying is, Somebody can be a really good Mormon. They can keep the word of wisdom. They can have a temple recommend. They can be paying tithing. They can say yes to all their callings and serve wherever they’re needed and not be a good human being. be an unhealthy human being who is beginning to or has given in to their proclivities, right? And it strikes me as a strange thing that this church has set up a system of worthiness where one can be an unhealthy or bad human being and still be a really good Mormon.

42:32 And maybe if you are the leadership in the LDS church, maybe you want to consider ways that you entirely redesign the system so that when someone is a really good Mormon, it also is indicative that they’re a really good human being. You shouldn’t be able to be a really good Mormon and be a really bad human being. But then again, at the highest levels of the church, there are plenty of them. That’s really interesting.

43:05 It also seems to indicate that there are some Mormons in leadership positions who think that if you are able to answer the temple recommend questions correctly, then everything else is good and there’s nothing shady going on in your private or family life behind the scenes. Well, I just want to say one thing about this before we go to the next story. And that is that this really, really bothered me.

43:27 It was set to go last week, and then we skipped it because of the length and the length of the show, and they weren’t going together. So we skipped it for this week. I am not as exercised about it this week. But here’s why, okay? I came up with a way that I thought I could explain why it is that this bothers me as a defense attorney. If you go to court in a situation where you’re trying to get your guy out of jail, okay, this happens all the time. People get arrested all the time. They all have hearings.

43:53 They all have these kinds of evidence brought forward and trying to get them out or help the judge figure out what is a good bail amount. So when those happen, There is an issue that is going on in the court that the prosecutor and the defense attorney are fighting over. They don’t always fight over this. As often as not, they can agree. But a lot of times there’s a fight over the bail. And so that’s the thing.

44:20 I am trying to get evidence in to support my position in the argument about my client. the prosecutor is getting in evidence that is supporting evidence about her client, the state. Okay. About this guy’s criminal record, the convictions, you know, why it is he should not be released from custody. So that’s what the dispute is about. Now, if, I can go to a bishop of this guy, whatever the church is, but it’s the Mormon church, and whatever my religion is, but it would have been Mormon.

44:51 If I can go and get a declaration from the bishop to use to help the judge be more lenient to my client, that’s my job. I’m there to represent his interests. so if i can do that that’s fine but if the the bishop says no okay i have to live with that the bishop gets to make the decision just like anybody else does as to whether they’re going to write a declaration now if the bishop says i can’t do it because my church has a policy not to do it then i gotta suck it up that’s a church’s policy okay all right but if the church then says I will write the letter.

45:30 It doesn’t say anything about the policy. I will write the letter. And then somebody in the church goes to the bishop and says, hey, you’re not supposed to do this because there’s a church policy. Dingbat, you forgot already again? And the bishop says, okay, I’ll withdraw it. I need to withdraw it. Well, as a defense attorney, I’m disappointed, but I got to let him withdraw it. It’s his decision.

45:52 Okay, I hope you can see where this is going. If that circle finally comes around to people getting the bishop to withdraw his letter, if we finally get around to the attorney who is on the other side of this case, who is arguing this very issue with me about whether my client should get out pending trial or what the bail should be pending trial, if that is the attorney who makes the contact to the other person, and I don’t care from there how many times it takes to go around from Curt and McConkie, and that’s the whole point of doing it, then I got a big problem with that. I got a big problem with that.

46:30 And that prosecutor should have a big bar complaint against that prosecutor. So that’s how I feel about it while still maintaining my feelings about the other issue. I don’t know if that makes me inconsistent. I don’t think it does, but I certainly am trained to look at this as a defense attorney and why that is a wrong headed thing for any prosecutor to do. Does that make either of you think anything?

46:57 Well, just to, It doesn’t need said again, but I understand it clearly that it’s the church’s job to police its local leaders about its own policies. It is unethical for the prosecutor to get involved and remind the church that this has happened and give them a chance to step in. The church needs to handle it without anybody from the judicial system stepping in to sway whether that letter is used or not.

47:27 And Rebecca, I’m not sure if this guy’s figured out if his career should be in the legal field or the priesthood. But I think he’s trying to use what he knows in order to influence what’s going on in court. And I don’t care if it’s from a righteous intent or an unrighteous intent. If there can be a righteous intent in here, I think you know what I mean, trying to make sure that these bishops are following the rules that they’re supposed to follow. Yeah, I don’t care.

47:52 It’s wrong. That’s what I think. Rebecca, what are your thoughts? I think at the end, they’re just trying to protect themselves, the churches. They’ve got to keep tabs on everybody. And think back to a couple episodes we did of the newscast where there are even judges who say, hey, he seems like a good guy. He’s faithful in his church. I mean, they’re not wrong. These letters not only impact decisions, but judges themselves look at people and say, ah, he seems a good guy.

48:19 Seems like he’s active and he can get out on bail or I’m going to treat him this way. So it exists in a theocracy. I have talked to other people, including Randy Bell, and he has said, you know, you just got to understand Utah is a different place. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, if the judge is a, is a Mormon and this is letters on behalf of somebody who’s a Mormon written by a Mormon leader, that they may take that more strongly than another person in a similar circumstance. And I said, okay, I agree with you. I hear you a hundred percent.

48:51 It doesn’t change my position. Okay, that’s enough of that. Let’s go to the next story, shall we? Oh, this one is mine. And this is also mine from last week that we moved because we had such important other stories, but these stories are equally important. Now, Bill covered this, I think it was two or three episodes ago, the book Torn by Jeff Strong, but there’s more data coming out all the time.

49:17 And I pulled out a few other pieces that I thought were really relevant and interesting for us. And again, this is a faithful story. person, former mission president, faithful guy, Jeff Strong. He’s written a book with another researcher, just compiling data on LDS people, why they leave and attitudes that the faithful have about those that leave. And these are really important conversations as we three found out this week, which I think Bill’s going to touch on a little bit later.

49:45 And I might just mention, but Jeff’s story is that he put his son into the MTC and then he got an email from saying, I’m leaving, I’m not going to stay in the MTC. And Jeff realized not only is his son having second thoughts about a mission, he’s going to leave the church too. And when that happens, parents have to very quickly figure out what’s going on and how they’re going to react because this is their child.

50:09 I’ve said it before, but I feel like in the eighties, it was, you know, you get back in there. I’ve told the story before about, you know, my fiance in the MTC leaving his family, disowning him, calling me and asking me to disown him. You know, it was that kind of thing. I don’t think that happens as much now. I think parents try to understand like Jeff and his wife did what is happening. What does this mean for our son? What does this mean for our family?

50:32 So this book comes from a faithful point of view, but the data is very revealing and he doesn’t really shy away from that. He really tells it like it is and then tries to kind of spin it a little bit, explain it. But it is it is pretty powerful stuff here. He talks about the idea of the empty chair here. Have you guys heard of that? I’m sure you’ve seen graphics like this. I made this one.

50:54 But it’s the idea that your whole family is there in the next life, but there’s one empty chair. That person isn’t with you. That person made different decisions. And I consider this one of the more dangerous doctrines that the LDS Church promotes because it makes families behave in a horrible way toward that person that has made a different choice that isn’t Mormonism, right? Kids are shunned. People are set apart. People are disowned.

51:21 It’s all for your own good, right? It comes from a place of love and fear. You’re going to be that empty chair. But the results are terrible and horrible for families and the individual that this happens to. And I’m sure everybody in our chat and watching knows scenarios where families have completely cut off and distanced themselves from from an individual who really just needs love and understanding and care at that time. He talks more about the survey.

51:44 I asked AI, make an image of somebody in a family who’s left the church and somebody who’s in the church. This is what it did. Isn’t that interesting? I think AI is following these stereotypes too. No, that’s Elder Holland’s story about the two brothers. Yeah, exactly. Which turned out to not be real. He had to pull it out of his book, right? They say you have two Doberman pinchers back there all curled up and going to sleep. Exactly. That was it.

52:09 It wasn’t his book that that story got pulled out of. Yeah, it was in the book that they had to. Oh, I meant it got pulled out of somewhere else. Yeah, it wasn’t the book. It was a talk. No, that’s Russell Nelson’s talk about the lady in the hat. The lady in the hat had to be taken out. There are so many big stories that apostles have told just in the last twenty years. It’s hard to keep up with them.

52:28 Yeah, no, I think President Holland had to make a disclaimer. And he said the story was misrepresented to me. It was a mission story about two brothers finding each other. Anyway, we digress. So the survey, fifteen thousand people at least started the survey and eleven thousand finished it. And it took like over an hour. Jeff Strong said he was really surprised that people were passionate and cared enough to really work through this and put down their answers.

52:54 And I think he said, let’s see, here it is. Forty percent were people who had left. Sixty percent were people who were current. At least that’s how they represented themselves. So that’s a pretty good demographic of people saying this, people saying that, both sides of the aisle. And you get some really interesting data. So let me see. I’m going to go to my notes here so I can read.

53:14 I made this other graphic and it about freaking broke my heart. Cause that was my oldest son growing up right there, you know, who still because of his treatment in his community and by extended family members, because he was just a little different, um, you know, he still suffers from growing up like that. So when AI, you know, showed up with that, I was like, Oh, breaking my heart.

53:35 That was, that was my life with my teenage son right there. So maybe TMI, but, um, it says, so people who identified as more devout, um, picked the wrong answer about certain things more than others, right? So the more faithful you are, the less you get it is what we’re saying in layman’s terms. For example, here’s one of the main questions. Seventy-five percent of the devout respondents greatly underestimated how many people were actually leaving the church. Right.

54:03 The more devout you are, the more you don’t get it. They say it’s probably zero to twenty five percent. That’s what they choose. Seventy five percent of the devout people think it’s a very small number of people that are walking away. And where the correct answer. And remember, this is from a faithful book is more like fifty to seventy five percent. That’s shocking that that’s there in this faithful book.

54:24 And that’s a graphic showing that the more faithful you are, the more in the church you are, the less you understand really how many people are disaffecting. Well, the more faithful you are in the church, the more likely you are to believe the leader’s prevarications that people are not leaving the church and that actually it’s growing faster than it ever has. Yeah, thank you so much for bringing that up.

54:43 You’re right, because they hear that every day. The growth, the growth, the tremendous growth. Those that maybe are not as devout, they’re just looking around going, there are like twelve people in the pews. What is happening? So you’re right. You have to kind of allow yourself to think independently outside of what the leaders are telling you. Let’s go to our next one. This is just great. Great information.

55:01 It really is. I ordered the book. It hasn’t arrived yet. So devout members also tend to attribute disaffiliation to personal inadequacies or religious failings. Of course, answers like they chose they they sinned and lost the spirit or they were led away by the things of the world. These are why the more devout members think people are leaving, right? And I made this graphic because that’s not the reason people are leaving.

55:27 And according to this book, he says it plainly. The reasons provided by actual people who have left were quite different. The most common reasons were I didn’t feel a sense of belonging. And what I think is more important, I encountered information about the church’s history that was troubling enough for me that I didn’t want to participate anymore. So it’s important to see this huge divide.

55:50 And Bill touched on this when he went over this data. There is just this divide in what the faithful members think and what is actually happening. And that’s why conversations or a coming together or meeting of the minds for the greater good does not ever happen. He says the most active members of the church Have a blind spot. And I love that they have a blind spot as to how many people are leaving and why they leave.

56:16 So it’ll be really interesting when faithful people read this book, because like I said, faithful source. And I just wonder what they’re going to think about it. I know what I think about it. Tell me. I think that Jeff Strong is committing the continued error of taking things that the leaders teach to the members and the members therefore believe them and blaming the members for it.

56:34 If you go back to that previous slide, the members have a blind spot. No, we don’t. We have the vision, the exact same vision that the leaders have given us. And they haven’t told us any of these things about why people leave the church. They have told us about the fake reasons and the generic kind of reasons. And then they told us not to look at anything that would tell us about the real reasons, but restrict ourselves to church correlated materials.

57:00 So this is a blind spot the church created and then gave to its devoted disciples. It’s not something that we developed on our own. That’s all I’m saying. Right. Any thoughts on that, Bill? I think that’s an excellent observation. We hear it all the time. Only talk to trusted members. Only read trusted sources. You’re going to get that information from those sources. What do you think, Bill? RFM’s right.

57:21 This is a way to blame the members for not paying attention when they’re only doing what the church leadership taught them to do. Yep, nope, that’s absolutely true. So he goes into a few more specifics here. Let me go back to my slide. Yeah, here we are. Again, AI is breaking my heart making these slides. Here’s a wayward youth, right, on the other side of the temple. So six percent, he calls wave one, and that’s lifestyle. And this is why people leave. I just couldn’t keep living this way. Okay.

57:53 So a small number says I just, I can’t do it anymore. Right. Forty-two percent. Wave number two, church history. Okay. If you listen to people’s stories, this does seem to be one of the bigger reasons people say things like the church isn’t what it claims to be. Forty-two percent just have the integrity to say, I can’t because it isn’t. And they lied to me, right? If you guys watched Landon’s Mormon story, the whole way through, he just kept saying, and at that moment, I couldn’t, my integrity wouldn’t allow me.

58:22 And I think a lot of people that they share those values. Wave number three is social issues. Even if the church were true, I could not support this. That’s another one that I think we see even more recently with all kinds of different issues, especially LGBTQ, othering people. You’re just like, I don’t care. I don’t care. God wouldn’t do this and I can’t be a part of it. Your moral center, your moral compass will not allow it.

58:46 And then finally, eighteen percent, he calls that way for the church experience itself. The church isn’t led by Christ and it’s not life giving. So they just don’t feel any joy or they just don’t think it’s doing the right thing. So and then I’m just going to we don’t have to. What was that? Can I jump in here for a second? Yeah, yeah, please do. I want you to jump in through all this because you guys have all looked at this data.

59:08 So, yeah, I’m going to go back one slide and just note. Everyone in the church, when you are asked why people leave, the most accurate answer almost half the time is problems in church history that don’t add up for that person’s brain to be able to continue to believe. So of all the answers you give, the answer that should come out of your mouth first is the problems in church history. Yeah.

59:34 So that’s a really good point. But that is the hardest one to hear. By the way, they’ve known this since what, two thousand and thirteen when John Dillon delivered all that information to them, which we know they got and then had in their possession and reviewed and served as the springboard for Elder Oaks. Much heralded, but not so great a talk that he gave after that. Yeah, no. And here it is.

59:57 No, the information is here. Someone in the chat said we leave because it isn’t true. But nobody wants to hear that and nobody can hear that. Even if somebody says that, your brain is not going to allow you because that is where your identity is tied into. You’re a believing member of the church. You’re going to hear some other reasons. You’re going to make up some other reasons.

1:00:16 If you have to, you are not going to hear that there’s a problem with the truth claims. So that’s just how human nature works. These kind of dig a little bit more into specific reasons into each wave. And you guys can freeze on these if you want and look, or if either of you see something interesting, but he just kind of drills down a little bit more on these actual reasons. Again, fifteen thousand people, eleven thousand finished it.

1:00:38 This is kind of a big, a big deal as far as getting to the heart of what’s going on. So another thing I thought was really interesting about it is it says the gap in understanding makes it all the more difficult to have honest, productive conversations. And this is what we’re talking about. You’re so polarized on different sides. How do you meet in the middle? Like Bill covered a couple of weeks ago, what the church thinks the members care about and what the members actually care about.

1:01:03 There’s a gulf, a vast, wide, you know, gulf right there. And how do you ever come together and make it work? Most people who leave do tell a church member about their faith crisis. They’re not going to keep it to themselves or their faith deconstruction. Eighty three, according to the research percent, do do that. But some conversations go better than others. And I thought this was really interesting.

1:01:26 Here’s a little chart saying, yes, eighty three percent of people that leave confess and confide in Jesus. someone who is still a member. And that’s probably because that’s your whole social group, right? Everybody’s a member. You try to find a trusted person, hopefully, but that doesn’t always work. So it says people who have left the church reported that their most helpful conversations were with peers or like a spouse and a friend, right?

1:01:50 You would hope that a spouse as traumatized as they are would hope to really understand because it’s very important. You’re living your life together. Friends, they care about you. More than half said those conversations were helpful and supportive. Farther down the list, and you can probably imagine where this is going, were conversations with parents, only fourteen percent positive.

1:02:12 And I think that’s because if you’re talking to your parent, you’re probably a minor or a younger person. And the parent still thinks they have, you know, the ability to convince you or sway you or change your mind. So they are going to be very harsh with you probably because of the empty chair. You know, they do have this power over you. They’re going to guilt trip you. They’re going to tell you you’re making a huge mistake because they honestly believe that you are.

1:02:34 So fourteen percent positive when you talk to parents. That’s not not very good. Relief Society presidents, ten percent positive. Yeah, again, somebody who has some kind of authority over you and has a way to, you know, sort of force you, make you feel bad, you know, tell you the hard, honest truth, right? They’re not going to be understanding because you’re doing the wrong thing in their eyes.

1:02:58 And the very worst of all, who do you think the worst is? You guys can read the slide. RFM, who’s the worst to have a conversation with? Bishops and state presidents, the usual suspects. Yeah, they are not going to hear it. They’re never going to say, well, you know what? Walk your own path. Oh, no. And I’m sure a lot of people in the chat who had those conversations, they can tell us what it’s about.

1:03:19 But only five percent of those are positive, according to the data that Jeff shared. So, again, you guys can freeze on this kind of look at it. But this is kind of what you would expect. The people that love you, that have to interact with you every day, they hopefully are going to try to understand a friend or a peer better. The people that are in a position of authority over you, a parent or a leader, they’re going to have a much harder stance there.

1:03:43 I love this. This says, Jeff says, let’s see, you’ve got to put emotions on hold, kind of on the table and able to have these conversations. And you need to examine the story that you’re telling yourself, faithful member, about why somebody that you love or care about is leaving. And again, it usually comes from a place of love or fear, but you will not allow yourself to hear what they’re really saying.

1:04:08 And sometimes church members sort of invent narratives about people and and why they leave. And that’s why I have this graphic up here. She’s thinking, oh, I’m sure he wants to drink or smoke or gamble. And you guys remember that My Turn on Earth song, I’m the one who writes my own story. You guys remember that. That’s exactly what people are doing for us, right? And I will say, yes.

1:04:30 Are you going to sing the song with me? No, I don’t know the song. Nor would I sing it with you if I did. But that’s more a reflection on me than on you. You have a lovely singing voice. All I’m saying is that they’re doing the same thing again. The church gives them. The church gives us this whole scenario. If we know somebody who leaves the church, they did it to sin. We’ve been over this before, right?

1:04:51 Or they did it because they let the things of the world lead them away, which sounds a lot like sinning to me with more words. And this says, right, instead, what’s that middle sentence say, Rebecca? Instead, sometimes church members sort of invent narratives. No, we don’t. We are given the fully fleshed out narrative from the church leaders. We just apply it as we’re told to do. Yep. You are not wrong. I’m rethinking the whole book.

1:05:17 And again, he’s from a faithful point of view. And so that is what he’s trying to say. He would never be able to say this comes from the top, right? He’s saying people misunderstand. And we hear that all the time. What do you think, Bill? You can tell it’s from a faithful point of view just because he continually does this sort of thing. Patrick Mason does the same thing. Others do as well.

1:05:35 And that’s why I just want to keep pointing it out. No, I’m glad you are. I’m glad you are. Any thoughts on that, Bill? And then I think we have two more slides here. Yeah, I hope that as Jeff continues to sit down with people, that somebody will ask those hard questions that RFM is pointing to, to ask him, wait a minute, you’re saying that church members sort of invent the narratives about why people leave?

1:06:04 Isn’t it the church leaders who invent the narratives and then tell them to the members? Rogue artist. Again, the church and its defenders continue to blame the innocent people in the pews who are just passing along what they’ve been told to pass along. But at some point, we all have to grow up and the buck has to stop with those top fifteen men who are at the forefront of every problem that is in Mormonism.

1:06:40 But those top-fifty men definitely never told the missionaries to challenge people to baptism after the first discussion, Bill, did they? Never. Elder Ballard said that. Strangely, he was in the missionary committee early on in his time, and he’s the one who helped create and publish the discussions that passed on that request to requests of potential converts to get baptized after the first discussion.

1:07:05 So they do things and they think it’s a good idea. And then it gets called out and it looks like a bad idea. And then it’s not their fault anymore because we never did this. I don’t know whose idea this was. What kind of crazy missionaries, what are you doing out there? You crazy missionaries challenging people to baptism after the first discussion. Yeah, they did that with technology too.

1:07:24 After years of saying nothing, no phone, no tablet, no email, don’t do anything. Then they finally realized they need to be on social media. And I can’t remember which apostle it was, but they said, we don’t know why our missionaries didn’t embrace technology before, but we’re going to teach them how now. Oh my gosh, right? How many people were sent home because they had a secret phone or something? So you’re not wrong about this.

1:07:46 And I feel like the church puts those narratives in your head. So when you do hear something that you can’t reconcile, your child is saying, I’m leaving because it’s not true. You instantly have that go-to. It just clicks in. Your brain can’t accept what your child or your friend said. So it clicks in. Oh wait, I heard this and that. You don’t even know that you’re doing it. So you’re absolutely right.

1:08:07 He does talk about parents, especially creating, a life and a dream that they want their child to have. You know, my child’s going to get married in the temple and they’re going to go on a, you know, and as soon as the child sort of veers off that path, you know, it’s very difficult for the parent. And, but again, like you said, our family, why do they have those dreams and goals for their children?

1:08:26 Because you’re told that’s the only thing that’s acceptable for your child. So yeah, the stat is very interesting, but, oh, here they talked about God. How did your faith transition impact your relationship with God and the church? And, you know, most people, the church, of course, they’re not so okay with anymore, but they kind of find their own sense of spirituality. And you guys can freeze on this and look more about it.

1:08:47 But there were several articles after Jeff’s book came out on the faithful side and Deseret news, where they kind of threw a little bit of the data under the bus. And they said things like, well, that might not have been representational. Well, that might not have this and that, you know, um, So I think they are having to backpedal or do some a little bit of apologetics because even though you point that out, this is a faithful point of view, that data is in there and you can see that and you can, you know, it kind of makes your head scratch if you’re faithful.

1:09:16 So be aware as you look around out there, there are articles starting to come out that are kind of throwing the data under the bus a little bit. I love the headline to this because it’s actually very humorous. Yeah. No, don’t you think that’s really funny? What does it say? It says, for accurate conclusions about LDS, Latter-day Saint retention, look at the best data, right? That would be the data we’re hiding from you.

1:09:39 That’s the best data that we want you to look at. The data that we won’t let you see. Exactly. So I’m excited to get the book. I’m going to read it and I’m going to see, and, and I will say that, you know, I’ll touch on this. Bill’s going to say it later. We had a little incident with that this week. We’re of course, the post-Mormon cruise, we’re all excited. And we had some people on the faithful influencer side, you know, make some jabs about people that were going to go, that they were going to, you know, sin.

1:10:04 And that’s all that was going to happen on this cruise. And a lot of people pushed back and, A lot of people said, you know, don’t stereotype these people. These are hurtful. These are harmful. And so there was a lot of dialogue back and forth. We had one faithful person say, I would never get on this boat with these people. Right. So this kind of. Yeah. Us, us, these people, these people I wrote back very fiercely.

1:10:30 And I said, these people are your friends, neighbors, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters. You know, these people are us and you. So and yeah, I will say that some people that we’ve even been talking about in this segment pushed back personally against the influencer. So people are taking notice. It’s quite interesting. Good. Is there a point in going on an ocean cruise if you’re not going to sin? Well, do you know what? What is the definition of sin, really?

1:11:01 I mean, in the LDS church, it’s having one drop of coffee. This is what I’m talking about. That’s what I’m saying. Is there a point in going on a cruise if you’re not going to sin, Mormon style? No, because I’m probably going to have at least a drop of ice coffee. So I guess I am planning to sin. There it is. You admit it. You admit it. No further questions. And I probably will uncover my shoulder. I think I will. You’re lost.

1:11:24 All right, that’s all I have on that one. It was very interesting, and there’ll probably be more. Well, great. Here’s the next one. The next one is in purple. It’s from Exponent Two. It looks like a great story. Yeah, this is me. I will just note, this will just take one slide to get through. For a lot of Latter-day Saints, there is a script, and we’ve talked about this in the last few weeks, about these stories of the church and its members beginning to celebrate the give approval to women who are out in the workforce.

1:11:57 Again, there was that blog post with the gentleman who is more of an at-home husband supporting his wife getting her education so that she can go out into the world and be the one who works outside the home and whose education and career gets focused on. So there’s this script that you date in high school, you serve a mission, you get married young, you start having kids, you move quickly into family life.

1:12:23 Now there’s an article in the Exponent Two, titled From Prom to Prenatals, the LDS Marriage Conveyor Belt. And it argues that many women experience this path less as a series of choices and more as an expected sequence already laid out for them. One line that stood out described the pattern as going from mission to marriage to fatherhood for the men, while women often feel pushed into a parallel track but a little different, centered around marriage, staying at home, and motherhood.

1:13:01 Another striking observation asks whether women are being prepared to pursue their own futures or simply taught to stay on the conveyor belt. And so you see the article there in the top right written by Abby Maxwell Hanson. We’ve highlighted her articles in the past. And so she’s just pointing to her in this interesting moment where everyone is taking note that there was a way we used to do things, and it is a changing.

1:13:30 So we’ll see where it goes. I’ll just note this story overlaps with a recent Mormonland podcast highlighting women who pursued careers during an era when LDS culture often discouraged it. Again, just a few years ago, we had the sisters in the church quite pissed. that we had female auxiliary leaders who were bragging about having spent their life doing their work career, and they were being promoted into the highest auxiliaries female-wise in the church.

1:14:02 And so the Mormon Land podcast was going in and getting stories from people who back in the time when it was shunned, discouraged, and looked down upon, the women who at that time were working outside the home and who valued their careers. So they look back at women who chose paths outside the expected mold and the resistance many encountered along the way. So we ask inside Mormonism how much of our life trajectory, and I’m obviously a man speaking, but I am speaking generally to the females in the church and those out of it, how much of our life trajectory is genuine personal choice and how much of it comes from a culture that quietly hands us a roadmap long before we realize we’re following one.

1:14:50 And I’ve said it here on the newscast before, I’ve said it on other podcasts that I’m part of, but I’ve got a highly intelligent woman in my life that I’m aware of, a friend of mine, and all she wanted to do was be a doctor. And she spent much of her early childhood with that as her dream and really wanted to do that. And I can tell you right now, she would have been great at it.

1:15:15 And sometime in her early teens, she was made to feel shame over those dreams. She was told that those aren’t really an option, that what she has to do is do the church track. And so she did. She became a wife and a mother, stayed at home, raised the kids. And having deconstructed the church, she is resentful that this system took away from her what I believe and what she believes she was meant to do.

1:15:47 And I think there’s a lot of women in the church, older women, who now see the church changing on something that they thought was baked into the doctrine and theology. And they are now having to confront the fact that their life was taken from them, and they were pushed down a track that wasn’t theirs. And so I’m grateful, again, I’ll say, I’m grateful that the church has made changes, that women growing up in the church today will feel safer going their own direction, but it is sad that this church constantly talks to its members, teaching them as if the false ideas of men are the true doctrines and policies of the kingdom.

1:16:43 When, if the world changes that wicked world, if that wicked world changes, they change right with it. They just happened to be four decades late. Your guys’ thoughts. All right, I’ll go. We talked to, am I muted? No, RFM is. Oh, RFM is. Oh, okay. I’m muted, but I’m down here asking you for your thoughts, Rebecca. Ah, there you go. Yeah, and we covered this. It seems like we cover this every couple of weeks, but it’s devastating.

1:17:15 It’s absolutely devastating, you know, and you do look back at your life. I mean, my mother had a master’s in zoology and she never worked a day in her life. She just went home, right? That was it. Masters in zoology. She was a Fulbright scholar. I talked about that. In Austria, she studied and she went home. That is the example that I saw, right? And when I was a freshman at BYU, my major was advertising because I loved it. I loved creative writing.

1:17:45 I loved to make things up. I would create jingles, advertising. But my first couple of weeks in there, they talked about, how intensive it would be and internships and, you know, high power and cutthroat world. And I was like, oh, gosh, I changed to art history. You know, I changed to getting a master’s in library and information science. That would probably be a nice, safe thing that I could be a mother and that not that cutthroat world of advertising advertising. But I didn’t do what I loved, right?

1:18:16 I did what I thought I should do. And I never really thought about why. I never thought, oh, someone’s making me do this. Not at all. I had the example of my mom and I had just the example of every single young women’s leader I’d ever had who said, oh, you’ll get married and then everything will be fine. And I don’t think women that are not my age or around my age could understand how it was.

1:18:34 They probably can’t believe it because thank God it has changed. Thank God, like Bill said, it is different. And we see these young people with career choices and motherhood, which is an awesome choice and, you know, couples working together. So, but for those of us of a certain age, it absolutely was a conveyor belt. It’s now called the covenant path. And we didn’t even know that we didn’t have free will. We didn’t know.

1:18:56 But then again, you can look at it and go, I don’t know what would have happened. I had my kids. I was a stay-at-home mom. I loved every second of it. It was amazing. So hindsight is twenty twenty somewhere out there. String theory, another universe. I’m some kind of high powered advertising executive, not on the newscast, which I also love to do. So there’s always time to find things that you love and start anew no matter how old you are. I think that’s a good message, too. So but yeah, the church does it.

1:19:21 And we didn’t even realize what happened to us. Well, if you ever get into financial trouble, you can always fall back on the cutthroat world of art history. You know, it is kind of cutthroat. I’m telling you, I got to see the Sistine Chapel for the first time two weeks ago. I had written my bachelor’s thesis on it, and it was quite a moment. I, for once, got to use some of the information, annoyed everybody in my group. Oh, yeah, it’s really not worth anything. No, it is.

1:19:48 I’m sure it enriched the experience for everyone in your tour group. All right. So do you think that has anything to do with cosmetic surgery in Utah? Yes, I do. This is very interesting. And we don’t have to go through every single thing here. But there was an article in the Tribune. Here’s why Utah has become one of America’s surprising plastic surgery hotspots. We have talked about this before, that the numbers just keep increasing.

1:20:12 And it is very interesting because we’re here in Utah. We’ll go through the reasons. This is pretty fascinating. Of course, I got to make all kinds of fun AI Barbie pictures. It’s a growing industry. The procedures have become increasingly common, particularly among women in the suburban communities among the Wasatch Front. And it’s becoming very normalized, much more so than it ever was in the past.

1:20:36 In other words, everybody’s doing it right. One of the big things people do are a mommy makeover. Have you heard of this, either Bill or RFM? No, I haven’t. I’ve got to tell you, I heard of the daddy do over, but not the mommy makeover. Oh dear. There it is. Yes. Kind of a all over full, you know, you have your kids. I have this graphic here. You have your kids, you have them quickly.

1:20:57 You’re on that conveyor belt and you wake up one morning when you’re thirty five and you’re like, I got to do something. Mommy makeover kind of takes care of everything. Right. They just do it very, you know, it’s all encompassing. Right. And you come out on the other side of it. I have friends that have had it and you’re like, wow, that’s amazing. I think they’re a little expensive, a little spendy, but definitely self-esteem boosting and in an environment that, at least in my experience, a lot about how you look in the LDS church in Utah. Everybody’s in such close proximity.

1:21:30 Everybody’s in the ward. There is competition among women. You see each other every week. You want to look good. And there’s definitely competition. I always made the joke about somebody new would move into the ward and they were a certain kind of very attractive looking woman. You’d go, ah, young women presidency. Yeah, she’ll be put in there. She’ll be made the young women’s president. And that’s exactly what happened. I was slogging it out in scouts, right?

1:21:53 I was the cub mistress for a long time. You could see those young women presidencies when they’d walk in the building on Wednesday night. It was kind of like, You know, the wind was blowing in their hair. They were fantastically attractive. And I know I said that before, but it is true. Is there any difference on the general level, do you think, with the general presidencies, Rebecca? Well, you mean above? No, and I’m going to talk about that.

1:22:15 Women are chosen who are very put together. We talked about Sister, you know, what’s her name, with the veneer, which I think might have been a veneer. They definitely look a certain way. They don’t look like your standard, you know, I had seven kids and stayed home. So what’s the purpose of Annette Dennis then? Do you know what? Oh my God. Don’t make me laugh without a rim shot.

1:22:37 No, you didn’t. Well, they do. Okay. They do have to put some people on there that represent America. More of the stay at home mom. So but, you know, she’s she’s awesome. She’s lovely. She has more power than any other woman. Let’s move on. So why Utah? This article talks about how and this is this is a good point. Younger population. Right. These procedures are typically done on a certain age range and we have more of that age range here.

1:23:03 We have the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives type women, right? So you’re going to see more procedures. Another thing it explores is just in the media. We have Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. We have the Real Housewives. They are all getting these procedures. It’s very commonplace. They talk openly about the procedures. It’s not something that you’re like, yes, I’m going on vacation for three weeks. She won’t see me. No, you say, I had…

1:23:25 whatever you had and people are okay with it because everybody’s doing it. So it’s very much out in the open more. This is the social media effect. Same thing I just mentioned. This is Jesse from Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is the same person. I don’t know if you would know this from the picture, but she’s been very open about her plastic surgeries a lot on her face and she’s been unhappy with them and had more.

1:23:48 And, you know, she’s searching after that perfect look and she’s very open about it. And every time she talks about it, people are Googling her doctor or trying to find out what the procedure is. And young, she’s thirty two, maybe thirty three now. very young. It used to be these procedures for, for people that were older trying to regain that, you know, youth. No, these are procedures that are on young women. Um, of course, concerns and criticisms.

1:24:15 Um, the article just talks about idealized beauty standards. And like I say, perhaps the church, because it’s just so connected and on top of each other, uh, that people see each other every day. They talk about these procedures, they compare themselves. They may notice that a certain look gets, you know, better callings or, you know, more attention in the board. And so they’re going to indulge in this. Let’s see. Yeah, here’s where I talk about it.

1:24:43 So the top leaders, I asked it, I said to AI, make top LDS leaders, you know, look like Barbies. And there they all are. Although I have to say in that picture, the person that has the greatest hair is Jesus over there in the corner. That looks fantastic. But I will say that the women in upper leadership, the women that appear on conference are usually really put together individually.

1:25:01 You know, they usually are extremely attractive. And they’re that forward-facing woman, you know, that we’re all supposed to idealize toward. I just figured it out, Rebecca. I just figured it out. You have the answer. Let us know. Sister Dennis is taking the picture. All right. Poor Sister Dennis. We love you, Sister Dennis. Again, she has more power than any woman anywhere in any religion.

1:25:25 So there are, let’s go through a little bit of stats. There are a hundred and ten plastic surgeons in Utah. So that puts Utah seventh in the US, right? Seventh. I mean, we’re supposed to focus on what’s inside, not what’s outside. But apparently, as I talked about before in your story, RFM, what’s on the outside helps you judge what’s on the inside. And if you’re pretty, lovely, and put together, you must have a very good insight, right? And this was shocking to me.

1:25:58 A decade ago, Utah was twenty six in terms of how many people would search online for plastic surgery, things like that. It’s number three today. Number three as far as searches. Mommy makeover second in the U.S. for how many people search for that because everybody’s a young mom. Right. And they’ve had their kids and they need to get a new lease on life. So they can go on that senior mission, right?

1:26:23 Breast augmentation, number one in the nation for searching terms. You know, how can I get one of those for myself, right? Rebecca, where does boob job rank? You know, people typically don’t use that term anymore. They tend to look at this more clinically. Yeah, that’s kind of a seventies term. Did they search for it? They might. I mean, they don’t really say. There are certain things, yeah, that they’re not going to put in a serious statistical analysis. And boob job is probably…

1:26:52 They’ve got nose job down there in the bottom right. They do. Rhinoplasty is what it is. You know what it ranks the last in, which is strange? Brazilian butt lifts. Nobody cares about that, I guess. Shocking data. But I just had to bring this up. And I took some informal polls today on this. Of course, we have Alma, right? Who says the soul shall be restored to the body and the body to the soul. We’re talking about the resurrection. Yay.

1:27:22 And every limb and joint shall be restored to its body. Yay. Even a hair of the head shall not be lost. but all things should be restored to their proper and perfect frame. Now, does that also mean that any additions that you made in this life, anything you added, right? Does that mean that that also might be taken away so that you can be restored to that perfect form? I tried to get some information because you know where I’m going here.

1:27:48 Are we going to lose that augmentation in the next life? And that’s kind of my graphic here. She’s resurrected and she’s going, what the hell? What happened to my to my perfect augmentation? There was really nothing that the church said. The LDS.org said they don’t weigh in on that. They do not have an opinion. Yes. Bill has a look on his face like he wants to say something he’s going to regret. Then you better say it.

1:28:15 We definitely know you’re going to lose them if you don’t make it to the Celestial Kingdom because there’s DK Smoothie again. You can add whatever you want. You can trim it up. Whatever you want to do. But if you don’t make that celestial kingdom, it all goes away. It all goes away. The TK smoothie. That’s right. But I kind of feel like you’re going to be restored to what God gave you because God don’t make no junk.

1:28:37 So whatever you added, whatever you did, I don’t think it’s going to be there in the next life. I did find this one person. It was unknown. It was on some church site. An LDS doctor in the resurrected body will not have plastic surgery enhancements. church teachings emphasize that the resurrection is a state of physical perfection this means the spirit will be reunited with its proper and perfect frame quoting alma restoring original god-given form without artificial additions um scars or mortal modifications it’s amazing all the specific and important stuff to her argument was found outside the scripture she’s quoting Well, it has to be because the church says we do not have an opinion on this.

1:29:16 Amazingly, because they have opinions on many other invasive things, right? Personal things that women do, but not this. It seems like it’s okay, but you may or may not get to take it with you, as they say. A church led by fifteen guys is okay with women getting plastic surgery, you’re saying? I think that’s true because if you look at who they marry, if you look at the other leadership, they’re awfully put together, aren’t they? So they’re okay.

1:29:43 And I think that’s the end of my story. Last comments on any of that or we’ll move on. I think I’ve said enough to get me in trouble tonight. Do you want to get another crack at it, Bill? The only thing I’ll say here is that women put their bodies on the line to carry a baby nine months, to deliver that child, to breastfeed that baby. I don’t have any judgment or shame for people who take measures like this.

1:30:09 Your body has in some ways been run through the ringer, and you get to do whatever you do, and I support that. people making their best decisions about how they want to live their life. I sure as hell want people to do that for me. Yep. One hundred percent. And like I said, I have friends that have had the mommy makeover. They look phenomenal. Seriously. Incredible. That’s good because I’ve been wanting to recommend a nose job for you for some time, Bill. I’ll schedule it this week. I do have a quite a honker there. So.

1:30:39 Yes. Well, remember, as Watson told… No, Holmes told Watson in one of the Basil Rathbone movies, remember Watson, throughout the ages, prominent men… have had prominent noses. Another story. Is that a segue? Sure. I don’t know how you can segue that. My nose grows as I get older. So does the church’s portfolio of property. And that’s what’s happening here. So let’s talk about it.

1:31:12 The church continues expanding its real estate footprint. And Florida continues to be a major focus. By the way, it feels like about twenty five percent of these stories have to do with Florida. For whatever reason, the church just loves that place. This week reports a highlighted two hundred and forty million purchase rate. of a four hundred and fifty six unit apartment complex in Boca Raton through the church’s investment arm, adding to a growing collection of Florida property holdings that now stretch well beyond the chapels and temples.

1:31:47 By the way, if you divide that out, what that means is the church, just to break even, has to make a half million dollars on each of those Just to cross the break-even line. Oh, they will over time. Pretty soon the church is going to buy Marvin’s Gardens. That’s right. Don’t pass go. Don’t collect two hundred dollars. But in the church’s case, collect all the money you want and the properties.

1:32:14 Observers have increasingly noted that somewhere along the way, the church seems to evolved from a religion that owns real estate into a real estate empire that also happens to own a religion. Or put differently, When your portfolio starts including massive apartment complexes, sprawling land holdings, cattle ranches, et cetera. It even owns a, even did like a major renovation on a rodeo somewhere here in Utah and major development projects across the globe.

1:32:45 People begin wondering whether they are watching a faith organization or a fortune five hundred property strategy that also has hymns. So any thoughts from you guys? It just seems like at this point, it’s almost not even interesting anymore. The church owns so much, and they’re just going to own more and more and more, and someday they might own my house too. Far, far away on Judea’s plains has rarely been so timely. Your thoughts, Rebecca? Yeah, you’re right. It is almost not interesting anymore.

1:33:16 Like, you know, I used to track it so avidly and grab every story, do a short on it, post it. Now it’s just like, eh, been there, done that. They own the gosh darn world. There’s nothing we can do about it. So yeah, it’s just par for the course, the golf course, which they own. At that point, there’ll be nothing Jesus can do about it. And I think that’s the real plan. I think maybe that is the plan.

1:33:37 But I still wonder at what point, I don’t know, some higher authority will look at how much they own and say, you can outbid Bill Gates and you can do that because you’re tax exempt. You don’t freaking pay taxes on any of this. I just wonder at what point maybe somebody will look at this and there might be a change. I don’t know. It would have to get to a tipping point. I think the idea is to buy up all the real estate before Jesus comes again so we can look at him once more and say those famous lines, there’s no room in the end for you, pal.

1:34:09 Just turn around and get out of here. Here’s another story. Is this yours, Bill? No, this is my story, my quick story here. Yeah, this kind of popped up for me on some alert over the weekend. Man threatens to shoot St. Charles County Church, and we’re talking about an LDS church, using AI voice generator. And this is the gentleman, Jordan Gibson. And what happened, I’ll just kind of paraphrase, is the members of the ward started getting these calls from somebody.

1:34:43 It was an auto-generated voice, you know, saying that they, you know, let’s see. I think they say specifically what he says here. something about yes burning in hell because you believe in false prophets okay so that’s what he said and it says the church member said they hung up and then they tried to call back i read another source that said they called many many times like thirty times uh the church member of course uh went to the police and they were able to track down the number It says, the church searched their phone records and found that the number associated with the first call belonged to Gibson, who had previously expressed interest in joining the church.

1:35:25 He’s an investigator, or as they now call them, a friend, right? The church member said that Gibson later changed his mind and told them to stop calling and block their number. He changed his mind and decided to blow it up. Yes, and as I read some other sources, he actually only attended once. And then he told them, well, there was the burning in hell false prophets comment. And then he just said, I don’t want to be bothered again. Stop.

1:35:52 The probable cause statement said that officers talked to a person who said she had frequent contact with Gibson. And she said he had recently told her that he was upset with the church because they kept calling him to join. Mm-hmm. So obviously that’s not the response that you want. But, you know, it sounds like maybe, you know, someone visits and you’re talking to the missionaries and they’re going to reach out. They’re going to keep fellowshipping.

1:36:16 And it sounds like he had just had enough is what it happened. Friend is the new name for investigator and fellowshipping is a new name for annoying. Yes, exactly. But what was really interesting to me is that I had several people from that area reach out and say, you know, that’s where I go to church. Where did you get that information? We haven’t heard about this. Isn’t that surprising? I was very surprised by that.

1:36:39 They said that they had received one thing on the next day after these calls that just simply said Temple recommend interviews are moved to another building. But it didn’t alert anybody to any danger or anything. They just said they’re moving the activity. And so the people that saw my post were like, wait a minute, why are we finding out about this danger right in our area from who are you, some random person?

1:37:04 Yeah. on Facebook. I don’t even know how they came across my post. Like I said, I found a small article somewhere. So the first email alerting the LDS members to any danger way after the fact came out on May, and you guys can pause on this if you want to read it, but the leader said, Oh, this happened is taken care of. It kind of went over the different things in the handbook that they tell you to do, throw the handbooks and try to keep safe and be aware and shut doors and things like that. It was a long email.

1:37:35 But the people that I was in contact with who, again, reached out to me, faithful, were like, we’re going to maybe talk to our leaders about this and find out why there wasn’t more of an alert. And I’m guessing they just thought they contained it right away. They were able to track him and trace him. And there he was. But some of them These are faithful members did express concern that they were not aware until much later what had happened.

1:37:57 So it’s an interesting scenario and it’s unfortunate. I think it said the guy’s bail is posted at five hundred thousand and we’ll see what happens. But this was in Missouri. I guess he didn’t get a letter from his bishop. I was going to say, since he only attended once, I don’t think they’re going to write a letter for him. But yeah, I just, I mean, I had to kind of stifle a laugh at the end of it when it said they wouldn’t stop contacting him. But again, it’s a very serious scenario.

1:38:23 It’s nothing to laugh at at all. Don’t laugh at this. Yeah, no, but using AI and using fake voices and, you know, people are up in their game when it comes to this kind of stuff. So yeah. And it was interesting to interact with the faithful members who just said, I hope the church can do better in letting us know what’s going on. Yes. I just want you to know that it’s too bad it’s St.

1:38:44 Charles County because it would have been nice if it were St. Charles Place. Oh, again, back to Monopoly. Yes, you caught it. And there’s only room enough for one rando in the universe, Rebecca. That’s Colby Reddish. You, however, can be the rando. I was just going to say that. The feminine is a randa. That must be me. Mediocre minds think alike. Any thoughts on that, Bill? Kind of a strange, glad it all turned out okay, but it could have been really scary.

1:39:12 We’ve run into this fifty times in the last few years where we talk about the fact that the church is who gets to make these decisions about how much information the member gets to know. And it just seems so inappropriate to me You don’t get to pretend like, oh, we’re the wiser. We know better. Stop treating your members like children. Give them all the information. Let them know what the risk or safety levels are of a situation, and they can make the best decisions for themselves.

1:39:44 They don’t need you to filter the information and be the gatekeeper of what people in the pews know about what’s going on in the church. No, in fact, this person was one of the people I talked to were upset because their child was going to go to, you know, young men, young women over at the church. Temple recommends were canceled, but nobody sent out any information about not having the teenager show up at the church.

1:40:10 So, you know, they really thought, OK, that’s kind of an oversight. We need to know. So you’re right, Bill. Yeah, I’m detecting another theme in addition to monopoly that a lot of these problems and stories have in common is the desire on the part of somebody usually related or affiliated with the church to control information so that you don’t get to see something that you should be able to see.

1:40:33 Yeah. Look at, you know, again, the church’s entire time of existence, right? has been a gatekeeper of information and withholding information that would change the ability for people to make informed decisions about how they live their life out in this religion. And it’s, of course, only normal that Mormon members, when they realize this, would start to act accordingly in their own lives. Yeah.

1:40:59 Here’s an update on last week’s. Yeah. New story about that mom and dad who got arrested for negligenting their eleven-year-old son, Moroni. Allegedly. To death. Yeah, and that was in last September. I did the whole story last week. It was a rather thorough story, which is why I didn’t do the other thorough story that I already did on tonight’s show last week. A week after a Tremonton couple…

1:41:26 was arrested and accused of child torture that resulted in the death of their son. Police said Thursday, this past Thursday, the parents have been released from jail because no charges have been filed against them yet. Remember, you sent this to me, Rebecca, last week, and you’re saying, what’s going on? The releases occurred after formal charges were not filed within the legally required.

1:41:48 Seventy two hour window, police said in a statement. Prosecutors are currently reviewing the case, but have not yet received the complete file. The county attorney’s office said in a statement. This matter involves serious allegations and a highly complex investigation requiring careful analysis of extensive evidence and investigative reports. OK, so what’s going on here? And as you had asked this. The bottom line is this.

1:42:17 I’ve had to have this discussion with hundreds of people, so I’ll try and keep it brief, okay? The bottom line is this. When it comes to the power of police to arrest and hold somebody, they have that power, but only limited in nature, and that’s seventy-two hours. It’s called a seventy-two hour hold. It does not include, repeat, not include weekends or holidays, but it’s seventy-two hours and business days.

1:42:38 And the idea behind it is this, is that if a person is going to be deprived of their freedom, then there have to be criminal charges filed against them. That makes sense, right? Well, with felonies, only prosecutors can file criminal charges. Police do not have that power. They can charge misdemeanors. They write a ticket for a DUI, for example, but they do not have the power to charge felonies. That is reserved to the prosecutors.

1:43:03 Prosecutors are the ones who can file felonies. So, What that means is this, is that we understand that the law recognizes that there are going to be times when the police need to arrest somebody and get them off the street and hold them in jail. Immediately. It’s an emergency, right? They’re a danger to the community. We understand that. On the other hand, we’re giving the executive force, we’re giving the police without the prosecutor’s executive too, but the judge is going to be involved at the initial stage.

1:43:33 The main thing is that we’re giving to the executive power in the police, the power without any criminal charges being filed to arrest somebody and hold them. That’s an extraordinary thing. By extraordinary, I mean It happens every day and multiple times every day, but it’s an extraordinary feature of the law. And because it’s so extraordinary, it is severely limited, and it’s limited by the seventy-two hours that I talked about.

1:43:56 After seventy-two hours, that person gets free. Okay? That’s it. That is the extent. You don’t get to arrest them for another seventy-two hours later on if you feel like it, if you’re the police, unless it’s for a different crime. But the prosecutor has to file charges. Now, what this told me, as soon as you told me this, Rebecca, It’s been since September, that’s over half a year since this kid died.

1:44:20 And the police have been doing their investigation. And as I mentioned last week, when I was going through the evidence, such as it was, this is a very circumstantial case. And now I read this story, which tells me that what’s been going on is that there’s probably been a feud going on between the police and the prosecutor’s office. And these things go on from time to time. And the police are very sure that they’ve got enough evidence to convict.

1:44:43 And the prosecutor’s going, I don’t think there’s enough evidence to convict. And that’s my job to make sure that that’s the case before I file the charges, because I’m the poor schmo who has to take this case in front of a jury. if I file charges, right? And if we can’t reach a resolution, and if I got a crappy case, it’s more likely we’re not going to reach a resolution because who wants to be guilty on a crappy case? They’re more likely to win a trial.

1:45:05 Having said all of that, this bears all the hallmarks of a fight between the police and the prosecutors, and the prosecutors have not been Willing to charge after over half a year. And so the police went out and arrested them, which they can do on their own, but only up to seventy two hours. And the prosecutors did not follow through by filing charges within seventy two hours. In fact, the statement by the prosecutor.

1:45:27 Is designed to make it sound like it may be true, even if it’s a prosecutor talking, it could be true. Make it sound like they haven’t even seen the case yet. And they would have to review the entire thing from scratch in order to make a determination as to whether they should file charges. So the bottom line is right now, there’s probably no good feelings between the prosecutors and the police there in Tremonton County.

1:45:53 and that the mom and dad of this deceased young man, eleven years old from last September, are free now. And they will continue to be free on this until and unless the prosecutor files charges, which should happen only when the prosecutor feels that the prosecutor has enough evidence to convince a reasonable jury beyond a reasonable doubt that these people are guilty. Your thoughts. Rebecca, you have thoughts about this. You brought it to my attention.

1:46:22 Well, yeah, I was just really surprised because the way the other article was worded, it seemed they had camera footage. They had them carrying the body. They had statements that didn’t add up. But what I’ve learned from you, I think I think a little more like a lawyer now, having spent so much time with you. You know, if they can’t if they don’t have enough to prosecute, they need to be freed until something else happens.

1:46:46 So but yeah, I did wonder we spent so much time on that story. And to me, it seemed so horrifying and so locked in. But maybe it wasn’t as much as we all thought. It may have been, I’m not saying it was, but it could have been an attempt by the police to put pressure on the prosecutor to file charges by bringing notoriety to the case, which of course happened when they arrested the people. I don’t know. If it was, it didn’t work. They’re out free until charges are filed.

1:47:14 Your thoughts, Bill? No, it’s already been said. Again, little Derek Corden. There are instances where it’s like, you can see what happened here, but without the evidence pointing to a certain person in a way that is significant enough that you feel the jury will be convinced. Because you can be pretty sure something happened and that’s not going to be enough. It needs to be beyond a reasonable doubt.

1:47:45 And so the case has to meet a certain standard, a certain level. And every day there are cases that are pretty clear to the observer, but not going to quite get over on a jury. Yes. And frankly, on behalf of all the armchair quarterbacks out there, it’s a lot easier for all of us to come to a decision in our armchair than it might be if we were actually in a jury going through the whole process here and all the evidence and all the arguments.

1:48:12 And we might be a little bit more disposed to being involved in the evidence and taking our roles more seriously than just an armchair quarterback. That’s on defense of me and everybody else in the armchairs. We’ve got another story here. Oh, is this yours, Bill? Yeah, this is the one where a church gave all of their excess money away. This is out of the Salt Lake Tribune. There’s the image on the right.

1:48:38 They had half a million dollars to spare, so they donated it. Only a guy who looks like that would donate half a million dollars. In other words, give it away. You’d have to look like that. He looked like that before he gave it away. That’s why he gave it away. He’s thrilled. A small Utah church found itself with some extra money and decided to ask a pretty straightforward question. What good could we do with it? Huh?

1:49:03 Who would have thunk it? That’s a crazy thing. Jesus would never think a thought like that. Never. He never said that in the scriptures. What are they thinking? Right. So Salt Lake City’s first congregational church’s answer was to donate five hundred thousand. By the way, they sold a piece of property, didn’t buy one. They sold one. They had a half million dollars in excess. They didn’t need for their whatever next three years of of taking care of the church and the church.

1:49:31 the requirements and responsibilities they’ve got to take care of there. So they had this half million dollars laying around and they thought, let’s just, let’s just do some good in the world. So they donated the five hundred thousand dollars to help create a food pantry, a thrift store, serving people in need, no investment strategy, no buying property in Florida. No waiting for the perfect market conditions.

1:49:54 No endless accumulation for a rainy day fund that apparently lasts for generations. Just a community seeing resources and deciding resources are meant to be used, which raises an interesting question. If you had over three hundred billion dollars, what would you do with it? I donate half a million of it. Yeah, and they do. Yeah, it’s funny you should bring that up. I saw an awesome graphic from the Widow’s Might who tracks, of course, the finances of the church as they can sort of extrapolate what’s going on.

1:50:28 And I think the hardest thing is to understand how much money that is. Right. It’s just so much money. Our brains can’t comprehend it. So when we hear things like one point five eight billion dollars donated in aid or charity, we think that’s actually not even really correct. You think, oh, that’s cool. So here’s the graphic for every one dollar, one dollar in charitable giving two dollars and fifty cents.

1:50:53 is given to members, costs of buildings, something to support the membership and the quality of life in the church. OK, one for charity, two point five, two dollars and fifty cents for the members, forty two dollars into the portfolio. That’s the breakdown. That’s the ratio. That’s how they’re spending their money. That helps you kind of understand it. One dollar in aid, two dollars and fifty cents to operational costs of the church.

1:51:21 Forty two dollars into that fund, just like Jesus wanted it. I can get over this picture of this pastor. I’m trying to imagine president Oaks with a look on his face like that. Do you think Dallin Oaks Dallas has ever had a look on his face that even remotely? No, that’d be pretty happy. That look would be beneath him. Wouldn’t it? Yeah, I think so. Was that everything you had to say about that, Rebecca? Yes.

1:51:48 I went on and on, but finances is another soapbox for me. Yeah. Theodos J. Whoopie, and I think what is another donation, says, ha-ha, thank you for making me laugh several times tonight. On behalf of Rebecca and Bill, you’re welcome. Well done. Awesome team. Oh, yes. Radio Free Portman puts the I in team. That’s it. We make the horrible news fun, right? Is that what it is? Is that our slogan? I think there’s something else going on. Is there something else? Yeah, I have my whole thing here.

1:52:24 So I think maybe we’ll probably skip that video just for the sake of time. But Bakersfield, right? Again, the little town that could. There were five towns that started three years ago that we were following very closely. Cody, you guys can all name him with me. It’s a drinking game, right? Heber Valley, Lone Mountain, Fairview and Bakersfield. All the other cities have almost all the other cities are in final stages, construction starting, things like that.

1:52:52 But Bakersfield, they have really been doing their due diligence. They mobilized immediately. They have an incredibly organized community group. And my title is Bakersfield Pushes Back Hard. against LDS temples, height and bright. Again, that’s the slogan. It’s always the same. Why will the church not understand this? Here’s a picture on the right. Let’s see. I think we will skip the video, but you guys can go back and watch it later. Maybe find it.

1:53:19 Just Google what’s going on in Bakersfield. They were able to gather four hundred and eight letters from the community to talking about the temple. We want the temple in our community. You guys can say this with me. We welcome the temple, but not the height and not the bright. It’s going to be a hundred and twenty four feet. It’s going to be lit up. And so they are really pushing on the community leaders and petitioning to the church to be good neighbors. We’ve heard this before.

1:53:45 Now, it’s interesting in this town, Bakersfield, we reported on this a couple of months ago. The city manager wears two hats. So the LDS Temple was announced in April of twenty twenty three for Bakersfield. Right. It was one of those ones when President Nelson was still up there doing it. Everybody’s cheering. Bakersfield city manager was called to be a stake president of the newly created stake.

1:54:11 Just a few months later, September, twenty twenty four. The city manager is also a stake president. Right. Just kind of let your brain let that soak in right there. And the strange thing was there was no publicity in the church news. Normally they list out all new stake presidents, new stakes. They didn’t for this. I have no idea why. And as we learned, Elder James R. Rasband, not the son, but the first cousin once removed of Elder Rasband, at that point was the assistant director of the temple department.

1:54:41 And he came down to Bakersfield and set this gentleman apart. So the temple department reached into the city, plucked out someone and said, we’re going to make you a stake president to represent the church. And there you go. So I don’t know. I just find that extremely interesting on the heels of Todd Stowell. The really weird thing is that the new stake that was created for this city manager to become the new stake president of is the Bakersfield Temple stake.

1:55:05 Yeah, well, yes, the West. Yeah, that would be a step too far. That’s right. So anyway, they’re really mobilized. And they have got the most amazing graphics of what the temple will look like in their community. Do you remember Dibble? Remember Dibble, Don’t You Dabble? The church spokesman, Dibble, he’s down there. I love Dibble. We talked about him before, Merrill Dibble. If you do go Google that video, he just talks about the church has made reasonable concessions. Is that in this video?

1:55:34 Of course, but it’s three minutes long. I want to watch it because I want to see it. Merrill Dibble, hopefully he’ll never need it. A dribble cup. It is a really good video. If we have time, it is really good. That’s your story. We’ll go back to your story. Go one more down and that’s my video. As to whether we don’t watch it because my back is killing me and I want to watch this thing. Dang it. We might go a little bit over. Yeah, we already have.

1:55:59 It’s okay. It’s all right. This is about the temple in Bakersfield? Uh-huh. This is it. There it is. I’m Maddie Fulmer, your Bakersfield neighborhood reporter. And the neighborhood behind me in southwest Bakersfield has flooded the Bakersfield City Planner’s office with over four hundred letters with concerns over the proposed LDS temple. Now here’s what both the neighborhood and church leaders have to say.

1:56:27 Residents in the Brighton Park’s fifty five plus community say that they’re not against the temple, but they want Bakersfield officials to enforce zoning rules before granting final approval. A newly released fact sheet from Brighton Park’s ad hoc committee flags concerns over the proposed one hundred and twenty four foot temple steeple and the potential for bright lighting spilling into nearby homes.

1:56:49 We are delivering four hundred and eight signed letters from the community Stating two things. Let me just get one of these. Yes, we would love to have the temple. To the South of our now community. However, the height and the bright. It’s just it’s it’s so far out of code. Neighbors say the proposed steeple would soar to more than twice the city’s sixty foot height limit for the area, and they’re worried the temples lights could be too bright at night.

1:57:24 Church leaders countered that the temple would be set at about two hundred and sixty feet from the nearby property lines, and they insist its lighting will be carefully engineered to minimize any impact on the neighbors. The committee claims the project does not fit within the surrounding neighborhood. They point to the temple project in Yorba Linda, where the church leaders reduce the building’s height to meet city requirements.

1:57:45 You know, those are common concerns by neighbors of temples built around the country and around the world. So those aren’t new. We are glad that neighbors give us feedback. We appreciate that. We supported the city in performing an extensive environmental study that looked at multiple environmental factors, including lighting and the height of the steeple. And we agree with the city in the report that there will be no negative impacts from those two things.

1:58:13 Residents are now asking city leaders to lower the steeple height and limit nighttime lighting. The committee is also asking for restrictions on the glare and light shining into nearby homes. This is just a small section of folks that we have that’s saying, you know, four hundred eight, please build it, but build it within reason. And there’s city codes, please. Both sides say that they hope to find a solution that works for the neighborhood and still allows the temple project to move forward.

1:58:44 It’s hard to compare temples to each other. We’ll work with the city like we always have. And if they have certain requests that we feel are reasonable, of course, we’re open to finding a solution that works for everyone. A final decision on this matter is still far away. The city has to review the letters and then send it over to the planning commission. They have to discuss it, vote on it, and then city council gets the final say.

1:59:10 Reporting for twenty three ABC, I’m Maddie Fulmer, your Bakersfield neighborhood reporter. Yeah, and I should say the reason it’s taken two years, even to get to this point, is because of those environmental studies that the city requested in the residence. Now, Yorba Linda, also in California, is biting the church in the ass. I’m sorry to say it, but it is. It did reduce the height.

1:59:32 It reduced it. Once the ordinances and the codes and the neighbors, it made a concession there. Every other temple building town is bringing up your Belinda and saying, why not us? Why did you do it there? In California, things are locked down a little bit more. But everybody is bringing up Yorba Linda, which is in open house right now. And people are just raving about its proportions and how beautiful it is.

1:59:56 And as we talked about in Fairview, right, everybody is bringing that up. So I think I’ll leave it at Bakersfield. I have more Temple news, but I’ll save that till next time because it’s not immediate. That way, as long as it’s not the answer to this question that I have for you, because last week, last week, the news was that the mayor of Fairview, had asked in a public letter of the LDS Church if they would consider reducing the height of the temple. Has there been a response? Fine, we’ll go to my next slide.

2:00:21 You just won’t let me not talk about it, huh? Well, everybody wants to know that. I know, everybody wants to know. Okay, let’s see. That’s your story right there. There’s the video. Okay, I’ll skip that one and I’ll go back. There it is. Look up at the top right there. Fairview Church. And there’s the temple. And what’s that right there? It’s a cricket. Crickets from the LDS church.

2:00:42 And he’s still waiting for more details on his wonderful invitation to the temple open house next year. Like that was delivered to him and they said more details would be coming out. He hasn’t heard anything more. So I really don’t know if this letter is going to impact that. But there has been so much news coverage of Fairview. Print media coverage. online interviews. It’s everywhere that he is simply requesting.

2:01:08 Let’s look at this again, like everybody else. So, all right. I will say the rest of my temple news for later for the sake of time, but thank you for asking about Fairview. And I think we go back to your very last story. I’m saying that one for later. Are you going to save that too? Okay. Then I think, I think we’ve done it then. And we’ll hit the rest of them on June first, since we won’t be here next week. Very good. This, this is about a lawsuit. It’s boring.

2:01:32 And to me, and they can certainly wait a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of weeks. We’ll make it fresher. Right. Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry. I’m in charge. Yeah, I know. I’m in charge. Usually I’m not in charge and I’m acting like I am in charge. That’s the problem. It’s true. I think Bill has the next slide with a little bit of an announcement. Oh, okay. Yeah. Scroll through my temple stuff. Was that it, Bill?

2:02:00 There. Wait. There. All right. So actually, I’m going to take that one down, put this one up. This has a few other things. Let me make sure. Here, I go back. Yeah, I’ll go back. Is that the new one with Jacob Hansen’s picture? Well, it will soon. I’ll show you a picture of Jacob Hansen. So folks, just a reminder, we haven’t talked about it much. We did talk about it last week on the newscast, but we went a few months without mentioning it.

2:02:20 Don’t want anybody to think that something’s happened to this. It’s the post-Mormon celebration cruise. celebrate your deconstructing the religion. In spite of all that works against you being able to do that, we leave port in Long Beach near Los Angeles, September thirteenth, runs through September twentieth. You can see there what we’ll be doing each of the days, where we’ll be porting on day three, four, and five, Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta.

2:02:48 So that’ll be a fun trip. We’ve got the influencers down there at the bottom that are going. I will note just One down thing, Kobe Reddish, some rando will not be able to attend. So we’re looking for other randos. So maybe you want to sign up and be part of the cruise. You can register today. At the very bottom there is the link to go to khagsethtravel.com. and post-mormon-celebration-cruise.

2:03:17 You can also just go to mormondiscussionpodcast.org. At the very top, click Post-Mormon Celebration Cruise, and it’ll have the link to there as well. But we actually had things really picked up this week, didn’t they? Yeah. And I’ll explain how and why that happened. So I’ll just note, I did post this image on Facebook. Jacob Hansen decided to just be gloomy with his sad eyes and said that on our cruise, you get spiritually fed. He’s talking about his cruise.

2:03:48 And, uh, he says on theirs, you get a hangover and maybe an STD and then another, yeah, another one there. Let me see. I actually need to probably straighten this out. Cause it looks like this one over a little too far. So I’ll just move that over a tiny bit so we can see the whole thing. Um, Also on thoughtful faith, which is Jacob Hansen’s group, exmos like to talk about their journey, but a journey has a meaningful destination.

2:04:14 Wandering is not the same as being on a journey. Telling people to go wherever they want, if all paths are equally good or valid, is the definition of wandering. Somewhere deep down, they know this. And somewhere deep down, they know they have a thirst they can’t quench. What the hell? Mine is a thirst for a margarita. I was going to say a good margarita. That’s why I’m going on the cruise, Jacob. You finally figured it out. I got a thirst I cannot quench.

2:04:42 Doesn’t it get old when people still in the church with the most saddest eyes Tell the rest of us that this happiness isn’t real happiness. I get told so much. Bill’s not really happy. I’m not miserable. Trust me. My life is pretty dang good. I’ll just note here. So there’s those two. And then there’s this one, Brad Barber. Anyone showing their bravery by going to this? Anti-Mormon influencers launch the leaving Mormonism is bravery celebration cruise. By the way. Wait a second.

2:05:13 Did somebody, where’s the bravery coming from? Oh, I think the post that I created to advertise the cruise talked about how courageous it is to deconstruct a high-demand fundamentalist religion when everything inside the system is working against you. And that’s where I think they’re getting that from. So there is that. So that one there. And then the one here on the right, Kathleen Cole Williams, book your room today on our great and spacious ship. Look at that graphic.

2:05:46 yeah i can’t think of anything worse than being stuck on a boat with these people well i can think of one thing i’d say there’s a reason they went from three hours to two at church so just fyi no i i lost it on that one i usually don’t post back but i’m like how dare you with these people and like i said before these are your friends your family your brothers your sisters But do you know what?

2:06:07 Do you know how many people have now showed renewed interest in this? I personally have gotten five more people to request. People have been messaging me. So it’s the Streisand effect. Absolutely. And I just don’t know if faithful people realize how many events like this the faithful side put on. If you want to know, go to go and do travel. That shows a lot of them. They do cruises.

2:06:30 They go get on a bus with Brad Wilcox. There is money everywhere flowing. They go. a temple a day throughout Europe. There are all kinds of these things that the faithful do. To my knowledge, post Mormons don’t do this. John Dillon had a cruise in two thousand eighteen. I think this is the next one. I don’t think there’s been anything else. So look at the, you know, beam in your own cruise. I is what I say.

2:06:55 Is there a drink package with the temple a day tour? Yes, it’s post them. I just wanted to know about that. I’ll just say what’s expensive if you do it right. I’ll just say if I have to choose between an STD and being an active Mormon again, I’ll take the STD, just FYI. Go ahead. STD and LDS have two of the same three letters in common. Yeah. I just want to note, by the way, this has been the Streisand effect.

2:07:24 So what this did was this created, as you pointed out, Rebecca, a renewed interest. We had the travel agent handling all of this stuff reach out to us in the past week and said, I don’t know what’s going on, but things are on fire again. Yep. And we said, thank you, Jacob Hansen. You’re a big help. In fact, if you want to post again this week, we’d very much appreciate it. I think the conversation should continue. So we hope that there are more posts.

2:07:48 She said that we talked to her, it was in the morning, and she said she had already had eight people that day. The way she described it, again, I don’t know what the number was, but I’m thinking like twenty, twenty five people in the last week have reached out to her. I don’t think it’s just because us putting this ad up, I think because of the Mormons going, those guys can’t really be happy and go on a fun cruise it can’t be rhythm so no that could never happen you know hopefully maybe jacob hansen will actually come on the cruise himself it would be a big help to our daily walking the plank festivities he might get on the cruise i’m not sure if he’ll get off the crew well he might but it won’t be in the line splash our way of the keel people just say it was a joke.

2:08:33 When people started, you know, writing back and going, Hey, he said it was a joke, but then he also posted some serious things after he said it was a joke, you know, especially about you, Bill. So, Jacob lies about his lies. That’s why it’s hard to keep track of him. I don’t think it was a joke. And again, just like Jeff Strong’s data, here are those stereotypes. And they hurt. Maybe they don’t hurt us. They roll off us.

2:08:56 But our friends and family read those things. And then that’s reinforced for them. So it’s not good to joke about that kind of thing. It’s really hurtful. If my dad were still alive, I wish he could have read something like that. Because then he would have thought my kid turned out all right after all. Well, there it is. Oh, gosh. What’s on the radar? First for you, Rebecca, because you’re next up on Tuesday night with Mormon-ish. It’s true.

2:09:20 I am up on Tuesday night, always at six PM. We have the amazing masterpiece Ron Yorgason again, and he just is tracking LDS membership growth. This is end of first quarter, twenty twenty six. The math isn’t mathing. I’m going to use that phrase again. This episode is going to blow your mind again. You hear about tremendous growth all the time. This will give you some talking points because he is showing ward closings and war in just manipulating the numbers and he has got the receipts it’s going to be an amazing amazing episode with a masterpiece in his new studio we do a little bit of a tour at the beginning so that is tuesday night tomorrow night six p.m mountain time and i have a bonus episode that’s going to come out i think on thursday and who is this with this is with bill real i know isn’t this shocking Yeah, you put together this. I didn’t know anything about it. What’s going on? What’s this about? Because it happened in like two minutes.

2:10:13 You know how Bill has been putting out those amazing episodes, little shorts every Thursday. And he’s also been his written books, you know, with the help of AI that are on Amazon that cover the little truth claims. I finally got my copy of the first one and I was reading through it. I’m like, this is fantastic. I want to know more about the process. I want to know more about what these are.

2:10:36 And I want to know, let people know what they’re about. And of course, I’m a librarian. So I did a little book talk. Just talk to Bill. It’s not a super long episode, but we talked about the whole process and what these books are. And I think you guys are going to love this. It’s going to be on Thursday. Did you have fun, Bill? I thought it was a fantastic episode. Just short, just talking about your book.

2:10:53 I had a great time and deeply appreciative that we did it. I think it’ll be fun for people to learn sort of what went into it, why they’re done the way they’re done and whether it’s working. So. Yep, it’s going to be good. So Thursday, I think, is when I’ll put that out. Look for more information on that. So that’s it for Mormonish. We will look for more information on that. Rebecca, thank you.

2:11:12 And then, now this isn’t this Wednesday. You just tell me. This is your, you go. Yeah, this is this Thursday’s episode. I actually had something else that was going to go out, but it was similar. Wait, wait, this, this, okay, hang on. My confusion then. This is something different from this. This is a Mormon-ish episode that I put out with Bill. It’s like a pop-up bonus episode, but it is discussing these episodes that he puts out every Thursday and the books that accompany them. This is regularly scheduled now.

2:11:40 Okay, go ahead, please. Yeah, so Thursday morning, nine a.m. I had a different one that was going to come out, but it was something similar to what you and I have covered recently on Mormonism Live. So I want to put some more space between it. So this Thursday will be a logical deconstruction of Mormonism is the series. And this will be on first vision discrepancies. We’ll talk about the first vision accounts and we’ll get into it. So they don’t last long. They’re five minutes to ten minutes most. each of them.

2:12:07 So they’re super short. They’re very concise. They put images of documents and stuff up on the screen. I think they’re a great little episode to share with friends. And there’s a whole series going and we’re about maybe eleven or twelve in. They’ll be thirty by the time we’re done. So not even halfway yet. No, no, not even halfway yet. Awesome. OK. Wednesday on Mormonism Live, Generally Unquotable will be joining us.

2:12:34 I have had her penciled in in my mind since I met her back in, was it February at Thrive? And I told you months before that you need to have her on. Do you remember that at all? Probably not. I don’t remember it. I’m expecting there was a mental block of some sort. I’m sure so. Why would you listen to me? That’s right. She’s fantastic. This is going to be a great episode. And you heard me, folks.

2:13:01 So having said everything I have to say about this episode on Wednesday, it should be great. no it’s gonna be fantastic it’s gonna be wonderful she’s great she’s fantastic i started watching her show um and it’s very difficult for me to make time for anything to add to the you know the schedule but i can you know it’s very quick it’s usually fifteen minutes or so she does that i think every weekday comes out in the morning about uh what the news is she does some special episodes she and i keep saying she i think it’s she her name is known right rebecca uh-huh yeah I think so or the second GS Island or however you want to say it I think that’s what she said but Megan Hayes is going to be on the show and her show is just really really uh it’s always insightful it is uh very articulate and she has a way of wording things and seeing things that is illuminating to me frequently so I appreciate her show and looking forward to having her on Wednesday Okay, so what’s on after that?

2:14:01 Oh, this is from last Saturday. They didn’t tell me this. Among a million other things. But this one really hit close to home. And this thing they didn’t tell me, I’ll tell you all about there. It’s doing okay. It was up to eleven thousand last time I checked late this morning. Eleven thousand. And I really appreciate it because it is on the longest side. It’s almost as long as this thing is that we’re doing right now. These two hours and forty minutes.

2:14:26 But it is a rather involved story, and it’s one that I appreciate everybody’s patience in watching because it is meaningful to me and an important milestone in my life. And thank you for letting me share it with you. Then there’s going to be Mormonism After Dark this Friday. I don’t have anybody with me. Last Friday I had with me Summer Rain Barrett. I remember the last name. It’s just Summer Rain is the one that’s hyphenated as I learned through this experience. Summer Rain Barrett. She was with me. I was very helpful.

2:15:01 Very, very thankful that she was with me. She was very helpful. Excuse me. Maybe I was helpful to her too. I don’t know. But yeah, she was great. And with my back acting up the way it was and continues to, it’ll be over in a few days, but it’s just, you know, it’s a back thing. It’s a lower back thing. But having her there really helped me out a lot. And I remember even thinking during the show, I’m so glad Summer’s here. All right, so that was that.

2:15:29 And we’ll see what happens this coming Friday. But after that, there’ll be another Mormonism After Dark on Saturday. And I think I know what it’s going to be about. But I haven’t done the thumbnail yet, so it’s not up here yet. That’s in process. I’m going to remove this from the stage and say to Rebecca and to Bill, it’s been a pleasure podcasting with you tonight about the news.

2:15:51 And I want to give you a chance to say any closing thoughts you might have before the show ends. Just this is a ton of fun. I love showing up every week and having conversations with the both of you and informing the audience of all the things that are happening in Mormonism all around the world and Utah included. Great. Anything from you, Rebecca? Yeah, I would tell everybody to look out next week.

2:16:15 It’s going to be the biggest news week ever because whenever we take a break, doesn’t this happen? Whenever we’re not going to be here, like we’re not going to be here on Memorial Day, we’re not coming back till June first, something’s going to happen. I’m saying it now. Every single time there’s something huge and we’re like, damn it, we should be reporting. But you know what?

2:16:33 You can go over to Generally Unquotable because she’ll do it. She’s amazing. That’s true. So it’ll be the biggest news of the century in two weeks, I expect. Rebecca to be reporting on President Oaks coming out of the closet. That might be it. I don’t know. We’ll see if that happens, okay? Yeah, I’ll report back from Disneyland. And thank you for reminding me, because I had already forgotten that we’re not going to be doing this newscast next Monday. It will be two weeks from Monday.

2:16:58 So we’ll see you then on the newscast next time. Thanks, everybody, for watching us. Until next time, good night. That’s a wrap for this week’s edition of the Mormon Newscast. We appreciate you tuning in and sharing this time with us. Keep the conversation going and stay informed on all things Mormonism. Until next week, wishing you peace and joy. See you next Monday at six p.m. on the Mormon Newscast.