How the Mormons control Utah

I was asked about how the Mormon church controls politics in Utah, and after collecting my info together, I decided to write this brief littany of incidents to describe briefly what the Mormons do that should piss you off.

If you do a bit of digging, you'll get stories about how the Mormon Church has persuaded Mormons who were elected into public office to give preference to the Church when it wanted to acquire lands. There are plenty of political corruption cases where the Church bought parts of Salt Lake City that were once public parks, and turned them into church-owned parks with Mormon secutiy guards who would kick out anyone wearing the wrong clothes, tatoos, smokers, etc. Some may argue that this is no worse than cities that ban smoking, or that it's the same kind of stuff that happens in other states, but think about the fact that it's not a private favor here -- the favor is taxpayer's money going to a powerful church.

The Mormon-dominated legislature successfully passed laws which water-down alcoholic beverages, and limit the size of a beer to this dinky half-pint bottle that costs the same as a full pint outside of Utah.

After the faith-based initiatives went into effect, Utah's social services became an extension of the church -- the church gets government money for faith-based rehab programs, and those programs get favored selection by the state.

The church owns a tons of Utah's real estate. In fact, Motels, hotels, malls, and various department stores are all owned by prominant Church officials, who give their profits to the church.

Remember Footloose with Kevin Bacon? It was based on a real town in Utah, where mormon politicians literally banned dancing! Utah also has the most "dry towns" in the country -- meaning many towns have banned the possession and sale of alcoholic beverages. IN fact, people often have to drive outside of the state to buy alcohol, and when they return, they have to hide their liquor the way drug dealers hide pot, because some cops will pull you over and check for it -- like In Massachusetts, where fireworks are banned, and during summer months, State Troopers pull over people coming off of various highways from New Hampshire to check for fireworks.

Last Year, anthropologists working on a dig of Mountain Meadows were shut down by mormon governor Mike Leavitt, because they were uncovering the bones of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where, in 1848, Mormons killed a group of immigrants. The Mormon dominated radio, TV, and newspapers did not mention a thing about it, and the secular non-Mormon news sources were the only places where you could find out about it. They also banned PBS from showing a documentary on the Mountain Meadows Massacre on Utah PBS stations.

The Salt Lake Tribune was the only newspaper that printed articles following the above events, and the church tried to buy them out in a hostile takeover with help from Mormon politicians.

Other stories involve Jewish families moving into Mormon-dominated towns, and then having their businesses mysteriously burned down, and law enforcement seemed unwilling to investigate (Of course, these are merely accusations).

The most insidious thing is that the Mormon Church has it's greedy little hands on the Public School system. All junior high and high schools in the state of Utah are arranged so that there is a Mormon seminary building either right next door or across the street. Essentially, the Mormon kids receive extra religious instruction in these buildings during the school day. What happens, is that the public schools literally empty out at one point, leaving only a handful of non-Mormon kids to just sit around and twiddle their thumbs for an hour or two. Many kids get sick of being alone, or sick of being part of the "other kids", and end up going with the Mormon kids.

Like many Evangelical towns in the American Bible Belt, many public school systems are run by administrators and staff who are Mormon church officials, and they use every opportunity to indoctrinate kids to the faith -- in public schools. Non-Mormons are daily subjected to religious instructions, just like Jewish kids used to get lectured on Christian doctrine before 1964. Music classes in public school use a lot of Mormon religious music, too. Also -- until recently, many public schools celebrated "missionary week", a Mormon holiday commemorating young boys becoming missionaries. The public schools actively help them celebrate it.

The Mormons have also tried to ban pornography on many occaisions, over the years. The Internet made this extremely difficult, since it meant that people could get porn without anyone knowing. The church actually has it's own spy network, which spies on citizens (usually on church members) suspected of being involved with liquor, porn, or other legal-but-church-prohibited activities. The CIA regularly recruits people who served in this network, too. The legislature also tried to make it a serious crime (with high fines and prison time) to let underaged kids into R-rated movies.

Oh, and they don't like porn in video stores. Movie Buffs, inc. was cited for 15 misdemeanor violations, because it did not have specially edited-for-cable versions of patently adult videos! Despite the fact that adult films are not outlawed, the state tried to prosecute them, and almost ran them out of business, before they were acquitted.

In Salt Lake City's East High School, a group of gay and lesbian students tried to form a support group. The school disallowed it, so they sued the school board. The courts agreed that the students deserved the right to form their group, but the Mormon-dominated school board decided to ban all extra-curricular groups from schools, rather than let the gay students have a group of their own.

This is just the tip of the iceburg. If you delve into these things, you'll see more and more testimonies from various people, both non-Mormons and ex-Mormons, who had experiences like the ones here, or where various events made the news reports.