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Tag: Mormons

  • Warren Jeffs’ Son and Daughter Say FLDS Imprisoned Leader Sexually Abused Them

    Warren Jeffs is the imprisoned leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. He is serving a life sentence plus 20 years for the aggravated sexual assaults of a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl who he claimed were his “spiritual wives.”

    Now two of Warren Jeffs’ adult children–Becky and Roy Jeffs–allege their father sexually abused them as children, too.

    Becky and Roy Jeffs made their claims to Lisa Ling, host of CNN’s This is Life. The show airs on Wednesday night.

    Becky Jeffs admitted she first discussed being sexually molested by her father when her sister shared that she, too, had been molested by Warren Jeffs as a child.

    “I thought, I’m not the only one molested, he’s done it to her it must be something that was in his nature,” she says on the show. “Where does it end? If he had this in him, how can I trust him? How is he really our prophet?”

    Despite being in prison, Warren Jeffs is still running the fundamental Mormon sect from behind bars. The group believes in polygamy and Jeffs is known to have fathered at least 60 children with some of his 78 wives.

    The mainstream Mormon church–the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints–renounced polygamy about 100 years ago.

    CNN tried contacting Warren Jeffs via his attorney, but so far hasn’t received a reply.

    What kind of excuses do you suppose Warren Jeffs might make regarding the alleged sexual abuse of Becky and Roy Jeffs?

    Why do you suppose Warren Jeffs’ children waited so long to come forward?

    They are only two of four of his children who have left the FLDS church.

  • Bill Maher Mocks And Criticizes Mormon Religion

    Bill Maher isn’t afraid to share his opinion. While he has been spending a lot of time bashing Islam lately, he now has a new religion to criticize.

    Last week the Mormon Church acknowledged that Joseph Smith had at least 30 wives, some of whom were young girls, one possibly as young as 14.

    Maher wasted no time criticizing the Mormons for their new discovery and mocked the religion, as he does most other religions.

    “What I love is he said he had a revelation in 1831 from an angel who said, ‘Marry plurally — get as many b–—s as you can up in there,’” Maher said. “Joseph Smith, [the church] says, resisted three times until the angel came down with the sword, threatening Joseph with destruction unless he obeyed. And you can’t argue with an armed angel.”

    Maher is atheist, and has often said that he hates how people try to push their religion on others. He continued to mock Mormons, saying that the entire religion was based on a sex cult.

    “This religion is based on a sex cult!” he said. “It is plainly based on a 19th century sex cult. And if we didn’t have Mormonism, we’d have to invent it for all the religious people who need something to look down on because they believe in something crazy, this would be it.”

    His comments have sparked a lot of debate and even those who are not of the Mormon religion, feel as though he shouldn’t have been so critical.

    Maher however, refuses to back down from his stance on the religion and has continued to criticize it over the last few days.

    What do you think of Bill Maher’s religious views?

  • Warren Jeffs’ Polygamist Compound Now a Bed and Breakfast

    A compound built for an infamous polygamous religious sect has now become a holiday destination for travelers looking to explore the state parks of Arizona and Utah. America’s Most Wanted Suites is now open for business, offering guests the opportunity to explore the renovated compound where Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) leader Warren Jeffs was to have lived, had he not been convicted of child rape and sentenced to life in a different type of compound.

    According to a Salt Lake Tribune report, the property in Hildale, Utah is now owned by Willie Jessop, who bought the compound in April of last year for $3.6 million. Jessop is a former prosecutor who once prosecuted a case against Jeffs.

    Jessop has renovated the property, installing 14 separate rooms for guests. As shown on the America’s Most Wanted Suites website, the rooms include big screen TVs and access to breakfast.

    Jeffs gained notoriety in 2005 when he was placed on the FBI’s most wanted fugitive list and featured on the popular TV show America’s Most Wanted, inspiring the name of the new bed and breakfast. Jeffs was caught in 2006 and was convicted of being an accomplice to rape in Utah in 2007 for helping to arrange the marriages of underage girls. The state of Texas was next to prosecute Jeffs, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for two counts of sexual assault of a child.

    According to the Tribune, the Hildale compound was built in 2010 and 2011 under the assumption that Jeffs would be acquitted. Hildale and its neighboring towns in both Utah and Arizona have large communities affiliated with the FLDS religion.

    Though Jeffs conviction has affected the FLDS in the Hildale area, the communities surrounding the bed and breakfast are still very much steeped in the FLDS religious tradition. The town governments of Hildale and Colorado City are currently involved in a discrimination lawsuit alleging civil rights violations against citizens not affiliated with the FLDS.

    According to the Tribune, an FLDS High School reunion held at the America’s Most Wanted Suites earlier this month was interrupted by Hildale and Colorado City authorities over a noise complaint. Mohave County, Arizona and Washington County, Utah sheriff’s deputies also reportedly arrived on the scene.

    Image via the Texas Department of Criminal Justice

  • Mormon Women Turned Away From All-Male Priesthood Meeting

    Hundreds of Mormon women who want ecclesiastical equality were denied admittance to a male-only session of their faith’s spring conference on Saturday in Salt Lake City, Utah, in their bid for the ordination of females into the lay priesthood.

    Members of the Ordain Women group, dressed in purple, marched along with their male supporters from a park to Salt Lake Tabernacle on Temple Square, a four-block campus that is the global home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They were seeking unfilled seats in the evening priesthood meeting at the faith’s semi-annual conference.

    This follows the group’s attempt last fall at gaining admittance into the meeting. The women seek a more significant role within their church, and their recent actions have led to tensions between the church and the women.

    Before Saturday’s event, church officials asked Ordain Women to refrain from coming to Temple Square, and said it would detract from the “spirit of harmony” at the two-day conference, and asked that they “please reconsider.” The weekend conference included four events open to both genders, and the male-only priesthood meeting.

    In a statement made on Saturday evening, LDS officials expressed displeasure with Ordain Women’s actions.

    “Despite polite and respectful requests from church leaders not to make Temple Square a place of protest, a mixed group of men and women ignored that request and staged a demonstration outside the Tabernacle on General Conference weekend, refusing to accept ushers’ directions and refusing to leave when asked,” LDS spokesman Cody Craynor said.

    “While not all the protesters were members of the church, such divisive actions are not the kind of behavior that is expected from Latter-day Saints and will be as disappointing to our members as it is to church leaders,” Craynor said.

    Members of Ordain Women expressed displeasure at being referred to as protesters.

    “We’re not activists. We’re not protesters,” said Kate Kelly, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights attorney and lifetime Mormon who last year co-founded Ordain Women with about 20 other women.

    “We’re people on the inside. We are investing in an institution … not critiquing it to tear it down,” Kelly said.

    Ordain Women, which describes itself as “a space for Mormon women to articulate issues of gender inequality,” raised more than $11,000 to meet the costs for women to travel from New Zealand, Mexico City and Germany and across the United States to the event on Saturday.

    When Ordain Women members attempted to attend the previous male-only meeting, the LDS denied them admittance, but later asked a woman to pray at conference and the priesthood meeting was broadcast live on cable television and the Internet.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Mormon Women Protest All-Male Priesthood

    Mormon Women Protest All-Male Priesthood

    The Salt Lake Tribune reported 130 Mormon women affiliated with the Ordain Women movement were turned away from the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City’s Temple Square on Saturday. As dozens of men edged their way past to enter the male-only meeting, the women were shut out at the door.

    The Ordain Women movement was founded in March 2013, and seeks to add women to the ordained ranks of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which currently only ordains worthy 12-or-older boys.

    The leader of Ordain Women and a Washington, D.C. human rights attorney, Kate Kelly, said “I really started to see a stark contrast between the contributions of men and women in the church… I have faith that we will receive the priesthood that lord will listen to our prayers and that our leaders will be responsive.”

    LDS Church spokeswoman Ruth Todd indicated that the meeting the women should be attending was the Relief Society meeting, which was held last week and was for women only.

    Through a statement to reporters, Todd said “Millions of women in this church do not share the views of this small group that has come and organized this protest today and some of the members feel this is very divisive as well. But even so these are our sisters and we want them in this church and we hope they’ll find the peace and joy we all seek in the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

    But even LDS women are divided on the issue: ABC4-Utah reported that two women showed up to protest the protest. Aubrey Brooks and Heather Reese stood outside Temple Square with signs indicating ordination isn’t required for them to feel equal to their husbands.

    “We love being members of the church… We don’t feel like we’re put down in any way and we’re very happy by the roles that we have,” Reese said.

    Brooks’ and Reeses’ comments echo the sentiment reportedly held by many Mormon women: a 2010 book by Robert Putnam and David Campbell entitled American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us found 90 percent of Mormon women were opposed to female ordination, while only 52 percent of Mormon men were opposed to the idea.

    [Image via the Ordain Women Facebook Page]

  • Artist Gives Away Swing-Vote In D&D-Inspired Game

    Mormon artist Casey Jex Smith is mixing his creations with politics, and wants everyone to know that, as un undecided voter, he’s willing to give up his decision on who the next president of the United States will be based on a Dungeons And Dragons game.

    Well, sort of.

    As an Ohioan, Smith will have a much-coveted swing vote, and after spending months following the Obama/Romney campaign, says he’s still not sure who he will vote for. Over the past few months, he’s been creating fantasy pieces which incorporate Romney–who is also Mormon–and Obama, represented by mythical creatures and figures at times. The pieces debuted in a show on October 10th at Allegra LaViola Gallery, where Smith staged a D&D-like game in order to find a “winner” between Obama and Romney using audience volunteers to represent each candidate. Whoever won also got Smith’s word that he’ll vote for that man come election day.

    “I’m an artist and an active Mormon originally from Utah. When Mitt Romney started running for office, I decided to tie myself with his campaign by making drawings about it,” Smith wrote on his Good blog. “Last year, my wife and I moved to Ohio from California. At the time we didn’t have a whole lot of money, we were living with my mother-in-law, and things were difficult for my career. I was going through a hard time, and started thinking about how I could get my power back. I thought that if I linked myself to Romney’s campaign through my work, and if he kept winning, then I could tie this into a show in October that was about him winning—or in that case, me winning.

    “The show became about Romney’s adventure: the foes he had to fight, the attack ads, themes of class. All the work is done through the lens of a Lord of the Rings/Dungeons and Dragons-type world as, per capita, Utah has the highest readership in sci-fi literature. I think Mormons find this kind of writing easy to relate to due to some of the more fantastic beliefs we have. One of the main Dungeons and Dragons writers is Mormon, as is Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game), and Stephanie Meyer’s of the Twilight series. Christians don’t necessarily want to touch anything that has to do with magic and witchcraft, but not Mormons—we can’t get enough.

    “In the works, I’ve represented conservatives as undead creatures like zombies and skeletons; liberals are goblins. I’m not really flattering either side. My portrait of Obama makes him out to be an anti-Christ figure, based on feelings my family have that they believe Obama to be the actual, Biblical anti-Christ.

    “As a registered voter, I’m still undecided: I voted for Obama in the last election as I was so disappointed with George W. Bush and was excited for somebody new to come in. His message of hope and change really resonated with me. Since then I’ve become a little more conservative and there are times that I want Romney to win and there are other times that I think: “I can’t buy into this guy, he drives me crazy, says ridiculous things and doesn’t understand normal people.”

    “If Romney were to win, the country would perceive Mormons as doing, and espousing, anything that he did, which would be a new and frightening position for us to be in. Mormons have attracted a lot of attention in the past few years, but a considerable amount has been negative. My frustration with Romney has also been that he shies away from his religion. This is one of the main reasons I drew him with a Brigham Young polygamist beard: because I want him to wear his Mormonism a bit more.

    “At the opening tonight we will have a live action performance to decide the fate of the election using Dungeons and Dragons dice, rules and attacks. We have created an all-encompassing environment for the game, including a dungeon wall with candelabra, an old church podium, and physical elements relating to the battle. I will be Dungeon Master and ask for two volunteers to come up and play the roles of Obama and Romney. We’ll go through a little ceremony and then they’ll roll D&D dice and “damage” each other until there is a victor. Whoever comes out victorious will win my real-life vote in Ohio. When I go to the polls, I’ll take photo documentation so people know that I have voted for the winner of the game.”

    Of course, Smith hasn’t updated us as to who won, but we’ll all see the documentation after election day. Check out his work below.

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  • Mormon Church Rakes in Billions in Tithes

    An analysis of the finances of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormon church, has revealed that the church brings in around $7 billion worth of tithes and donations annually. The analysis, was done using church records in countries around the world that require more financial disclosure by religious institutions than in the U.S., and was conducted by Reuters and University of Tampa sociologist Ryan Cragun.

    According to Reuters, the Mormon church owns about $35 billion worth of real estate, much of it commercial property such as shopping malls and ranches. It also has 14 million members worldwide, all of which are required to tithe. The analysis points out, though, that only the 40% of Mormons who attend services weekly are likely to tithe.

    The reason any of this is relevant is because Mitt Romney is the first Mormon presidential candidate. As a wealthy Mormon, Romney has dutifully given his share to the church over the years. Reuters states in its report that Romney has given $4.1 million to the Mormon church in the past two years. That amount is very close to 10% of Romney’s gross adjusted income, which is a percentage traditionally given by many Christian tithers.

    The Reuters analysis also accused the Mormon church of neglecting charity work with their billions. It states that the organization owns no hospitals and has only a “handful” of primary schools. The church puts most of its considerable resources into profit-making investments. For example, Reuters points out that it is the largest rancher in the U.S.

    (Photo by Bjørn Graabek via Wikimedia Commons)