Transgender Response To New LDS Church Policies [The Mormon Newscast 035]

welcome to the groundbreaking news program that delves into the heart of Mormonism your weekly window into the unique intersection of news history and culture that resonates with the tapestry of Mormonism so whether you're tuning in from the heart of Utah or joining us from around the world your favorite news program starts now where news meets insight and the stories of our faith unfold welcome everybody to another episode of the Mormon newscast we're on number 35 you guys can you believe we've done 34 before this one that's a lot of news it's a blur it's a lot of news it is so uh glad to be joined by my esteemed colleagues Rebecca biblioteca and radio free Mormon how are the both of you tonight fabulous great excellent excellent anything in your world before we start the news because otherwise we can jump into this first uh this first story oh absolutely let's all right so let me uh there's the slideshow folks we'll talk tonight about the lashback over new LDS uh transgender policies we broke that news to you last week uh that news came out Monday the 19th and we covered it that evening we'll also talk about the Mormon uh wives fight back Elder Bednar requests a flood and Fairview uh receives an intent to sue notice so uh and with with that we'll go to the first video here uh and this is the one that I put together uh on the uh transgender policies response so here we go good evening one week ago the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints released a set of new policies that have left the lgbtq community and its activist and many within the faith feeling deeply disheartened these guidelines unveiled as part of updates to the general handbook significantly restrict the roles and participation of transgender members within the church the new rules announced on Monday August 19th build upon an existing policy that prevents transgender individuals from being baptized without first presidency approval now these guidelines go even further while the church handbook states that those who have transitioned away from their biological sex at Birth are welcome to attend services and participate in many other ways the reality is that these ways are severely limited for instance an updated policy prohibits transgender members from staying overnight at youth camps and restricts their use of bathrooms at church meeting houses to single occupancy bathrooms if they choose to use a restroom that aligns with their gender identity a trusted person must stand outside to ensure that no one else enters this rule change seems to send a clear message about how the church views transgender members participation Additionally the church has doubled down on its stance that gender is defined strictly by one's biological sex at Birth stating that it does not take a position on the causes of gender dysphoria this marks a shift away from previous practices where local congregations had some flexibility in interpreting church policies often in allowing for more inclusive environments now these new rules appear to remove that local discretion enforcing a stricter more uniform policy across the board lgbtq Advocates within the faith have been quick to voice their concerns Lori Lee Hall a transgender woman who was excommunicated in 2017 after her transition described the new guidelines as a significant setback the door seems shut and bolted unquote Hall said highlighting how these new restrictions further alienate transgender members who already feel marginalized within the church Paul shared her personal experience of being part of a local Mormon congregation that has been relatively welcoming allowing her to participate in classes and activities with other women but under these new guidelines she would be forced to attend classes with men despite presenting as female quote I'd attend church in dress shoes and makeup and be required to sit with a bunch of men wearing suits unquote expressing a concern that this would make her a visible Target what's more Hall finds the implication that transgender individuals are somehow a danger to others reflected in the policies barring them from working with children or requiring a Sha own to use the restroom to be particularly offensive and dehumanizing she says it sends a message that trans members are untrustworthy which is a toxic notion for those trying to reconcile their gender identity with their faith it's important to note that these policy changes come even as the church has made public efforts over the last decade to show greater compassion toward lgbtq members however critics argue that these new rules undermine those efforts by creating an environment that feels anything but welcoming for transgender individuals Matthew Bowman a scholar of Mormon studies explained that while these guidelines are unsurprising given the church's historical stance on lgbtq issues they are still painful for many members he noted that this lack of flexibility could lead to further disenfranchisement among those who have been and holding out hope for a more inclusive Church despite this Lor alienating younger Generations who may not be willing to accept such rigid Draconian policies she suggests that this could lead to significant loss of membership and engagement a trend she believes is entirely avoidable if the church could adopt a more inclusive stance as the Mormon Church grapples with these complex issues the conversation is far from over we will continue to monitor the story and provide updates as new developments unfold R rfm you uh you made a facial expression when the Elder Holland image went up on the screen when it said that uh these kinds of policies sort of distinguishing between a standard member of the church and those who are transgender might end end up making them a Target and I'd love to know the look if you were sort of wondering what the connection was in terms of that or if there was something else maybe on your mind I was going to speak to it if if it was somewhere along the lines of what I think you were thinking well from my point of view you kind of froze there for a few seconds and I think that may have been what registered on my face as opposed to Elder Holland it does seem to me that if they're going to be consistent about this whole bathroom thing I mean was there ever a time when the church recommended that gay men go to the women's room and gay women go to the men's room yeah sort of the same thing right you'd have people in there who are attracted to the other people that are in the restroom I mean isn't that where this is coming from and if so it would seem consist their motivation yeah consistency would suggest that they do the same thing for for homosexuals but I don't think that's a good thing I just think it points out the inconsistency of what they're doing with trans people yeah by the way I'm not saying that that's how it is in reality I'm saying that what you're hitting on which is that the church would be afraid of what are the things that it's afraid of that it creates these policies and whatever those things are there are other situations that would constitute the exact same sort of risk and the church doesn't seem to even have a second thought about those ones yeah yeah yeah um your thoughts Rebecca yeah I have several thoughts I could spend the rest of the newscast probably talking about this but I will not I know that I personally on the day that the updates were made public had two people reach out to me and say that this was it and they were resigning one said my 16-year-old child has asked me if we can finally just be done and she said yes and it was her birthday the next day and she said we're going to resign together and this is just finally it I have another acquaintance who you know for a long time because of family d Dynamics has remained in even though she also has a child affected by this but this was finally it although heartbreaking because a mixed Faith marriage and it's going to cause problems but she could no longer in good conscience remain where her child she saw was actually in danger and these are two people that I personally was aware of and then if you look on social media over and over again I can't even tell you how many I've seen where people have finally said that's it I'm out I don't know I don't know what the church was thinking I honestly can't imagine it's like November 5th all over again is how I look at it do you guys see it that way almost I'll say it's the reason we covered the story this week again we had announced it last week but in all of the push back through uh major news outlets or or platforms and also a lot of the word that was coming out from folks who had sort of endured this as another moment as you point out very comp able to the November uh 5th 2015 uh policy changes that excluded the children of LGBT or lesbian and gay folks uh specifically and uh you know three and a half years later to remove that sort of the lashback that the community gave and uh this is another one of those moments where when those came out it was quite obvious that it had caused uh further damage in this community and that people were who were anywhere near the fence are are now sort of jumping over and saying that's it this is this is enough I've have endured these kinds of things enough times in Mormonism yeah and that's what I'm seeing all over social media two more thoughts that I have one is I thought this was a really good and unfortunate observation that I I came across on social media this is the end to Nuance Bishops as we report on these kinds of things Progressive Bishops whatever word you want to use Bishops that try to make a difference that try to include that try to do something that maybe is on the fringes the edges to help people and make them feel a part of the ward family and this is the end of that because they've made it pretty clear now in the policy that the Bishops are either going to have to say I'm not following that or they're GNA have to say I'm sorry from now on I have to follow this you can no longer go to Relief Society or you can no longer do this so it'll be really interesting to see the reaction of these these Bishops um that consider Heroes because it seems like they are trying to carve out a space for everyone in a ward family and now their hands are being tied the other thing I came across on social media I thought was interesting is this idea that could this be a foreshadowing for Oaks presidency you know we all get the sense that President Nelson is you know gonna turn a hundred and perhaps things will be turning over within this next year could this be something that is a foreshadowing of what we're going to see with Oaks I don't know have you guys thought about that at all I had not actually but I think it's a great Insight I think it's two weeks from today if my math is correct that President Nelson will turn 100 should he make it and Elder Oaks obviously Elder Nelson is in Decline he can't do as much as he used to and power um like nature abhor a vacuum so I'm sure that Elder Oaks is making his wishes and will known and manifest yeah it's like a power vacuum kind of when you have a leader at the top that's very infirm we have seen this before and it seems like when there's this power vacuum like you said there's a power grab by some of the other people so I don't know that's just something that a few people have brought up to say I wonder if this is just foreshadowing what's coming and it's already sort of slowly being enacted so I don't know either way it just doesn't bode well and it's really sad and even if president Nelson were totally with it I don't think he's like President hinley where you would look at this and say there's no way president Nelson would ever have signed off on these I think this is completely what he would have signed off on especially since he was almost certainly the moving force behind the 2015 policy of exclusion yep I I'm having a lot of glitch issues on my end so hopefully what I say next it comes out in full but when I look at this situation and I think like they are really more the the church leader ERS through policies and procedures are more inclusive of convicted child molesters and uh murderers who come back out of prison and want to go to church than they are towards the transgender community and when you tell somebody you're welcome like we do want you here but you literally are going to run into obstacles no matter what you do and some of them will even be uh beyond what would a rational person would think is even reasonable uh for any fears that you might have and uh what it ends up looking like is that the church would prefer to get as far away from folks who are transgender than they would those who really are a danger and a threat to kids and other adults at the W level yeah for instance um Lori Lee Hall who was there in your clip I think she used to be an architect for the church or something if I recall correctly but yes so former bishop and St president too I think she's a transitioned woman and so then she would normally be going to uh Elders quum right except for except for the fact right that you have to get area presidency approval and then according to the new policy your participation her participation in priesthood according to that policy will be limited and rare is what it says and I don't know what that means because they don't Define it does that mean she cannot attend Elders for I think a lot of it we don't know and perhaps it is up to interpretation but I know that people aren't fully I don't think they are aware of how this impacts them I'm always over on the faithful um Reddit subs and social media and there was one really heartbreaking post where a transitioned woman wrote Oh I I'm just fine I'm in my board my Bishop knows me loves me I get to go to Relief Society I'm sure this will have nothing to do with me and then someone wrote Under that in response you need to read the policy and you need to read you know some of the other supplemental materials about it and then a little ways down on the thread this person wrote back and said I'm in tears I now see that I probably will not be able to participate in the way that I love to participate and contribute in the way that I love to contribute so I think people are just barely starting to figure out what this actually means when I look at this uh new set of guidelines close what it seems to be doing is saying uh for people like Lori Lee Hall you can't be in Relief Society and you really can't be in Elders quum either there's no place for you in this church is what these guidelines amount to Y do you feel there'll be any kind of backlash I know some people brought up you know will sports teams refuse to play BYU will you know as as word of this update gets out do you think they'll be in any kind of backlash like that that I have no idea about I think we're already experiencing a significant backlash from members of the church who back in 2015 they were in the center of the church and 2015 comes along and a lot of people who are on the outside of the church they leave the church and the people who are on the inside like these people they get pushed out to the boundary now they're on the boundary of the church now this comes along and now they're gone and this happens over and over again and the church is just hemorrhaging members for no good reason except for its own bigotry yeah the other thing too when you guys mentioned like how are they G you know they they give all these rules and some of these rules uh in terms of the one you pointed out rfm you know you can come to uh these things but it's going to be rare it's not going to happen very often and nobody knows what that means but I have a hunch the Brethren knows what that means and they do the thing they always do which is put into formalized uh opinion the things that you don't want to get in trouble over or at least not have it be as severe and then you let the state presidents to let the Bishops know what it is sort of your expectation and that'll always come through a 70 uh who's meeting with the state presidency and then it sort of removes the top 15 from having said it directly and it's really just 1 70's opinion even if it happens with every 70 across the church what sorry as to what rare and limited mean correct yeah at a minimum it doesn't mean that you get to attend as much as you otherwise would it's more rare it's more limited right yeah sort of sad um anything else from you guys on this I was gonna say one more thing I was going to say I believe it's a huge miscalculation on the church's part I believe there was a day where parents and Ward members would go along with something like this at the expense of their child or their neighbor or their loved one I don't see that so much anymore people even Ward members who are now understanding and comfortable and friendly with transitioned individuals because they're part of their W family that a lot of them are not going to stand for this I think it's a miscalculation yeah once again I will say it that um when it comes to making decisions the church not only tends to make bad decisions it makes decisions that are so bad I couldn't have even conceived of them in advance there's no way before this happened I would have ever thought that the church would come out with guidelines on trans people saying these kinds of things including you can't hold a teaching calling you know all the things that are in there which are so insulting and so dehumanizing to this entire community and why for what purpose why because the Book of Mormon says that all are alike unto me well I guess not not in the modern Mormon church anyway don't you think it's strange that the church has to sort of learn the same lesson over and over and over again as you point out it's it's almost like they get in a room the top 15 of them and we had seen where it felt like there was being progress made the uh Bishop Osler had the interview where he interviewed the convert who was transgender and she seemed to feel like the church almost bent over backwards to let her in and and uh Bishop Osler felt like she was gonna have a good experience going forward and now again with these changes those will impact folks like her um it's almost like these men get into a room and and sort of go around the room and say how can we make people's lives harder how can we make things more difficult on human beings who are already having a difficult time um it's it's really sad to see grown men uh handle things in that way and then put these rules into place and then they disappear they don't talk about it they don't stand in front of a camera and say hey here everybody here's what we were thinking I know it looks bad but here's where our mindset is and if there was genuine expression of like hey there's a blind spot here and maybe if you think about this we're actually doing something that's helpful but they know that's not what the response is and they stay as far away from being accountable to the damage they do in the in the the wake of uh these policy changes that seem to come out every once in a while that that seem to push members to reestablish who's in and who's out to try to give a more Fuller a fuller picture of things I know that we're in a space where we typically deal with this side of the issue right and yet we have to admit and we have to acknowledge that there's lots and lots of people who are lobbying and expressing their discontent to the leadership of the church about having trans people in their Ward you know it's not just one way it's not just one message they're getting they're getting lots of messages from a lot of other people and apparently they are deciding to bend to the will of those people as opposed to taking care of the members of the church who are trans go ahead I was going to say there are quite a number of videos from content creators on the faithful side that are you know supportive of this right they express that they know that this may be hard but this is what needs to be done that kind of thing so question is where is the statement from Ally and church spokesman Aon sherinian I'd love to see what our church spokesman who is known Ally of the lgbtq community what does he think about these new changes yeah he's gonna have to make a decision sooner or later to fish or cut bait it uh I'll say this then we'll go to the next story it it seems as though the kind of things that Jacob Hansen and others were saying not too long ago about how confused they were and sort of urging kind of this ground swell of Orthodox members reaching out to their leadership to say that they were confused by this and needed some resolution this at least in part seems to be be that further instruction that they were asking for MH okay let's go to our next story I believe it is Radio free Mormon it is thank you very much once again we're going to go back to the mcken Texas temple in Fairview um I live not too far from the Seattle Temple which is in Belleview so this isn't the first time they Nam a temple for a different city than the one they're building it in this is the mcken Texas temple we did a an episode about this on Mormon is and we recorded this last Friday morning it went up around Friday around noon and we went over some of this I'll give an abbreviated form of it tonight also I've done some additional research which I think you will find interesting but to recap when we last left Fairview the vote at the Fairview Texas town council meeting on August 6th 2024 was a 07 unanimous vote to deny the LDS Church's application without prejudice that this means the LDS church can reapply at any time of course they're not going to reapply they're going to sue what happened next the next morning on Wednesday August 7th 2024 the Town Council received a letter via registered mail and this was in excuse me oh hang on a second here just what happens when I can actually do the slides the mayor's office received notice of the impending suit there was a notice of an impending suit that was received that was the mail one day after the Town Council voted to deny the church special approval to Bill build the temple this is from the Dallas news members of the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints are set to file a lawsuit against the town of Fairview said Fairview mayor Henry Lesnar and here is part of that letter now this is a cover letter because the City attorney the town attorney technically the assistant Town attorney sent a cover letter to Landon broy in response to his request to try and get this two-page notice of intent to file a lawsuit this is part of that four-page letter and down there at the bottom you can see that there is a footnote and the footnote is about the same uh size font as the body of the letter so it doesn't look that much like a footnote I went ahead and oh I'm uh the next slide Bill Boom baby I went ahead and did that so we could actually read it and this is important because this notice of intensifi lawsuit is a law firm in Dallas representing two individuals as opposed to the church coming in and filing a lawsuit this is a law firm which is a lawyer there's a lawyer in the law firm who apparently is a member of the church and he's representing two individuals who are both members of the church and here's what the City attorney or assistant City attorney says in footnote one also the town of Fairview is uncertain that said that said August 7th 2024 is sent on behalf of any residents of the town of Fairview as of this writing the two named persons alleged to be members of the organization that means the church are not known to be residents of Fairview and do not appear to own any real property in the town of Fairview according to County deed records Rebecca did a little bit of additional sleuthing found out that these two individuals actually live in Allen Texas now there's a signature line David overcash the assistant Town attorney who's the one who signed this I think that's a great name for a lawyer over cash I wish that were my last name that'd be awesome okay and this is the notice that was sent to the city registered mail and emailed to them the following day it's titled notice of violation of Texas religious freedom and restoration act and preservation notice and preservation notice Dear Mr McCoy mayor lar and Fairview Town Council Members this firm represents Bryce Peterson and Joseph Walker and then it says another similarly situated individuals yeah who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints this firm does not represent present the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or any church entity only individual members whose rights have been violated by the town of verview this letters to serve as a formal notice of a claim pursuant to the Texas religious freedom and restoration act this is where they have to file notice of a claim on the city prior to filing a lawsuit it is a statutory requirement and that's why they're doing this the fact that they had this ready to go the following day indicates to me that they already knew what the city council was going to do they had this in their back pock pocket and they F filed it or sent it in the very following day they had this ready before obviously pursuant to the notice requirement in section 1106a we give notice that the town of Fairview has violated the trf which is the Texas version of arupa in the following ways number one Bryce Peterson Joseph Walker and other similarly situated individuals free exercise of religion is substantially burdened they have to allege that because that's that's what the statute says is substantially burdened by an exercise of the town of fairview's Mayor and town council's governmental Authority in denying an application from their Church to build a temple conditional use and there's the cup number two the town's refusal to and cup is conditional use permit two the town's refusal to Grant the permit is and will be a substantial burden to Mr Peterson Mr Walkers and other people uh their free exercise of religion by prohibiting them from worshiping in a temple near their homes the humanity worship is the temple is the highest form of worship that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints can engage in although they can't really explain to the public what it consists of and the town's refusal to Grant the permit has unduly burdened these individuals worship without showing a compelling governmental interest and three the town's refusal to approve the permit prevents the mcken temple from being built in a timely manner in the town of Fairview Bryce Peterson Joseph Walker and others have to drive to Dallas the nearest Temple to worship instead of a temple within approximately 3 to six miles of their homes in Fairview so I'm guessing one lives three miles away from the proposed Temple site the other one lives six miles away from the proposed Temple site hence the three to six miles of their homes in Fairview this is oh and by the way their homes are not in Fairview this sentence is constructed in such a way as to give the implication that these two people Bryce Peterson and Joe Joseph Walker have homes in Fairview which I think is an allegation that led the city or the town Assistant Attorney to do the research and find out that they actually don't appear to live in Fairview and they don't have any property in fair viiew either so this appears to be a an attempt on the part of this letter to give a an incorrect idea about where these people live as I said Rebecca did some research found out they live in Allen not in uh Fairview it's not that far away but it's not in Fairview um instead of a temple within a approximately 3 to six miles of their homes in Fairview this is a substantial burden oh W on Bryce Peterson Joseph Walker and other similar situated to individuals free exercise of religion and has caused them damage and will continue to cause them damage and then there's a big um paragraph here which is the preservation notice saying preserve everything you've got because it'll be evidence in the upcoming lawsuit etc etc and then assigned by this fellow Matthew R McCarley who's the attorney who's representing these two individuals okay so the reason I'm making so much fun about this substantial burden is here's the Dallas Texas temple okay this is the one they have to drive to how far is it from fair viw to Dallas I'm going to go to this one excuse me all right here is fair viiew by the way let me go back here just so you can see where it is that Fairview is located you can see it in the upper top right of the map and you have to swing upright and head down the main route and then there's Allen can you see Allen down there 5.9 miles from Fairview to Allen this is important because Allen is actually on the way to Dallas it's on the way to the Dallas Temple so Allen where these two people live is between Fairview and the Dallas Temple that becomes important for this calculation the distance from Fairview to the Dallas Temple is 22.7 MI or roughly 23 miles right there's Fairview and there's the Dallas Texas temple the next one is the D the distance from Allen the city of Allen to the Dallas Temple is 17 miles so it's approximately 6 miles shorter right 6 miles shorter to the Dallas Texas temple than it is from Allen to the Dallas Texas temple does that make sense so these individuals only have to drive 17 miles to get to the Dallas Texas temple and they're crying like they have to pull Hand cards across the plains so the swing on this the distance from Fairview to Dallas Temple 22.7 miles the distance from Allen to the Dallas Temple is 17 miles so the difference is a swing of 5.7 miles will rounded up to six miles okay the swing meaning that it's 11 miles so I.E the plaintiffs would have to dri or the one who lives 6 miles away from where the Fairview Temple is the plan if would have to drive six miles to the proposed Fair view Temple instead of driving 17 miles to the Dallas Temple does this make sense so far this means the plff would have to drive 11 miles further to get to the Dallas Temple than to the fair viiew Temple that's why I'm saying it has an 11m swing to it so what they're complaining about is having to drive 11 miles that's what the substantial burden is about is driving 11 miles note the swing on plane of the plane of who lives 3 miles from the Fairview Temple site is 17 miles that's the swing or in other words he has to drive 20 mi to the Dallas Temple instead of 3 miles to the Fairview Temple so you can see the swing would be 17 miles by the same math right I'm going to set it down I'm going to write this in stone and we'll see if any judge dares disagree with me driving 17 miles to a temple instead of six miles to a temple does not constitute a substantial burden on plaintiff's free exercise of religion and even if we go with the other one who lives three miles away from the proposed Temple site in Fairview and driving 20 miles to a temple instead of three miles to a temple does not constitute a substantial burden on plan of free exercise of religion I think you're going to have to search long and hard high and low to find a judge who's going to agree that your free exercise of religion is being substantially burdened by having to drive 20 miles and here uh this has to do with something that we talked about we didn't have the answer to I did some additional research on it since Saturday and or since Friday it has to do with the timing to bring a lawsuit now you have to file a notice before you file the lawsuit okay but section 1106 this is the Texas code notice and right to accommodate a person may not bring an action to assert a claim under this chapter and this is the same chapter that they're bringing the lawsuit under so it applies unless 60 days before bringing the action the person gave gives written notice to the government agency by certified mail return re requested that's what this notice is so now that they filed this notice they have to wait at least 60 days before filing the lawsuit okay does that make sense on the other hand there's a statute of limitations as well and that statute of limitations is a year so a person must bring an action to assert a claim for damages under the chapter not later than one year after the date and that's the actual lawsuit so then the question is what happens if they wait until the last day of the year to file their notice well then the statute gives them an additional 75 days to file their lawsuit so really it ends up being as long as you file your notice within a year you've got a year plus 75 days to file your lawsuit um oh I don't think I let me see here if um yeah that's in section B I didn't highlight it mailing notice under Section 1106 tolls the limitations period establish under the section until the 75th day after the date on which the notice was mailed okay so that clears up some questions they have up to a year to file their notice and up to a year plus a little bit more if they file their notice at the end of the year to file their lawsuit and this may be why it is we haven't heard anything from the church yet and why it is a little bit strange that they they went so quickly and filed this the next day they didn't have to it was certainly precipitous on their part and I think that shows that they were trying to make a point they're making a a political Point rather than a legal maneuver here to file their notice the very following day they're they're sending a message with that instead of waiting and maybe thinking about it a little bit more before they file their notice because this notice doesn't seem to set forth grounds for a lawsuit that's going to win anywhere in my humble opinion so it's also this section that talks about the free exercise of religion we've talked about what that means but here's what the statute Texas says it means free exercise of religion means an act or refusal to act oh that would be like Jehovah's Witnesses not do say in the Pledge of Allegiance right if refusal to act but here it's an act free exercise of religion means an act or refusal to act that is substantially motivated by sincere religious belief in determining whether an act or refusal to act is substantially motivated by sincere religious belief under this chapter it is not necessary to to determine that the act or refusal to act is motivated by a central part or Central requirement of the person's sincere religious belief so it doesn't have to be core but it does have to be a sincere religious belief okay all right an application under Section 1102 this chapter applies to any ordinance rule order decision practice or other exercise of governmental Authority that would apply to the city council or the Town Council denying the church's request for their cup to build the temple there and finally subject to subsection B this is section 1103 religious freedom protected a government agency may not substantially burden a person's free exercise of religion so that's what they have to show the plists have to show that their free exercise of religion has been substantially burdened by having to drive 11 more minutes or in the worst case 20 more minutes to get to a temple than they would have to if they were allowed to build a temple in Fairview now now does anybody have any comments about that so far then I've got a little bit of a video to show it it just seems absolutely ridiculous to me I don't know I'm sorry I know you can sue over anything my question for you though rfm is does this then tie up the town do they have to address this will they have to go to court will they have to allocate resources toward this could this be a smokees screen while the church prepares its actual lawsuit I just can't figure this out it's not at all what we expected it's very strange and I imagine that the church is aware of it um I think they were aware of it before the notice was sent based upon your research that some of these individuals I think one of the plaintiffs is an executive state Secretary or has a lawyer is is in Allen all of them are in Allen they all are connected to either state level executive secretary or Ward Clerk or state clerk they they seem to be in the fraternity of Clerks somehow so it's hard to think that the executive State clerk went off did this without telling the State president who he's glued to the hip uh most of the time right he's the guy who makes all the appointments and then if there's an appointment uh he'll sit out in the couch just to make sure there's somebody close by you know it's not exactly two people in the room but there's somebody close by uh in case anybody needs any help but um yeah they're they're very very closely connected so it's hard to think the State president didn't know it if the State president knew about it it's hard to think the area Authority didn't know about it and if the church didn't come in and say no don't do this then I think the church is tacitly okay with this I think it fails in another way too the the town didn't say no to a temple they said no to a temple that violates zoning uh conditions and hence when you go to court with this argument from this uh announced upcoming lawsuit it seems like you're arguing that these guys won't build my temple well they're they're happy to let you build your temple you just got to get the height down now whose problem is the height oh that's the Church of Jesus Christ of latterday saints it actually seems like they would almost need to sue the church for not building the Temple because the temple could get built if it would stay within the height it's supposed to and then you'd have essentially one party suing the other in a ridiculous lawsuit so right well there would be issues related to an individual suing a church about this issue as opposed to the government um mainly because the government is the one that uh has the burden of you know playing fair and square and not infringing on anybody's religious liberty but I hear what you're saying I hear the point that you're making yeah all the church has to do is just say okay we'll build a church a temple about the size of the Dallas Temple and they could already have it or at least have it under construction so yeah and that may be another element of the substantial burden that will be talked about in this by the way um the whole thing is this is that I predict that the the City attorney is going to make at least that argument that I made about this is not a substantial burden because here's how far it is blah blah blah and here's the swing right and we're talking about 11 minutes and that's not a substantial burden of course then the uh PL ifs will come back and they won't use that exact metric they'll take those numbers and they'll use percentages and they'll say yeah well um it used to be what uh six minutes it would have been six minutes for this guy to drive to um Fairview but now he's got a Drive 17 minutes so that's almost three times as much see that's what they'll say three times sounds worse yes exactly the same stati that's why there's Li damn lies and statistics right I don't think it's going to impress a judge but I predict they'll do that wow all right are we ready for this great uh this video because I was looking um on YouTube yesterday trying to find out if my next uh brush up your Shakespeare was up yet and it is up this morning thanks to Bill reel by the way and I saw this an Austin Texas temple groundbreaking apparently was announced a couple years ago in 2022 they're getting around three days ago might be four days now I think it was last Friday to the groundbreaking ceremony and I watched it and I found some interesting clips from it in fact we've been talking about at least we did last Friday right Rebecca about it wasn't that long ago that we told stories about people who underwent great sacrifice to get to a temple who didn't have one near to them and those were put forward as Faith promoting stories and how blessed they are for their sacrifice we even have a hymn that says sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven and sure enough one of the speakers here talks about how it used to be when they were in uh Austin and there was only one temple in the state it was Dallas and how they used to have to drive 7 hours round trip three and a half hours there three and a half hours back and what a blessing it was to them and how much God blessed them and their family for doing it I'm trying to push this yeah you got the magic button there bill this is about a minute long this clip once it starts and it's going to be so worth the wait you won't believe it in 1988 when we first moved to Texas the ausa metro area had one stake now a stake is a geographic area made up of about six to 12 congregations and there was one temple in Texas located in Dallas prior to the Dallas Temple church members from this state traveled to Mesa Arizona to attend the temple very often Temple trips were organizes and buses chartered to make that 7-hour roundtrip drive to Dallas for temple worship members of the church have many fond memories of making those trips and and the Deep spiritual connection to God that came to them from those experiences oftimes we would take our little children with us to Dallas we would do something fun with the kids while taking turns worshiping in the house of the Lord our children began to look forward to those trips but more importantly it kept the Gospel Light Shin shining and glowing brighter in her home well there'll be no more gospel light shining brighter in our homes because now we want to be able to drive six minutes to a temple instead of 20 what do you think about that Rebecca I think they need to get their stor straight here you have a lawsuit that comes out on Wednesday that says godamn it I can't drive any farther than two minutes to the temple or I'm burdened and then a few days later you have somebody that says oh incredible Rich blessings and spiritual experiences that we get from driving long distances which is it that's what I want to know I just think you can't make this stuff up but amazing that you found that rfm I think that's great I've been sharing that with all of my temple building residents and they just think that's hilarious I will tell you that those two individuals and what are their names again hang on a second here I want to make sure I get their names right right so let's see here I want to try and is it possible to go back on this bill yep give me one second suddenly it won't let me do anything with the slides it doesn't like me yeah you can't do the video ones right somebody oh no no I wanted to go backslides oh I got you yeah so if we can go back a few slides and find these guys names because I want I are you trying to get the names of the residents yes Joseph Walker and Bryce um sorry I can't remember Bryce blel yeah but it's it's it's Joseph Walker it wasn't Bryce blank Nagle no it was not I just saying see if you're were paying attention Okay that was good that was good Bryce Peterson and Joseph Walker Walker yeah okay I want to make sure I have their names correct because I'm GNA mock them mercilessly dear I mean how on Earth these guys should be ashamed of themselves for complaining about having to drive 20 minutes to a temple when they want to have it six minutes away and saying they're substantially burdened in their free exercis of religion because of this honestly when did the Mormons become such weenies Bill what do you think do you have any thoughts about this um it just this reminded me of the other moment where Bednar says the size of our temples don't matter you know and uh and yet here we are arguing that the size of our spire matter and the height of our Temple matters and it just feels like Mormonism is a really unhealthy religion that tries to get its way and will use whatever loophole it can on one side tight translation and use whatever loophole it wants to on the other side when that's uh conducive to their argument loose translation and it seems like that's the kind of thing that's going on in Mormonism uh since its Inception well it's funny you should mention Elder Bednar because the same speaker a little bit later in his talk references is Elder Bednar and uh right after he quotes from president Nelson he goes to Elder Bednar and he makes the same point once again just using different words and once again this is just three days ago this actually was probably was it on the same day no no this was a Friday but it wasn't the same Friday that they received it in um Fairview it might have been a week later but it's going on contemporaneously and they're saying this at the Austin Texas temple ground breaking no less and if we could play that second clip I think it's this is the second clip bill and this is going to be even better than the first one it's okay yeah families I like I like watch president Russell M Nelson the prophet and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of lty saints has counseled as evil intensified there's nothing that will protect us more than regular time in the temple he goes on to say every time a temple is dedicated more light comes into the world every time we go to the the temple our lives are reinforced by that light and by the covenants we make with God along the same lines Elder David AB Bednar an apostle of the church has said when a temple is built it's not about the building for us what is more important is how our hearts are changed as we learn about God and Jesus Christ and fill of their Divine love wait a second what did he just say about Elder not about the building again they need to get their notes together they need to get on the same page and I feel that they won't until they have something in the Leona some kind of article or answer to a question or they mention it in conference they have got to put it on the record that the size of the building does matter it matters incredibly and the distance that you have to drive matters there's got to be a conference talk about that or something in the Leona so that everybody can be on the same page I agree and this is once again going to be another exhibit in the city's briefing on this lawsuit I think yeah probably several cities who are aware of this clip which is current like you said very recent only a few days old y so is that the end of my my go ahead it is crazy y it will all make uh a great stack of evidence in the argument against uh the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Rebecca what do you have for us tonight oh my goodness those Mormon Secret Lives of the Mormon wives will not go away I don't think I've ever seen the stend um Factor more in play and that if you don't know what that is is where somebody says like like if someone in church says don't ever read the CES letter and everyone's like what's the Cs letter you know and they go home and read it right or when you were a youth and you'd go to a Fireside and they'd say don't neck or pet and you're like what's necking or petting right as soon as you bring it up people are fascinated by it and this is what is happening with this new documentary that is going not documentary it's more like a series that's going to be on Hulu coming out on the 6th of September so very very recently it's called The Secret Lives of Mormon wives and it's about a group of tick tock moms um in the last couple years really wildly popular they had mom talk and it all exploded a couple years ago Frankie Taylor Paul or is it Taylor Frankie Taylor Frankie Paul sorry I got that reversed um came out said oh that things have gone wrong there have been Affairs and marriages are breaking up anyway all this Intrigue and then suddenly we find out they're going to be on this new program that's coming out well of course the church is not happy because it has the word Mormon in it right and it seems to be about Secret Lives and wives so we talked about this last week but we're gonna mention it again because the Mormon wives are lashing back what they're lashing back against is the statement that the church made where I'll just read it really quickly again because it was really surprising that they would come out with this as a commentary on their Church website it says the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints like other prominent Global Faith communities often finds itself the focus of the attention of the entertainment industry some portrayals are fair and accurate but others resort to stereotypes or gross misrepresentations that are in poor taste and have real life consequences for people of Faith while this is not new a number of recent Productions depict Lifestyles and and practices that are blatantly inconsistent with the teachings of the church others irresponsibly mischaracterize the safety and conduct of volunteer missionaries now we believe that statement is a direct result of a movie called heretic that's coming out starring The Amazing Hugh Grant about two sister missionaries that go into somebody's house and end up in trouble uh we understand the Fascinations some of the media have with the church but regret the portrayals often rely on sensationalism and inaccuracies that do not fairly and fully reflect the lives of the church members or the sacred beliefs they hold dear millions of church members around the world are deeply dedicated to family Fidelity Service and the Gospel of Jesus Christ we invite all to consult reliable sources of information and listen to the voices and authentic experiences of individuals and families who find great joy and satisfaction in living these principles the true story of our faith is best seen in the countless lives of those who strive daily to follow the Savior Jesus Christ and of course while we thought this was unusual a lot of people also voice their concerned well so wait you don't want to hear my story my story isn't baking cookies and family home evening and being the relief soci president there are a lot of stories that do not fit the perfect narrative that the church wishes was the only narrative and this Secret Lives of Mormon wives I think is one of them so um what happened is that faithful members kicked it into high gear right as far as warning people strice and effect against this program so I won't read all of this but people are saying things like as many of you know this is a prominent LDS influencer I'm a proud member of the Church of Jesus Christ latterday Saints this week Hulu will Air a show called The Secret Lives of Mormon wives which claims to portray the lives of women in our faith I want to share with you why this matters to me personally why I believe it's important to be cautious she goes on to say this is not an accurate reflection at all of Mormon women and if anybody wants to know what Mormon are real women are really like they can talk talk to her message her personally again who is this by the way I'm not going to give any names because I don't give names but it's all over social media and there were many posts like this many of them however I did ask AI to make a perfect Mormon woman picture and there it is so in case you were wondering it kind of does have that haunted look in their eyes right like blink tce if you need help sorry that was fous but it's influencer doesn't have anything to do with my joke about the Widemouth frog does it uh no no no no no no although they came out also talking about that so what I'm saying is that into high gear the church knew who I meant what you knew who I meant that's the whole point of course I knew who you meant you tell that joke you tell that joke over and over I don't know if you're aware or not once any once once I told it once okay so anyway I I just think it's really funny and I don't know what you guys think that that they're just so insistent that this program doesn't reflect Mormon women and I'm telling you these women are Mormon and this is what they did so this well I could also make the argument this is what some people in the early church did too huh so this is this is a huge no true Scotsman fallacy yes good point do you want to explain what that is in case some people don't know well it means that the I guess the only the only true Mormons are the ones who do everything the church tells them to do y that's right but again these are Mormon women so um I kind of went on social media and gathered a few quotes So from the more faithful side things like another tool Satan has access to the to ward off potential future members nothing new um I wouldn't touch this show with a long poll yuck this is the kind of junk entertainment that both prophets and historians have warned us about lol historian yeah I I don't I would think the historians would know some of the similarities between sounds like history to me that's what I was gonna say and people do make that connection oh for sure with the war on Saints predicted in the scriptures shows like this fuel the fire and means the second coming is close at hand so this Hulu program May Usher in the literal Apocalypse in second coming I'm not sure um long story short most of the women are excommunicated inactive or otherwise elapsed members who are in the Tik Tock space one of the cheap Chief ones was into swinging so ad hominum this isn't true this is the m this is the adversary um The Secret Lives of Mormon wives this two-minute trailer is an example of how the LDS church is being used for profit by those who have no ethics I hope everyone here will speak out against this kind of vile entertainment and then right underneath this post somebody wrote In all seriousness if you are offended by this trailer why post it for others to see she actually posted it huh I know I'm telling you everybody is and they're like don't you dare watch this but the pictures are so provocative you know you have to arm yourself against evil so you better watch just a little bit to make sure you know that you're you can resist the rest so um some else made the comment then the early church was wild I would watch a show about 1830 Mormons all day long so people are kind of in their mind kind of make this parallel um because again with their soft swinging it was consenting adults in a a marital relationship consenting within that relationship to expand and open their marriage and be involved with other consenting adults so I feel like there were times in church history polyamory where that where that was happening um by the way to your point in in Mormonism as much as the members of the church are furious with these people who are having consensual Intimacy in an open marriage Mormonism was full of non-consensual intimacy yeah in in open marriages and everybody defends the prophet when that's brought up that seems so strange that in one instance it's like bad bad people and then in another instance you're like oh no no that man's good they just he's just misunderstood no you're absolutely right it's all about consent it's completely about you know an O an open type marriage and everybody within that relationship agrees to that and so that is nobody's business except for Hulu I guess um another person says people are missing the point on the storyline this is the stuff that some of the members do keep secret nobody's gonna watch a show about sister linquist canning wheat on Tuesday and helping her kids color books on Sunday point taken and typically these programs are about a more Fringe element in any of the programs that you see because they aren't going to follow somebody that's just in the mainstream um somebody else points out one of the women featured is Demi Demi Ingman her husband is Brett enman a former BYU quarterback both are very nice people our faithful members of the church as far as this person knows in other words she plays on your team this person is trying to push back on faithful members saying this isn't us um I suggest you reach out to her personally if you find her actions so deplorable so you can see there's just a whole whole gamut of reactions to this someone else says there's a whole lot of spouse sharing going on in Nauvoo this point is not escaping someone uh this show really isn't that far off the only difference is that they're not using God told me to as an explanation and Joseph Smith did and then finally somebody said if the church ever gets brave enough to release the William Clayton Diaries there's plenty of tea in there there's the making of a very lucrative show you wouldn't even need to write a script all you'd have to do is quote from the original documents so people are having a lot of fun trying to figure out exactly what this is well um my favorite comment however is this I had to give it its own slide this is from someone named Todd on Facebook he says I'd say that Hollywood's obsession with Mormon sex lives pales in comparison to any local LDS bishop and I say boom to that right boy that that should be getting some Applause I think I'm giving an Applause right there I think that is absolutely the point so okay all this backlash people defending back and forth um um an article several articles come out as some of the women and a mom of one of the women um Taylor Frankie Paul or Frankie Taylor Paul I gotta get that right sorry guys um comes out and speaks out over the hypocritical backlash and claims that a lot of sins are committed in church so it's kind of like don't throw stones at glass houses why don't you look at the beam in your own eye in I didn't say Maroni I said your own ey and you said beam too I love it when you get that backward did I said beam look at the beam in your own eye I know I always get it mixed up so anyway let's see what Taylor's mom and I can't believe this is the mom she looks like she's about the same age as these women um let's see what she says on Tik Tok about the church's statement kind of coming after them if you can play that uh bill yeah here's here it is it may take a moment there we go I'm sure you have heard a lot about the Secret Lives of Mormon wives I know I have my daughter Taylor's in the show but what really makes me irritated recently is that I see all the backlash um from them their comments that they receive on social media I don't know if their families get it as well as we do but I recently received one that I thought was very interesting and contradicting that they stated that we or we my family and I should distance ourselves from being with the church and being Mormon because we're not Mormon enough and that's pretty hypocritical coming in saying that on somebody's page and stating other things like these don't align with the teachings well either does that for for somebody to come and say that I shouldn't be a member of the church because I'm not Mormon enough or or I sin let me tell you a lot of things happen in the church and a lot of sins are are committed every single day and nobody is perfect so before somebody should go out and judge somebody else or state that they shouldn't be Mormon or they're not active enough and all the other stuff that comes with it maybe they should look within themselves and see if they're doing the things that align with the church yeah I'm talking and I muted sorry so that's Taylor's mom lashing back at the statement from the church Bill what do you think about that first off you're right about the age thing I thought I was listening to like a 22y old or something thing and that she must be 4550 minimum uh anyway um you know I think this is the standard parental response which is you know before you judge my kid look in the mirror Mormonism is this formalistic you know religion that has all these rules and all these regulations and there's this idea in high demand fundamentalist religions of uh creating costly signals I signal to you that I'm making SA Rices and living in the box that Mormonism is and I'm looking at you and making sure you are signaling back that you're in the box and if one of us doesn't live our lives in the way that the entity says even though really both of us aren't but if one of us is observ observably outwardly not living it then uh the system is sort of designed to judge that person and shame them and so you get a lot of Latter-day Saints right now who are looking down upon this and like I said earlier are completely unwilling to touch the life of Joseph Smith which is all of this plus a bunch of unhealthy grooming and uh non-consensual uh actions and it's ironic which things Mormons judge and shame and which things they sweep under the rug yeah yes well mainly um Financial sins AOK in the Mormon church as long as you're not stealing directly from the church itself sexual sins no no even pseudos seexual sense even soft sexual sense yeah no you can't do that um I understand I think I understand where the mom's coming from in that Tik Tok video um I agree with her on the other hand it isn't it obvious that this is being made in order to be titilating to to work against the grain of what the general expectation is of what Mormons do and what Mormon women do I mean that's the whole cell on this right that's the whole Sizzle uh to quote Tim Ballard yeah it's the sizzle on everything I mean that's the whole point Secret Lives of Amish wives it would be the same thing right or anybody you just want to see what's really going on you want to kind of pull back the curtain and see what's really happening so and I've also heard people say this isn't even about the Latter Day Saints because it's called Mormon so oh okay great yeah they're trying everything so so we'll see but it's coming out on the six so if we can go back to the slides really quick I have a couple little comparisons there and we'll we'll also talk really briefly about um okay so a couple more quotes where they're just saying you know just watch us I mean it's G to be just fine I won't go through everything here and I do want to point out that the LDS church has their own influencers that are very wildly successful I don't know if you know that you know the mommy blogs the mommy ticktockers a lot of them are LDS ballerina farms and they are definitely portraying a lifestyle maybe more of a tradwife kind of a scenario we've talked about that before um these guys are influencers if you can see my graphic right here this was a temple open house that was at the red Cliff's Temple and if you read right there it says this is an influencer event they encouraged influencer only influencers to come the day before the normal open housee started and they would take pictures and the influencers would post about it and they would blog about it so the church itself definitely knows how to work influencers and it's a whole world if you're not aware there are some wildly successful LDS influencers out there and Alyssa greenfeld did a little short um video very quick to kind of explain what this means so I feel like the elas church can't really be pointing at these Secret Lives of secret Mormon moms when their own influencers are out there kind of doing the same thing and raking in huge money so if you can play this really quick bill we'll see what Alyssa says about influencers have you ever wondered why there are so many Mormon influencers or influencers who are no longer Mormon but definitely used to be Mormon one Theory I've heard over and over again is that Mormon girls were taught to journal growing up and that that journaling from a young age grew up to chronicling their lives online but to me this always seemed like a super weak theory for such a huge phenomenon my theory is that the Mormon Church which has an estimated 230 billion dollars is paying them money but they're doing it very sneakily the secret lies in advertising revenue and you can see here that the Mormon Church's Search terms have a much higher ad spend than similar terms from different religions and from different geographic regions this ad spend makes it wildly more lucrative to be a Mormon Utah influencer than it does to be a la influencer or a New York influencer Honestly though it's complicated enough that you'll have to just watch my YouTube video that explains this theory about how the Mormon Church gets its wealth into the hands of these Mormon influencers yeah she does have a whole video on it but there is this algorithm there and we're talking major money have you guys are you aware at all of this whole world of the LDS influencer and how the church utilizes them like you just saw come to our influencers only Temple openhouse so that you can post about it I'm not so aware of it actually I have trouble keeping track of just the postmormon uh it's true Bill you're you're a you're an influencer Were you invited to that thing down there at the the Washington Temple right isn't it yeah really yeah I was not in I was not invited to it and I also don't think uh uh we're getting any kind of money near what that they're getting so somehow the church has a way to go we're going to pay the good guys and we're going to make sure Google is requested not to pay the baddies so yep I actually feel that's what all the billions are for SEO I'm not kidding that's makeer break these days so anyway all right let's go quickly to the next slide as we finish out here so the other part of the church's statement of course was about the movie heretic the church's statement said we don't like the way missionaries are characterized as perhaps being an unsafe situation and now this movie is coming out in November it stars Hugh Grant it's about two sister missionaries the actresses portraying these characters I believe they are or were LD I think were LDS I don't know if they ever were missionaries but they were LDS and of course they knock on a door Hugh Grant says of course my wife's home can't you smell that lovely blueberry pie baking come in she's just in the kitchen and it goes from bad to worse there as they suddenly realize there's no blueberry pie it's a candle and they're stuck right so the church in their statement basically said this is not fair this is not right this is not real our missionary are not ever in compromising situations well I think all of us are not naive enough to believe that I think we all know anecdotally stories of missionaries that have been in extremely compromising situations in fact our mormones episode that's coming out on Tuesday at 6 PM mountain time is about a missionary who was kidnapped and assaulted and held in his apartment and suffered lifelong PTSD from it just absolutely horrifying he reached out and contacted us the first after the first newscast that we talked about heretic so for the church to say you can't show this um that's ridiculous this is real life and of course Hugh Grant and his people and some of the actresses here said no we were very respectful we didn't try to make this the joke we tried to be very realistic in our portrayal of this and I think this is more of a psychological Thriller that's kind of the sense I get but it's just interesting how the church is kind of trying to dog whistle to its members don't watch The Secret Lives don't watch heretic we don't want you to get any wrong ideas about anything when the reality I think is maybe more closely aligned with what you're seeing there in the media and of course how many of us can forget The Saratov Approach right did either of you see that no but I heard about it when it was happening the church promoted that that movie and it was about a true story of two missionaries that were kidnapped in Russia held it was very dramatic the way the Lord intervened to rescue them it had a happy ending but again it's okay if the church puts it out but if Hollywood tries to put it out it obviously has an evil intent it's the adversary it's going to usher in the second coming so interesting so at the same time their commentary statement on social media and these programs that's coming out you have Elder Bednar at a Fireside and he's talking about I don't know if you guys remember 10 years ago if you can think that far back um this article is called then and now a look at Elder bednar's invitation 10 years ago to flood the Earth with social media he basically came out and said we've got to get on social media we've got to tell people who we are every member a missionary everybody get out there so they're kind of having this little interview with him to see how did that work out here we are 10 years later you know Rebecca if we can go back a slide sure it strikes me the Elder bedar is looking more and more reptilian well you know I went through quite a number of pictures to pick one that I considered flattering because I T try to be a nice person was that the best you could do was the best I could do and that green tie I he he has a thing for that green tie and it's not helping have you seen the new alien movie have you seen the alien baby okay then I won't see no no I'm not watching any more Alien movies I was just saying with the anyway there was a comparison made by I've seen we get to see one every six months and then the third one and the third one was just like BL first two were great and I have no desire to see any more Alien movies after that sorry about that well there you go you you've said it so so anyway basically 10 years ago Elder bedar said fill the Earth with goodness by using social media to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ and so he's saying what I think this is funny what we have accomplished thus far in this dispensation communicating the gospel message through social media it's a good beginning but it's only a small trickle so he's saying what you've done already is okay but we need to open the floodgates and I know we reported on this a couple weeks ago uh the governor task force on you know safety for children is saying do not encourage children to go on social media especially to uh put forth their religious views right you're just opening yourself up for a lot of attacks it may not be the most healthy place for kids but here in this interview just last week Elder bedar saying nope you got to get on there he says I now extend to you the invitation to help transform the tri transform the trickle into a flood beginning this place on this day I exort you to sweep the Earth with messages filled with righteousness and Truth messages that are authentic edifying and praiseworthy and literally to sweep the Earth as with a flood and so here I have a picture I don't know if you guys are familiar with Facebook Marketplace but missionaries go on there all the time especially sister missionaries with plates of cookies I didn't I went through a whole bunch of these pictures I didn't even want to post any because I don't want to further this so I made AI sister missionaries um which is why they're wearing jeans and why it says L LDS on the apron it's LL DS yes that's the latter latter days that's right uh but anyway they go on there and they're like hey right there at the end now yeah we'll come to your house with cookies and a message it's just so dangerous I think any parent would see it that way but Elder bedar seems to be saying please share your lives share your authentic Mormon lives I think as long as they fit in with the narrative that we're trying to portray so one of the ideas that he gave as we close out here is um I thought this was really interesting so he said um just be normal and natural it's funny how many times they have to tell the members to be normal and natural there was something about 15 years ago where they were trying to tell people how to interact with others and they said invite them to a barbecue smile be friendly I mean you know things that you don't normally have to tell people to do like just be a normal person right don't be weird um anyway be normal know what your real ulterior motive is exactly it's hard to be normal and natural when you have an ulterior motive that's trying to get these people baptized yep you've hit it on the head so um Elder bedar encourages individual and families to consider their normal routine and think about what they would be interested in posting it doesn't have to be a gospel message you said we are the gospel message I love that boom We Are The Gospel message I am what we do is much more important than what we may write or say so perhaps somebody could highlight one aspect of their family home evening such as a young child giving a lesson yeah make sure that you post a picture of that young child and give their full name birth date and tell everybody where his Elementary School is too that'll be perfect um anyway he says now we all think that's normal a young child giving an a a lesson for family night says Elder bedar but to those that not familiar with home evening this is abnormal in a home to have a child taking the lead in providing some instruction so I think his idea that people would be so impressed with that what kind of religion has taught a young child to be able to talk so eloquently about the scriptures I think he's thinking that would have an impact on people so he says Latter-Day Saints live a distinctive lifestyle that some people may find interesting Elder bedar said just live the gospel let some of that be in your social media posts and it will create curiosity so to me again can you have it both ways Mormon lives of secret wives is definitely creating curiosity but it's not the kind of curiosity that Elder bedner wants to create by showing your child on social media leading a family home evening lesson so I don't know can you have can they ask to have it both ways I'm not sure what do you think caram as we close out here I think the church has always wanted it both ways yeah and they always want it their way and the other way they try and shame people into not doing by the way if I were the president of the church right now I think I would change the moniker from LDS to llds and I would say LDS is a victory for Satan it's now llds because we are in the latter lad days we're the latter lad Day Saints the latter lad dou L DS that sounds kind of powerful right L DS like 1159 and a half p M lld DS and also it seems to me that if you went back up to what Elder bedar was saying about was it Elder Bednar no it was the the statement about the the church made obviously about heretic chastising them for trying to indicate that missionaries are unsafe well missionaries go out and they talk to people that's their job is to talk to non-members and it's funny that elder bedar or the church statement is saying that when in the temple dedication the temple groundbreaking video that we just looked at the individual quoted president Nelson before he quoted Elder Bednar and what he said that President Nelson said was we need these temples because the world is becoming increasingly what evil evil Wicked oh very good point and yet we're sending our boys and girls out there yes and then and then the church is chastising the makers of heretic for suggesting that they might not be safe even though the president of the church is harping on how the church the world is becoming more and more evil and those seem to me to be conflicting messages yeah well at the same time every built Temple brings more light into the world well that's actually true messages do seem to contradict themselves it does bring more light if we can't see the stars about light pollution right any thoughts Bill final thoughts on this this is the end of our story it the message from Bednar was that you know you it doesn't always have to be a thing that you're doing because we are the gospel message but again irony when people are asked what do they think about the Mormon Church they you know on one hand yes the members seem to be happy and family oriented right we hear that a lot uh they seem to be good people but when you ask people what they know about the church itself it's financial fraud sexual abuse uh in hidden history and so when elder bedar says we are the gospel message it's almost like he's asking the members to bail out the leaders because it's the members who put forth a good image of the church and it's the top 15 that put out something that is less than good and by the by the way these are one two three four five six right here these I believe are six members of the church as far as I understand they're all members of the church I'm a member of the church people should look I'm a member of the church I think people should never look to you for an example of anything Rebecca except high education and extreme organizational and research skills there you go that's it well and again I just you know I'm a person who I think I read those statements about how Mormons are supposed to be and that was in my life in Mormonism my kids didn't turn out perfect like that you know they went other directions things happened that weren't perfect I don't I don't have that life that that Elder bedar is saying I should post on social media so I'm not going to post that you know if when I was in the church I tried very hard to post things that did follow the party line and I think then you get in that trap where you're reading everybody else trying to post things that look perfect and then that just leads to a very unhealthy you know like not feeling great about yourself so I think it's kind of almost a recipe for disaster in that way right if if nothing else at least these people apparently are being authentic that's what I'm saying it's all out there there it is so September 6 everybody uh stri and effect you can't look away we're definitely gonna have to cover it on the newscast and it could get president Nelson a heart attack three days before it's 100 birthday I feel like it might September 6 it's a big one Elizabeth y okay and you've you had one more thing up here I do have one more slide that's right because we are daring to take a break on Labor Day because I feel like the rest of you will take a break on Labor Day too so it's happy Labor Day from the Mormon newscast we will see everybody back again like clockwork on Monday September the 9th at 6 PM mountain time so everybody have a great great Labor date perfect before we close out what do you guys have going on what do you want to tell the world that you've either been working on or about ready to work on Rebecca well I think I already kind of plugged my own show in the middle of it but we do have an episode on Tuesday 6 PM mountain time that's when we always put our Tuesday episodes out and it's with the missionary who this experience is pretty extreme pretty extreme and he he didn't really recognize that it was causing this PTSD because how would you know that you know and kind of lifelong symptoms until he finally got some help so it's a cautionary tale he's an awesome guy and I'm really excited for you guys to be able to hear his story and yeah it's it's pretty unbelievable as for me and my house we just got out I think I mentioned the next to last brush up your Shakespeare on Hamlet there's one more Scene to go it's a I think it's really pretty good the play is great I think my my podcasts are okay but yeah so we just got out Act five scene one there's only Act five scene two to go and that's where you know everything happens right everything's been building up to this point so we're at a very exciting place and if you want to get caught up Now's the Time to do it to brush up your Shakespeare Wednesday evening we've got a Mormonism live I've got no idea what we're doing on Wednesday and maybe I shouldn't bring it up here yet bill I'll talk to you about it behind the scenes what me either so we'll have to talk about it behind the scenes and somewhere here in the last few weeks um we had a a Wednesday we had to adjust on and so rather than that be your Wednesday you took the next one but that's gonna run into an issue next week because we're supposed to interview Julie Hanks on September 4th and so you and I do need to get together and figure out the next couple of Wednesdays and I coming on yes that's what I mean we'll have to sit down and resched jie yeah yeah Julie I'm sorry Julie now you guys see how it works there at Mormonism live a well oiled machine and then uh and then in terms of I sent you a message earlier I didn't check my phone before I got in here for the show but uh I had thrown out the idea that maybe the possibility of doing a Mormonism after dark this Friday oh yeah absolutely going very well I've heard really POS feedback on those really well yeah I think the last one was better than the third one the third one was better than the second one and the second one was better than the first one and it feels like we've really hit a really cool stride so I'm excited they're getting better because I think people Now understand kind of I think people are like nervous at first like going to a party right you walk in the door you're like what's happening I'll get a drink I'll stand here do I talk what do I do and now your audience is loosening up and able to call about some really provocative topics and I think you guys have hit your stride I think it's an awesome show it's a party show it's a party show you wear a tuxedo my God true I do if you want to see rfim in a tuxedo tune in if you want to see uh Bill reel in a jacket looking like a really goodlooking Don Johnson then uh tune in as well but I think episode three will go down in history is the one um where we played the clip uh with Cardin Ellis in it in the movie The Jackal that's right it's a little known part that he played in that movie amazing so check out episode three and then watch episode four and then join us this Friday for our fifth installment of Mormonism after dark you think card has seen that yet no I hope so I yeah I would assume his people have his people their people clips for them to talk yeah they pull clips for them to talk about but they don't watch the clips so oh that's true they end up talking about things without having watched what the context of the thing is that they're showing and speaking on is I'd love it if they pulled that clip and played it it'd be great huh I think it would be great I know you're in charge so I'm not going to sign off bill I'll just say um it's been a great show tonight I look forward to seeing you whatever the heck we're doing on Wednesday it's going to be great yeah on Mormonism live and then Friday at Mormonism after dark and of course Tuesday with Mormon and Rebecca and Landon boy with so many victories for Satan just in that one sentence Oh my God it is a busy week it has been a good decision on most of our parts to use Mormon in the name of what we're doing including here Folks at the Mormon newscast thank you for joining us tonight uh as rfm pointed to if none of the other things we'll see you next Monday it's 6 PM mountain time for the next installment oh that's right two Mondays from now because of Labor Day sorry about that so watch watch the uh watch the Mormon lives Secret Lives of Mormon wives on the six and we'll all talk about it on the that'll be fun have a great night everybody awesome bye everybody Gordon B Hanley here 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 600 p.m. on the Mormon newscast and