Welcome and Introductions

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. This is Mormon Stories, Mormon Expression edition. It is October 20, 2022, and as always, we are so excited to have as one of our trusted friends and colleagues, the John Larsen of Mormon Expression Podcast fame. Hey, John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:00:21] Hello, everybody.

John Dehlin [00:00:22] Are you joining us from your underground bunker somewhere in Oregon, is that right?

John Larsen [00:00:26] I am from an undisclosed location. Indeed. Kara has visited my undisclose location.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:00:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:00:33] Cara who?

John Larsen [00:00:34] Hey, Cara the.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:00:35] Cara. The one and only. I flew on an airplane to go visit that, like, jolly old fella.

John Dehlin [00:00:42] And if John and Cara weren't enough, we have joining us in studio, Samantha Shelley as well from Zel on the Shelf. Hello, Samantha. It's so always great to have you as a co host. Thanks for joining us.

Samantha Shelley [00:00:54] Yep, pleasure to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:55] Check out Zel on the Shelf. Check out Samantha Shelley. What life coaching extravaganza do.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:01:01] Check it out.

Samantha Shelley [00:01:01] Yep, that's the.

John Larsen [00:01:02] Oh, hey, Samantha, I'll tell you something. I've confessed this many times, but I never watch or listen to Mormon podcasting. I never have, I never will.

Samantha Shelley [00:01:15] And you shouldn't have to.

John Larsen [00:01:16] Except I've watched you guys sometimes because you make me laugh.

Samantha Shelley [00:01:19] Oh, my God. Thank you, John Lawson.

John Dehlin [00:01:21] Oh, that's a big compliment.

Samantha Shelley [00:01:23] Yeah.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:01:25] On my recommendation. I'm just trying to weave myself into this narrative.

Samantha Shelley [00:01:29] Yeah. Was it.

John Larsen [00:01:29] You can have it if you want it, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:01:32] Anyway, that's awesome. So, yeah, check out Zelph on the Shelf. And also check out Nuance. Okara, you released an episode you're really excited about today, right?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:01:40] Yeah, not that I need to tell you folk. It's just probably all around the algorithm already. It's just. It's been. It was really exciting day. I had a video with my friend Eve who sat in this chair, and me and John did a video on my Nuance Ho YouTube channel telling a Mormon just some facts that she didn't know about Joseph Smith and letting her react to them in real time and answer or. And ask questions and have us answer them. And it's really informative. And people keep saying it's like the greatest video that they can't wait to, like, share with kind of, you know, people who are on the fence believers. So I'm just really proud to put out that content today, and I'm proud of Eve for doing it with me, and I'm just really grateful for everybody who watched so that came out today. So make sure you check it out.

John Dehlin [00:02:17] Yeah. And please support Nuance Ho and her Patreon channel or her donor box donor button. Become a monthly donor. We got to pay for these content creators or they'll go away, right, Samantha?

Samantha Shelley [00:02:30] Yeah, we will. We're always on the edge of going away. It could happen at any moment.

John Dehlin [00:02:35] Yeah, that'd be bad. Okay, so today I think this podcast is entitled your friend, the Church. We are going to be talking about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or the Mormon Church and their history, filing amicus briefs with, I don't know, the Supreme Court or other courts. And I, I haven't done a lot of background research for today, so I'm going to be relying on the heavy lifting of John Larsen and Kara Burrell. And of course, you know a lot about the Supreme Court, right, Samantha?

Samantha Shelley [00:03:03] Well, I was going to say who will be explaining what an amicus brief is?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:03:06] I can do that at some point.

Samantha Shelley [00:03:07] Wonderful.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:03:08] Great.

Samantha Shelley [00:03:09] Let's start there.

John Dehlin [00:03:10] John. John may help with that as well. Anyway, I will say that this, this whole series is part of the Mormon Expression series on Mormon Stories podcast. John Larsen used to host an amazing epic podcast called Mormon Expression. You can find that on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts, check out Mormon Expression podcast. It's, I don't know, 300 ish or some of the best Mormon themed podcasting ever made. But John, we were able to motivate John Larsen to come out of her retirement and to do a monthly episode on Mormon Stories because of gracious donors. So if you like the, the John Larsen content on Mormon Expression, we've had some significant donors to the Mormon Expression Project. Bail. It's not in any risk of going away anytime soon, but if you love John Larsen and Cara Burrell and the Mormon Expression content on Mormon Stories, please go to MormonStories.org Mormon expression. Become a monthly donor to the John Larsen Project and we'll have John Larsen on along with Kara, as long as John will do it. Anything you want to add to that, John Larsen?

John Larsen [00:04:14] No. Thanks for hosting the old Mormon Expression stuff and thanks for doing this. John, as a matter of absolving him, never puts any restraint on what I am allowed to say. So he just tells me to do whatever I want. So I appreciate that freedom.

John Dehlin [00:04:33] Samantha, do you feel the same way?

Samantha Shelley [00:04:35] Exactly the same.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] I just had a conversation with Samantha off camera. Every time, every time somebody talks about capitalism, we lose donors and, you know, anti capitalism kind of stuff.

Samantha Shelley [00:04:48] This is a pro Jeff Bezos podcast. We want to make that very clear right off the bat. Do not unsubscribe.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:04:53] Everything in this room was literally ordered from Amazon too.

John Dehlin [00:04:56] So, like, that's actually true.

Samantha Shelley [00:04:57] We're all prime customers, and that will never change however many rainforests go away.

John Dehlin [00:05:02] No, but. No, it's. It's. I think maybe we can talk for this about this for two minutes. But, you know, obviously we want. We want to reach people who are trying to process Mormonism. And I'm always torn because I. I have very strong political views. I had strong political views before I had strong progressive or post Mormon views. So I care a lot about politics and government. And honestly, I feel like Mormon stories moves the needle in terms of helping people become more sensitive to the causes I care about more than almost anything. At the same time, I don't want to alienate people. I don't want to. People think that this is a partisan program, that if. If whatever your political party or ideology is, that you're not welcome here. So we're always. We're always trying to figure out the right balance, and I always want my guests to be authentic. And so we'll just figure it out. But just know that my guests have the political views they have, as do I. We want everyone to feel welcome. And at some point, we need to have some. Some political conservatives on who are thoughtful. Yeah. You know, to be able to have some type of dialogue.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:06:06] I've been trying to get that Greg guy, Greg Madsen from quick channel, that YouTuber, you know, but darn it, he's speaking at Rod Meldrum's convention this weekend. The book of Mormon evidence 1. He's all tied up with them, so. Darn it. I just can't get an intelligent conservative to come in here. I'm trying.

Samantha Shelley [00:06:23] I would also like to say that more important than my political views, and I feel like this is probably the same for both of you too, is just believing that we're all more than our views, and all of our views are the result of just whatever we've been exposed to in our lives and whatever our brains have sort of been wired to value more than other things. So, you know, we. We don't buy into sort of polarizing narratives about, like, good and bad. I don't see it that way at all. I think whoever you are, like, everyone's worthy of love and respect. I don't think anyone's an idiot, you know?

John Dehlin [00:06:53] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:06:54] We're on the same team.

John Dehlin [00:06:56] Yeah. I'm reading a book called why We're Polarized, and it's a really interesting book, but I. I hate. I actually hate religious polarization because I think it's counterproductive and I, I don't like political. The level of political polarization that we have now. Now, having said all that, John Larsen, I'm guessing you have some thoughts or feelings as well on all this.

John Larsen [00:07:16] No, I'll just, I'll just let it slide. I will say this. We live in a polarized time indeed. Politics is about power and political power, power. And one of the cheap tricks that's being deployed right now is the umbrella of what people call political is expanding further and further and further and further and further till now. It includes things like basic reproductive care, the existence of LGBT people, the existence of slavery. And so the problem is that there is truth and there is not truth, and there's some things that we don't know. But, yeah, I've. I have long walked away from lots of money because I'm not for sale. I have upset many rich donors who have tried to influence me and people around me to get me to say or not say things, and I'll say what I believe, and, and I would say that if you're so sensitive in your views that you can't encounter somebody who has different views than you, then, yeah, go, go away. But people like me, I read the right wing voraciously and I think it's important to know what's happening. We're living in an age of confusion. And, and so I can't, I simply, I, I respect what people are saying, but I can't come into this podcast and be able to speak the truth about Mormonism while meanwhile trying to navigate around whatever pegs you all put down and saying, you can talk truth here, but you can't talk truth here. You can say this, but you can't say that I cannot operate. I will go and continue to speak my truth and ask for correction, and I can't do anything else. Mormonism, politics, nationalism, it's all the same animal. And I'm not going to tolerate one because some people are more sensitive. So that's the way it is. And when it's time to kick me off, I will say, thanks for all the fish.

John Dehlin [00:09:22] That's not happening. No, that's why we love you, John Larsen. And yeah, we don't. We. We stick by our no muzzle, no muzzle policy. And that goes for you too, Samantha.

Samantha Shelley [00:09:35] Yeah. And if this isn't. Isn't an example of what you resist, persists, John.

John Dehlin [00:09:41] No, no, this is good. It's more of a disclaimer than anything. But, John, we love you and be you. How's that?

John Larsen [00:09:48] Yeah, thanks. And I enjoy interacting with the other side or people who have different views than me. But what you're probably going to be peppered with, and you can look at the comments in these, like these is questions from me as I try to understand and you know, probably one of my biggest frustrations and I think it kind of, it will lead into something we're going to talk about today is just this lack of understanding of basic terminology. I doubt 1 in 10,000Americans could define what socialism is. I doubt 1 in 100,000Americans could define what capitalism is. And so it's just hard to have these discussions when people have terms that they don't understand and then they play a plant a big fence around them, you know, so.

John Dehlin [00:10:32] Yeah. Okay, well, so that's kind of one way to start the show. John, did you have any other announcements before we dive into today's topic?

Following Up on Previous Episodes

John Larsen [00:10:44] I do. You know, we always want to follow up if, if I've said anything wrong or if there's information from previous shows, I like to, I like to circle back on those things. And again, this is an open invite for people to show me where I'm on. I, I belong to no political parties. I never have. I belong to no religions. I, I haven't since I left the church. Really. I don't affiliate with any. I'm just looking for, for, for truth and knowledge. That's, that's all I care about. So if, if you can show me where there's something that I believe that's off, I, I will reward you the best I can because that's what I want. I want to be showed that I'm wrong. And, and you know, I've thought about it before. One of the reasons I think I became kind of bombastic when I was leaving the church is I was trying to get anybody to save my soul. I was trying to. And I had to push harder and harder and harder and then I eventually pushed the whole thing off the edge of the cliff. So

John Dehlin [00:11:42] I loved your theme on Mormon expression. Is there a better way to get this point across? It's like, how do I get this point across? Could anybody help me?

John Larsen [00:11:50] Right, right. Okay. So that was my long winded introduction. Unfortunately, we have to follow up on the lake. There have been a few developments with the Great Salt Lake. As a reminder, a few months ago we recorded a rather heart wrenching story. You know, Utah's my home. I mean, I, I, I, I grew up there. My family's there. It's a place that I love. And if you remember in the podcast before, I gave a warning that, that of course, the New York Times gave the same morning that at 17% salinity, the brine fish start to die. A lake is sitting at 18% salinity right now and it spiked. But I read two reports. One that said had it spiked at 22%, another said 25. According to Bonnie Baxter, who is, I think at Westminster College, she's studying the place. She says this. We're not seeing any fly pupa today. That's terrifying. So if you recall the, the, the. Everyone's focusing on the water in the lake. But what I tried to redirect saying there are 10 billion birds that, that fly from Canada to Mexico or places in between that winter over or summer over, or they go to the wetlands of the lake where they feed mostly on brine flies that feed on brine shrimp. And brine shrimp are a very unique organ organism and they cannot survive really in salinity above 17%. There's also another thing. I didn't have this in my notes, but I was reading about it last week. There is kind of a relative of coral, like coral reef that lives in the lake. And they, they said that last year, you know, it gets exposed and it turns from green to white. And then when the water came back in the winter, it bounced back. This last year it didn't. So the lake is in, is in dire straits and I don't know what to do, but just keep sounding the alarm. I'm. I'm sorry. This is one of those things that there's a few bellwethers that have been that the world is starting to focus on in terms of climate change. And the Great Salt Lake is one of them. So there's national international news, there's stories on the Great Salt Lake every two or three days.

Great Salt Lake and Church Water Policy

John Dehlin [00:14:16] And Samantha, you're saying the Zelf on the Shelf, in addition to the episode we did our Mormon stories about the Great Salt Lake. Samantha, you're saying Zelf on the Shelf has, has something as well?

Samantha Shelley [00:14:25] Yeah. So we interviewed a research guy called Mike the Vegan and he, we talked about how, I think I check, double check these statistics, but like 85% of water usage from the Great Salt Lake is for animal agriculture. That makes up only around 3% of the economy. So I just thought that was interesting because, I mean, we see that with a lot of environmental disasters that animal agriculture is contributing massively.

John Larsen [00:14:52] Yeah, yeah. And it's even worse than what you said because it's not just, you know, there is a lot of cattle, especially up, up in the north, but most of the agriculture in Utah is alfalfa that is grown to feed animals. But the alfalfa goes overseas. So it's, it's, it's not even something that's contributing to the, you know, the food environment of Utah or the country. It's just an economic. So, so, so these, these, if you look at it this way, these countries from, you know, across the water are, are using up the last of the resource that the Mormon people depend on in order to make money. That is a minor portion of Utah's economy. The, the amount of deference that agriculture is given does not equal the amount of economic impact on the, on the Utah economy, unfortunately.

John Dehlin [00:15:43] Got it.

John Larsen [00:15:44] There's another, there's another story from Axios and, and the Guardian, who have been tracing this. Axios went into Salt Lake City. The church in June released a statement. I don't, I don't have the statement. Oh, I do have the statement. A watering law of lawns and landscapes at temples, meeting houses and other buildings is being reduced. In some cases, landscape will be permitted to brown and become dormant. So Axios went to Salt Lake City and went to 120 meeting houses. And they, this was recent. This was in September. And they found only four. Only four of those lawns showed any sign of distress. Now, you know, the margin of error on that is those four might have just had sprinkler problems, who knows? But the church has made no action and their lawns are as green as green. In fact, where I live in Oregon, I drive by an LDS church every day. And the habit out here is that the grass goes brown. Even though we live in a rainforest, the grass grows, goes brown during the summer. And on my whole drive, I drive about four miles. Everything is brown except for one place, which is the LDS chapel, which is just green as green is green. So the. The church is not doing anything. And the Guardian. I recommend anybody look up this article. It makes a really great case. The. The article's called, titled Lawns are Godly. And the fact that Mormons believe that the. The desert shall blossom as a rose. For many Mormons, those green, green lawns. And of course, Utah uses more water per capita than any other state in the United States is part of the fulfillment of Mormon theology. And as long as the church's lawns are green, the Mormons will follow.

John Dehlin [00:17:40] Interesting. All right. Yeah. So do what you can. And one way to really impact things is to depend Less on meat as a source of your diet. Right.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:17:51] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:17:51] I think that's the biggest way you can reduce your personal water consumption.

John Dehlin [00:17:54] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:17:55] Because it's just inefficient to have to grow plants to feed to animals and then eat the animals, water the animals.

John Dehlin [00:18:02] Right.

Samantha Shelley [00:18:02] Yeah. The amount of la. You know.

John Dehlin [00:18:03] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:18:04] Land, you know.

John Dehlin [00:18:05] Yeah. Okay. All right, John, thanks for giving us that update. And. And we definitely care about the environment and the earth, so in Utah, so thank you for that update.

John Larsen [00:18:15] Yeah, yeah, I would say. My pleasure, but not really. I'm. There are. There. There are. They're starting to talk about actions. I. I should acknowledge the. The north railroad berm. There's a railroad line that cuts right across the lake. As a matter of fact, if you look at Google Maps, you can see it because it reduced the salinity or of the north section or change the salinity. And the two sections of the lake are different colors. So they're actually raising. Right now, they're in the middle of raising the railroad up to get more water moving back and forth between the two sections to try to stem this tragedy.

John Dehlin [00:18:54] Yeah. So they are responding to Mormon Stories podcast and John Larsen. It's just taking them a while. And I have read that they're thinking about diverting a lot of the agricultural water back into the lake. So there's talk of it.

John Larsen [00:19:07] It will happen. It's just. How long do we put it off? Yeah, it's inevitable, you know.

John Dehlin [00:19:12] All right, any other announcements before we jump in, or.

John Larsen [00:19:16] No, that. That was all I had to cover there.

What Is an Amicus Brief and Why It Matters

John Dehlin [00:19:18] All right, well, let's jump into the main event for today. We're talking about the Mormon Church and amicus briefs, and Cara's saying, what the heck is an amicus brief? Right.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:19:29] I'm not saying that. I'm American. I have that word tattooed in my arm.

John Dehlin [00:19:35] So no offense, Samantha.

Samantha Shelley [00:19:38] So.

John Larsen [00:19:38] So yeah, let's. Right before we jump in, I'm gonna. I want to ask a question, first of all, to. To everybody listening that I'm going to ask at the end of this. This podcast, same question. I'm going to ask it right now. So you can keep it in the back of your mind and think about it, of. Of everything. We're going to talk about the next two hours or so. What does any of this have to do with Jesus? I mean, Mormons have always said that they're a Christian denomination, that they. They believe in the same Jesus everybody else does. And. And it's the Jesus of the Gospels, the four. You know, the Four books in the Bible. And so we have what Jesus wrote and spoke of. It's well understood, been studied for 2000 years. What does any of this have to do with Jesus? That's the question I wanted to plant in the back of your head.

John Dehlin [00:20:27] Okay. I think you're. I think you're poisoning the well, John Larsen. You're poisoning the well. I'm kidding.

John Larsen [00:20:33] I'm. Yeah, I guess. All right, so, yeah, let's talk about. Because I used it, an amicus curiae brief is. It's Latin, and it just simply means friend of the courts. So when major rulings come up, the justices or the judges, this. This happens at different levels matter. Everything we're going to be covering today are all Supreme Court, US Supreme Court cases, except for. I have one Nevada state Supreme Court case that I kind of bent the rules for a little bit, and actually I have another one in there where the Church is not the amicus, they are the petitioner. So I did bend my rule for two of these. But what these things allow is that, generally speaking, I think if I wrote a friend of the Court's brief and submitted to the Supreme Court, it wouldn't go anywhere. So this is a way to allow for powerful, influential political organizations to weigh in on these cases. And if you read cases, they will. Oftentimes, if you read the decisions, you can see that the Supreme Court justices do indeed sometimes borrow language wholesale from these amicus briefings. So they are an important part of our political system, or I shouldn't say political system, our governance system, for good or for bad. And they've been around for a long, long time. But they do allow us to understand some things, and we'll get to that point in a second. So first, as I always like to do, let's delve into Mormon history a little bit to get us grounded and talk about why we are where we're at. Okay, so if we recall, during the Nauvoo period, Joseph Smith set up two parallel forms of government. And I'm sure there's been Mormon stories episodes where you've covered the council of 50 and whatnot.

The Church as a Corporation and Legal Entity

John Dehlin [00:22:32] All right, John, maybe not as much as I'd like to read an old

John Larsen [00:22:38] Mormon expression, one on the Council of 50.

John Dehlin [00:22:40] We'll have Maven put that in the show notes for sure.

John Larsen [00:22:45] So basically, Joseph Smith had set up the priesthood in a form of what we know it, or what you can read in the Doctrine Covenants that there was the president of the Church, the first presidency, and then the. The Quorum of the Twelve and the Quorum of the Seventy. Although at the time that Joseph Smith was alive, he said that those three were equal in power. And then later, of course, Brigham Young kind of put it into the patriarchal hierarchy that we kind of know and love today. So, so that was the governance of the Church. But Joseph Smith also set up another governance body called the Council of 50. And the Council of 50 was in place to actually rule the world. So they would define it that the church governance ruled the Church. But Joseph Smith had himself anointed king of the entire world, a process that was repeated by both Brigham Young and John Taylor. Those three had secret ceremonies where they were anointed king of the world.

John Dehlin [00:23:47] And Leonard, as Karen and I mentioned in our last episode, also Leonardo DiCaprio.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:23:52] John loves a callback.

John Larsen [00:23:54] Leonardo DiCaprio was king of the world.

John Dehlin [00:23:56] Did you see Titanic?

John Larsen [00:23:57] It just took me a minute. I'm sorry.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:24:00] And not the connection with him having women that are under a certain age, that's a different connection to be him being the king of the world.

John Larsen [00:24:07] So there's some interesting things about the Council of 50. We'll briefly go over. Three of the members of the Council of 50. The original one set by Joseph Smith were not members of the Church. So it's clear that Joseph Smith was looking to expand his power and his influence beyond the Church. But the council of 50 didn't get a lot of action. We have some of their notes. I don't think we have all of them yet. And, and they didn't get tons of action before he was assassinated. So, so, but then when they went over to Utah, Brigham Young reinstituted the council of 50 and they were in. In place for a long time. I think the best book on this, if you're interested, is D. Michael Quinn's Origins of. Of Mormon Church, Origins of Power. And he talks about as, as they raise this up. So in Joseph Smith theology, the, the Mormons, the restoration was here to restore the old order, the old priesthood order, and to set up a shadow government that Jesus Christ would take the helm of on his return. So the, the early Saints were literally building the kingdom of God in their mind and that, and that the government that would be moved to Missouri would become the one world government. And these beliefs still survive today. And you know, you hear those, like the White Horse prophecy, the constitutional hang by a thread and we saved by elders of the Church and all that sort of stuff. It all has to do with, with the belief that the, that Mormonism is not just a religion. But it's free to operate in the secular world. And they did. They own businesses and they still do. And, and there's great books. 1986, the Mormon Corporate Empire is the book that finally got the church to start divesting. Before 86, if you would have gone to like Union Pacific Railroad board meetings, they would have been, you know, most of the board of directors would have been actual sitting apostles and things like that. So it's in recent history, in a lot of our lifetime, the church was heavily, heavily involved in business. But I want to point out that's part of the doctrine that in Mormonism, historical Mormonism, there's no differentiation between church and state. And you know, Brigham Young, of course, was governor of the state and president of the church and that caused all sorts of problems when he died. For a long time, up until Reed Smoot, the senator, were always apostles, you know, and, and I mean, that continued. Ezra Tap Benson was Secretary of Agriculture while being a member of the quorum of the 12. So, so up until not that many decades ago, there was no distinction between political, political government and church, which again, to go to where we started this thing, I don't know how the hell I'm supposed to talk about the church without talking about politics when the Mormon Church is, is an extremely active political entity, and I would say more so a political entity than a religion. But I divert.

John Dehlin [00:27:18] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:27:18] All right, are you guys with me so far?

John Dehlin [00:27:20] 100 carries in Samantha.

John Larsen [00:27:24] Okay, so the church has long had a law firm and for a long time it was Curtain, McConkey and Pullman. And then there were some controversy with Pullman and he was removed. Curtin McConkie sits in on the north side of City Creek, just south of the temple. And there is literally a tunnel between that law firm and the church office building and the temple. So it's one of the only organizations that I know of that connects literally its most holy place with its legal entity, with its law firm. Kurt and McConkey take clients outside the church, but they are the principal and only a law firm that the church deploys. So, and they are, it's, yes, it's that McConkeys, they are the old blue blood Mormon families. So, so it's, it's, and there's all sorts of stories about that, that, that law firm, I don't have any interest in disparaging them other to say then they're the, the legal arm of the church. And so they file most of these briefings. Many of the briefings are filed under Kurt mcconi representing the church. There are a few that are filed, especially older ones that are filed just under Kurt and McConkey. But, but those two organizations, there's, there's no, there's no daylight between them. Okay, all right, let's talk a little bit about non profits versus profits and let's, we have to talk a tiny bit about capitalism. I'm sorry, but just, just trying to define it. So, so in a capitalistic economic system, the, the, the laws and the structure are, are set up around the capital and that's what we have now or the money that's invested in the company. So in our legally, how corporations are run in the United States is the capital is the principal thing. And then there's managers who manage the capital. And in fact, if you can get into legal jeopardy as an executive of a company if you make decisions that don't serve the capital, so there's actual illegal and fiduciary responsibility to return investment on the capital. And then we have labor and resources and those three things exist. But our system is set up around protecting the capital. And you know, for example, you know, a lot of people don't know this. Most companies have two types of stock. There's privileged stock and then there's the regular stock. When you buy stock in the stock market, you're not getting the privileged stock. So this is just an example of how the law is set up that if a company's going bankrupt, all the privileged people get paid out before the, the, the con. You can't even buy privileged stock. You don't, unless you're an insider and you know how to get there. It's just not available in the market. I'm sorry, did somebody have something?

John Dehlin [00:30:37] No, your, your mic went out for a second, but it's back.

John Larsen [00:30:41] Okay, so, so the reason I bring that up is then we have nonprofit corporations. So for profit corporations or a default corporation is designed legally, and again, our whole jurisprudence system is designed around this to make return on the capital. A nonprofit follows all the same kind of corporate guidelines. It just doesn't have any shareholders, it doesn't have any capital up there that it's doing a return on investment. And people get this confused because they think a nonprofit is a company that doesn't have a profit. It's not true. It means that there's no profit on the capital because we're a capitalist society or a capitalist legal form. So, so like the church can. And, and there's legal precedents. The church can actually, as a non profit can own for profit entities, they just have to pay taxes and submit to the legal wranglings of, of those for profit entities. And in those cases, the Church being a nonprofit organization is the capitalist in the for profit organization. I know it gets, it gets squishy and weird, but this is what the Church does all the time. This is the world they live in. And, and it really defines who they are and what they do. And it's important for what we're going to be talking about. So when we talk about a nonprofit, never get confused. If you say like Intermountain Health is a nonprofit, they'll still make billions of dollars a year. They just distribute it to the officers or to, in other ways rather than return on a investment because there investitures. So, so the, the, the important part that it's coming up here is the Church is a corporation first and foremost. It acts like a corporation, it breathes like a corporation. It is a corporation. The officers of the Church, the, the holy men of the priesthood are selected for their corporate bona fides. They are corporate attorneys. They are corporate financiers. They are corporate executives. If you look down the resumes of the 12 and the people are, they are CEOs of Mars Bar, they are people who, who rose in the ranks. They worked in the military industrial complex. They worked all over. These are people who are well versed in corporate America. And that's not a judgment call. I'm just saying corporate America is part of our system and, and we select the officers of the Church from corporate America. So it should be no surprise that the Church acts like a corporation all the time and has a set of attorneys who act like corporate attorneys. We live in a post truth world right now, which is kind of unfortunate. The Internet and other advancements have made it so that basically anybody like me can say anything they want at any time on the Internet. And there's some good in that, but it allows for a lot of confusion. And so, and there's a lot of legal loopholes around truth. You know, we can talk about the concept of puffery, which is a real legal term. Puffery allows people to inflate claims around products and things like that without getting into trouble. And there's a lot of wiggle lines and people are always pushing them and, and that sort of stuff. So why do I bring this up in the post truth world where, where so much money and so much legal wrangling has been done to protect corporations, protect corporate officers. The only thing you can really believe for a corporation is what their Lawyers say. So I go through that whole exposition to say this. If you want to know what the Mormon Church really believes, what they really value, what they really are all about, you're going to get more of that truth by reading these amicus briefings because that's in the language of their lawyers. That's really what matters in our legal system. What missionaries say, what they say over the pulpit, what they say in their scriptures, they say in their history books doesn't matter. What their lawyers say matters. So this is an important topic because this is one of the only ways to cut through all the baloney and get at what the church really values and really holds to.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] Hey, John, do you mind if we, do we mind if we explore that for just one second?

John Larsen [00:35:14] Please, go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:35:15] Also thanks to J.C. talking about capitalism and nonprofits. Thanks to J.C. for the super chat. He just gave 20 bucks. I'll go ahead and read his comment as well. JC writes this Social Democrat. Happy to chip in over and over and above my monthly donation to make up some for one of those who just left over here in capitalism discussed. Thank you, John Larsen team. Join me, fellow open minded listeners. I love it. Thank you, Jason.

John Larsen [00:35:42] Thanks, J.C. and J.C. is actually a woman.

John Dehlin [00:35:44] Okay. Oh, J.C. all right. And, and Kara Maven saying, my, my, my sound's not coming in quite as loud as other people. So. Okay, okay. So John, let me push back on that a little bit because I'm sure if, if you were to ask even Dallin H. Oaks, but the first presidency or the quorum of the 12, you know, is it true that if you want to know what the Mormon Church really thinks and feels and cares about us, the lawyers, number one, I'm sure they would all say that's wrong because that sounds horrible. Even Oaks would say that's wrong even though he's the chief lawyer. But, but I probably would guess that in their own hearts, they don't, they wouldn't, they wouldn't register it that way. They would say, no, no, what's most important is Jesus and, and our gospel and our doctrine and the people and, you know, the legal stuff is just what we need to do to exist in a temporal world. So what, what would you say if, if the leaders were to take umbrage with that reductionist characterization that all they really care about is legal stuff?

John Larsen [00:36:51] Of course they'd say that. I would say you have to ask their lawyers. What do their lawyers say? Because I, I, you don't, you can, you can be of any political persuasion and look at the last 30 years at least of, of goings on in Washington. And lies don't matter. Like people can lie and there's no consequences. Right. Everybody, everybody in power right now is lying all the time. So why wouldn't they lie? Well, they won't lie when it, it will cost them dearly when they get caught and it costs dearly when you have your lawyers lie for you. So let, let their lawyers craft a well crafted legalistic statement explaining why we should believe what they say. I mean, because, because my point is where things really matter for the church. What things really matter? Property, money. And the things we're going to talk about over the next hour. They don't. The, the, the, the 12, the, the, the, the prophets don't talk curtain. McConkey does. So, so I would say that let's look, John, let's look and see what the curtain of Conky says versus what the church says. Yeah, let's see how consistent curtain of McConkey is versus how consistent the prophets are.

John Dehlin [00:38:07] Yeah. And I'm, and I'm just trying to, and Carol, want to get you in and also you, Sam. I, I'm. Part of me wants to play a little bit of a advocate for the church or believers role since we don't have a believer in our little panel here. I, I will say that if I just do my own thinking and analysis there, there are at least two things that come to mind that have always really blown me away about the modern Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. One is down. Hs Dallin H. Oaks's statement that we neither seek nor give apologies. Like it's hard to contemplate a more unchristlike comment than that when we know that Jesus is all about repentance and forgiveness and all that. But that, that comes from the law. That is basically any lawyer will tell you apologies equal guilt and they lead to culpability and legal settlements. So never admit guilt. So that statement that Oaks makes is informed by law. The only other thing that just blows my mind is the way the church has always handled abuse. How it always seems to protect the abusers at the expense of the abused, how it silences and quiets victims of abuse and just doesn't, doesn't protect victims. And that has to be legally driven. It has to be all about protecting the assets, protecting the good name of the church and, and it's got to be lawyers behind that part of the church's inexplicable history of, of defending perpetrators. Kara, let's get you in.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:39:44] I Just want to add to what's been said already that, you know, when I was Mormon, I looked at these. These men as my spiritual leaders. These are the people who hold the keys that unlock my salvation. I need to watch General Conference. I need to obey the prophets. And I just have this echo of the Colby and Cammie Reddish interview all the time of what happened in their case with, you know, a bishop that was a predator. And when they kept asking, okay, well, how come this wasn't, you know, made more aware? Anytime you ask questions and you go to a spiritual leader in the Mormon Church, they're going to defer to their lawyers. And I remember Colby and Cammie saying in that interview that like their, their bishop, their stake president, they all ended up with their hands in the air saying, the church lawyers decided this for us. And so when you assume that you become part of this church because there's a spiritual mantle on these people's shoulders, it's always just somebody kicking the can down to a lawyer. And especially when you bring Oaks into the situation that he graduates from law school in 1957, and then he goes and becomes a teacher at University of Chicago and then becomes the president of the. Of BYU and then is in the Utah supreme court up until 84, when he joins straight from being a judge, straight into being an apostle, a special witness for Jesus Christ. And the very first thing that he does is he writes a legal defense for the church when they need it, a legal defense called Principles to Govern Possible public statement on legislating affecting rights of homosexuals. So he goes straight from the legal legality center of his brain into the exact same part. But he's using it for religious reasons and trying to give the church, you know, a better foothold on how to take away gay rights from people all the way up until this, this very day. And so I just. I really feel like when I was Mormon, I wanted these people to be my spiritual leaders, but they always are just going to fall back on what is most advantageous for the church's growth and not actually what is best for its. Its church membership. And they have blood on their hands when they do that, you know.

John Dehlin [00:41:39] All right, thanks, Kara. Samantha.

Intentions of Church Leadership

Samantha Shelley [00:41:43] Well, my thoughts on this are it's very human for us to want to psychoanalyze people in power and be like, what are their intentions? You know, do the apostles see all the business legal stuff as the main thing? Do they put Jesus Christ at the center? And I feel like it's somewhat irrelevant, like, when we're talking about People in power. Who cares what their intentions are? Who cares, like, how they think and feel? The reality is just, like, what they're doing with their power and what the impact of that is, you know?

John Dehlin [00:42:11] Yeah, no, no, that's the. That's the most powerful thing. I'm also going to say if we were to look at the most common profession of members of the First Presidency, quorum of the 12 and theologian. First school teacher, like elementary school teacher. Farmer. Right.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:42:30] Feminist. Leader.

John Dehlin [00:42:32] Yeah. Historian. Yeah. Yeah.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:42:35] I think the historians are actually lawyers, too.

John Larsen [00:42:37] It's a funny mix of.

John Dehlin [00:42:39] Yeah, even church historians are lawyers. But. But I think the most common profession amongst Mormon general authorities is attorneys, I think. I mean, maybe it's businessmen, but.

John Larsen [00:42:49] But usually they're both right. You know, you'll see a lot of them that have their MBA and their. And their JD or their. You know. Yeah. So.

John Dehlin [00:42:56] Yeah, that's. That's important. I. John. Keep going, brother.

John Larsen [00:43:00] No, I don't want to say. I absolutely want to underline Samantha's comment that so. So often they're. They're given apologetics by climbing into their head. And I say we can't climb into their head, but we can look at what they write, especially if they write it to the Supreme Court, you know?

Samantha Shelley [00:43:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:16] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:43:17] Anybody who's ever worked with Deseret Book or any other institution of the church knows that the Church is micromanaging every piece of. Of literature that goes on their shelf. Everything. And the idea that there is any daylight between the Church and its legal firm, I find completely laughable. And. And, you know, to build on what you're talking about, John. Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:43:37] They.

John Larsen [00:43:37] They never apologize, but they also understand the power of weaponizing. True. I mean, what. What do they want you to do more than anything? They want you to confess to your bishop so they have power over you. So they can. So they can. They can because they recognize what a sharp blade it is to be the one who has no confession over the one who does have a confession. It creates an unending power imbalance. And they, of all people, know the power that can be used when you confess to a wrongdoing, and they'll never do it.

John Dehlin [00:44:11] Yeah.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:44:13] Right on.

John Dehlin [00:44:14] All right.

Samantha Shelley [00:44:14] So good.

John Dehlin [00:44:15] You got. You got. I don't know what this means exactly, but Samantha and Care are both doing this. Doing this side.

Samantha Shelley [00:44:22] I've never been to a comedy show.

John Larsen [00:44:26] Well, I was gonna say, you know, and you could say, okay, well, the church, it's. They believe and they still teach that the prophet Nielsen is the prophet for the entire world and that God speaks to him and him alone for all of God's concerns and affairs on this planet. But the church is not like a, you know, a little broke backwood church. It owns Bonneville Communication. Bonneville Communication owns television stations, radio stations. I was going to read down the list of every radio station, television station they own. The list is out there. You can see it. If the church wanted to get its message out, it has newspapers, it has television, it has tons of web presence, it has radio stations. It can get whatever message out that it wants. But I believe that it enjoys the darkness of the Supreme Court. I've, I've enjoyed reading Supreme Court briefings since I was in high school. I, I find them fascinating and, but most people don't share my twisted view on the world. So it's just gonna fly completely over the heads of, of almost everybody except wonky people who like this stuff. So the. I think the church knows and they feel like they can just get away with anything in these briefings. And that's why I think it's so important.

John Dehlin [00:45:52] I love it.

Church Lobbying and Political Influence

John Larsen [00:45:54] All right, are we ready to jump into the cases?

John Dehlin [00:45:56] Yeah, quickly. A huge thanks to Sean for the super chat. Sean writes. Wow, I'm blown away. So grateful for your hard work bringing the truth to light. I'm just now truly seeing the church as a capitalist corporation. It looks like anti capitalism is bringing in the, the revenue last month for us.

John Larsen [00:46:13] I want to be clear, you know, because we live in an age of post truth. I am not making any judgment on capitalism. As a matter of fact, I'm not against capitalism. I just think it's. It is a tool and it has its, it has its benefits and it has its drawbacks. That's my belief. Okay. The, the idea that I'm some kind of like communist sympathizer is just something that people say because they just don't want to engage these ideas. So the fact that the church functions as a capitalistic organization or functions in a capitalistic system is just, it just is. It's neither good nor bad.

John Dehlin [00:46:46] I'm not.

John Larsen [00:46:47] But, but we just have to understand that because of that, we can put a lot of weight in what the church says here, that these things are probably a better way of finding out what the church believes than reading scripture. When's the last time we had a new revelation? 79 or something like that? Yeah, it's been a while.

John Dehlin [00:47:05] Does. Does rolling back a revelation count as a revelation?

John Larsen [00:47:10] Well, you know, it's been. They've made the definition so Squishy that nobody actually knows, no one can say. And isn't that, isn't that, isn't that the central irony? You want a reason to leave the church? The whole premise of the church is that we have modern revelation today to lead us in these latter days. But the way the church is structured is such a way that you know nothing. You, you can't even tell what the, what the church, what the church believes. You know, what, what's a restoration, what's not, what's a doctrine, what's not, what does the Church actually teach? No one really knows anymore.

John Dehlin [00:47:42] Yeah. And I was just gonna say, I was trying to think of the most recent revelation and part of me wanted to say the proclamation of the family, number one, that hasn't been canonized yet. But number two, that started out as, as, like a legal brief, as I understand it. Maybe you're going to get.

John Larsen [00:47:56] Yeah, it is. It was actually cited in the Supreme Court cases, believe it or not.

John Dehlin [00:48:00] Which proves our point even more.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:48:02] I was uploading a TikTok in the car driving over here about that today because I was so fired up reading. I was nerding out on amicus briefs today. John Larsen, so.

John Larsen [00:48:11] Excellent. And by the way, this is a great. Somebody out there needs to. This was a really hard one to prepare for because there is so. There are so many tendrils and threads off of this. Someone does need to write a book where they actually go through the wranglings because this is one of the few places where we actually get to shine a light on the political undergirding. What is it? The population of Utah is about 2/3 Mormon, but 91% of the legislature are active Mormons. And because the prevailing party in Utah has a super majority, they meet in secret. This is. No, they meet in secret. Even though there's laws that, that would require political things to happen out in the open because they, they have that much power. They do a lot of things behind closed doors that we have no view into. The Church has an army. I, I knew the figure at one time, but I, I don't remember anymore of lobbyists that are just in the Utah state legislature. My understanding is there's more Mormon lobbyists in the Utah state legislature than any other organization and they have lobbying firms in, in Washington D.C. the church has a lot of fingers in political pies, but normally it's under the COVID and you don't get to see what they're actually doing with the wrangling until they put it in writing.

John Dehlin [00:49:36] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:49:36] All right.

John Dehlin [00:49:37] And that's what we're going to talk about today is what have they put in writing?

Bob Jones University Case and Church's Position

John Larsen [00:49:40] Okay, so I'm, I'm going the, I'm going to kind of do these incrementally and I'm going back to 1981. The first case we're going to discuss is 1981. And this is Bob Jones University versus the United States. For a matter of context on this case, the church was actively bigoted in policy against anybody with any African American or African blood. Those terms, I'm using their terms until 1978 and, and apologists since have always tried to reframe that as a priesthood issue. But let's be clear. Black men and women were not allowed to pray in churches. Black women were not allowed to go to the temple, which didn't require any priesthood whatsoever. So the Hotel Utah required black performers to enter through the back door. And you can go on and on and on and on. The church was openly and officially racistly bigoted against people of African descent until 1978. Okay. And there was a lot of stuff that led up to that and then they, they, they reversed that. There are anything controversial there. I mean that's, that's kind of well known history. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, so 1981, Bob Jones University. Bob Jones University. I don't know what they're doing today, but they always had the reputation of being the most ultra conservative right wing evangelical university in the United States. And because of its, it's the way Bob Jones and I'm going to be bouncing back and forth out of language coming from these briefs. Their interpretation of Bible regarding interracial dating excluded anybody who is black to attend Bob Jones until 1971. And then from 1971 until 1975, they admitted black students, but only if they were married. And after 1975, they could, they would allow, they, they would deny admission to anybody who was in an interracial marriage. So if, if you were a white person married to a black person or a black person married to a white person, you are not allowed to attend Bob Jones University. And so the, the Supreme Court or the case was that they wanted to pull their tax exempt status. Right? It all comes back to money all the, all the time. So Bob Jones was not paying any taxes because they were a religious institution. So they ended up in the, in the Supreme Court because the, the United States tried to pull the, the tax exempt status away from Bob Jones University because of their ban on interracial marriage. And this is the case that went before the court was decided in 1981. We should play a game here. Guess which side the church is on. Guess which side the church. The church is on. This one.

John Dehlin [00:52:43] Samantha, you want to guess the bad one?

John Larsen [00:52:46] Okay, Kara.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:52:48] The one that they never want us

John Larsen [00:52:49] to find out about. Oh, go ahead, Kara. I'm sorry.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:52:52] Yeah, the one that they've never told us about.

John Dehlin [00:52:53] You know, I mean, the one against mixed, mixed race marriage. Because to this day, in the current church curriculum, they still have statements discouraging interracial marriage.

Samantha Shelley [00:53:05] And it's an eternal sin and it always will be.

John Dehlin [00:53:07] Yeah.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [00:53:08] And Bednar, president of BYU Idaho in 2003.

John Larsen [00:53:12] Amazon Music Something is the Mormon Church weighs in on this and they say the question is not whether we like or dislike the university's policy. This is, this is the church's language. The question is whether the Internal Revenue Service public servants shall have power to grant or deny the lifeline of tax exemption based on what they choose to call public policy. The quotes were there. Theirs. Then they say this raises questions of fundamental importance to all churches in the United States. Is the admitted public policy of the nation favoring freedom of religion as expressed in the First Amendment to be limited by a public policy assuring, in the words of a divided United States circuit court, that Americans will not be providing indirect support for any educational organization that discriminates on the basis of race? This is what I. This is what I love. That the church wrote. This question goes to the heart of the very existence of religious organizations. It has to do with the power to tax as the power to destroy. So, so one can make the argument saying, well, you know, most of us would avoid siding with an openly racist organization and you wouldn't want an amicus briefing. I'm sorry, I'm Mr. I'm Mr. Air quotes today. I apologize. That's kind of douchey. You wouldn't want an amicus briefing and such. Just guilt by association. But what's even more sinister is what the church is worried about is that churches can do despicable, terrible things and lose their tax status. It wasn't that the church, they clearly say we're indifferent to their religious policy. The church was worried that bigoted racist universities could lose their tax exempt status because as they say, the power to tax is the power to destroy. Now, the church didn't come up with that line that's been around for a long time, but that the church would deploy such a line that says that basically saying, you trying to make us pay our fair share into society and not have special Money privileges. No matter what we believe or say, that's a tantamount to trying to destroy religion and the religion. The religion has dominance over this and the will of the people and the will of the United States doesn't matter if the Church wants to have tax exempt status and wants to do terrible things. The amicus brief clearly states that is the Church's position.

John Dehlin [00:55:45] Yeah. And you know, the truth is the Mormon Church has a history of being a lot more like, I mean, I. To me, Bob Jones University, at least the last I heard about it, is one of the most reprehensible universities in the US from what I know about. Yeah, it's a really horrible institution. Like I. Unfortunately, I think the Mormon Church's history is more like Bob Jones University than unlike it. But to give the Church even the benefit of the doubt, let's just say the Church wasn't a huge fan of the ideology or theology of Bob Jones University. What that definitely shows is that money is, money reigns supreme for the Church. That's what I'm taking from the Church's involvement with that particular brief.

John Larsen [00:56:34] Me too.

John Dehlin [00:56:34] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:56:35] And for those keeping track at home, Bob Jones lost this case. It was, it prevailed that the, um, the overall interest of the United States and the First Amendment overrode that and that they could. The government had a real interest in getting rid of Jones's tax exempt status.

John Dehlin [00:56:55] I bet that made the Church nervous.

Corporation of the Presiding Bishop vs. Amos

John Larsen [00:56:58] All right, let's go on to the second case. This is corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints versus Amos et al, decided in 1987. Apple Lee, I think is her name, Appley Mason had been employed at Deseret Gym. Now back in the 70s and 80s, there was a gym that was just on the north side of Temple Square. In fact, it's the gym that Mark Hoffman was at when he came out and sat in his car and accidentally blowed himself up. That was just right outside the, the, the front of this gym just for those keeping track at home. And the church imposed a policy at the time that said every employee of the church has to have a temple recommend. And this case went all the way to Supreme Court because they said, this is a gym attendant. There is nothing here that, that would allow the church any kind of exemption. Now this is probably a good time to pause and talk about the ministerial exemption. And I don't have case law on this one. I'm sorry, I should have been better prepared. But for a long time there's been a political or a I keep saying political. There's been a governmental view that the government can't interfere in the selection or discharging of a minister in the church, that the minister of the church is fundamental to a church's identity and the US Government cannot impose any sanction if a church fires a minister. I actually think that's a decent ruling. I mean, because if you think about the, if it went the other way, then you could have politicians making laws that would define who and how you could set up your, your priesthood or your church leadership. The problem has been, and we're going to run into this more times this evening, is that view keeps getting expanded and expanded and expanded. So in, in this case, the church argues that. And, and by the way, they, they try to give this a class action lawsuit. I don't know. So, so, so the Church argued that they obviously have the, the ability to decide who works for them and that they are not subject to the regular laws of fairness and propriety. That as a society we have kind of agreed on the people can't be discriminated based on gender or based on religious belief. And I, I find this, I find this centrally ironic. We're going to get back this. And this is, we need to delve more into what Oaks talks about all the time. Because the Oaks view of, of religion, and by extension the LDS view of, is that the freedom of religion is the freedom for religion to discriminate in ways that people who are not religions do not have. So the Church never argues that we shouldn't have like equal protection under the law like of Title 9 or Title 7, like housing. The Church oftentimes in their briefs affirms that they believe in that they just don't believe that those rules should apply to them, that they are a special snowflake and that that the laws of common decency and fairness, the United States do not apply to these guys. Okay, does that make sense? Are you guys following along? I don't, I don't worry. I get too wonky sometimes.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:00:28] No, the right amount of wonk.

Samantha Shelley [01:00:30] I was just texting John saying make sure you turn that bit into a tick tock.

John Dehlin [01:00:33] Okay. All right. Carrie, you got anything?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:00:37] Ned, I completely just spaced what we were talking about, but I was listening intently and I'm not on a phone.

John Larsen [01:00:44] So the, the church did win this case and they were able to discriminate, which they do to today.

John Dehlin [01:00:52] I mean this is, this, is this example of BYU professors now being more and more required to have active current temple recommends.

John Larsen [01:01:00] We're going to get there. BYU professors are a different segment of

John Dehlin [01:01:03] the law, but it's like a building block for what eventually, you know, leads up. Leads up to what we're seeing today.

John Larsen [01:01:08] Right. So, so, so, right. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, John. And so right now, in the United States, religions can, in fact, discriminate against their, their, their employees when it comes to protected classes. If they can show that that is tied to some kind of religious belief. And it's, it's sort of an extension of that same kind of ministerial thing. If you read the cases, you'll go down the rabbit hole of all the different cases that they cite. But that's one that the church won that. And you know what's ironic here, I want to ground this back in truth. Here was a person going to work happily. There was no argument that they weren't doing their job well. And the church just decides that, hey, you have to have a temple recommend. Now that seems, you know, okay, except one of the main requirements to get a temple recommend is

John Dehlin [01:02:06] paying tithing.

John Larsen [01:02:08] You have to pay 10% of your gross income back to the church.

John Dehlin [01:02:11] Right, Right. Yeah.

John Larsen [01:02:13] So, you know, it's hard to make a case that everything's about money for the church, but it is kind of intriguing that everything always has a money component when it involves the church.

John Dehlin [01:02:24] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:02:25] Okay. Versus Segglestein.

John Dehlin [01:02:29] So number two, again, has a heavy money component. Amicus brief number number two. It's about control. It's about employees. It's about money. Is that right?

John Larsen [01:02:39] Well, yeah, it's about, it's about we get to decide, you know, they have to have a temple recommend. And inside a temple recommend, they can ask whatever they want. They said, you touch your pee pee. Do you think about naughty things? Do you eat the bread? Every. Whatever they want to. Whatever they want to ask, they can. They can ask, and then they can terminate whoever they want. And the church is a major employer in, in Salt Lake. So the, the church, on a whim, has. So, so, so basically our brothers and sisters who work for the church do not have the basic rights that we as a country, that we as a people. Belief should be guaranteed to all people.

John Dehlin [01:03:15] Yeah.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:03:16] My question to that is if somebody is supposed to have a temple recommend, and if I was a member, I'd be like, great. Because I want to make sure everywhere I go that's owned by the church is all really stalwart, awesome members of the LDS Church, and they all follow the same rules that I do. And I don't have to encounter a gym member that could Possibly look at

John Dehlin [01:03:37] pornography or be wearing underwear I'm uncomfortable with.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:03:40] Yes. Or just like I want to be surrounded by other Latter Day Saints. Could that possibly be an argument? Because I don't think a gym member is really going to be paying a lot of tithing. Is it really? I'm just trying to play, you know,

John Dehlin [01:03:51] Devil's Drum is another way to say that care is just what's wrong with wanting to have your employees live up to a certain moral or ethical code? Is that also kind of what you're saying?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:04:03] Because other people make me uncomfortable and I moved to Utah to not be uncomfortable.

John Dehlin [01:04:07] Or maybe, or maybe if your employees aren't on drugs or addicted to alcohol or they're not doing things they shouldn't be doing, they'll be more productive workers. Maybe.

John Larsen [01:04:17] Yeah. Well, you know, like, who could be. Is that how you say your names? I apologize. Makes a great point, you know, to go, to get a teleporter when you have to go to church. So you have the church literally dictating what people do in their spare time.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:04:34] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:04:35] You know, what, what they can do in their, their free time. Excellent point.

John Dehlin [01:04:39] Yeah. Okay. All right.

Church Amicus Briefs on Clergy Accountability

John Larsen [01:04:41] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:04:42] On the three next case.

John Larsen [01:04:43] This is, this is, went to the Nevada Supreme Court, Romani vs. Siegelstein. This case is, is deplorable. And, and a lot of these cases just disgusted me. The church would even get involved in this case. There was a synagogue and this rabbi followed a member of the synagogue out to the parking lot and raped her. On the, on the, on the grounds that that was not in dispute.

John Dehlin [01:05:13] Rabbi rapes of one of the members of his temple.

John Larsen [01:05:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:05:18] Okay.

John Larsen [01:05:18] On the, on the church grounds. In, in the, in the parking lot.

John Dehlin [01:05:21] You have my attention.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:05:22] Oh, good God.

John Dehlin [01:05:24] Gosh.

John Larsen [01:05:25] And by the way, this, this case was settled in 2010. We're not talking about like 1950 here. Although the case had been open since 2001. I, I, I do believe that this happened in 2001. So in this case, the, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that the two Las Vegas synagogues, that, you know, there's complexity of who's doing what. But, but, but basically here you have an agent of a religion who is in, you know, in a, in a religious role, on the religious property, who does something that's despicable. Right. So let's turn the page here and find out what the church says about it. So in an amicus briefing, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints argues that recognized religious institutions cannot be held liable for the sexual abuse of their clergy because of the protection contained in the First Amendment. That's the Church's argument, that the church itself is not liable for any sexual act, that it's its own ministers and agents do because of the First Amendment.

John Dehlin [01:06:35] What, what, what is it? The First I. When I think First Amendment, I think speech, I think religion. But, but it's not part of our religion to be able to rape. So I'm trying to figure out how they're using the First Amendment to protect the right to rape.

John Larsen [01:06:53] They would argue that, that the First Amendment protection of religious light rights is infinite, that because the Mormon Church is a religion, they can do whatever they want and they're protected from it. But what I think is really interesting here, because they're going to basically argue the opposite here coming up, and we get to talk about what it means to be a minister in the, in the Mormon Church. But, but they're saying out of this side of their mouth in this case, that even though you're a minister of the church, the church is not liable for you. So, so again, let's go back to what I said in the preamble. The Church acts like a corporation. Who is the church? Well, it's not the membership because they've shown in legal cases, they'll go after the membership and they'll excommunicate them. And now it's not even the clergy, because they're saying, if you are clergy and you do this, we're still protected because we have our First Amendment religious rights.

John Dehlin [01:07:48] All right, Carrie, you had a comment?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:07:50] Yeah. Is this just like the same similar theme that we see, you know, with the, the Associated Press article recently as well? Just like ev. As long as they can just defer the blame to an individual and not hold the Church because the religion is just too massive, that the religion will always get its freedom of speech, it will always get its freedom to choose its, you know, whether it's as pastors, it's bishops, it's stake presidents, whatever it may be within the religion, it always gets the right to choose that. And you can never actually, like, hold any claims that will stick against the LDS Church. Is that what their point is by saying freedom of speech?

John Larsen [01:08:23] Yeah, the church is ephemeral, like, like. And, and we see outside the legal realm, them doing this all the time, disavowing what, you know, the prophets of the Church have said, disavowing what the Church has, has written, disavowing scripture. Because the Church is not any of those things. Well, if it's not its doctrine and if it's not its clergy and it's not its membership. What is it? Well, I told you at the beginning of the hour, it's a corporation.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:08:47] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:08:48] And it exists as a corporation, and it uses the protection that religious corporations have in order to assert its rights.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:08:59] Yeah. And just echoing on the point I wanted to make earlier in this program is that it's a corporation. And if people are so desperate, everybody wants, you know, spiritual fulfillment, what do we. What's after this life? How do family be together? Like, where do I look for morality? And you get that from the Mormon Church that you just described. That's where you're getting your utmost spiritual fulfillment. That's where I go make covenants. That's what. The clothing that I buy from the church to put on my body for its underwear, everything. When I was Mormon, I wish I would have known these types of things of, like, this is the spiritual leaders. These are the people that hold the keys when it's really just lawyers behind the curtain that I'm getting all of this fulfillment from and jokes on them. I got a lot more on my own. Sorry, guys. I can do it without you.

John Larsen [01:09:39] Well, also buried in this case. I mean, good points, Kara. Also buried in this are the fact, like, what. None of this had anything to do with the church. Why was the church even monitoring this? Like. Like, why would they even care? Like, that's like. Yeah, go ahead.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:09:57] I'm just saying. That's spooky. Why are they monitoring. Let's look out for other clergy members who are raping, and let's write some amicus briefs on that just to make sure that if one of our guys not, like, protecting children, not, like, putting any kind of orders in place and what's the word I'm looking for? Background checks in place. They're busy writing these briefs to make sure if their guys go rape and that they won't have to face the music. Is that what it's kind of going on here?

John Larsen [01:10:22] I feel like it.

John Dehlin [01:10:23] I mean, I want to get salmon here, but it. It has to be that they're. They're thinking, wow, we've had a lot of bishops abusing members. We want to be protected. So let's. Let's pile on here and make sure that we can avoid a bunch of lawsuits because we've got. We have these problems, too. Samantha, why don't you jump in?

Samantha Shelley [01:10:43] Well, if I climb into my believing Mormon brain on this one, I think, well, why should the church be liable for, you know, a Mormon bishop doing something that is decidedly against Mormonism's code of conduct, like why should. And obviously it feels much more sinister having the context of the way that the Church protects abusers, but thinking of it through a believing lens. Yeah. Why, why should the Church be held accountable for bad apples that aren't doing something that's in line with Mormonism like, or is, am I, am I understanding the case right? Is it, is it deeper than that?

John Larsen [01:11:21] No, it's a great question, but I have an answer for it. The code of conduct and behaviors that are issued to the bishops are done in secret. And the church specifically forbids members for having it and releasing it, or they did in the past. I never know what the Church is doing today. So the church handbook of instruction that tells bishops what to do was specifically instructed to keep out of the hands of the membership. That's argument number one. Argument number two, the Church has no channel for reporting bad conduct. So because of the way the Church has structured its organization, the membership has no mechanism whatsoever to differentiate between when a bishop is acting as the agent of the church and a bishop who's acting on his own behalf. So because of that, because that data is secret and specifically withheld, I would think that that shows a nefarious intent.

Samantha Shelley [01:12:20] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:12:21] Now, how the case was decided, the supreme court unanimous decision written by chief justice Michael Douglas said the synagogue and rabbis cannot be held liable for Siegelstein's intentional conduct as it was outside the scope of Stegelstein's duties. And again, just what I said. In the Mormon church, we don't know what the duties of bishop are. They don't say.

John Dehlin [01:12:45] I'll just say really quickly that, you know, one of the things I was taught as a 8 year old Mormon boy is that the church, you know, one of the articles of faith is we believe in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law. Sustaining the law, that means like supporting and upholding it. What this, what this amicus brief tells me is that the church wants to do everything it can to be above the law, to not be tied down by the law, and to do everything it can to escape any legal culpability.

John Larsen [01:13:19] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I, I think. And we're gonna go through more cases. I think if you're going to sum them up, it's that the U. S. Law, the, and, and, and, and it's more than just law. Like the idea of equal protection under the law is not just legal wrangling. It is one of the core values of, of the United States. The, the, the place that I love. And I think that is an important advancement in human, in human history. Equal protection under the law. And what, what the church again and again and again argues is that they can break the laws of the land because they are an entity unto themselves and the, the, the will of the people has no bearing on them.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:14:01] Yeah, yeah. And the sentence that comes to mind right now is just this idea that the church thinks in, in the, the way that they strategize this whole thing is that they can do things without any kind of ramifications and with impunity. And, you know, you're in a system that has, you know, women, children, men, all who feel like they have to be there. Like, there's no, there's no system in which, like, you, you're just allowed to just take your kids out of the church and still be a believing member and just not attend. You're not a believing member. You're not living up to your covenants. So the church, you're, you're forced to put your kids in situations and your family in situations where the very church that they feel forced to go to can act with impunity. But your children don't have a choice. Your children and your wife and your family, or your whole family breaks up and everything goes to, you know, your whole family is, is blown to pieces if you don't act in accordance with what they want. But when it comes to, like, them actually paying the piper and, you know, people actually going to jail and people needing to pay these giant lawsuits like we've seen, the church will do everything in their power to not actually pay the piper. But it's, it's all of that, that pain and that trauma is just passed down to the members themselves. That's my point.

John Dehlin [01:15:08] Yeah. I'm going to share a comment from B. Dan. He writes, this is why the penitent privilege thing is a linchpin. It makes the covering up key to the traditional religious practice. So. Thanks, Dan. I think that really is important. The, the priest penitent privilege is, is again, another instance where the church wants to avoid any culpability. And I think that was demonstrated in the episodes we did with Tim Kosnoff and the AP article by Mike Resendez. I also just want to say, isn't it weird that it's, it's the United States of America that's protecting religions and religious freedom and yet churches don't have to pay in to support that infrastructure? Why, why is it, if, if the, if the country does such a great job protecting these religious institutions that they shouldn't want to chip in, to help sustain financially the, the, the country that helps them thrive. I mean, we are the most churchy. We're definitely one of the most churchy developed countries in the world. Why, why should we be giving religions a tax exemption when we're growing them and building them and helping them be successful? Anyway, that's a side note tangent, but

John Larsen [01:16:27] I think it's excellent. Questions, Brother Dylan?

Same-Sex Marriage Cases and Church Involvement

John Dehlin [01:16:31] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:16:31] Okay. And we're gonna skip ahead a few years to the infamous. Oh, Burgerfell versus Hodges. I've heard of that one probably the most. 2015, one of the most consequential cases for the church to let refresh your memories a little bit at this time, Obama was in office and had passed the DOMA act, the defense of marriage, whatever. And, and the church got involved in California politics in Prop 8. And during Prop 8 leading up to this, the church overextended its hand several times, got caught in more than one lie, got caught busing people around and doing things. The church was full on. This is well documented. Even people like Steve Young ended up making public statements against the church because the church was using its religious networks to ask. There's many members who left the church over, over this case, including my dear wife. So, so there are people in California who walked away because they were getting callings to go canvas in for Prop 8 and the church passed a. The church had, or the state of Utah had been one of the places that defined marriage as a man and a woman. And it is those cases that eventually got overturned in Obergefell. So in. On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court by a 5 to 4 margin ruled that state bans on same sex marriage, unrecognized same sex marriages duly performed in other jurisdictions have to be recognized in any state. So for a long time there'd been a legal principle which is important to the foundation of the United States of America, that the legal contracts and binding agreements as you enter into one state are binding when you cross boundaries. So like if you get married in California and you drive into, into Nevada, your marriage is still legal. That has been a long standing principle and it started to break down in the early part of the last decade. And as states were saying, we will not recognize the marriages of other states. And the Supreme Court by 5 to 4 margin said, Nope, if somebody gets married legally in any state, then those marriages are legal everywhere. Thus decriminalizing gay marriage. A very wonderful day. I still remember the, the day that that case came about. The, the lawyers, there was a, a phone tree that, that went out because we knew we had a window, we had a short window of time as we were rushing people to the, the courthouse. And it was, it was, it was a beautiful day in Salt Lake. I was involved in, I was involved in a little bit as we were rushing people around and getting them down to the courthouse to get him married. The worries that the, the doors would open and they would slam back closed, they haven't yet. But I believe the Supreme Court is taking up this issue again this session and we'll see what happens in, in the spring. But wonderful, wonderful day.

John Dehlin [01:19:53] Beautiful, John.

John Larsen [01:19:53] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:19:54] And did you tell us where the church came down on its amicus brief?

John Larsen [01:19:58] No, I'm choosing to read actually from the, the church's newsroom. They did file an amicus brief and they had their fingerprints all over this, nationally and locally. So much money. And it has been argued that if the church had not got involved in this, it may not have ever come to pass. So the church has a direct hand in making sure we have marriage equality today, which we do. So I'm going to read you. This is from the church newsroom. If you go search obergefell vs Hodges and like Latter Day Saint, it's one of the top things you come up with. It's still up there today. It was this afternoon. The church says, yet as explained in the amicus brief, the legislation of same sex marriage across the country does far more than grant same sex couples the right to the same benefits as heterosexual married couples. By redefining what marriage has been for most of human history, the court will impede the ability of religious people to participate fully as equal citizens in American civil life. The courts will impede the ability of religious people to participate fully. If Gary marries Steve, according to the church, you are impeding their ability to fully participate. As, as a Mormon, I'm, I'll ask faithful Mormons, how has your worship of the Mormon God in Mormon churches with the Mormon priesthood been impeded by gay marriage? That's what the Church says will happen. So it's been, it's been six years, right? We should have it well documented now how the church's mission on earth has been impeded by. Well, we, we know. We know one. I guess. I, if I think about it, we'll answer my own question. The November 5th travesty where they would stopped allowing baptisms for a short time of children, innocent children who had only the sin of having gay parents. And if you'll remember, the church demanded that these kids condemn their, their, their Parents in order to join the church.

John Dehlin [01:22:14] Kara.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:22:15] Yep. Speaking as somebody who was a conservative Mormon three years ago, who went and helped put on speeches at the UN fighting for a traditional marriage with Elaine S. Dalton and BYU conservative professors on marriage and family. And then your. Your old nuance. Ho, Kara Barrel over there. I have some sins to repent of. And my position three years ago was the. In my head. I didn't say this publicly because this is not like that helpful if people. Now this is safe. It's not that helpful for people who don't believe the same things that you do. But in Mormon conservative circles, the idea was that God is sending down these beautiful babies down, and we need to them to be in as many heterosexual families as possible. Not all of them are gonna be Mormon and sealed in the temple, but at least they will have the promise of one day being sealed in the afterlife. But if they come down and they live with and, you know, they get adopted into gay families or through surrogacy, then that will destroy the family and that will destroy people's ideals of what a traditional family looks like. And there goes the Mormon Church and there goes our entire country hanging by a thread, all because these little babies in heaven, these sweet, sweet spirits need to be like Saturdays, warriored down into Mormon heterosexual families.

John Dehlin [01:23:34] A mother and a father.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:23:35] That was my position three years ago.

John Dehlin [01:23:38] Yeah.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:23:38] Here I am on the other side.

John Dehlin [01:23:41] JC writes, Kara's conversion gives me hope.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:23:45] Yeah. I have. I did not want to have to admit some of my old opinions, but that is who I used to be.

John Dehlin [01:23:51] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:23:52] Unfortunately, Kara, that's who I used to be too. I mean, that's who we all used to be. Right? We don't sit and, and point fingers at Mormons and say, ha, how stupid you are. In only as much as we were all stupid, we were all taken in by, by this. So I don't think anybody should feel shame that they were raised in. In a home that taught them things that they later realized were wrong. I think we should learn to honor and respect those who can change their opinions.

John Dehlin [01:24:26] I'm just curious, Samantha. I don't even know the answer to this question, and I've known you for a while. Were you ever sort of like pro traditional family, anti same sex marriage? I don't even know this about you.

Samantha Shelley [01:24:39] Well, I didn't. I. I grew up very pro lgbtq, but when I became Mormon, yeah, it did warp my thinking. I did become pretty anti gay. I mean, it was, you know, the idea of like, it's only a sin if you act on it. And I think I had a bit, a bit more perspective maybe than someone who grew up in a Mormon family where I didn't, it didn't feel quite as heinous, you know, the idea of gay people raising children. It didn't alarm me that much. But yeah, the church did, did erode my thinking there and, and make me homophobic.

John Dehlin [01:25:16] Yeah. Okay. Thanks for sharing.

Samantha Shelley [01:25:18] Super cool.

John Dehlin [01:25:19] I, my, my, my, my thought in reaction to the Church's involvement in same sex marriage is just kind of, it's, it's a thought of hypocrisy that, you know, the church knows what it's like to be discriminated against for the, the types of marriages that it held sacred in the 19th century and in the early 20th century and back then it was screaming bloody murder that the state, meaning the US Federal government would step in and try to micromanage what people's, what, what people conceived as being their sacred families or their sacred unions. So it feels hypocritical 100 or whatever, how many years later for the church to find flip and, and be basically making the legal arguments that a hundred years previous, you know, it, it was fighting and the Church has a long enough memory to remember, it has enough scars and, and a good enough memory to remember what its position used to be. And so I do think that's just kind of like blatantly hypocritical for the Church not to go, hey, we know what it's like to be told what is and isn't a legitimate family. So we're not, we're not going to turn around and do that to other people.

Samantha Shelley [01:26:39] But that logic is more advanced than the Church has because it's. The juvenile way of thinking is just like, no, our way is the right way. It's, they're not looking at it through the lens of like oh, comparable phenomenons. It's just like our way is the right way. We don't give a shit how you try and tie these things together. They're not the same in our mind. Yeah.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:27:00] And I think it, for me personally it come from, comes from a place of ignorance of just. And I don't mean ignorance in a bad way of just, Yeah, a lot of, a lot of whitewashed history. A lot of things that you don't realize about your own history. We had like I said, my vid, my, my video on my Nuance Ho channel with Eve, my friend in here about asking her how many wives did Joseph Smith have? And this idea like that the Proclamation to the family is trotted out in these amicus briefs. And the church has to have this certain language showing that they have a vested interest in and the outcome of these cases. And they need to prove that by showing, like, see, we've always believed in traditional marriage. See, it says right here in the proclamation from our God. You're not allowed us allowed to like, not let us file this amicus brief on this. You know, I'm saying amicus and amicus interchangeably because they are just wanted to make sure that everyone knows that I'm hyper aware of those things anyway. The. The church is allowed to like, you know, prop these things up that we've always believed these things. They need to have really firm language like we're reaffirming our values when gay marriage wasn't even talked about before, like the 1970s. And they just kind of want to have what John always likes to say. The droids you're not like the droids you're. You're looking for are not found here. That. But with different words. Just. The church needs to have this, this whitewashed version of history that I didn't know about. If I would have known that Joseph Smith. We have no right to be talking about traditional marriage and fidelity within marriage. When Joseph Smith had 22 women that he was sealed to before, you know, Emma that he was banging like, those things would have been important to understand that the, the, the overall context of what my church believes in now and supports now is completely removed from the history and what it's been up to. Elder Oaks himself is saying that in the marriage is about procreation and he's allowed to marry a second wife along with Russell Nelson. They're not doing any procreating. And so it's. Yes, it's this hypocritical nature, but it's also just as a member, you're just following. These are my spiritual leaders. These are the people who know what's best for me without taking in any of the other context about why they're actually doing these things.

John Dehlin [01:28:52] Yeah.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:28:53] In the history. Uneducated I was.

John Dehlin [01:28:57] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:28:57] You guys all have great points, but you're being way, way, way too generous. John, you saying the church is hypocritical, and Sam, you saying the church is juvenile. Too generous. They're liars. Let's read again that paragraph, shall we? Or at least the last sentence. By redefining what marriage has been for most of human history, the court will impede the ability of religious people to participate fully as equal citizens in American civil life. Let's pull that apart, shall we? In China there is the practice of polygamy. There has been polygamy practiced in China for thousands of years. In India there is a practice of polygamy. They've been practicing polygamy for thousands of years. In Africa there is the practice of polygamy. They've been practicing polygamy for thousands of years. What were the marital practices of the Mayans, of the Aztec, of the Phoenicians, of the Babylonians? I don't think the Mormon lawyers actually know they are stating a bald face lie. And the only way to make their statement make any sense is if you insert the word white in it to it by redefining what white marriage has been for most of white history, then it makes sense. They are racist and they're dismissive of people they don't care about, which, I mean the Indian civilization is the oldest or one of the oldest civilizations dating back thousands of years of, of, of brilliant, philosophical, scientific, governmental, human progress. And the church routinely ignores that billion plus people who live that religion today. And it's rich and fascinating history. They will get in front of you and say with a straight face, our definition of marriage, even though we know, as you guys brought up, that it hasn't been their definition of marriage ever. Because like Kara pointed out in 2000, either Three or Five Oaks declared very clearly that both of his wives, the one who had passed away, the one he's married to, were his eternal companions. It is unambiguous that the Church believes in polygamy today and that most of the world has engaged in alternative marital arrangements to what these guys are saying are traditional. These are white supremacist dog whistles. And to believe that the way that the Protestant Americans behaved, even ignoring the Mormons of the past, is just either, either plain ignorance. But the Church is not a dummy. It is an outright lie. It is not traditional to say that a man and a woman are married. Any anthropologist will tell you that there are hundreds of different forms of marriage played on the earth today and have been for all time. As best as we can tell, there is no fundamental marriage the society is built on. That is bogus. That is a lie. The Church was able to have huge economic growth underneath polygamy. And, and, and whatever they're saying it is, it is just baloney. But there's more baloney. Go ahead, John.

John Dehlin [01:32:07] So, so, really quick, John. Like if I had to think, like if I had to think about the defining issue in Mormonism for the past 30 years. And Kara, this is a nod back to when Oaks kind of took his position as an apostle. It's almost like, it's almost like the church said, oh, we're getting in trouble in Hawaii with this gay marriage stuff. And, oh, Boston, and maybe Vermont's getting a little bit too cozy and Canada's starting to look like they're gonna, you know, the gay menace is growing. Let's get an expert in legal stuff into the quorum of the 12, and let's have his chief responsibility of his life as an apostle be fighting the gay menace. Enter Dallin H. Oaks. He writes the, the memo that you referenced.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:32:55] Principles to govern, possible public statement on legislation affecting rights of homosexuals. And it basically, it is just him talking as a lawyer and also as apostle to tell the other top leaders of the church that when we need to talk about gay marriage, these are the angles, this is the strategies that we need to go with. It's pathetic. And you can read it online. I'll post it later.

John Dehlin [01:33:14] And it's, and it's, it's. It's a photocopy of like, type typed out text, so you can actually see that a typewriter typed it out. And you can hear Dallin H. Oaks's voice, the homosexual in the Mormon, you

Samantha Shelley [01:33:27] know, really strong impression.

John Dehlin [01:33:28] Is that good? Is that pretty good? Thank you. No, but, but if I had to think about, like, where's the, you know, John, your whole premise of this episode is amicus brief shows what the church cares about. If I had to pick one thing that the church seems to care the most about over the past 30 years, it's going to be fighting same sex marriage. Because, like, how many decades did we go where every general conference talk, Packer or Oaks or whoever would always have to say, traditional marriage, marriages between a man and a woman, you know, to the point where. When do we have any evidence of the church actually trying to lobby at a state level to take a basic human right away from. From, you know, free citizens of a sovereign state where the church, like, got BYU students to fill up, call banks and literally phone in to influence the election of a sovereign state and to pay 40, 80, however many millions of dollars to get involved in a civil matter. Like, what other issue is the church shown that level of care and involvement? It's on fighting gay marriage and it's not done. It's. Oakes is giving his musket talk and, and, and the honor code. There's still BYU still at fighting the gays, and it's the Church is kind of, it's sinking the church. And John Larsen, this is a long way of asking kind of a question. I remember when you ended Mormon expression, you kind of threw down the gauntlet and made a pretty strong statement about the Mormon Church and this issue of, of LGBTQ members that they'll die on this hill. Yeah. And I've just, you know, if we had to theorize, you might be muted. If we had to theorize why the church is ready to die on this hill, do we have theories about why the church is wanting to die on this hill, of all the hills? It's not legalization of marijuana. It's not protecting child abusers or child, child abuse victims. It's not water. It's not starvation. It's not homelessness. It's literally trying to destroy the LGBT lifestyles and, and, and LGBTQ love. Why? Let's go around the horn. John Larsen, you start.

John Larsen [01:36:02] Well, I, I think there's two parts here, and there is, and we can find the link. There's one of the last Mormon expression episodes. I, I, I make that argument in depth. So there's a whole episode where, where I kind of explain, but in brief, you start pulling on that thread and everything falls apart. Because first of all, once you recognize gay marriage in the church and fully recognize gay marriage in the Church, you allow two men to marry. Once you allow two men to marry and adopt and seal, then women in the church have zero value. They have no value anymore because women are valued in the Church for the reproductive and, and sexual value. And that's, that's the, I said there's two parts. The other one that I want to push back on you. There is another issue that the Church fights as hard with, and that's, that's the sexual subordination of women to the church and its church authority. And that happens both in terms of what bishops tell women, how we treat women in marriage, how we treat them, and call everything they do in the church an auxiliary and don't allow them any real leadership. And how the lawyers deal with sexual confession of women, things as simple as if a woman confesses adultery to her bishop, then the bishop can do whatever he wants in terms of disciplining her. But if a man confesses the same thing, then it has to go because he's a priesthood holder. It has to go to a council of 15 men. You know, so, so I would say that the subjugation and sexually sex psychosexual subjugation of women is still on par with, with gay marriage.

John Dehlin [01:37:38] And honestly, Yeah, I stand corrected. Because in my lifetime, the Church fought the Equal Rights Amendment and definitely lobbied and lobbied as hard to, to kill the Equal Rights Amendment as they did Prop 8.

John Larsen [01:37:51] Well, you look at this case that's got juice in, in Arizona, where, you know, which is, it's, it's been around. I, I pulled an article in my research from 2019, an expose, I think it was done by Vice, talking about how, you know, people are reporting sexual abuse inside the Church and it goes straight to Curtin and McConkey. And, you know, that's been well established. In case anybody doesn't know, if the bishops are given the instruction is if somebody confesses, you know, internal sexual abuse, then you're supposed to call this number. But that number runs straight to Curtin, McConkey, and it's completely about legal protection. And that's what this case, that's, that's rising up through the courts right now is, is about. So I, I think that that, to the Church uses sexuality, among other things, to control people. So, so it seems like gay marriage is, is its, is its focal point, like you're suggesting. And I think that's just because it's in the zeitgeist. It's what we're dealing with socially right now. But really the Church pursues and, and claims ownership over anything that makes its membership feel broken because they sell snake oil. Remember what I've, what I've always said, the Church takes everything from you and then tries to sell it back from you. The Church is going to tell you you're broken. The Church is going to tell you you need the saving grace of Jesus. And by the way, we're the only ones who can give it to you. And it costs 10 and all this other stuff. The Church is a corrupt, disgusting aberration on humanity that uses the common struggles that we as humans have to subjugate people and to turn them into psycho psychological slaves. I, I can't say it any more clearly. The Church wants you broken. And if it can break you because you're gay, it can break you because you're horny, it can break you because you, you're addicted to something, anything. It will use that to wield power over you.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:39:46] Kara, I think it's, I think it's simple. I think it's right in front of our faces. I think that homosexuality, the Church has tried to prove that it's not an inborn tendency, and they've gone to all of the extremes that they can. And I think that we do know that homosexuality is A normal inborn tendency. And we see it all across the animal kingdom. We have a prophet that doesn't believe in evolution. So the church is just anti science and it's anti best practices, psychologically speaking. And so I just think that homosexuality proves the church wrong. And they're doing everything that they can in their power to snuff it down. And that's what I mean by people should really go read that proposition paper in 1980, 84. It's the exact same things you will hear all across, like conservative, evangelical, all those same spaces about the strategies of how do we demonize gay people? How do we keep them out of talking to our kids? We can't make them teachers, we can't make them coaches, because that will normalize it. And if we normalize gay people, people will start to think, oh, I have a gay friend, and they were just born that way. And that will go against the teachings of our church, that God created one man, one woman. Their genders are. Are the exact ones that God put in their body. And anything different than that will disprove our church. And in the 1970s, oaks formed a. The Values Institute, which it's intended. Confirmed its intended reason for being set up was to prove the church's biases about homosexuality. Correct. And ever since then, they can't. They can electroshock the crap out of gay people. And you can't. You can't pray away the gay. You can't electroshock the gay gay away. And homosexual people exist. They always will. And then I just think of people like the Lang family in here. Kelly Lang, the second that he realized that his son was gay and he came up to him, he went, the church is false. He immediately said, if my son is gay, I know this person, like, so well. They served a mission. They were the most righteous person I could ever imagine. If this person's telling me they've done everything they could to try to pray the way the gay. In an instant he says the church isn't true, and the church is scared as hell of more people doing that.

John Larsen [01:41:47] Amen.

John Dehlin [01:41:47] Beautiful. Sammy.

John Larsen [01:41:48] John.

John Dehlin [01:41:49] Oh, John. Just one second. Let's get Sammy and then we'll come back to you.

Samantha Shelley [01:41:52] You can go first if you.

John Dehlin [01:41:53] No, no, go ahead.

Rigid Ideology and High-Demand Religion

Samantha Shelley [01:41:54] Well, I mean, I think you guys have really summed it up well, but it's like humans exist somewhere on a spectrum of how willing they are to tolerate uncertainty. And I feel like in high demand religions, people flock more to these rigid ideologies, these rigid, like, frameworks that they're Unwilling to question. And I mean, I've seen this recently. Like, that people leave Mormonism. Mormonism is obviously a huge one. But then outside of that, it's like monogamy, patriarchy. Like, there are frameworks in the brain that like, will continue to exist even after someone leaves Mormonism. And I just feel like, yeah, for all the reasons you guys have just said, like, embracing homosexuality is just something that, that cannot be done because it's, it's.

John Dehlin [01:42:38] It.

Samantha Shelley [01:42:38] It threatens too much of those core frameworks in their brain, you know, like patriarchy.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:42:45] Yeah, one. One piece of the Jenga tower comes out, the whole thing will fall down. And that's how a lot of it was. Like, I started to realize that I know too many gay people and they didn't choose this, but my church is saying the other one. Okay, if they're not right about homosexuality, are they not not right about patriarchal structures? Are they not right about, like, word of wisdom? Are they not right about a million different things? And a lot of, again, kind of conservative values are all tied up in those things. And that's why deconstruction is just like a lifelong process. You start untangling yourself from what you thought was truth that you got from these spiritual sources. And then you take the curtain, you're like, oh, lawyers are telling me this. All right, well, this gen guitar is coming down. I got to sort out these pieces.

Samantha Shelley [01:43:22] Well, yeah, and as one or all of you said, like, sexual shame is like a primary tool of control for high demand religions. And I've just lost my point. As I started talking out loud, I

John Dehlin [01:43:33] was just gonna say, think about as Samuel.

Samantha Shelley [01:43:34] Oh, I was gonna say, like, if people, if you've been so wired to associate homosexuality with, you know, sexual perversion, whatever, like, you're wired to feel disgust. And disgust is a very powerful emotion, you know, that is, like, very hard to get away from. And they've done studies showing that conservative people feel disgust more easily than liberal people. Like, it's a. Disgust is a primary tool of control as well.

John Dehlin [01:44:01] This is righteous Mind Jonathan Heights stuff you're talking about.

Samantha Shelley [01:44:03] Not that I'm necessarily saying conservatives are more controlled than liberals are, just using that as an example.

John Dehlin [01:44:07] Yeah, really quickly, let me give a shout out to Mike B. He writes the extreme political right is pushing for Christian nationalism. Church members, in my opinion, are trained nationalists and they don't even know it. I'll just add that the. The New York Times podcast, the daily, just in the past week or two, did a really, really fascinating episode on The. The emergence of Christian nationalism over the past 10 years, I forwarded to Patrick Mason. I loved it so much. I also want to give a shout out to Jake Clark. I think Jake is a former Mormon Stories podcast interviewee. Jake says tacos to share and he flies the. The rainbow flag. I think that might be. That might be a care reference. Yeah. Okay. John Larsen. Oh, Sammy. Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [01:44:54] I also think. Sorry if I'm being a dead horse, but gay people threaten gender roles. And I feel like gender roles are almost like a big source of comfort again, coming back to that human's ability to tolerate uncertainty. It's like just in a world where nothing is certain and there, you know, you find your own meaning. It's like, it's very comforting to feel like, oh, this is. This is what I should be. Someone has already laid out a blueprint. Humans love a blueprint. And I just have to do that. And if I just do that to the best, then I'll be doing a good job. And I think threatening that. And sort of just like, we humans don't want options in a lot of ways. And it's, like, scary to expand the number of options that people might have available to them because I think so many people are so afraid to question any of their deeply held beliefs because, well, obviously. Right. We're wired to protect them at all costs, and inviting any expansion whatsoever threatens your perceived sense of self. And, yeah, it's something. And then it's like if they're rigidly adhering, if gender roles are so important to them and they've been taught their whole lives that they're so important, they're the people that are going to rail the hardest against people who choose not to adhere to them because it brings up this thing of like, well, then why have I been doing this my whole life? You know, people are the most annoyed when you break rules that they falsely believe our fixed realities.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:46:17] I think we should let John Larsen talk.

Samantha Shelley [01:46:19] Oh, sorry.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:46:20] No, no. I was going to say something. I was going to say something, and I didn't. I'm enjoying.

John Larsen [01:46:23] Go ahead, Kara.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:46:24] Okay. I just feel like we haven't brought you in in a while. The only thing I was going to add to that is think about how simplistic it is in the church when you just want to say, like, the church is true, and you just repeat that over and over again. You know that that's your testimony and testimony meeting. That's all you really need to know. The church is true, the book is blue, those kinds of repeated phrases. But I wanted to echo again what Samantha was saying on her lovely point. And I was not trying to be disrespectful. I was trying to not talk myself because I wanted to bring John in. But what Sam was saying is so true because I think there is the simplicity of being in the church and then you have to have on the opposite end. That's why Mormon stories episodes are so long. That's why deconstruction takes so long, is because you have so many books you need to read, so many layers of nuance that it takes a long amount of time, it takes a lot of emotional fortitude to get through understanding and learning and empathizing. That is a lot of lot larger and broader of a road that fewer people choose to travel along than just saying church is true. Gender roles, specific blueprint. I'm just gonna stay over here in this nice little place. But all of that is just anything that takes that, that layered amount of thinking the church does, I believe, wants to shut down and doesn't want to encourage. They want to keep you staying. Yes. In that rigidity that is, that is just for their benefit. It's not for your spiritual benefit whatsoever. It's not for your intellectual development.

John Dehlin [01:47:37] Maybe a way to summarize this whole little section is this famous Boyd K. Packer quote that was made probably before you guys were born, where Boyd K. Packer comes to BYU or whatever and says the three great threats to the Mormon Church are the gays, the feminists and the intellectuals. He literally said that.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:47:55] They make us think. They make me feel bad for not unloading the dishwasher. It's like, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:00] All right, John Larsen, let's bring you back, brother.

John Larsen [01:48:03] Fantastic, wonderful points. Thank you guys so much. I, you know, it's, it's heartfelt. I, I want to move on, but there's one more gem in Obergefell that we have to bring up. And I'm going to go back to in this case, the amicus briefing the Church wrote, and they have this gem in there. The Constitution marks a wiser course by leaving the people free to decide the great marriage debate through their state democratic institutions. Allowing all citizens an equal voice in shaping their common destiny is the only way the diverse views of a free people can be respected. On this matter of profound political, social and religious importance. I defy anybody to show me anything in Mormon doctrine, ancient or modern, that would justify that statement. And I will call out the full on hypocrisy of them saying that states should have the right to decide this decision. After the Utah based LDS church did a full frontal campaign in California to get Prop 8 overturned or to get Prop 8 voted down. And it's a bald face hypocrisy because the church is constantly lobbying for national law and national protection. If they really believe this then they would be saying all the time that this, the, the feds should not be involved in this. This should be a state's issue. Now we can even attack and go after the, the logical nut job of the argument that it is that somehow that, that having a state decide thing where we know states have been more involved in gerrymandering and other nefarious things. Why that how in whatever world that means the state reflects more the will of the people than the nation. No one's made that argument. But again, let's talk about dog whistles. Since the, since the Civil War, racism and white superiority, white supremacy has always, always, always gone to the argument of states rights. And, and that was, that was the false flag operation of the Confederacy because they really weren't ever after that. And, and had the Confederacy survived, they would, well, it's conjecture. I wouldn't even make that argument but that it's, it's, it just shows the hypocrisy of the organization and how they are in bed with white supremacists. They use the arguments all the time. This is commonly used by the right to, to, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll. On one point, I'm talking the radical right will on one point argue that Roe versus Wade for example should be overturned to be a states right issue. Then immediately start the national campaign to get a national anti abortion law passed. So the church is engaged in full frontal hypocrisy here and they have no grounds or no bearing to make such an argument. And I just think that it shows what the church is really after, which is power, which is political power and not any kind of doctrinal consistency.

Masterpiece Cakeshop, Guadalupe Schools, and Ministerial Exemption

John Dehlin [01:51:21] All right, John, thank you. All right, that was good. Let's go to the next. Should we go to the next amicus brief?

John Larsen [01:51:27] We shall. Masterpiece Cakes Ltd. Et al. Vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission 2018 case. This is a case that should be recent on your mind. Masterpiece Cakes was a cake shop in Colorado that I think two gay men came in and asked for a wedding cake and Masterpiece Cakes refused to make the cake on religious grounds. They said, hey, we don't, we don't have to. It's free speech for us. The, the basic argument was my free speech can mean I can discriminate openly and freely against anybody who doesn't share my religious beliefs. Or even more sinister, my religious beliefs allow me to discriminate people based on intrinsic characteristics of. Of my neighbor because I believe those intrinsic characteristics have a connotation, I. E. Sin. So if I declare something that you do sinful, I am free in the United States to defy equal protection under the law.

John Dehlin [01:52:27] John, your. Your mic just. Your mic just ditched for a second there. I think it's back.

John Larsen [01:52:31] Oh, okay. We back?

John Dehlin [01:52:33] Yeah, you're back now.

John Larsen [01:52:34] I think so. So, so again, that the gist of the case is that they're arguing that their religious beliefs allow them to call anything that anybody does sin. And if I call one of your behaviors sinful, then I can discriminate against you and ignore the equal protection of the law, and I can deny you services. That was the fundamental argument of Masterpiece Cakes.

John Dehlin [01:53:02] Okay.

John Larsen [01:53:03] All right, so who's who? You want to guess whose side the church is on in this one?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:53:07] We're gonna like pro discrimination.

Samantha Shelley [01:53:09] Yay.

John Dehlin [01:53:09] We love to discriminate.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:53:10] It's our favorite thing ever.

John Larsen [01:53:14] The Church of Jersey's Christ Latter Saints and seven other organizations filed an amicus brief. By the way, the. On a 7:2 decision. The. The, the courts said that Masterpiece Cakes was out of line. But this, this is coming back up to the courts. We're probably going to revisit this issue again, probably this term. So this is from the amicus brief. But some deeply religious Americans, including some of amica's members, cannot in good conscience assist with same sex weddings. Now that the court has protected the liberty of same sex couples, it is equally important to protect religious liberty of those conscientious objectors belief in basic fairness for all. The church has openly encouraged and participated in legislative efforts to secure essential rights for LGBT citizens while protecting religious freedom. Again, if you look and see what they're, they're, they're defining that they say their religious freedom gives them the right to refuse to participate in civil society.

John Dehlin [01:54:24] Yeah, it's almost like nowadays, whenever you hear the Mormon church talk about religious freedom, you can almost guarantee what they're going to say next is, we want to discriminate against somebody. And you know, there was a really good comment that was just made that basically said, how would the church feel if businesses were allowed to discriminate against Mormons based on their religion? So the church is okay, discriminate for businesses discriminating against same sex married couples, but would they flip that around and be okay with businesses discriminating against Them on the basis of religion. Maybe not.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:55:03] They'd be like free market capitalists. Just go open another place down the street where you then compete with the non selling to Mormons bakery store. They'd just be like free market all day.

John Larsen [01:55:12] Well, and we don't have the time in this podcast to read the entire amicus brief, but I will let you know that you can go read them. If you want to call me a liar, just go look at it yourself. That the church oftentimes makes that case in a preamble to whatever they're about to say. They say, oh, we really, really believe in rights and everyone should have equal access, but equal access to us. Or as you were hinting, John, their belief is that their religious rights mean that they can do whatever they want and ignore the rights that they demand outside of the religious sphere.

John Dehlin [01:55:44] It just, it just makes me feel like the, the, like I'm not anti religious, but it seems like the United States has gone too far. Coddling and upholding and protecting religions where they're not paying taxes. They can live and exist above the law. Like Scientology, one of the most heinous organizations in the history of the United States. They were able to successfully sue the IRS and, and put the IRS sort of in terror. And I just, I just think we give way too much religious protection in this country.

John Larsen [01:56:21] Well, I, I agree. I, I think that it should be taken out of the Constitution in part from what you're saying, because we already have the right to free speech. We already have the right to assemble, we already have the right of the free press. So, so what else do you need? And the answer, according to Dallin Oaks, is you get the right to discriminate. But, but here, legally, I, or philosophically, I would suggest that if you say believing Joseph Smith the prophet is a protected religious belief, then I would say from a fundamental logical perspective, believing Joseph Smith is not the prophet would also be a protected religious belief. So the fact is we all are full of religious beliefs because for every belief, I have a counter belief. And if you want to call believing something to be religious, then not believing it would also be religious. So I would say that all of this stuff is, is intellectually, politically, and I would say legally vacuous. And I would hope that future generations can see this. The way we look back at slavery and the justification for slavery, the justification that religious people need a special carve out, is on its face ridiculous. Because we are all religious. We all have religious views. It's just mine are contrary to yours. It's yeah, you just believe there is a God.

John Dehlin [01:57:42] Sorry, John, say that last part again. You muted for a second.

John Larsen [01:57:45] Oh, I'd say that. That the belief, the belief of or in God is a religious belief.

John Dehlin [01:57:51] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:57:51] Not that only having one particular highlighted special belief in God would be a religious belief. And that's, that's, that's really the problem with the Oaks argument is it gives special privilege status to believing certain things, not actually belief or religion itself.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:58:06] Yeah, let's just start a religion where we believe instead of Joseph Smith is in heaven to the right hand of the Father or whatever, that he's just in hell. Let's just believe that that's my new religion.

John Larsen [01:58:13] And don't discriminate against the religions all got together and encoded in the tax code, what a religion is. And to be a religion, United States, you have to do things like operate a higher educational institution. So interesting. If you were a billionaire, you could do it. If you just buy a school, call it a religious, and do a couple other things, you could have a religion. But you and I, it's impossible to found a religion in 2022.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [01:58:37] Nothing's impossible. Did you see where I came from three years ago? Just kidding.

John Larsen [01:58:42] All right, onward. Ho. Our lady of Guadalupe Schools versus Morrissey Baru, not 2019 case. So we talk about the ministerial exemption. I kind of. I kind of hinted at that before in the, in that, in that court case with the Deseret gym. So in this case, there was a teacher in a school, Our lady of Guadalupe Schools, and they, they fired a teacher, and they didn't give cause for firing the teacher. And I can't remember what the details of the case were, but they claimed that they, they had ministerial exemption because since it was a religious school, the teacher was acting as a minister of the religion. Now, the teacher said, I have never been. You know, I was never. I was hired as a, as a, as a. Just a regular teacher. I was never given any ministerial duties. I was never identified as a minister. I never had anything that would indicate. Matter of fact, they made it clear that I wasn't a minister. That was just a school. And now the church is declaring that I'm a minister, and therefore they can just fire me at will anytime with no cause.

John Dehlin [02:00:03] Okay,

John Larsen [02:00:07] so the, the, the, the. Which. Which side do you think the church came down on?

John Dehlin [02:00:12] We're gonna have Samantha answer this one.

Samantha Shelley [02:00:16] I'm guessing they want to be able to call anyone whatever they want.

John Larsen [02:00:21] Indeed. The church's briefing, you know, sides that, that in a school, the Church can declare everybody to be a minister. Now, I, I really want to call out the, the Mormon hypocrisy on this front because the, the concept of minister, ministerial authority is fundamental and key to Mormon theology. I've already hinted at this this evening, that the priesthood is an immutable force that has been consistent throughout all of human history. And it was lost through the great apostasy, making all churches, in the words of Joseph Smith, or in the words of God, according to Joe Smith, an abomination. And the only way to get out of that state of abomination that the entire world was in, in 1805, in 1810, was to restore the priesthood. And one of the big problems with really false priesthoods, but only the actual priesthood. And the Church is very adamant about this. They keep track of who ordained whom. They give people cards and say, I am authorized for this and I'm not authorized for this. And they talk about callings and authority. And they're adamant that prior to 1978, nobody with Brown blood could have this ministerial priesthood. They're still adamant that no, no woman can possess this, this priesthood. The Church is very rigid in its definition of priesthood to you and me, but not to the lawyers. To their lawyers, the ministers of the Mormon Church are whomever the Mormon Church says they are.

John Dehlin [02:02:00] Okay.

John Larsen [02:02:03] I think it's an important point.

John Dehlin [02:02:05] Yeah.

John Larsen [02:02:05] All right, let's keep going.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:02:06] Kelly did, too.

Healthcare, Transgender Rights, and Gender Identity Cases

John Larsen [02:02:09] All right. Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany vs. Lacewell, 2020 case. New York regulation mandates that employer health insurance plans cover abortion, including religious entities. So there was a New York state law that said if you're going to give health insurance to, if you're going to give a health insurance policy, by law, you have to allow women the right for that sort of care. And, and the, the Church has argued the, the, the, the church in, in Albany argued that they don't have to, that they, they are exempt from that because of their deeply held religious beliefs or whatever. Okay, so here's what the Church said. The Mormon Church, the question of religious autonomy presented here holds exceptional importance from the Amnesty. Faith communities rely on the doctrine of religious autonomy to carry out their vital work. Without this court intervention, religious institutions in New York will blah, blah, blah, problems. So the, the key part there is it is key for them to carry out their vital work that the Church exercise the power of health care over women. And let's be honest, it's about women. These issues never come up with health care directed at men. You never see the Church intervening in the distribution of viagra pills to men. You never see. You've not seen the church have one word against men getting penis extensions. As a matter of fact, you never see the church have any problem with people getting boob implants. But they do have problems with women, especially young women, especially young trans men getting mastectomies. Very curious. I can put a bag of slop in my tits and the church is perfectly fine with that. But if I remove them, then the church has religious problems. Sorry for the divergency, but that's key to this case that the church signs on it. The church insists that it has the power to take employees who are securing secular jobs because the church owns businesses. And this, this jumps on the Hobby Lobby case, which, as best I could tell, the church did not file an amicus briefing in from 2018. Of course, the Hobby Lobby case does the same sort of thing. 2018 under the Trump administration. They say we have the right to choose what health care women who work for us can receive and what they can't receive. So Hobby Lobby won't buy, won't do any, any contraceptive care, won't pay for IUDs, won't pay for anything. But again, they're only laws that affect women. So according to the church, to carry out their vital work, they have to have the ability to decide what health care women can and can't receive.

John Dehlin [02:05:08] And specifically, isn't it about whether women can use contraception, whether women can use birth control, whether women have elective abortions? What am I missing, Samantha?

Samantha Shelley [02:05:21] I don't know, but I'm guessing they don't have a thing about men getting vasectomies.

John Dehlin [02:05:26] Yeah, interesting, no? Yeah.

John Larsen [02:05:30] And as a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, the church insurance used to pay for vasectomies, but not for

Samantha Shelley [02:05:35] like tubal, even fully stops New Spirit babies from being able to come down versus an abortion. Just ends one potential pregnancy, but you can still get pregnant a bunch of other times.

John Larsen [02:05:46] There's another important issue here that sometimes gets glossed over. The church isn't just insisting that it has the right to decide what healthcare can be distributed. And mind you, we're talking about healthcare decisions between a physician and a woman who happens to work for the church, potentially in a secular, non religious role. The church says it gets to decide that, but the church also operates in. In where they will review with the employer what health care is being distributed. So the church not only is saying, I can decide what healthcare decisions you and your physician make, the church is also insisting on the right to inspect and monitor, control and decide on and fund what healthcare decisions women make. Because let's be honest, it's women.

Samantha Shelley [02:06:35] Do you, do you mean like in, in real time? As in could they theoretically come in and inspect that? Or do you just mean when they're deciding what plans to give to what people? Like, how does that play out?

John Larsen [02:06:49] Yeah, I'm suggesting that health insurance is, is in a. You know, the American system is key to healthcare because otherwise the cost is so astronomically. It's, it's, it's conceptually the same as not having health care. So by allowing the church to decide which procedures its insurance provider will and will not fund, your de facto deciding which procedures people can and can't do and you're exercising an ongoing power to remain in control that they, that the physicians have to report to them and you know, and so they can disallow these things.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:07:28] Interesting, because I, I just got a comment on TikTok today where somebody said, no, this girl has it all wrong. The church is all about agency. People can sin and then they will have consequences. But the church always wants to give people free agency. Never. Do they not do that. John Larsen, your reaction?

John Larsen [02:07:47] Free agency? What's that? First of all? Secondly, no, the church doesn't believe in any such thing. I mean it. What are the. No.

Samantha Shelley [02:07:55] Yeah, but Cara, that fully formed four week old baby in the womb, where's, where's their agency?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:08:02] Well, Jimmy and Emily already decided which family to come down on Saturday's Warrior and that was already decided. Do you guys know I've only been triggered once, twice and like where I needed to cry and leave the room watching something in my post Mormon life. And one of them was Saturday's Warrior. And I realized that indoctrinated me and I don't like it.

John Dehlin [02:08:20] Who are these children?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:08:22] So that's absolutely. Just sing the song. For sure, John. That's what they want you to do.

John Dehlin [02:08:27] Like gentle rain, dark and sky.

John Larsen [02:08:31] Okay, we, we've got it. We got a couple more cases that I think, I think we got two, two more that I think are important. We can get through them pretty quick. Grim vs Gloucester 2020 case. 15 year old transgender boy addressed the Gloucester County School Board November 11, 2014 to explain why he was in no danger to the student body to use the male bathroom. Grim presented as a. A male and wanted to use the the bathroom. And part of the case was because he presented as a male. His argument was in part that he would cause more problem by having somebody who looks like a man walking into the ladies restroom. And he explained that he's a person of, of worth and dignity and that he matters and that he deserves the right to go pee. Strangely enough, the Church weighed in on this case. Latter Day Saints believe that birth as a male or female carries spiritual meaning. Gender identity in large measure define who we are, why we are here upon the earth, and what we are to do and become. From an LDS perspective, the unique combination of spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional capacities of both mental males and females were needed to implement God's plan of happiness. Men and women are not interchangeable. A person's gender is to be embraced along with the complementary but distinct path that God ordains for men and women. And I would say implied in all that is the case I keep making that the Church does not believe that women can or should be equal to men. So if you take this, that gender is eternal and necessary. It's necessary because women are banned from acting in the priesthood. And when you start playing around the margins of gender, you start playing with the Church's fundamental power that ensures that men rule over women constantly, irrevocably and undeniably. And, and it's, it's their, their cases are completely predictable. If there is any case that is going to give women any sense of autonomy away from men deciding what they can do, the Church is right there with an amicus briefing explaining to you how society will completely fall apart if you give marginalized people rights.

Samantha Shelley [02:11:01] I like the mental capacity bit. That's my favorite. What about you guys?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:11:06] Of that rant

John Larsen [02:11:08] of the state of the Church statement?

John Dehlin [02:11:11] I'm just, I'm trouble.

John Larsen [02:11:12] Emotional capacity.

Samantha Shelley [02:11:13] Yeah, it's.

John Larsen [02:11:14] You see, you're, you're, you're. Ladies, you guys are too emotional to lead.

John Dehlin [02:11:19] I'm just deeply troubled that a corporate religious institution is filing strong legal opinions based on its theology that like less than 1/2 of 1% of the, of the national populace even believes. Like, just say, like, hey, we support this law or that law, or we, we stand on this side of states rights or that side of states rights. But, but like, to be inserting theology into the judicial system just feels tone deaf and cringy and almost like anachronistic. It's like, are we in the Middle Ages? Like, what are we doing?

Samantha Shelley [02:12:10] And given how much they try to avoid sounding tone deaf, you could imagine how hard that would be for them.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:12:17] And you can imagine how much they just love following the best standards and practices of like, the psychological situ, like in what's best for trans people in the United States and all of the psychological institutes and doctors who actually have studied these things and have scientific information informed, informing their opinions as opposed to theology. What a thing it is to be actually informed by science. Science, but that's the devil. It's really just following along a, a real strong path that whatever the church does is right. We're going to keep doing the things that we previously said and not let new information and new data ever kind of like come and play in the sphere. Because prophets, they are supposed to know everything. They're not supposed to be informed by new data by, you know, new best practices. We'll get as much blood on our hands as we have to, just as long as you guys still uphold us as prophets.

Samantha Shelley [02:13:07] Notes Cara, the Church accepts all truth, whether it comes through science or revelation. We just learned that at recent hashtag lds.

John Dehlin [02:13:16] We're getting a little salty and sarcastic here on Mormon Stories this evening.

Samantha Shelley [02:13:20] Oh, my God. John's picking up on sarcasm.

John Larsen [02:13:24] It's, it's, it's when you're faced with such blatant, just like dirty legal maneuvering, I mean, I, I, I, I don't blame anybody for feeling a little bit punchy or salty when, and it's just this stuff is gross. It's just, and this is where the church spend its money. We'll get to that in a minute.

John Dehlin [02:13:45] Let's, let's go really quickly, really quickly. I'm just gonna say if any of you were able to see the, the Daily show guy, I was just thinking

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:13:55] of how to reference that, and I can't put it into words. John Stewart does a great job.

John Dehlin [02:13:59] Yeah. He interviews, I think, the governor of Arkansas.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:14:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:14:03] And she's basically talking about why she just passed something.

John Larsen [02:14:07] Attorney General. He was interviewing the Attorney General of Arkansas and want to know what justification she had legally for overriding the consensus of the medical community. Why, why would she do that? What was her justification?

John Dehlin [02:14:20] Yeah, yeah. And I hope Maven, I hope Maven can include that in the show notes because it's so brilliant. Because he's just saying, saying, oh, you know, better than the American Psychological association and the American Medical Association.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:14:31] She's like, we have our own sources. And he's like, can I see those? And she's like, we've had people testify. He's like, can we see those? Because they need to be pretty substantial to override the American medical situ. Like.

John Dehlin [02:14:41] Yeah, I mean, I think that's my point is like, what, what does religious theology, kind of Bronze Age or 19th century religious theology? What place does that have have in the judicial system, especially when it's trying to trump the cons, the overwhelming consensus of the scientific and legal communities. It's kind of weird in 2022 that that's even tolerated.

Samantha Shelley [02:15:06] It just betrays their insecurity. They need their thing to be true. They need it to be, you know, appeased to in all imaginable channels because they're so terrified.

John Dehlin [02:15:16] Yeah, well, it just feels weird. It feels anachronistic. Okay, John Larsen, take it back.

John Larsen [02:15:23] Excellent. Let's get the the last by the way, Grim versus Glasser. Good news. The Court of Appeals vacated the decision and the Supreme Court refused to take it up. So it was cited for Grim.

John Dehlin [02:15:36] Okay.

John Larsen [02:15:38] For at least for a while. Okay. The last case. Bo Stock vs Clayton County 2020. In the, in the case, the court ruled that the Title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights act prohibits employers from discriminating on the base of sexual orientation and gender identity. So this was a, a a gender identities case. And in this one, here's the the church's statement. So I want to really get to these amica hold differing religious beliefs. This is some of the times these amicus beliefs have like 10 churches or 20 churches and they'll do one all together which the the Mormon Church participates. That's this case. And amici have nuanced views on the proper policy mix for ensuring freedom and equality for all Americans. They're acknowledging that they don't even all believe the same thing on on rights. Some of these amicai have called for federal fairness for all legislation balancing LGBT equality and religious freedom. While others have cautioned that such legislation will unavoidably pose risk to the First Amendment rights. But Amakai are united in their support for the religious liberty of faith based organizations. Their religious liberty will be profoundly threatened if the court construes sex in Title VII to encompass sexual orientation and gender identity. Then later on, five states, California, Colorado, New Hampshire, Utah and Washington exempt all or most religious organizations from their employment discrimination laws entirely. This is typically done by excluding religious organizations from the definition of employer. In several cases, these broad exemptions were expressly motivated by concerns about bans on SOGI discrimination. In Utah, for example, the legislature in 2015 adopted new prohibitions on this discrimination. At the same time, it also broadened its religious exemption to protect additional religious organization individual religious leaders. First of all, I want to make the case saying that that they've already done an end run in their home state around this by saying if you're a religious institution we exempt you from all employment laws in Utah. The LDS Church, as one of the biggest employers, including BYU and all that stuff, is exempt from any employment law. They can do whatever they want. Let that sink in for a minute.

John Dehlin [02:18:06] Wow. Yeah.

John Larsen [02:18:09] And, and then they're arguing that if they go on and define sexual orient sex as sexual orientation and gender identity, then it, it's a threat to, to, to religions. All right, so let's drive to the conclusion. The, the, if you take what is being done, what the Church is arguing for, remember I, I argued at the beginning that if you really want to know what the Church wants, what's it really believes, look and see what it does with the courts, because that's the one place it has to be honest. And, and there, because there's no motivation whatsoever for them to, to not give their actual position to the courts because they want what they want and they're looking to get law changed. In every one of these cases, what you have is the Church interpreting law as their freedom to do whatever they want to whomever they want with absolute impunity. It doesn't matter if the victim was raped. It doesn't matter if the victim was taken from. It doesn't matter if the victim was denied basic rights. And also implied in what I'm saying is in every one of these cases, it is marginalized, powerless people who the church goes after. And, and that speaks volumes. For the Church to maintain its status and its position, it has to constantly threaten psychological violence against those people who have the least amount of power. And the Church is built on denying power to women again and also continuing the white Protestant privileged legal status that has been the de facto status the United States for 200 years. This definitely tells a story. And the church, the church is supreme in the Church's mind and they have no moral obligation to anybody or anything. This sort of legal work costs a lot of money. And those of you who are still in the Church, this is what you're doing, this is what you're funding, this is what you're part of. And if you didn't know before, you know now. So if you want to keep going to church, this is your organization. This is who you are.

John Dehlin [02:20:36] Beautiful. As you know, as an organization files amicus briefs. So is he right? I mean, yeah. And you, you did, you did begin, John Larsen by asking the question, what does any of this have to do with Jesus? My, my answer to that question is, my reading of Jesus is that Jesus stood up for the poor and the disenfranchised. And the marginalized against the power structures, against the corporate interests, against the. The rigid religious hypocrites. And it just, it does not seem like the church's amicus briefs speak well for where the church's heart and priorities are.

John Larsen [02:21:27] Yeah, Jesus hung out with sex workers. He was telling us something. They, they are always in every society, the most marginalized people. Sex workers always are, and they're always present in every society, in every age, in every time. And if you want to talk about the most daring, bold, revolutionary thing Jesus did, it was that he took the people who had the least amount of power. You know, he hung out with. With Mary and Martha. He hung out with women, and he. And. And that, you know, the people who had the least power. And that was his focus. I'm saying there's nothing, you can't connect any dots between Jesus in the Gospels and the way that the church operates. And we've, We've. We've hit on these hypocrisies. You know, like, again, I want to emphasize what I was saying 20 minutes ago. The church is all about ministerial authority, but they will declare women to be ministers so that they can fire them but not give them the decency of having anything they do in the church not be an auxiliary. Look up the definition of auxiliary. Everything that women do in the church is defined to the church as an auxiliary. Women are important to the church for only one thing, and that is their reproductive ability. And that is not something I want to subject anybody to. This is a corrupt, dangerous, backwards cancer of an idea that needs to go the same route as slavery and, you know, I don't know, invasion of other people's countries.

John Dehlin [02:23:15] Sammy's nodding her head. So I'm gonna give Sammy the. The mic for some closing thoughts from Samantha. And by the way, Samantha, we just got a comment that said I. I like the new girl. Something like that. I like the new girls.

Samantha Shelley [02:23:28] Thank you.

John Larsen [02:23:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:29] You got a fan. At least one fan. I there.

Samantha Shelley [02:23:30] Oh, thank God.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:23:32] We love you, Sam.

Samantha Shelley [02:23:33] It's been a rough night. Well, I mean, I don't have much to say. Obviously, all the stuff we've been talking about today is the audience. Church sucks. But you know what they say in all of these cases, that they're, you know, it's going to infringe on their religion. And on some abstract level, they're kind of right. Because if we, you know, nationally expand our ideas about who we should be empathetic towards and who deserves what rights. Like it. It does. It doesn't. It does Threaten them because like their, their whole ideology is so rigid and encountering more and more people who don't subscribe to those rigid ideologies, it will bring people away from those ideas. It will loosen their grip. And so, you know, in a way it is gonna impact the LDS Church even when it won't at all. You know, that feels kind of like the underlying truth here of, you know, just. Yeah, that's it. I'm done. I'm done talking. It's bedtime.

Closing Reflections and Supporter Shoutouts

John Dehlin [02:24:33] Samantha goes to bed, she pumpkins. She pumpkins at 10. Kara, you're next.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:24:38] Love you so much, Sam. I love all of your thoughts and you added so much to this and I'm grateful that you.

Samantha Shelley [02:24:42] How dare you say that to me,

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:24:44] Sam is one of the main reasons that I even left the church and I was able to think in nuanced ways. And yes, it is a threat to, yeah, that kind of like brainwashing ideas about like institution above all. And then you start to realize that the way that the institution wants you to love Jesus Christ is not actually loving the people that Jesus Christ loved. And it begs the question, yeah, why does the church need lawyers as much? Why do they need apologists as much? Why can't the church just stand on its own two feet? But absolutely can't. And it is unfortunate with the way that the church, I mean, they hire lobbyists. How many, when was Christ hiring lobbyists to push their, you know, amicus briefs and try to get the laws passed that they wanted to do. And my, my final thoughts in my wrap up is that just basically that the church just wants to push this, this political, this mental dynamite, this anti gay rhetoric onto the minds of its membership and think that it is beamed down from the one true beautiful creator of mankind, that this is the type of rhetoric that they want them to have. Just like John Larsen said, if you want to know what the church is up to, look at what the lawyers say. And if the lawyers are directed and they're approved of by, you know, the first presidency and the people that you call a prophet and the people that you think are the mouthpiece of God. And that person right now is next in line is Elder Oaks. Elder Oaks, electric shock guy. Elder Oaks went from being, you know, Utah Supreme Court justice straight into the apostleship to write all of this anti gay rhetoric on how do we demonize gay people. That is your best that you've got. Just echo what Sam says. Church, you guys suck. You are absolutely going to be a laughingstock and a joke. The second that Elder Oaks you're boring into. The second that you're put in, that Oaks is put into to be the president and the profit of this corporation, you're going to look like nothing more than a sheep because you have a lawyer parading as a prophet, Syrian mouthpiece, mouthpiece for your Lord. And we know that there are way more beautiful, more expansive versions of spirituality, and Elder Oaks is not going to be the arbiter of that.

John Larsen [02:26:51] Excellent. Hey, can we take Marzipan's comment, it's about 15 up at 8:38 and show that on screen?

John Dehlin [02:26:58] Yeah.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:26:58] Is it about the anything of There

John Dehlin [02:27:01] it is right there. How can anything infringe on the rights of a church? Rights are for humans, not corporations.

John Larsen [02:27:08] Thank you. Thank you for making that point. Actually, I'm impressed that you came up with it, and I'm embarrassed that I didn't. The idea that the church is walking around asserting that it has the rights of humans by the church's teachings. We are special, all of us, because we are God's children and we have rights because we're human beings. The fact that this institution, which we've already established tonight, is not. It's. It's clergy, that one still floors me that the church believes that, you know, that it's not its clergy, it's not its teachings, it's not its people, and it somehow has rights that are getting hurt by other people believing or doing other things. It's a ridiculous notion and thank you for pointing it out. Churches shouldn't have rights. They're not people.

John Dehlin [02:28:01] My, my hot take is that it's one of the only times in my life I'll say that Boyd K. Packer was right. I think that gays, feminists, intellectuals and all that people of color are the great threats to mormonism. And in 2022, they're winning. And, and it's. It's just weird that. That where your lawyers are, there will your heart be also. And it's weird that the church's sanctioned law firm, it continues to uphold racism, sexism, homophobia, misogyny, and it's in the church is imploding as a result.

John Larsen [02:28:42] And, and we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg, right? Only when the church gets caught, like in the Arizona case or like the amicus briefings. That's a big building full of lots of dirt, of lots of attorneys doing God knows what. You know, like most of the time we, we know one of the church's biggest things are NDAs, that it, it has people sign those things over and over again. We know they operate in the darkness, in the shadows. If. If you really want to be the. The organization that's bringing light and truth to the world, be light and truth, quit lying. We. Why we.

Samantha Shelley [02:29:19] We.

John Larsen [02:29:20] We pointed out actual lies that, that you put in your articles in Meridian magazine or the LDS store, whatever room. We've caught you lying on the Arizona thing. We've caught you lying about this and that and the other. We've caught you plagiarizing. Just fess up. Like, be what you say you want us to be. Be honest, be contrite, be forgiving, be repentant. Because if you want to know any reason to know, the church is not true. It's. The church does not believe anything it actually says to people. It doesn't follow the gospel. If the church were part of God's plan, it would first and foremost want to follow the gospel as they teach it, and they refuse to at every turn.

John Dehlin [02:30:07] All right, thanks, John. I have to give. I have to give a shout out to Mark Elwood. We love Mark. He. He does amazing Joseph Smith history graphic novels. I think he has his volume two coming out soon. Mark, we gotta have you back on Mormon stories. But Mark writes. Thanks, everyone. This is a great conversation. Yeah. And I want to thank you, John Larsen, for always preparing such intellectual, thoughtful, and engaging content. Thank you, John.

John Larsen [02:30:35] Thanks. And I think somebody honestly needs to write a book about the church's legal wranglings. There's a. There's a lot. I. It was one of those things that doing preparation for this left so much on the cutting room floor.

John Dehlin [02:30:47] Sure. Yeah.

John Larsen [02:30:47] And I do have to say, hey, I'm going to be in town on. On. And we're going to record live in Studio on December 1 and December 2, which is a Friday. There will be a meet and greet with me somewhere in Salt Lake City. I'm trying to finalize the location. If you'd like to meet me in person and, and, and say hi, I'd love to. I'd love to talk to folks. So if you, if you want to see, if you want to be, you know, what's, what's the. What's the scripture? Is this the man who, you know, you want to be disappointed in. In what a real person looks like? You can come meet me on December 2nd.

John Dehlin [02:31:30] John, you're not. You're not a disappointment to meet in person at all. So I'm excited to have you in studio, and I'm excited to record an episode, and I want to do everything I Can to support a meet and greet with John Larsen. We've done that once or twice and it was always a fun time.

John Larsen [02:31:50] Yeah, we're trying to narrow down to either like a coffee shop or a tea shop or a restaurant or a bar that we can have a, you know, a room that people can come in. Problem with bars is they're oftentimes really loud and it's really hard to have a conversation. So if anybody knows of a place of a room, we can, we can get. And it's a good chance. I know oftentimes after the years and years, stepping out and meeting other ex Mormons is really scary and really hard. But it, to a person, it's always worth it because you get to see the humanity of people who came before you. So. So if this is the one for you, then, then by God, I'd like to help facilitate it.

John Dehlin [02:32:31] All right.

John Larsen [02:32:32] I promise I'd buy you a drink, but then too many people want to drink. I might buy you a drink.

Samantha Shelley [02:32:37] Do something impressive.

John Dehlin [02:32:40] All right, John, you're. You're a firebrand and a teddy bear. Can you be both at the same time?

John Larsen [02:32:46] I try. I'm not as mean as I sound. I promise.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:32:51] He's a good human.

John Dehlin [02:32:52] You're a teddy bear. We know it.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:32:54] We love you, John.

John Dehlin [02:32:55] Can't fool us. All right, John, we love you. Thank you so much for tonight.

John Larsen [02:32:58] And. And, oh, yeah, thanks, Sam again. Cara always brings it. And Sam, you were great. I think you really added to the conversation. Please feel free to come on any of these in the future.

Samantha Shelley [02:33:09] That is very nice of you to say.

John Dehlin [02:33:12] Yeah. Sam, thanks for. For joining us last minute. It's always great to have you, even when it's past your bedtime.

Samantha Shelley [02:33:18] Yeah. This is a treat. I have had limited exposure to John Larsen and I was very, very, very impressed. You say nothing superfluous, which you don't find in a lot of people.

John Larsen [02:33:29] Oh, if you hang around, ask my wife. I say lots of.

Samantha Shelley [02:33:34] She.

John Larsen [02:33:34] She's earned her place in heaven just listening to me. Ra the time.

Samantha Shelley [02:33:38] Beautiful.

John Dehlin [02:33:39] Well, I feel the same way about you, Samantha. You say nothing super.

Samantha Shelley [02:33:42] Well, that's ridiculous.

John Dehlin [02:33:45] Well, thanks for joining us. And check out. Tell us your coaching website, Samantha. Shelleycoaching.com that's Shelley with an EY, right? Shelley with an ey.

Samantha Shelley [02:33:53] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [02:33:54] Yeah, and check out Zel on the Shelf and donate to their Patreon and support their work.

Samantha Shelley [02:34:00] Yeah, we've done some fun stuff on our Patreon. It is worth your time.

John Dehlin [02:34:03] Now, did you say that You.

John Larsen [02:34:05] You.

John Dehlin [02:34:05] That people are saying something you released recently about the faith crisis is one of the best ever.

Samantha Shelley [02:34:11] John, that was a personal comment I made to you. I did just recently do a video on how to navigate a Mormon faith crisis. How to alchemize it into gold. Yeah, that's worth a watch if you're going through a Mormon faith crisis.

John Dehlin [02:34:24] So we'll have Maven include that in the show notes and come back. Come back, Sammy.

Samantha Shelley [02:34:29] I will be back.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:34:31] And Kara, who says plenty of superfluous things and including all of the pronunciations of Amigas Briefs, I did hold my tongue on Alfalfa and Little Rascals ideas. When we were talking about growing that for the land in Utah, I made sure not to call the Utah legislators Little Rascals. I saved that for right now. So supplier Suicity is all I know. And lots of hand. And lots of hand waving.

John Dehlin [02:34:53] No, you're. You're brilliant and insightful and always fun and enjoyable. Kara, thanks for gracing our studio twice. Is this twice in one week?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:35:03] Yeah, I came back on Friday when he filmed that thing with Eve, so everyone make sure to check that out. It's doing really well. It just was uploaded this morning. It already has 10,000 views.

John Dehlin [02:35:11] Whoa. Is that like a land speed record for Nuance?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:35:13] It is. It is Good. That's like TikTok numbers on YouTube.

John Dehlin [02:35:17] All right.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:35:17] Anyway, thanks for helping me out, John. I just. I love you as like a mentor and just another person in this space. John De Lynn's a good guy and I'm just grateful that he came on my channel this last week and helped boost my views and help make good content for my new one so channel.

Samantha Shelley [02:35:30] So.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:35:30] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [02:35:30] Well, it's a great channel, so check out Nuance. So why doesn't self ever ask me?

Samantha Shelley [02:35:34] I was gonna say, you coming on Zelf next week? Let's go.

John Dehlin [02:35:37] We should. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. All right. All right. Well, thanks, Sam. Thanks, Kara. Thanks, John Larsen.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:35:43] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [02:35:43] And thanks to Maven for moderating the chats and helping out with time codes in the show notes. Also, thanks to all our live stream commenters. We love the chats that happen in the live streams. We love our supporters, we send them our gratitude. We wish we could share more of your thoughts and comments, but we just really love this community. So shout out to you guys and gals and everyone else, non binaries, thanks so much for your support and just most importantly, thanks everyone who supports Mormon stories in the Open Stories Foundation. We couldn't do this without all your support. So please support us. If you can go to the donate button at the top of MormonStories.org click on the Donate button, Become a monthly donor. Super chats are great for everyone who who donates through the super chat feature in YouTube. That's also super useful. And please subscribe to us. We we we need our YouTube and Facebook and Tick tock and Instagram subscribers to click the subscribe button. We want to hit a hundred thousand. We think we can do it in a year. We think we can hit a hundred thousand subs. Maybe. Maybe a year and a half.

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:36:51] If you're on a sub train, just go with Zelf Nuanceo Mormon Stories. Make sure you sub all of them.

John Dehlin [02:36:56] Yep. And John Larsen's got a channel too, right, John?

John Larsen [02:36:59] Yeah. Yeah. If you want to hear me rant about things that are not Mormon related, you can.

John Dehlin [02:37:04] What's your channel?

Cara (Nuance Ho) [02:37:05] Homesteading stuff.

John Larsen [02:37:08] Last time we were talking about guns. Next the next one we're going to talk about why you shouldn't fear civil war.

Samantha Shelley [02:37:17] Okay, Nice.

John Dehlin [02:37:19] All right.

Samantha Shelley [02:37:20] That is a fear of mines.

John Dehlin [02:37:22] I saw one that's like, should you have children? Hint the answer is yes or something like that.

John Larsen [02:37:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if. If you enjoy my random thoughts, then listen to it. If not, hey, we're cool.

John Dehlin [02:37:34] All right, all right, all right, everyone. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Stick up for the marginalized and the disenfranchised and just peace. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody. See you soon.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.