Welcome and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast and a special edition in partnership with Radio Free Mormon. Today we have a really exciting episode for you. I'm Dr. John Dehlin. It's January 15, 2021, and we are beginning with something that's super important to me, and it's not the actual episode. So let me give a little history, a little bit of context. Let's see. Back in 2010, I started a nonprofit where I basically wanted to do my part to help Mormonism, the LDS Church, Mormon culture do and be better. And I wanted to, most importantly, help the truth get out there and help Mormon in Faith Crisis or family or friends who are affiliated with Mormon in Faith Crisis find the support and help they needed. So I started Mormon Stories. I started the Open Stories foundation, started collecting donations, and I'm happy to say that it's 2021, and the open Storage foundation had its best year ever in 2020. And, you know, as long as supporters keep doing what they're doing right now, we're good for the foreseeable future. However, what's super important to me is that we have a thriving ecosystem of contributors of creators, of podcasters, of YouTube channels, of TikTok channels, so that there are many good people doing lots of good work. And over the past few months, I've been trying to, like, actually over the past several years, but especially over the past few months, I've been trying to lift other creators and make sure that they get the financial support that they need. So recently I had Zelf on the shelf, a wonderful YouTube channel on Samantha and Tanner. I encourage you guys all to become monthly contributors to their Patreon account to support Tanner's art. I've. I've had, you know, members of the TikTok community, including Mitch and ex Mormon Mindy, and want you to all go to TikTok and support the ex Mormon contributors there. We'll have more. Today, I want to bring on someone who I think and I'm bringing him back to Mormon Stories. Obviously, I am bringing to you someone who I think is one of the most important contributors currently to Mormon discourse, if not the most important contributor to Mormon discourse right now in 2021, and that is Radio Free Mormon. Hello, Radio free Mormon.

Radio Free Mormon [00:02:06] Yes, Dr. Dehlin. How are you doing?

John Dehlin [00:02:08] Hey, thank you so much for joining us again.

Radio Free Mormon [00:02:11] You're very welcome. Excited to be here and to talk about what we're going to talk about today.

Supporting Independent Mormon Podcasting

John Dehlin [00:02:16] All right, well, welcome back to our live stream. You're super important and I Want to begin by saying that that the. The main impetus for this program today, this episode, is not just because we think this is a super important subject to cover, but I want to encourage publicly everyone to become a monthly donor to Radio Free Mormon. Radio Free Mormon does this largely out of the good of his heart. He's got a trickle of donations coming in. He's supported by the wonderful Bill Real, who, you know, none of this would be possible without Bill Real. So support Bill Real, support his podcast, and support Marriage on a tightrope with Alan and Katie Mount, which is also under Bill Real's network, and support Radio Free Mormon. And the way you do that, everybody, is you go to radiofreemormon.org and you find a little donate button on the right. And if everybody will go there and click on the donate button and become a monthly donor, you can will have Radio Free Mormon around for a long time because he shouldn't have to do this purely out of the good of his heart. It's in our best interest to support Radio Free Mormon financially so that he will have the sustainability he needs to keep doing his wonderful programming. Do you disagree with me, Radio Free Mormon?

Radio Free Mormon [00:03:29] No, I don't. But I do appreciate your giving a shout out to Bill Real. Without him, I would not be here. He is the Dr. Frankenstein who created the monster known as Radio Free Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:03:42] All right, so I. I hope everybody understands why it's important to support our creators. I would love to hear that by next week, you know, at least 100, if not a thousand, of you have become monthly subscribers. And what being a monthly subscriber allows people like Radio Free Mormon to do is to plan his future. In other words, instead of saying, I'm burnt out, I'm tired, I. I'm not getting what I need to make this worth it. Oh, I've got these monthly contributors where I can count on this amount of income every month, so I can dedicate this amount of time to it to make it worth it for whatever reasons financial or morale or sustainability or opportunity cost or whatever that is. So just become a monthly donor. 10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, a hundred bucks a month, whatever you can afford. Support Radio Free Mormon. A little bit of that goes to support Bill Real and his network, but the bulk of it goes to. To support Radio Free Mormon, which also supports marriage on a tightrope and whatever other amazing things Bill Real does. Okay, so thank you for everyone who's joining us live. We advertised this episode today well in advance because we wanted as many people joining us as possible because today we've got something that's kind of really important to talk about. And if it's okay, I'm going to start providing a little bit of context. And here's what I'll say as kind of an intro. We what I'm going to do is I'm going to read an article that was written by someone named John O' Brien on June 3, 2020, and it says the following disillusioned Mormon takes second shot at suing the Church. So this is going to give an overview and then we're going to dive into the details. So this is the detail. This is the overview. The woman who lost her faith in the Mormon Church, then lost her lawsuit against it, is trying again now. I'm just going to say at the outset, I don't. I think this is a biased article, probably commissioned by someone at the church, so that if anyone had any questions, they would Google this case, find this article, and definitely not have any concerns. So this is the article. Laura Gaddy amended her complaint against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints weeks after federal Judge Robert Shelby threw out her original complaint. He expressed skepticism that she will be able to correct her lawsuit. But in late May, she tried anyway. She alleges that the church, meaning the Mormon Church, the LDS Church, leaves out pertinent information about its history and founder, Joseph Smith, and that key facts the church teaches are, quote, radically different, close quote, than its factual history. Quote, churches can be liable for fraud claims like anyone else, close quote. Judge Robert Shelby wrote in March, quote, but the First Amendment bars such claims when they would require a court to consider the truth or falsity of a church's religious doctrines. Gaddy claims that the church, in its account of Joseph Smith's first vision, leaves out information found in Smith's own handwritten account, some of it relating to his practice of polygamy. The Church of LDS argued in its original motion to dismiss that the case makes, quote, a mockery of both the court and religion. It was quick to file another dismissal motion after Gaddy's amended complaint. Quote, Ms. Gaddy once again attempts to use the court as a forum for airing her religious grievances with the church, close quote. The motion says, quote, the amendment complaint is little more than a hodgepodge of criticisms of the church and its teachings. She is, of course, entitled to her religious beliefs, but she is not entitled to use this court to spread those beliefs or, or to force the church to defend its religious teachings. Shelby also wrote that he can no more determine whether Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ or translated with God's help, golden plates or ancient Egyptian documents, than it can opine on whether Jesus Christ walked on water or Muhammad communed with the Archangel Gabriel. The First Amendment prohibits these kinds of inquiries in courts of law. So that is how we're going to kind of introduce this case. Basically, it's a class action lawsuit initiated by Kay Burningham, which is an attorney who I believe lives in Bountiful or North Salt Lake somewhere in Utah. I believe she's someone that I've known of and I've met Kay for well over a decade and she's initiated a class action lawsuit basically attempting to sue the LDS Church or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for, for fraud, that it's misled its members about its foundational truth claims. And too many people have given too much time and money to the church under false pretenses and have experienced abuse or duress. And so a bunch of ex Mormon, a bunch of people who have resigned from the church, should join this case and sue the Mormon Church for damages, for reparations for this fraud. So that is kind of the overview of. And I could think of, well, I did email Kay and I invited Kay to come on. Kay is the attorney representing this case. What Kay told me, and I'm just remembering from memory what Kay told me, is that while the case is being adjudicated, she can't come on and talk about strategy or anything like that. It would be inappropriate. So we're not having Kayon now. Maybe we'll have her on later, maybe we'll have other experts on later. But I could not think of a better person to come on Mormon Stories to analyze and discuss this case than the amazing Radio Free Mormon. And before I unleash Radio Free Mormon on the rest of you, I'm going to ask all of you right now to go to your social media copy the YouTube link for this live stream or the Facebook links for this live stream and share them on social media so that we can have the largest live audience as possible joining us for this very important discussion. So go do that now. Also, while you're at it, go donate and become a monthly subscriber to Radio Free Mormon. And without any further ado, before we jump into the outline, Radio Free Mormon, is there any opening statement you would like to make to either correct my record or make any opening statements that you would like to make?

Guest Background and Legal Career Overview

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:55] No. I think that you've done a great job of setting the stage for this, I will say that first off, I have been practicing law for 31 years now. This month, actually January of 2021. It was January 19, 1990, that I started practicing law after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin Law School. Now this case involves the First Amendment and specifically the freedom of exercise of religion clause in the First Amendment. I do deal frequently with the Constitution, but the amendments that I typically focus on are the fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments that relate more to criminal matters. This is not a criminal matter, it's a civil matter. It focuses on the First Amendment. So I took a con law class way back when and I don't want to date myself, but I think that when I took it there were actual, actually only 10amendments in the Constitution at that time. But I have looked at all the briefing in this case and there's a lot of briefing. There's hundreds of pages of briefing in this case by now. And I've read through it. I've done my best to understand the arguments, some of them familiar, some of them new to me, and I learned a lot in the process. And what I hope to do is to be able to not get into too much legalese because nothing is more boring to most people, including myself, than getting into a whole lot of legal jargon. I want to try and simplify it as much as I can, hopefully without losing the substance of the arguments on both sides and talk about the procedural history, the first complaint, then the motion to dismiss and the granting of that motion to dismiss by the judge, and then the amended complaint that was filed by Gaddy in which they bring a new, it's not necessarily a new action, but it's an amended way of looking at it that may or may not get traction with the judge. We'll have to wait and see. Oral argument was held on the amended complaint just on January 5th. Today's January 15th of 2021. So that's 10 days ago that they had all the briefing done. They had the oral argument on that amended motion and the or amended complaint and the judge took the matter under advisement, which means he didn't rule from the bench. And, and I wouldn't expect he would. He's going to go back, he's going to write probably a multi page order like he did the first order, and then we'll be able to find out once he issues that order, what his decision is and whether this case can move forward.

John Dehlin [00:12:40] Excellent. Okay, Radio Free Mormon. Well, if it's all right, let's start maybe a tiny bit conceptually to kind of frame all this. When I think about the way religions get started, it's basically that some charismatic leader, usually a male, almost always a male, claims Mary Baker Eddy. What's that?

First Amendment Protections for Religious Truth Claims

Radio Free Mormon [00:13:01] Mary Baker Eddy.

John Dehlin [00:13:02] I know there are exceptions, but usually it's a male. They claim some sort of divine experience. And almost always it's sort of a requirement that that divine experience be undisprovable. In other words, it's I had this vision or I had this dream, or I was alone or I was translating these records, but no one. You know, it's something where there is an evidence. And thus religious truth claims are born. The number one requirement of religious truth claim is that there's no real tangible evidence such that it could be disproven. And so that sort of sets us off to ask the question, what's the difference between. And putting the legal stuff aside, or at least talking it very conceptually, legally, you know, let's just say there are or not genuine religious experiences that may or may not be provable or disprovable. How do we start thinking about the difference between religious experiences and things that might be susceptible to claims of fraud? Help us map out at least that opening understanding of the difference.

Radio Free Mormon [00:14:11] Okay, so the first thing I would say is that this is exactly the kind of area that the First Amendment protects religious belief in. And exactly why it is that courts, government doesn't get involved in religions or religious beliefs or the espousal or proselytizing of religious beliefs on the part of a religion. They simply don't do that. That's what the First Amendment protects and what they don't want to do. And what Judge Selby said he wasn't going to do in his first order where he dismissed the original complaint, was, we're not going to get into that.

John Dehlin [00:14:51] Tell us why the American founders felt like it was so important to put that in the very First Amendment. And, you know, kind of just a little bit historically of why that was important.

Radio Free Mormon [00:15:03] Well, I'll answer that second part first, because I remember back in my constitutional law class where the professor, aged man, I think older than I am now, but very, very knowledgeable, started talking about the First Amendment. And he talked about the rights that are in the First Amendment, including the freedom of religion. And he said to the class, hundreds of people present, why is it that this was put in the First Amendment? And of course, hand shot up, because it's the most important. And he said, yes, that may be true. Of course, one would assume that in a list of 10amendments. Something has to go first. So he even took a shot at that idea that it was the most important. All the amendments are important, but that First Amendment is very important about freedom of religion because that is really the basis on which this country was founded. It was founded by a bunch of Puritans who fled England because they didn't like a state religion. And this was very important to the, the founders of the country that there not be any government interference or an establishment by the government of religion. And so that's why it's there. And what they don't want to get into is a religious dispute, because basically what can go on is that. And what did sort of go on in the first complaint is that the way it was structured is this. First off, I want to give kudos to, to Kay Burningham, whom I have not met, I have not had that pleasure, but I've certainly read a lot of what she's written. She has done an enormous amount of work in this case with the hope of getting it allowed to proceed and be established and certified as a class action lawsuit on behalf of her client and any other clients that join in. Now, the way she framed the first 80 plus page complaint can be broken down this way. First off, she talks about three different areas of church history and church teaching. And she breaks them down into number one, the way the Book of Mormon was translated. Number two, the first vision and what Joseph Smith saw. And the third is the Book of Abraham and its translation from the papyrus. And by and large, she limits herself to those three areas and points out all these different areas. What she does is she breaks each one of those three down into two component parts. The first is what the correlated narrative that the Church teaches and has taught for decades what that correlated narrative is. And then in comparison, she contrasts what it is that really happened. In other words, what scientists say happened, what historians say really happened, and say there's a difference there, they're irreconcilable. And the Church has been committing a fraud by promoting this correlated view, which is contradicted by what really happened. Okay. The main reason that got thrown out, as I understand Judge Shelby's order, which I've read a couple of times now, is because that's precisely the kind of thing that courts don't get involved in. Now, once again, the First Amendment says Constitution, government can't get involved in religion. Well, the courts, of course, are an arm of the government. It's the third branch of the government, the judicial branch. Right? So when courts are getting involved in religion. That would be the government getting involved in religion. And they are not going to be there to settle religious disputes. Regardless of how what a person or church believes or teaches may be contradicted by what science says or anything else for that matter. Because what you're doing then is you're saying, okay, your religious belief is invalid, even though you believe it. Lots of other people believe it. But it's invalid because it just didn't happen that way. That's exactly what the courts are not going to do and why it was that he ended up dismissing that case. Whenever you bring a lawsuit against a church, you are immediately fighting an uphill battle. You are tilting at windmills, so to speak. But. But just because it's an uphill battle does not mean it is a lawsuit that should not be brought. And just because there's never been a case that has been decided of this type against any religion, at least as I read the briefing, this is a matter of first impression. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be brought. If we only brought lawsuits that were supported by prior cases that had already decided the same thing, we would never have had some of the most important decisions in the history of the country. For example, I believe it was Plessy versus Ferguson. That was a case that held, look, segregation is fine in schools. Well, that was the established law. But nevertheless, somebody brought Another lawsuit, Brown vs. Board of Education, and said, hey, that's wrong. That's in the case where actually there is prior precedent. There's no real prior precedent on this one, I don't think. Although I think the parties on both sides would disagree in their briefing, but they're asking the judge to make a new rule. Brown vs. Board of Education, of course, ended up with a ruling that said we're overruling prior case law. We're overruling Supreme Court precedent that said that it's okay to have separate school systems and separate facilities depending upon your race. And in fact, it was Plessy versus Ferguson, I think, that came up with the phrase separate but equal. And then in Brown vs Board of Education, we have the wonderful expression that separate is inherently equal, unequal. So you couldn't have more of a reversal than that. So I want to say that first off, it is an uphill battle. I'm sure that Gaddy realizes that. But that doesn't mean that it is not a case that should not be brought.

John Dehlin [00:20:59] Okay, okay. That's a great introduction, rfm. Thank you so much for offering it. So if we want to just distill it down then if. And I want to talk about the Tom Phillips case. And there's a lot of listeners asking us to talk about the Tom Phillips case in any precedent. But before we dive into the details of this case, and so if you can define for us how we can think about then a case for fraud could be made against a religious institution. What I hear you saying is it's never gonna be around. Did Moses see the burning bush? Was Jesus resurrected per se? Did Joseph Smith talk to God and angels? That sort of stuff is always going to be off the table for being adjudicated, right?

Radio Free Mormon [00:21:48] Yes, and it should be. And it should be, in my opinion. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:52] Yeah. So what. What then can be on the table in terms of fraud? And there's. There's probably stuff that's separate from religion altogether, like murdering somebody or stealing something. Like, clearly, I'm guessing that if religions, like, break law, they can be punished for that, but then there's probably also fraud. So talk about instances where, number one, it is fair game to sue a religion. But then, secondly, how we can think about fraud given that core truth claims. The veracity of core truth claims is kind of off the table.

Can Courts Hear Fraud Cases Against a Church?

Radio Free Mormon [00:22:33] Okay, well, let's talk about three things here. I always like to try and go from what we know to what we don't know. And what we don't know is what's going to happen with this amended complaint in the judge's ruling. But we know a few things. All right? And the first thing that we know, and it goes to your question about murder or whatever, murder in the name of religion is never going to be sanctioned under the First Amendment. And you and I, as Mormon, we have this in our history, that the polygamy battle. All right, so the federal government came against the Mormon in Utah for polygamy, and the polygamist in question was George Reynolds. And the church felt very confident that once they appealed this issue up to the Supreme Court in the last part of the 19th century, I believe it was that they would win that freedom of religion, as enshrined in the First Amendment, gave them the right to practice polygamy. And they were extremely disappointed to find out that the Supreme Court ruled against them. And they basically made the distinction that under the First Amendment, people are free to believe whatever they want, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are free to do what they want. It protects belief, but not necessarily conduct when that conduct is in violation of another law. And, of course. Well, I don't want. Once again, I don't want to get into the weeds too much. But this has to be a law of general applicability. It can't be a law that's focused at that religion. All right? But this is a general, applicable law about no polygamy in the United States. And so they lost that. They lost that. That fight. And, you know, things happen from there in history, but that's one thing. Now, getting back to Judge Shelby's opinion, there are other areas in which a person can litigate successfully against a church where the First Amendment does not protect them.

Speaker C [00:24:22] And.

Radio Free Mormon [00:24:23] And that is not in religious matters, but in secular matters, non religious matters. And an example that's given there is, let's say we've got a parish, and this parish has a van. It's a used van. They want to sell it to somebody and get rid of it. Well, the priest or somebody who works for the church goes into this van before they sell it and they roll back the odometer, okay. To make the. The van look a lot newer than it is. And they sell it under false pretenses or fraud to an individual. That individual. Yes. They can come back and sue the church for selling them this van under fraudulent pretenses, because that's just a completely secular issue. It doesn't go into their religious beliefs at all. Okay, so that's one example. Now, I also want to.

John Dehlin [00:25:16] That's an example of religion, of. Of fraud by a religion that just doesn't have to do with truth claims, correct?

Radio Free Mormon [00:25:22] Yes. Fraud by a church. Yes. It doesn't have anything to do with truth claims. Another example he gives. In addition, you mentioned a little bit about it, but he. Shelby points this out very clearly and I think very well in his order, where he talks about Jesus being resurrected. And he says it's a fundamental belief in most Christian religions, I would think so, that Jesus was. He died and was resurrected on the third day. And what he says is, look. Oh, let me. Let me back up from that, okay? Because the arguments being made in the original brief that there are religious facts, but then there are real historical facts. There are religious beliefs versus historical facts. With the idea being promoted that if you can prove that a religious belief is wrong, historically speaking, then you can have an action against a religion. Well, the judge sort of kicked that out. And this is where he uses this comparison about Jesus being resurrected on the third day as a belief. He says the facts really are inextricably tied into many religious beliefs. He gives us as an example. It's a belief that Jesus rose again on the third day. But is that just a belief, or is it also a factual belief? You're believing in the fact that it actually occurred. That's what makes it a religious belief. And that's where he talks about how it is that it is so inextricably tied, in many instances, a person or religion's religious belief to the facts. And therefore, you can't just say, well, these are religious facts and these are secular facts, because religious beliefs and secular facts because they're so tied together. So if you were to prove somehow that Jesus really didn't rise on the third day, or you get all these experts saying, no, this didn't happen, okay, it doesn't make any difference because it's still a religious belief by the person espousing it. And that is something that is protected by the First Amendment. If we get out of Christianity, sometimes that's too close for people to look at, and we just think about flat earth or something like that, if that's part of a person's religion. All right, if you get a flat earth, Well, I think 99 of the people would think that's ridiculous and it can be proven to not be true, even just from photos from space or something like that. It doesn't make any difference. If it's a religious belief, part of a religion, then it is protected by the First Amendment. The idea being that that's. That's kind of what a religious belief is. It's something that is not provable. You can believe things that you can't prove. You can also believe things that 99% of the people think is ridiculous. That's okay because that's protected by the First Amendment. I want to tell you this other story. This isn't about suing a church, but just to give you an idea about how protected religious belief is, this is a story that happened actually just a couple of blocks across the street here in the local superior court. This was a number of years ago now, but I was present and watched it. I wasn't involved in it, but a young man was a Jehovah's Witness. I think he was 18 or 19 years old. I'm not sure. I don't know exactly how old he was. I saw him there in court, as I observed, and he had some kind of fatal blood disease or something like that, and he was going to die unless he got a transfusion. Well, his parents hired an attorney and brought an action in court not to sue the Jehovah's Witnesses, but to get an order from the court. Requiring their son to, to get a transfusion so that his life could be saved. And we can only imagine the emotions that they would have and why they would do this, because they don't want their kid to die just because he's Jehovah's Witness. The parents obviously were not. But the case was joined. It was argued in front of a Superior Court judge, and at the end of it, the Superior Court judge just had to go, you know, I hear what you're saying, but there's nothing I can do. I cannot force a person to have their religious beliefs denied, even though I disagree with it as a judge, even though the parents disagree with it, even though everybody who's not a Jehovah's Witness probably disagrees with it and thinks it ridiculous that this young man with his life ahead of him, if he gets a transfusion, is going to die because of a religious belief that everybody but Jehovah's Witnesses think is ridiculous, and especially in this context. And so the judge had to deny their motion. And I did. I didn't know the kid. I didn't follow up on it, But I expect that he went on his way, didn't get a transfusion, and died shortly thereafter. So that is how critical religious protection under the First Amendment is. So that's, Is that two things or is that three things? I think I've, oh, I talked about the odometer, I talked about Jesus, and I talked about the Jehovah's Witnesses. Those are the three things I wanted to talk about there.

John Dehlin [00:30:16] Okay, so let's just say in a fictitious scenario that, you know, I, I'm, I'm a fan of L. Ron Hubbard. I think that what he did was amazing. Like, look how rich and famous L. Ron Hubbard was. He said that famous quote that if you want to get rich, start a business, if you want to get really rich, start a religion. So I'm thinking, I want to, I want to start a religion, but I don't believe in supernatural hocus pocus, but I'm going to lie about it. And so I, I, I explicitly know that I'm making a false claim. And I say, I saw God and I saw Jesus. And I translated, I found these ancient records and I translated them. So I'm a prophet. But there's evidence that I know. Like I tell my buddies and I write it down somewhere in my journal, hey, hey, hey, I'm really going to screw these people. And I leave some sort of evidence that I am intentionally creating fraud, and then I create a religion and Then people believe it and then people start finding out that there's evidence that I committed knowing fraud and then somehow that a lawsuit gets brought against me and then there's discovery where somebody says, bring your journal to court or here's a secret recording and evidences start is brought forth. In that sort of scenario, can you know, can a lawsuit of, of religious fraud in theory be successfully presented?

Radio Free Mormon [00:31:47] Well, you actually potentially won and potentially one. Well, that depends on a host of different things about the potentially one. But now you're raising a question that is going to the heart of the amended complaint.

John Dehlin [00:32:02] And we'll come back to the gaddy thing. I just want to talk conceptually, but.

Radio Free Mormon [00:32:06] But if you want to use that conceptually.

John Dehlin [00:32:08] But I'm just trying to conceptualize it before we talk about the case.

Radio Free Mormon [00:32:12] Sure. So if you're talking about you making something up now, this is something where you would not be the first person to do that. And by the way, if you're still alive, I know you're kind of casting yourself in a Joseph Smith kind of role, but if you're still alive. Right. Then it's possible a lawsuit could be brought against you for fraud if there's evidence to show that you're making it up and you don't really believe it. Okay. Now if you go 200 years or 100 years down the road from you and you were successful in establishing this religion, even if it was based on a fraud, as you yourself have admitted now, and you have followers and even millions of followers throughout the the earth, can you bring a lawsuit now against the followers and the leaders of that church 100 or 200 years later because they believe that what you said was true? Probably not.

John Dehlin [00:33:04] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:33:04] Because you're getting to the religious beliefs there was.

John Dehlin [00:33:08] So even if you could prove that a founder 200 years ago, even if you think you could prove that he committed intentional fraud, if a bunch of people religiously believe it now that's, that's maybe a difficult thing to adjudicate successfully in court. Right, right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:33:24] And once again, this is circling right back into the heart of the matter, which is a court is not going to get into resolving religious disputes because there's people who say, hey, he's a fraud. I can prove that he's a fraud. Right. Well, okay, you can prove he's a fraud, but here's the other side. And they say, well, we believe it. So we're courts are not going to get involved in trying to settle religious disputes. It's like you have two sides having a Bible bash. Right. Or you've got Mormon apologists on one side and you've got Mormon critics on the other. All right, they can do that all day long as much as they want, but don't go to court and expect a judge to say, okay, I agree with you, and therefore you can have a lawsuit and the church is somehow liable in some manner.

John Dehlin [00:34:08] Right. Okay, excellent. So if it's okay, let's jump briefly to the Tom Phillips case in the uk. Neither of us really know a lot about that case. I'm sure I know less than you. A lot of people are asking about it. What's the sort of admittedly unthorough and incomplete overview of the Tom Phillips case, how that case fit into the framework of what we've talked about so far, and your view on why it maybe wasn't successful?

The Tom Phillips Case and Religious Fraud Precedents

Radio Free Mormon [00:34:37] Okay. And so once again, as a caveat here, I'm not intimately at all familiar with the Tom Phillips lawsuit or that lawsuit in England where they had, what was it, President Monson subpoenaed to testify, I believe. And also that's an English court, which is different than American court, but, you know, there's a lot of similarities. So having said all of that, basically, I think it got kicked out because of exactly what we're talking about, that the allegations were, you know, that the church believes things that are scientifically wrong and therefore.

John Dehlin [00:35:11] And it even talked about, didn't it talk about like a global flood and Adam and Eve and the age of the earth, things that not only Mormon believe, but that Christians believe and the Jews believe. Like it tried to really strike at the heart of the veracity of general, broad, broadly held and believed and held sacred religious truth claims. Is that right? Your understanding?

Radio Free Mormon [00:35:35] Oh, yes. They talked about the age of the earth. They talked about the global flood. They may have talked about the Tower of Babel and talking about how the, the LDS Church believes this. And it's obviously not correct because look at all the science over here. On the other hand, and therefore it's a fraud. And therefore, you know, the LDS Church needs to be liable for all the tithing that members have paid because they're presenting this obvious fraud. It got kicked because the courts are not going to get involved in religious disputes. But, but an important point is that it was, I think, widely thought that maybe that wasn't the best strategy. It would have been kicked anyway. But it wasn't the best strategy to go in there with allegations against the LDS Church of beliefs they have that are common amongst many other Christian churches. And when you're getting to Old Testament, to Judaism as well, because now you're basically putting the judge in the position of saying, okay, if I agree with you, then basically I'm opening up every other church that believes these kinds of things to a lawsuit. I thought that the Gaddy complaint, the original complaint as well as the amended complaint did a good job of avoiding that kind of misstep, I think. And they restricted their allegations to facts and history and teachings that are exclusive to the LDS Church. Once again, the first Vision, the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham.

John Dehlin [00:37:02] So trying to not piss off or alienate Christians and Jews generally is probably a good strategy.

Radio Free Mormon [00:37:08] Well, I don't know if it's about

John Dehlin [00:37:10] pissing them off or strike or address their religious truth claims. Well, it's not the non starter. I'm just saying.

Radio Free Mormon [00:37:17] Yeah. And it's about putting a judge in a position where if he rules for you, then he's got to be ruling against all these people as well. And that's more difficult, that's even more difficult than the difficult task that you have set yourself bringing a lawsuit against the church.

John Dehlin [00:37:31] Okay. And so the Tom Phillips case, you know, you, you guys should go to Reddit or go wherever, type in October Surprise. You know, I had done this amazing interview with Tom Phillips, a former stake president twice, and you know, a man who had received his second anointing. That is one of the most, top three most important Mormon stories episodes of all time. If you haven't listened to it, go stop this. Go listen to that now and then come back. It literally is one of the most important episodes of all time. Not just because he was so high level in the church, not just because he knew Jeffrey Holland personally, but because he talks in depth about this super secret, super sacred, super elitist ritual called the second anointing, which only wealthy Mormon elite receive. And then they have this pyramid scheme like referral system where they refer other people to it. It's, you know, the woman anoints the man. It's this crazy. Apostles are involved, like super interesting, super important. Go check that out. I did that interview with Tom Phillips. It blew up. It was a huge deal. And then Tom Phillips followed that up after being completely estranged by his family, which, you know, we all felt really super sad about that. His wife and his kids all abandoned him. He was super angry and sad. We, we feel for what Tom Phillips was feeling. And then he started telling people about this October surprise and then they launched this lawsuit, subpoenaed Thomas S. Monson while he was in full dementia. You know, Monson never got subpoenaed. The case got dismissed. And it's a really interesting thing. Go Google October Surprise. Tom Phillips. And we love Tom Phillips. Shout out to Tom Phillips. He's still alive. I'm trying to get him back on Mormon Stories. But kudos to you, Tom Phillips, for all that you've done. And please come back on Mormon Stories. We would love to interview you. Okay, so going now to Gatti. To Kay Burningham and Gatti.

Radio Free Mormon [00:39:22] I listened to that podcast, by the way. Tom Phillips. I'm one of the many, many people who listen to it. Fascinating, fascinating podcast. I listened to it back when you were just releasing it many years ago.

John Dehlin [00:39:32] Yeah. And that was right around the time I was being threatened with excommunication and super fun stuff. Okay, so. So now we come to Kay Burningham and the Gatti case. Tell us about. Just give us a. Give us a overview, and I may fill in a few gaps here of her original case. Oh, first of all, what can you tell us about Judge Robert Shelby? There's at least one super important ruling that he's been involved with that involves not just Utah. He is. He is a, you know, a member of the LDS Church. I don't know that he's currently attending, but he was involved in at least one important case. Do you want to give any background on Judge Shelby, or do you have anything to say about that?

Radio Free Mormon [00:40:20] I want you to give that background on Judge Shelby. But can I bring up one more example here about religious freedom under the First Amendment? Okay, so it has to do with homosexuality. All right, so, John, if you are a homosexual and you work for the government or you work for a private company, that's not a religion, all right? And you get fired from your job because you are a homosexual, do you have a cause of action against the government or the company who fired you?

John Dehlin [00:40:56] I don't know.

Radio Free Mormon [00:40:57] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:40:58] You do.

Radio Free Mormon [00:41:00] Sorry. That's okay. This is like the Socratic method, right, that we get a lot in law school.

John Dehlin [00:41:05] Absolutely.

Radio Free Mormon [00:41:06] You do. You got a huge lawsuit. If you can prove that you got fired from the government or a private corporation because you're homosexual. Absolutely. That's huge. Okay, now take that exact same set of facts and say you're working for a church. And this is a little bit different from Mormon because we don't have as many paid people in our church. Only after you get up above a certain level, as we know. Right. And then you get paid quite a bit in some cases. But let's say that you're a person who's a homosexual, you belong to a church. It's like the LDS Church and it's says homosexuality, you know, acting out, it's a sin. And you get fired from your church position because you're a homosexual. Do you have a cause of action against the church?

John Dehlin [00:41:51] I would say no.

Radio Free Mormon [00:41:52] The answer is no. There's actually case law on that. Okay. And this is the, the huge distinction, right? You can have the exact same, same thing happening for the exact same reason. And in one case you have a cause of action and another one you don't because of the First Amendment. Now this, I'm not going to get into a lot of legal jargon, but I am going to mention this one thing here, okay? This is what has been called in case law the church autonomy doctrine, which has ironically, the initial cad cad and it gets abbreviated that way throughout the briefing sometimes. But the church autonomy doctrine. And what this means is that under the First Amendment, churches are free to decide without government interference, matters of church government, faith and doctrine. And that's what it means, the church autonomy doctrine. And basically the original complaint got dismissed because it was going after things that are protected by the church autonomy doctrine, or at least the judge saw it that way. And of course that's what counts. Right. So that's a church autonomy doctrine. And we've talked about how that protects churches in doing things and making decisions with their government and their internal organization, as well as their faith and their doctrine, regardless of whether somebody could have an action against a non church entity for doing the same kind of thing. Now, you want to mention something about Judge Shelby and actually I think you told me this, so why don't you go ahead and mention it now?

Judge Shelby's Background and Role in the Case

John Dehlin [00:43:25] Okay, I'll just, I'm going to read a bio of Judge Shelby because I do think he, you know, Judge, you could tell us about what the judge's role is and isn't. And I think ideally a judge's background doesn't matter and shouldn't matter and probably doesn't even really too much come into play because I think a judge's role is just to do their best to rule on the law. But I'll just read a little bit of the background of Judge Shelby and he is important for at least a few reasons. So he's an American attorney, He is a jurist as the Chief United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Utah. And he was born in Wisconsin. He served in the 19th Special Forces Group, Utah Army National Guard. He was on active duty duty during Operation Desert Storm. Received a lot of military awards. He's a Utah State University Aggie. So go Aggies 1994 graduate. So we were about the same age. And then he went to University of Virginia Law School, which is a great law school. And then he went on to become a clerk. And eventually what it says is that on November 2011, President Obama nominated Robert Shelby to the district, to be the District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Utah, replacing Judge Tennant Campbell. And both senators from Utah, Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee at the time, endorsed his nomination. So even though he was nominated by Obama, he was endorsed by both Republican senators, Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee. And they described him, Mike Lee described him as preeminently qualified, predicting he would be an outstanding judge. Hatch described him as a man of keen intellect. He's demonstrated unwavering commitment to the law and all of that. And then his most notable decision came in December 20, 2013. This was right during, you know, this is like a month after my TEDx talk on same sex marriage, which has nothing to do with Judge Shelby's ruling. But I just say that because it came right in the heat of, you know, post Prop 8, you know, United States of America, same sex marriage kind of arguments, movements, outrage, adjudication. But it was, it was December 20, 2013, that Judge Robert Shelby struck down Amendment 3 of the Utah State Constitution, which defined marriage as a union solely between a man and a woman, opening the way for same sex marriage in the state. He found that Amendment 3 to be in violation of the US Constitution's 14th Amendment, which guarantees due process and equal protection. And my understanding is, is that this cut off, or at least it was the first of many such rulings that eventually resulted in a chain of rulings that led to, in 2015, the legalization of same sex marriage across the whole United States. Anything you want to say to correct or add to what I said about that?

Radio Free Mormon [00:46:47] Raider Free Mormon If I'm being technical, I, I would disagree with your characterization of the chain of rulings that led to the Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage and fighting in the Constitution. I think that would have happened regardless of, of how Judge Shelby ruled in Utah. But he did ended up, he did end up making the ruling in Utah that it was adopted by a majority of the Supreme Court. Ultimately.

John Dehlin [00:47:12] Okay, but, but it was weird for me, it was, it was notable that that ruling came first in Utah, it seemed, and, and that, you know, we all remember that day where People rushed to the gate. You know, gay and lesbian Utah citizens rushed to the courthouse, got married in Utah. And it was kind of a euphoric day. And it was Judge Shelby that was, you know, the person that ruled behind all that.

Radio Free Mormon [00:47:40] Yes. And you're, and you're. The reason that you're bringing this up

John Dehlin [00:47:45] is just because, well, I don't know. Because that sort of begs the question. Let's just say somebody is thinking, oh, okay, let's say I'm a liberal Mormon or I'm an ex Mormon, or I'm a progressive Mormon or I'm somebody that cares about progressive sensibilities, or I'm more secular than religious or whatever. Someone might say, oh, wow, Judge Robert Shelby, we don't think he's an active believing Mormon. He might even no longer be lds. And then he did a ruling that went the way that we would have wanted. Those of us who might be progressive or liberal or pro LGBT or whatever, and then they might think, oh my gosh, maybe this, this case has a chance to be influenced by his, his slant as a judge. And that might be, that opinion might be bolstered by the fact that he ruled in this way about same sex marriage that we all kind of wanted back then. Tell us, if you can, about how judges work and disabuse us, if you would like on this idea that Judge Shelby's background may or may not even have anything to do with how this case might be adjudicated. How do judges work in this context or not work in this context?

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:05] Well, different. Judges are certainly different, but their job is to interpret the law as it's written and then also interpret case law which is based upon law. They're supposed to interpret law, they're not supposed to create new law. And so I expect that Judge Shelby does that to the very best of his ability, which is probably immense. But if anybody has an idea that because he ruled that way on the gay marriage issue, that that's going to impact this case, I would think that his or his original order dismissing the original complaint, his order dismissing the original complaint, would probably disabuse people of that notion. There's not going to be any connection between the two, as far as I can tell, and I think that proves it. He is going to follow the law as he understands the law to the best of his ability. And regardless of his feelings about the lds, I have no idea what his feelings are about the LDS church. But if people are speculating that maybe he's not really on board with what the LDS church teaches. And that's why he ruled that gay marriage was constitutional in the state of Utah. And I, I don't think that's the case. I think he's going to follow the law. He's able to separate those things. And if, if really he's just going to find any reason to rule against the LDS Church, he wouldn't have dismissed the original Gatty complaint.

John Dehlin [00:50:23] So there, so conceptually speaking, there's, there might be this perception that judges can be biased and that their personal biases can influence their decisions. And what you're saying is, is that an important qualification and, or temperament or disposition of a judge is to put their own personal views aside and do their best to just use logic and an understanding of the law to inform their rulings.

Radio Free Mormon [00:50:52] Yeah, you're supposed to do that. But of course, judges trying to do that to the best of their ability are still going to come to different conclusions, conclusions on different cases and how they relate to the law. For example, if judges were able to do that and always come to the same conclusion, which presumably is the right conclusion. Right. If they're always able to come to the same conclusion, then you wouldn't need nine justices on the Supreme Court. And with nine justices, you would always have all nine of them agreeing one way or the other. And we know that's not the case really. It's just the majority of justices see things one way and that ends up becoming the ruling of the court, whereas you got other justices, usually, unless it's a 900 opinion that disagree with it. And yet they're trying, they're trying their best to follow the law. So it's no guarantee that just because a judge is well trained, intelligent and trying to follow the law to the best of their ability, that they're going to come to the same conclusion as another judge is doing the same thing.

John Dehlin [00:51:47] And I think we have a really cool example of this concept that we're trying to talk about with, with the recent, the most recently, Donald Trump nominated Supreme Court justice in Amy Coney Barrett because so many liberals or Democrats were like freaking out because their thoughts were, oh my gosh, if Trump rams through this nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, then she'll be his puppet. And then if there's any case that goes before the Supreme Court that potentially could benefit Donald Trump, she'll rule like a puppet in whatever way Donald Trump wants. And then, you know, we'll have, you know, monarchy or whatever the fear was. And as I understand it, there, there have been some cases that came through the Supreme Court in an expedited way that could have benefited Donald Trump. And how did Amy, Judge Amy Coney Barrett rule? Do you, do you have any background or understanding of that? I'm kind of putting you on the spot there.

Radio Free Mormon [00:52:44] Not a whole lot, but I mean, the history of the Supreme Court is rife with justices who are appointed by one party because they feel that they will rule one party way. And then they get on the bench and they end up doing things that are completely different from what that party thought they would do when they appointed him. I think John Roberts would be an example of that. And there's lots of examples of that throughout history. It's a hard thing to gauge where a judge is going to come down on something just because you think that I, I've seen what he's ruled on before, therefore he's my kind of guy or my kind of gal, and I want them on the, on the Supreme Court. And then they start ruling in ways. So you go, wait a second. I did not anticipate this.

John Dehlin [00:53:27] Okay, beautiful. Okay. So what can you tell us about the original complaint that Kay Birmingham filed on behalf of Laura Gaddy? I don't think either of us have read the original complaint, is that right?

The Original Complaint Against the Church

Radio Free Mormon [00:53:40] I have.

John Dehlin [00:53:41] You've read the original complaint. Okay. I read the amended complaint.

Radio Free Mormon [00:53:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:44] Which is still, you know, 83 pages of legal reading. What can you tell us about the amended complaint? And I know we've already covered this, but now just in the flow of the logic chain, that helps me understand things better. What can you tell us about just the basics of the original complaint that Kay Birmingham filed on behalf of Laura Gaddy? Just give us a sense for what it was trying to argue.

Radio Free Mormon [00:54:10] What it's trying to argue is once again, under those three categories, the Book of Mormon, the translation, the First Vision, and the Book of Abraham. And basically saying that this is what the Mormon Church teaches on one hand on each of those three subjects. And over here is what the reality is and what the historians say about those three subjects. And therefore, the church is teaching something that's not correct, it's fraudulent, and therefore they should be subject to this civil suit. And that's about the, the best way I can break down 80 plus pages of briefing. Now, this is of course, what the judge said. No, this is not something that is

John Dehlin [00:54:53] the Judge Shelby in the original one. So you're saying that the basically, Kay burning Hammond original complaint said the church hasn't the, the, the, the things. Are you saying that K's argument was that,

Speaker C [00:55:09] that.

John Dehlin [00:55:10] That. Was she trying to argue the truth claims themselves, or was she trying to argue that the Church has misrepresented the facts behind the truth claims? Does that make sense?

Radio Free Mormon [00:55:21] Yeah. And this is where you get into a little bit of the blurring between the original complaint and the amended complaint. Because the main thrust of the argument was. And let's try and keep this simple, okay? For me as well as for everybody else, but the main thrust of the original complaint is, is that they're teaching this stuff about Mormonism and it's not true, and we can prove it's not true, and therefore it's a fraud action and the Church should be civilly liable for teaching things that are fraudulent.

John Dehlin [00:55:50] So basically, the first vision didn't happen. Like, you know, didn't happen. The translation of the Book of Mormon didn't happen. It's not a historical document. The Book of Abraham is not an accurate translation. And so fraud has been committed.

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:09] Yeah, that's not really it, but. Because that would be, I mean, obvious to everybody, that would be a violation of the First Amendment protection. No, it's a little bit more refined than this. And this is where it bleeds over into the amended complaint. Because what happens is that there are things that are argued in the original complaint that aren't fully fleshed out, but they're sort of there. And then they're in the oral argument for the original complaint. It sort of brought up an oral argument too, apparently. And then Gaddy moves to amend the complaint to include this new argument.

John Dehlin [00:56:47] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:47] And that's what the judge allows her to do. And that's what the amended complaint is. But more specifically, in the original complaint, what it's saying is not that the Book of Mormon is a fraud, and it wasn't translated. It says you've got the dominant narrative that is portrayed by the Church of Joseph Smith using the gold plates to translate the Book of Mormon, and picture after picture after picture, and those are included as exhibits showing Joseph Smith. You know, he's got the plates in front of him and he's got his. He's got his finger on him, you know, and he's looking at him real, you know, studiously. There's no pictures that the Church has produced and about Joseph Smith using his seer stone and putting it in a hat and putting his face over the hat in order to translate the Book of Mormon. So this is one of the main things that they're talking about, that there is an active intentional deceit that is going on by the LDS Church. In this regard, and it has been for a long period of time. With the first vision, they're not saying that it never happened. They're saying that there's different accounts. And of course, we've got the 1832 account of the first vision, which is the original or the earliest one that we know of, in Joseph Smith's own handwriting, where he mentions he only mentioned seeing one being, which by the way, is different than saying he mentioned seeing only one being. I'm trying to use my only correctly in the sentence. He only mentioned seeing one being in the first vision. And then, of course, there are the steps that were taken by Joseph Fielding Smith to remove that from even the restricted area of the library and put it in his safe for three decades. We'll get to that here presently. But I think most people know the story. We'll touch on it again in a minute. But in other words, they, the, the church is teaching one side of the history, but they're not teaching this other side of the history which they know exists. And that that is the allegation of fraud there with the the Book of Abraham. It's similar that for over 100 years, the LDS Church has known that Egyptologists look at the facsimiles at a minimum, and I think that's really where they focus on is the facsimiles in the Book of Abraham. And those do not translate into what Joseph Smith said that they translate into. And yet the church has continued since that time publishing it and representing this translation of the facsimiles as Joseph Smith did it as being accurate and correct. So there's this. It's not saying that Joseph Smith never translated the Book of Abraham by divine aid, really. It's just saying that the church knows that this is not what these facsimiles actually represent. And they've known it for a long time, but they continue to represent it the way Joseph Smith represented it. And that that's the allegation of fraud there.

John Dehlin [00:59:34] Okay, so maybe, maybe we can say it this way, that K. Burningham's original complaint in Gaddy v. The Corporation for the President of the LDS Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, she didn't quite make the case. And so the ld. So the LDS Church, in their response, basically filed a motion to dismiss. Right. And then Judge Shelby granted the motion to dismiss and in his granting of the motion to dismiss, explained why. Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:00:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:07] And tell us one more time his explanation for. For granting the original motion to dismiss.

Radio Free Mormon [01:00:14] I think that with the framework we've got that Judge Shelby was not convinced that the complaint sufficiently alleged things that were outside of the church autonomy doctrine.

John Dehlin [01:00:28] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:00:29] And once again are getting into this, this freedom of belief. You can believe whatever you want. It doesn't make any difference if every other person in the world is a scientist and they all agree that what you believe is hokum and they can prove it six ways to Sunday. Right? It doesn't make any difference. You can still believe it. It's still protected by the First Amendment. And so he felt that what was alleged was still contained within this church autonomy doctrine. And that's why he uses his example about Jesus being resurrected or the Angel Gabriel appearing to Muhammad or those other things that you mentioned. This is the core of it, and this is what the First Amendment protects. And that's why he dismissed the loss, the lawsuit at that point. Now, I want to say something, okay, this is just about the law, okay? The complaint is filed and now the church files a motion to dismiss. That's the very first thing. That's what happened in England. Right? And they won that motion to dismiss. Nothing has happened beyond that point other than the complaint is filed and the church files a motion to dismiss. Now, what this motion to dismiss is, is effectively what I would call a motion for summary judgment. And what that means is this is that we don't have, we're not having a trial, we're not having witnesses. What the church is saying is that if we accept everything that the complaint alleges as being true and if we draw all reasonable inferences from those facts in the light most favorable to Gaddy, okay, they get every benefit of the doubt in this motion. Even if we assume that all that's true and they get all the benefits of the doubt in their complaint, do they have a legally cognizable, a legally recognizable cause of action? Is there some law or theory of law that's accepted in the jurisprudence that they can bring an action against the church? And what the judge said on that original complaint was no, even accepting everything that they've said. They're well pleaded facts, which they have tons of in over 80 pages. Even if we accept them as all true and draw every reasonable inference in the light most favorable to Gaddy, the petitioner, they still don't have a cause of action because it's protected by the First Amendment. So that's. It's an extreme motion in the sense that you get every benefit of the doubt when you're gaddy. But if the judge says, even if we take everything that you say at Face value. You don't have to prove, you don't have to call witnesses or anything to prove it. We're just going to assume that it's true if you've pleaded it and support it in some fashion. But if you don't have a case, then you're thrown out. You don't get to go any further. You don't get to even proceed with discovery. You don't get to depose witnesses. You don't get to ask for or subpoena documents or anything like that. You're just out. And that's what happened the first time.

Motion to Dismiss and the Amended Complaint

John Dehlin [01:03:28] And so, and so someone might think, oh, well, the, you know, the church filed a motion to dismiss, the judge granted the motion to dismiss, case closed. But that's not what happens basically when, when Robert Shelby. And by the way, I've included these documents. If you go to mormonstories.org go to the post for this podcast episode in the show Notes. I've included three documents and one is Judge Shelby. I didn't include the original filing for the case, but then I did include Judge Shelby's granting of the motion to dismiss, where he gives his argument for why he's granting the motion to dismiss. And it's almost like he's basically coaching the, you know, Kay Birmingham or the plaintiff's attorney, saying, if you were to make this case, you've kind of missed it. You haven't really made your case. This is where I would kind that the case would need to be made. It could almost be viewed as signaling, but I know that's not the intent. It's more on his part, an explanation of why it didn't, in his view, reach, you know, reach the merits to proceed. But regardless, I guess there's a process for an attorney responding to a dismissal and keeping the case alive. And that's the second document that we've included, which is Kay Burning Hand's sort of revised case, which is the amended class action complaint, where she's basically responding to Judge Shelby's granting of the motion to dismiss with kind of a new and improved case. Is that right?

Radio Free Mormon [01:05:04] Yes. And first off, about judges signaling. Yeah, judges have been known to signal from time to time. I've experienced it myself. I love it when they signal something to me. I hate it when they signal something to the other side. But I don't think he was actually signaling something here because this is something that had been tertiarily addressed in the original complaint, but it hadn't been fully fleshed out. And we'll see what that is here in a second and why that is. And it was sort of raised in oral argument. And actually Gaddy, which represented by Kay Burningham, had already talked about filing an amended complaint. And I think she may have even filed an amended or a motion to file an amended complaint or an amended complaint by the time the judge issued his. His. His order dismissing the original complaint. Because he refers to that at the end of his. At the end of his order, and he says, you know, she's already filed it, but if she wants to leave it, she can. If she wants to withdraw it, refile another, that's fine. But he gives her leave at the end of his order to file an amended complaint, which is what she did. And I think that was in. Was that May of last year? Excuse me, May of 2020.

John Dehlin [01:06:13] Yeah, that sounds right. Okay, so RFM, again, this amended complaint is 83 pages. It's interesting. I think it has a lot of interesting historical facts there. I have some opinions about it, and I know that, you know, you're a gentleman, you're a professional, and we don't want to put you in the position of talking. And I'm not even trying to set it up where we're talking ill. Do you have any observations about the amended complaint, positive or negative or just from a professional standpoint or an effectiveness standpoint at least? I would like to hear, you know, to what extent you see a difference between the. The original filing and the amended complaint, but also anything about tone or substance or, you know, legal professional efficacy. And then I just had a couple things that struck me that I wanted to share, but I wanted to start with your sort of a. Sort of a recounting of the difference between the amended complaint and the original and any observations about it.

Speaker C [01:07:22] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:07:22] Well, I want to start generally and let the audience know what it is that the basis of this amended complaint is and how it differs from the original. Before I get into anything else, and I do have some thoughts about that, things that I thought were done. Well, things I thought may I might have done differently. But here's the substance. The substance is this. Is that in the amended complaint, what the allegation. And by the way, it involves a lot of the same facts. Right, but the amended complaint says this, okay? The First Amendment protects religious belief, Period, end of story. But there's an addendum to that, which is supported in case law, by the way, is that those beliefs have to be sincere. They can't be fake beliefs. They have to be sincerely held. That's the expression that's used. They have to be sincerely held religious beliefs in order to qualify for First Amendment protection. So let me give you an example of this, okay? We know that the First Amendment gives churches and religions a whole lot of protection, right? So let's just say that I, let's say marijuana is not legal. Let's go back a little ways and say, look, I know marijuana is not legal, but I really, really like marijuana. So I've got an idea. I'm going to create a church, the First Church of Marijuana. Okay? And the sacrament in my church is smoking marijuana. And you don't only do it on Sunday, you do it anytime you want at 5, 20, you know, whenever. And that's, that's my religion. And therefore, because it's my religion and I believe that smoking marijuana is part of my religion, therefore I have First Amendment protection. And you can't shut me down and the government can't interfere with my practice of my religious belief. Right? Okay. That's not going to work. It's not going to work for, among other reasons, because it's not a sincerely held religious belief. So whereas courts are not willing to go into whether a belief is valid. Let me find this quote here because I wrote it down. I thought there, there was a quote in one of these briefing that was really, really helpful. Yeah. The validity of a belief, whether it's true or false, the validity of a belief cannot be examined by a court or really anybody else cannot be examined. But sincerity of belief can be. Okay, so this is a huge distinction because if you can show or if you can plead, because we're just in the pleading stage now, right? If you plead. This is the amended complaint. If you plead that the LDS Church does not sincerely hold the religious beliefs in these three areas. First, vision, Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham doesn't sincerely believe the dominant narrative that they've been teaching, then it's not entitled to First Amendment protections. Now all of a sudden you're outside the First Amendment and you don't get to invoke the church autonomy doctrine because now you're, you don't believe it. So that's one thing. Okay. The second thing is this. The church autonomy doctrine basically says that once you're a member of a church, you've agreed to become a member of a church, then you're subject to whatever rules and regulations and government that that church has. Okay? Because you joined. And there are cases that deal with that, and I'm not going to talk about those right now. But, but the amended complaint says not only are these beliefs of the dominant narrative not sincerely held by the LDS Church and its leaders, that constitutes a fraud and not just a fraud on the members. And by the way, it's a fraud as alleged because not only are they sort of being disingenuous and making misrepresentations about what happened in these three areas, they also are omitting information that's relevant for a person making this decision about whether to believe it or not. Now this gets to the joining part, okay? So there might not be much of an action there. If a person's already a member of a church and the church is up there and they're doing whatever it is they're doing, they don't really sincerely hold these beliefs, etc. But this is kind of finally tuned down now in the amended complaint to joining the church, okay? Because what they're saying is that the church engaged in fraud because they don't sincerely hold these religious beliefs. They're giving, you know, the whitewashed, correlated version of history that we all know and love so well and that we taught on our missions. And that for me, I. I learned from the missionaries back in 1978. So we get this omitted whitewashed version of the church, which then induces a person such as myself or Gaddy. Gaddy is the, the, the plaintiff here to join the church. So they're not a member at the point that they're receiving this instruction from the missionaries, okay? They're not a member. So they're not already a member of the church and subject to the church government under the church autonomy doctrine, but they are being induced to join the church by fraud is the allegation. And the fraud comes from the misrepresentations as well as the omission of information that a reasonable person would think would be necessary in order to make a decision about the truth of what it is that's being presented. Now, if that's the case and this is the allegation, if that's the case, then it's sort of like an oral contract. When a person joins a church, I don't know if we actually sign our name on anything, but we certainly get baptized. Okay? It's kind of an oral contract. If a person enters into a contract by fraud on the part of the other party, under the law, that contract is void. Okay? And this is, this is an obvious example. You go to a used car lot, right? And you buy a car, and there's certain, certain representations made about the car. And once again, let's go to the Odometer rollback. Okay. This is, it's only got, you know, a thousand miles on it when actually has a hundred thousand because they roll back the odometer. Okay. You enter into contract, you sign it, you buy that car and then you find out it's falling apart and it seems like it's a lot older than a thousand miles on it. And then you go back and can you sue the car dealership? Absolutely. Why? You signed the contract. Yeah, but the contract was you were induced to sign that contract by fraud on the part of the car dealership, which means that contract has no validity, it is void. So you're not bound by that contract anymore. And once again, I'm sorry, just trying to put the final point on this and hopefully this is clear. The idea being that the LDS church is inducing people to join the church by fraud and therefore they're joining the church. That oral, that contract of joining the church is void and therefore the church autonomy doctrine does not apply and they have no First Amendment protections to hide behind.

John Dehlin [01:15:01] Okay, great. Now we're getting questions. And I, I had one too that's very similar. My, my dear friend Amber writes, does this, does this, doesn't this mean that it's impossible for an eight year old to enter into a contract? But also Jeff writes, so being born in the church is out of luck. My understanding from reading the case was, was that people born in the church are included in the class action lawsuit. They're not just targeting converts to the church. And so I just want to clarify, is it your understanding that this class action lawsuit that Kay Birmingham is saying only you only qualify for a class action lawsuit if you are a convert to the church? Or is he understanding that people born in the covenant, born Mormon, are also invited to be a part of this case?

Class Action Structure and Laura Gaddy as Plaintiff

Radio Free Mormon [01:15:51] Okay, well, once again getting technical. There's nobody in this class yet. Okay. There's only Gaddy. Who is the plan of Laura Gaddy? I think, and I believe that she was a convert to the church. It's much clearer if you have a convert to the church, as is my case, by the way. John.

John Dehlin [01:16:09] Yes.

Radio Free Mormon [01:16:10] Are you, you're a convert?

John Dehlin [01:16:12] I was born in the church. I'm a sixth generation Mormon. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:16:15] Okay. So that, that's going to become a little bit more hazy. I think in order to establish that, I expect that what the Gaddy lawsuit would try and say, the plaintiff would try and say is that you're not a member but you're being taught in primary. Right. You're growing up in primary. And you're hearing the same whitewashed version of events and therefore you should be included in the class. But once again, that's a step removed from a strict adult convert like I am, and I think like Gaddy is as well, because that's more clear cut, at least under the terms of this argument. So I don't know if this motion to dismiss is denied on the amended complaint and if the petition to have a class certified is established and it's going to be up to the judge to make the determination as to what the parameters of that class would have to look like.

John Dehlin [01:17:16] Let me just say that I'm reading the case now. It actually, on page 31 in my PDF, it gives a background to Gaddy and it says Gaddy was raised by a single mother who joined the church in 1979. So I'm going to guess that that Laura Gaddy was baptized at age 8 and that her, her mom had joined the church prior to her and that she was baptized at age 8.

Radio Free Mormon [01:17:41] Is it clear in the facts?

John Dehlin [01:17:43] I don't think, I don't know that it's clear in the facts, but it seems to talk about her, you know, attending primary and, and hearing primary songs as a child. All right, onward.

Radio Free Mormon [01:17:58] So this is another thing that I expect the judge would have to rule on. I mean, if he dismisses it, he doesn't have to address the issue. But if he doesn't dismiss it and he's got to certify the class and he's got to give the parameters of the class and, and he could say, okay, everybody's included. Or he could say, no, you're not included, unless what you're taught by the missionaries or something like that. So hopefully it would include everybody who joins the church under false pretenses. And by that I just mean that the church is, they, they know the other side of the history and they, the, the version, the whitewashed version that they're presenting, they don't have a sincere belief in the truth of it.

John Dehlin [01:18:44] Okay, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna just say, I'm pretty sure there's a section in this complaint where she describes what the class intended class is, and I'm searching for that now, but I'm just gonna say, and I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just gonna make it clear, my understanding is, is that, you know, multi generational Mormon born in the church that, that the intention is for the class to include them. Although I think you're very well right, that that as she's exploring as Kay Birmingham is exploring this case or laying it out. The case of missionaries and converts is included in the justification, but my understanding is it's not exclusive to converts to the church. But anyway. Oh, no.

Radio Free Mormon [01:19:29] And I don't think that it would be the. The class that she's seeking to certify. Cause your job, when you're an attorney. Attorney in a situation like this is you're. You're throwing every. You're asking for everything you could possibly, possibly get. And then it's up to the judge to say no to this or no to that or no to the whole thing or yes to the whole thing. But you cannot get something that you don't ask for. So I would certainly imagine she'd want everybody included in the class. Okay. Ultimately, it's up to the judge to decide.

John Dehlin [01:19:56] Okay. And then if I'm just gonna. Let me just try and restate what I've heard, and I'm sure I'm gonna get this wrong. But what I read in this document, and I think what I just heard you said, is that basically that the LDS Church, as an example, has taught the 1838 version of the First Vision for decades and decades now. That two personages appeared, whatever it is, the 1838 version, we all know it, but that in reality, and it actually talks about this, that the church is known. That the First Vision narrative is fraught, including with the example of Joseph Fielding Smith coming upon the 1832 version, where it's one personage instead of two, where the facts around the First Vision are different. That Joseph Fielding Smith ripped that account, the 1832 account, out of some book or journal that the church has hid from the members, knowing that the account is more fraught or complex or different. The church has knowingly taught the 1838 version, knowing that the facts were different. In other words. And this is kind of where I think the knives come out a little bit in Kay Birmingham's document. She's basically trying to make the case that the church has intentionally deceived and lied to its members by putting the 1838 version of the First Vision account in all its curriculum, in its primary and its Sunday school and its seminary and its religious instruction, in its public, you know, in its movies, on Temple Square, in its media. That it intentionally lied and deceived the world, investigators and members by knowingly teaching an inaccurate and fraudulent version of the First Vision. And same thing with the Book of Abraham. That the church knew that the. That the translation of the papyra didn't add up, but it knowingly perpetrated fraud by teaching in its curriculum and its missionary work and its media that the Book of Abraham was a translation when the Church knew that it wasn't. And even it goes on to talk about polygamy, that the church knowingly taught that Joseph Smith had one wife, Emma, while in reality the church knew that it was lying and deceiving people because it knew that Joseph had 30 plus wives, when in reality it was teaching that he had only one. And so it's not trying to challenge whether or not the first vision happened, whether or not the. And again, the Book of Mormon, that the Church explicitly taught that when Joseph Smith did the translation of the Book of Mormon, it committed fraud by teaching that Joseph Smith looked at golden plates, used a Urim and Thummim, when it knew that what really happened was that Joseph Smith used to the hat and the peep stone. The plates weren't even in the room. And by teaching, you know, at least in these four examples, in these, in these four examples, the church intentionally and knowingly taught fraudulent versions of the Church's core truth claims when it intentionally and overtly knew that what it was teaching was, was fraudulent and untrue and not substantiated by the historical record. And that's my, my sense of the overall gist of the argument that Kay Birmingham makes in the amended complaint that is available@mormonstories.org now. Is that getting even close to your understanding? RFM? And please feel free to correct or refine.

Radio Free Mormon [01:23:35] Okay. It is so close.

John Dehlin [01:23:37] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:23:37] But actually what you've done is done a brilliant job of arguing the original complaint. Complaint that got dismissed.

John Dehlin [01:23:42] Okay, so what, where, where, where did the, where did the amended complaint improve on what I just argued?

Radio Free Mormon [01:23:50] It is so simple and so nuanced. They're saying everything that you just said, except always circling it back to this, shows that these beliefs were not sincerely held. Right? That's how simple it is. But it's, but it's huge. It's huge because if you can, if you can now take all of that and get it out from the protection of the First Amendment and say if it's not sincerely held, there's no First Amendment protection, you're on an equal playing field with everybody else. If the judge goes with that, then now you're, you're cooking.

John Dehlin [01:24:29] Okay. All right. So now let's just briefly, can you talk about. Because like, someone could read this when I'll start here, I'll make it easier for you. And so first of all let me say the good I think that. Okay, going back a little bit. As someone who has been talking to Mormon, progressive Mormon and post Mormon now for 20 plus years about the Church's truth claims, my faith crisis happened while I was at Microsoft living in Seattle back in 2000, 2001, I learned about the book of Abraham for the first time then as a 30, 31 year old lifetime multi generational church member, I learned about the Peepstone in the hat back then again, 31 years old, never was taught this. As a Mormon I learned about polygamy and polyandry and Joseph's multiple wives for the first time back then, you know all of this stuff and the multiple versions of the first Vision account. I lived 30, 31 years of my life serving a mission for the church, serving in callings, going to primary, going to young men's and young women's to Sunday school, going through church education system at BYU and all the religious education classes, all the Sunday school, all the sacrament meetings, all the gospel doctrine classes. I went 30, you know, and by the way, my parents and my grandparents and my great grandparents, like I reached the age of 30, 31 as a well educated, successful, highly devout Mormon male, having never heard of any of this stuff in any credible way. So of course when that happened to me, I felt lied to, I felt betrayed, I felt like fraud had been perpetrated not knowing anything about the law, not knowing anything about, you know, any of this gaddy, you know, any the historical precedent. I just felt betrayed and lied. To add to that, that I started talking to people at Microsoft around me, friends in my ward, bishops, stake presidents. No one knew any of this stuff and well that I knew close to me except for some ex Mormon frankly who had found it in books. And then I started just getting on the Internet and finding out that there was this epidemic of people that A didn't know any of this stuff and that B, once they learned about it, felt lied to and betrayed by the LDS Church. That's what led me to leave Microsoft. That's what led me to start Mormon Stories podcast and frankly, that's what led me to work with Travis Stratford and Greg Prince and Hods Mattson and Marlon Jensen to do this survey to find out when people have left the church by 2011, 2012, 2013, what caused them to leave. We had the Swedish rescue coming out by 2011, 2012, and the survey of over 3,000, you know, Mormon and ex Mormon on the Internet vetted out and you can find this at why Mormon leave or why mormonsquestion.org just google it. You can find the preliminary results of this survey that the overwhelming finding was not that people were mad about Joseph Smith's polyandry and not the peep stones, not, you know, the first vision, the overwhelming feeling of anger and betrayal was that people felt lied to and deceived by the church. So I think it's fair to say that it's a very, very common experience for Mormon to feel betrayed and lied to. And that's the emotional underpinning for Tom Phillips's case and for Kay Burningham's case. You know, I think that there's a lot of credibility in that. Now having said all that, what I think is amazing about Kay Birmingham's case is that she's trying to represent these people. She's trying to do a better job than the Tom Phillips case did, which also is commendable because it's trying to represent a broad feeling of fraud and betrayal and anger and frustration and sadness. And she's trying to take it one step further by not just arguing, you know, Adam and Eve and Noah and a 6,000 year old Earth and all these things. She's trying to get to the heart of the matter, which is this idea of intentional knowing betrayal by Mormon leaders of the church in the 20th century, in the 21st century, so that she can hit the mark. So, and if you read through this, this 80 plus page complaint, you will find lots of very important, interesting history that, that actually exceeds all the things that we've talked about today. It's very lengthy in some ways, it's semi comprehensive and I think it's an important thing that Kay Burningham has done. So that's a lot of the positive. If I were to say what kind of took me back a little bit is some of the language that she uses in her complaint. And so what I was taken back by, I'll just give a couple observations and then I want to hear your, your, your reaction. It felt, it felt. I don't want to, like I'm gonna, I'll use some crude words that I don't want and I don't mean like sexually explicit words. I just mean some words that came to my mind were, and this is going to sound offensive, anti Mormon screed. And what I, what I meant is, is like, it's, I felt like she's using really harsh language. She's saying words like a concocted scheme of lies. She used the term fraud. But, but she she says she calls the church the Mormon corporate empire long she uses the phrase long standing coordinated lies. And I'll just read one sentence that I pulled out. She wrote the value of services rendered by the corporation of the president by unwitting lay Mormon. Plaintiff and those similarly situation also claim general damages for the cops non RICO fraud and or reckless infliction of emotional distress which have caused severe emotional harm for which the cop is is acutely aware. Now I don't know how much this type of language is standard in a legal case and I'm not trying to cast aspersions on what I think is a really well intentioned noble case, but one thing I was struck with was kind of the harshness of the language. It didn't read from what I would expect as sort of this measured legal attempt at sort of unbiased analysis. It felt like sort of this jargony ex Mormon, almost anti Mormon screed in terms of its verbiage and its rhetoric. And then you add to that it had a kind of a kitchen sink feel where every possible thing that could be added, you know, the Ensign Peak and the City Creek Mall and polygamy. And it just felt like, you know, even, even more than the CES letter, it tried to throw in as many digs as possible into the complaint that for me, number one, had a little bit of a tinge of sort of an angry ex Mormon kind of rant, but maybe to refine it a little bit for in terms of efficacy, it felt like it didn't really sharpen the arguments to the, the, the, the really essential points that would take this case from sort of falling into the trash heap of the Tom Phillips kind of like, you know, again, this fails again, this doesn't meet the criteria. It didn't quite sharpen and hone and narrow its arguments in as objective as a way as possible, as a professional way as possible to really give Judge Shelby the arguments that would be required to meet that bar of then proceeding to the next stage of adjudication. Now again, I'm not trying to trash or criticize Kay Burningham. I'm just telling you what my emotional and uninformed reactions were. As I was reading through it, as someone who's never been a lawyer and was just sort of had a set of kind of expectations that I brought with me. Now, having said all that, what do you want to add to amend, critique or take away from my reactions? You know, what were your reactions in that regard of sort of effectiveness and professionalism?

Evaluating the Legal Strategy of the Complaint

Radio Free Mormon [01:33:23] Oh wow. You want me to talk about another attorney's professionalism?

John Dehlin [01:33:27] Talk about why. Talk about why attorneys don't like to do that. And I'm not trying to get you to trash her or defame her. Talk about why attorneys might even not want to answer a question like I just asked, and that's okay, too.

Radio Free Mormon [01:33:42] Yeah, well, it's like Bill Murray says in Ghostbusters, before they go in the building, he says, okay, guys, whatever happens, let's try to be professionals. I had a. You know, I had a similar reaction, first off, to the. To the use of the word lies. That's just something that most attorneys try and shy away from. We'll use bigger words that don't seem to be so misrepresentations or things like that. If it's longer, it's not as bad. But lie. And throughout, lies, lies, lies. The. The. The phrase that caught my attention was referring to Joseph Smith as a malignant narcissist. Malignant narcissist. And I went, oh, my gosh. Well, this is kind of personal. What you get from it is that the person who's writing this is really personally and emotionally invested. It's not the dispassionate kind of thing that. That you typically. I think most judges want to see in briefing. It doesn't necessarily take away from the facts that are put forward in there. It's in addition to the facts. It shows probably more about the person who's writing the brief than it does about Joseph Smith. But I expect that the judge. If I was reading this as a judge, I'd probably go, oh, geez, you know, and just try and go put that to the side, and let's focus on the facts. Similarly, by the way, the church, in their. Responsibly, Their motion dismissed. They're doing the same kind of thing, not so much against Joseph Smith or of the church, but against. Or gaddy. But against the attorney, Kate Burningham, because they refer to her as a, I think, a disaffected, disgruntled member of the church. And, you know, this is the only reason she's bringing this lawsuit is because of this. And she's just upset about her loss of faith. Well, none of that has any relevance either, for crying out loud. And I expect the judge would look at that and go roll his eyes and say, yeah, now you guys are getting personal. I'm not interested in personalities here. I'm not interested in what your personal opinion is of Joseph Smith or the attorney on the other side. All I'm interested in is the facts and the law. Guys, come on now, let's just, let's try and be professionals here. But anyway, if that, if it happens in briefing, a judge can look at it and roll their eyes. If it starts happening in oral argument, then judges are more prone to like caution whoever the offending side is about, let's keep it clean. You know, let's, let's try and have some professionalism here. I don't know if that happened during oral argument.

John Dehlin [01:36:12] And why don't we see the church's written response? Does the defendant publish or is it published any type of. Because I would love to see the church's detailed rebuttal to Kay Burningham's two complaints. Tell us about why we haven't seen or read any written responses from the church on this.

Radio Free Mormon [01:36:33] Because they don't want to have to get there. We're not at that point in the case yet. They're doing a motion to dismiss saying she doesn't have a case.

Speaker C [01:36:38] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [01:36:39] She doesn't have any case. And if they get it tossed here, then they're clear. It's only if she wins or if they lose their motion to dismiss the thing, then it proceeds, then you're going to start getting into that kind of. Okay. That makes you call, you know, Dan Peterson on the hotline and say we need you as an expert witness.

John Dehlin [01:36:59] Okay. So I do hear you say that you noticed some language that maybe was a little bit inflammatory, like the narcissist kind of thing. But I'm also seeing comments that that's normal for there to be kind of passion on both sides and that to come out in the prose of the arguments. So as far as kind of making that extra case now to like responding to Judge Shelby's dismissal. Right. To what extent do you think, do you think Kay Burningham made the case that there was kind of knowing intentional fraud going on by LDS Church leaders? Do you have even a position or an opinion about how effectively that case got made in the response to the complaint, to the dismissal.

Radio Free Mormon [01:37:53] Right. The fraud that shows that the, the church did not sincerely hold these religious beliefs. I keep having to circle it back there because it's okay, because you know, the, the facts are largely the same, but you're pushing it through this funnel of insincerely held religious beliefs.

John Dehlin [01:38:12] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:38:12] Okay. And that's why it can very, very confusing as to what is this amended complaint versus what was the original complaint. If you just trying to second bite at the apple. No, she's not, she's using a lot of the same information, and she adds a lot more information in the admitted complaint, But a lot of it's the same that was in the original complaint in a different structure in order to make the allegation that the church did not sincerely hold these religious beliefs because of all this fraud and deception and withholding and omission and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. First off, I want to say this. Just because I might organize things differently, it doesn't mean that that's a slam on anybody. Different attorneys are going to organize things differently. And I've got to tell you this story. It's a personal story. I'm going through my second divorce. It's a trial. It's a divorce trial that I'm in the middle of. It's two years ago or so, three years ago, anyway, I can't remember. It's 20, 21. It's several years ago. Okay, so it's enough in the past. I can laugh about it now. But we're in the middle of the trial and I'm testifying. Okay? Now, I'm a lawyer. This is a somewhat complicated case, but I've lived it. I know everything backward and forward. I've got it in my head. A lot of it's financial numbers, etc. And chronologies on different things. Well, my attorney is a good friend of mine. His name's Richard. And I. He's. He's asking me questions, and I'm answering these questions. But when I'm answering the questions, I. I don't like the way he's asking the questions because he's telling the story in a different way than I want to tell the story. I've got a way to tell the story that I think is going to be more effective and more clear to the judge. But he's asked me these questions out of sequence with the way I want to tell it. So when he's asking these questions, I'm sort of jumping over here and I'm answering. I'm doing a Robert Millet. I'm answering the question that I think my attorney should have asked me so I can tell my story the way I want to tell it. And we go to recess and we go out in the hallway, and Richard virtually grabs me by the lapels. I jacket and pushes me up against the wall. And he says, look, I know that you know this case. I know that you have a certain way that you want to tell this story, but I have a way that I want to tell this story, okay? So just answer my damn questions, will you? Right and after that, I was much more compliant in answering his question. But this is to go. To say this is a story just to go show different attorneys are going to want to present things differently. It doesn't mean one thing's bad or one thing's worse or effective or less effective. It's just different way of approaching it. Okay, so having said that, what was your question?

John Dehlin [01:40:47] My question was, how effective was Kate Birmingham at addressing the central concern of Judge Shelby's.

Radio Free Mormon [01:40:55] Okay. And now the second point that I wanted to make on that question. Thank you. Is, is that if Judge Shelby is going to bite on this and deny the motion to dismiss because of insincerely held religious beliefs, she has got more than enough stuff in there for him to base that decision on. Okay, so it's not a question of, oh, well, if she done something differently, she might have won it, and if she, you know, she screwed it up because she didn't do it in this particular order or with these particular facts. No, if she's going to win on this, then she's got plenty of stuff in there for the judge to base his decision on that these were insincerely held religious beliefs. Now, having said that. Okay, having said that, I may not be an expert on First Amendment religion law, but I am kind of an expert on the church hiding stuff. I've done over 200 podcasts over at Radio Free Mormon, and primarily my bread and butter has been researching and pointing out ways and places where the LDS Church has hidden things from its members and even prevaricated. See, there I go again. Using euphemisms for a lie. Prevaricated about certain things in order to promote the whitewashed version of their history. Okay, now, the very first episode I did on Radio Free Mormon back in 2016, it was now dealt with Boyd K. Packer's talk in 1981. The mantle is far, far greater than the intellect. Now that's, of course, the. The talk that most people know, and they know one quote from it. Right? Not all truths are useful or some truths are more useful than others. One of those kind of things. You know that, right, John?

John Dehlin [01:42:35] Absolutely.

Radio Free Mormon [01:42:36] Okay. And in the amended complaint, they mention that quote from that talk. But that quote is just a bumper sticker from the talk. And if you just say it in a vacuum, I mean, who could argue with that as a proposition that some truths are more useful than others? Or, you know, obviously in everyday life, some truths are more useful than others. But if I had been doing this, and once again, this is me wanting to Tell the story, okay, is if I had been doing this briefing, I would have spent more time on that talk because that talk is exhibit A in the church deceiving, actively deceiving its members and hiding information from its members in order to keep its members from leaving the church. Because it's not just that quote, I spent like an hour, less than an hour in the first podcast breaking this down and I went back and re listened to it. So I'd hopefully be prepared. Prepared. And I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time here. But this talk is Boyd K. Packer. As an apostle, he's a representative of the church. He's talking to the CES employees and that means the BYU professors, it means the seminary instructors and directors, it means the institute, all the church teachers. And in this talk, what he does is he says this. He says, I'm an apostle. There are two different kinds of facts about the LDS Church. There are good facts that are faith promoting facts and there are other facts about the LDS Church that are not faith promoting. And I, as an apostle, I teach only the faith promoting side of it. I do not talk about those facts that are not faith promoting. And not only do I do it as an apostle, I'm telling you, each and every one of you, every teacher in this church, whether at college or seminary, all you teachers, you have to do this too. You have to teach only the faith promoting side of church history and you do not talk about the unfaith promoting side of church history. And then he goes on to threaten them and he says, if you teach this negative side of by and you don't publish about it either. You don't write about it, you don't publish it, and it doesn't make any difference if somebody else has already published on it before. You don't quote from them to talk about these negative things. Basically because. Well, not basically. He says it what was originally published could go out of publication and we want it to die there. And you don't want to spread disease germs by keeping it alive by quoting it in a subsequent publication of your own. So he says this, then he threatens them with their employment. He basically says, you know, if you do this against my advice and talk about the negative side of church history, you are probably going to be looking for a new job and you're definitely going to be spending an eternity in a place that's a lot hotter than the celestial kingdom. So he threatens them not only with their temporal income, he threatens them with their eternal salvation. Okay? So this is why this talk is. It's everything. This is not having to connect dots, okay, and try and prove a case. This is a representative of the church saying what he's doing and why he's doing it and telling all the other church teachers that they need to do the same thing. And then it was published in BYU Studies. It's a publication where you can actually go to what it is that he said and quote his exact words and you can show it. That's why it's been several pages on that, because that's your exhibit A, that's your smoking gun, I think, as far as I. My studies show me. And then I would follow it up. I would follow it up with what Elder Oaks said four years later to the same audience. Once again, he's addressing ces. It's in August of each year. So he's addressing the church education system. And by the way, that just made me think of when you're talking, quoting from that, the briefing and you said cops a couple times, I just want to throw in there that that's not police officers, that's Corporation of the President

John Dehlin [01:47:01] Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which is the formal name. People don't know this, but the church was incorporated. And by the way, Shannon Caldwell Montes, I sent her this. She's. She, she's the author of that amazing manuscript about the secret Mormon meetings of 1922 with B.H. roberts, where B.H. roberts is putting the Church on notice that there are deep problems with the Book of Mormon as a historical document. This came on the heels of the 1912 New York Times front page article where Egyptologists put the church on notice that the Book of Abraham hieroglyphs are not translated correctly. Guess what year the church incorporated as the corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Do you know the year RFM that

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:48] you must teach me?

John Dehlin [01:47:50] 1923. So it may just be a total coincidence, but it turns out that the church, the LDS Church, was incorporated as the corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And in 1923, a year after the secret Mormon meetings of 1922, where B.H. roberts put all the Prophet, the first presidency of the Quorum of the Twelve, and all the general authorities on notice that the Book of Mormon had deep problems as a credible historical document. Now, chances are that's total historical coincidence. Do you see there being any reasonable possibility that there's a connection between sort of a decade of the Church being put on notice that it could be presiding over some potential fraud and the Church's incorporation. Rfm. Do you think that's even reasonable or do you think that's just total coincidence?

Radio Free Mormon [01:48:47] I am not sure. All the legal ramifications of the reorganization of the Church in that legal structure, so I really couldn't tell. But I am aware that sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.

John Dehlin [01:48:58] Yeah, absolutely. Let me also just say that as I'm reading through this document, I'll refer you guys to kind of page four, 40, we'll say 41 to 44 or 45 of, of, of the complaint. What K. Tries to do is not just the Boyd K. Packer Packer quote, which she does mention, but she mentions Martin Harris saying that they're, you know, that even if there's a lie, I can make money out of it. She talks about, you know, Brigham Young saying that the Church has the greatest and smoothest liars in the world. She talks about Joseph F. Smith during the Smoot hearings, you know, acknowledging or, you know, lying about post manifesto polygamy. She tries to kind of go through the Church's history and call out any potential lies that she sees, including Joseph Fielding Smith's hiding of that 1832 account of the first vision. And then she goes into the 60s. She talks about the Leonard Arrington administration and how the Mormon Church shut down the Leonard Arrington administration of factual church history once they realized that, that the, the church history was kind of inconvenient. And that's when she gets to the early 1980s when, when Boyd K. Packer gives this seminal talk where he basically says, and this is a, this is a disturbing quote, quote, we are required to tell the truth, but we are not required to tell the whole truth. And she's saying this as an advisor to the church history department and to church history employees. And of course that becomes this talk, I believe it's called the Mantle is Far Greater than the Intellect, which then gets published in BYU studies. And then she goes on to talk about the excommunication of the September six of other BYU employees like David Knowlton. And she even talks about statements the, that Gordon B. Hinckley makes to a German reporter, you know, to other reporters where Gordon B. Hinckley makes public statements that polygamy is indoctrinal and other sorts of things that can be argued as kind of explicit overt statements of fraud made by top church leaders. Anyway, I just wanted to say that's a section of this argument worth talking about. And by the way, she also talks about the whistleblower complaint. So David Nielsen's complaint, this former employee of Ensign Peak, where the church, including Gord v. Hinckley tells the world, tells the members that tithing is never going to be used in the construction of, you know, the City Creek Mall. And in fact, we have the whistleblower David Nielsen going on record as saying that investments into Ensign Peak, which allegedly come from tithing funds, were in fact used to bail out overruns at City Creek Mall. So these are all the sorts of arguments that I read Kay Burningham is making, in addition to the Boyd K. Packer argument that the church has, in fact, committed knowing fraud. Your reactions, RFM Yes.

Why the Discovery Phase Is Critical

Radio Free Mormon [01:52:37] Look, I know that the petition only has one chance to get everything they want in front of the judge in this case. 2. But you understand, I think that some of those things are more probative than others. I'm not sure that statements, alleged statements, by the way, by earlier church leaders like Joseph Smith or Brigham Young are necessarily that important. I think what she's trying to portray is a pattern throughout history. I think that what's happened in the lifetime, more of her client is probably more germane to the lawsuit, but I understand why she's doing it. I don't think that what Gordon B. Hinckley says about polygamy not being doctrinal is either here or there. So some things are, I think, more significant than others. But it's hard to fault somebody for trying to throw everything in there because that's the only chance that you have. You don't get to, you know, come back later and present it to the judge. And you never know what a judge is going to think is important. Right.

John Dehlin [01:53:35] And I think it's kind of fun. I assume this is the real Kay Burningham joining us on YouTube, not in the video, but just in the comments section. We have a commenter on YouTube that describes themselves as Kay Burningham saying, good job so far. John, if you still want me to call in, I have some time. So if that is indeed Kay Birmingham. So she's saying we're doing an okay job so far of describing the case.

Radio Free Mormon [01:54:00] Well, good, good. I guess I'm a little bit, yeah. Trepidatious about that. Yeah. So what do you want to do?

John Dehlin [01:54:07] Yeah, so it. So, okay. One of the questions I had a couple questions that I think are. I had a couple questions from this that I just wanted to ask you. One of the things I understand from attorneys when they do a case like this is that the case itself, sort of winning the case is not necessarily always the Holy Grail of a case. What I understand many attorneys say is that winning the case against the church, though LDS church often is sort of met or a major component of winning a case is met when. When you're able to reach the discovery phase. Because, yeah, it's interesting to sort of like have a judge rule, okay, you can proceed with the case. But where it gets really interesting is once the discovery case of a phase of a case is entered into, that's when things can get really interesting. Tell us why RFM reaching the discovery phase of a case can be really interesting with someone like the Mormon Church. What happens in the discovery phase, and why can it be super cool?

Radio Free Mormon [01:55:21] Okay, well, here's the position I'm in right now. Okay. Is that you've got K. Burningham herself, who's making herself available to talk to you for a bit. So let me just. Let me just. I'm sure she would answer that question better than I could, except for the fact that the church, you know, doesn't want their leaders, who are in various states of mental acuity, to be deposed under oath. And obviously they would be witnesses, so they would be. Would say, motivated to settle the case prior to that happening. Okay, but let me just finish off this one thought, okay? And then I think we should try and get K on. The one thought is this is that you've got Elder Boyd K. Packer saying that 1981. Then you've got Elder Oaks saying the exact same thing in 1985. The interesting thing about Elder Oaks is now he's first counselor in the First Presidency and next in line to the throne. And what he says in his CES talk, which is called reading Church History, See if this sounds familiar. Quote, the fact that something is true is not always a justification for communicating it. Does that sound like a familiar concept? And he also says in another place, by the same token, some things that are true are not edifying or appropriate to communicate. That sounds kind of damning. I. I would have included this in the briefing if I had been doing it. And then he says this. This is. This is the. The real money quote. If those aren't good enough, Elder oaks says this 1985. Balance is telling both sides. Well, thank you for telling us that. But balance is telling both sides. This is not the mission of official church literature. Wow, that's quite an admission that they're only showing half the side that he knows that it exists. But that's not our mission of official church literature. We're not telling you both Sides, we're only telling you the one side and the one side that favors us. And then I would bookend it. And this is the last point I want to make here, right. I would book in it because you've got 1981 and 1985. So that's quite a while ago. I mean, it's almost 40 years ago and then 35 years ago. But bring it up to 2017. So this is the other book in which is Elder Ballard, November of 2017, doing the face to Face devotional for the young adults, right. And he says this we would have to say, right after mentioning Boyd K. Packer and Dallin Oaks, right. Then you quote him as saying Ballard 2017. We would have to say, as two apostles who have covered the world and know the history of the church and know the integrity of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the twelve. From the beginning, there has been no attempt on the part of the church leaders to try to hide anything from anybody. That's the other book in. Because now you've got church leaders just in my lifetime saying, we're hiding stuff from you. And here's why to Elder Ballard now saying, no, they've never, we've never hidden anything from the beginning. None of the apostles or leaders of the church have ever hidden anything from anybody. So that's a stark contrast. And it'd be a wonderful framework for everything else to be fit in. Because once you start with that and give the framework, now all of a sudden all these other places where the church is being dodgy and hiding stuff, now you're looking at it and going, this looks like more than a coincidence. It looks like they know what they're doing and all they're doing is following exactly what it was that Elder Packer and Elder Oaks said their goal was, which is, we're not going to share both sides of it. We're going to keep the faith demoting or faith destroying part of it away from you. So. And once again, circling this back in, this all gets into the sincerity of their religious beliefs. When they're presenting only one side of the issue, can they say that they're sincerely holding this belief when they know the other side that counters the side they're presenting and they're not revealing it to you. Okay, that's, that's the whole issue, I think. And are they using that as a, a deception to induce a fraud, to induce people to join the church and ultimately to pay tithing, which is of course the biggest money issue. That is basically all I had to say right now, John is available.

Church Leaders' Statements on Transparency and Hiding History

John Dehlin [01:59:47] What's that? No, no, I don't. I don't think she wants to come on right now, but we can have her on later. But I, I also wanted to add just a couple comments really quickly from the audience. Brent writes, yep, this quote from Ballard that you just read, rfm, really tipped the scales for him. So we have listeners basically saying that that quote where Ballard's saying basically church leaders had never been dishonest is really disturbing because some would say that's a super lie to lie about your lies. I also want to add the amazing Jonathan Streeter, who has a YouTube channel called Thoughts and Things and Stuff that you should all subscribe to. Jonathan, thanks for joining us. He writes, I would also like to see Elder Oaks statements that there's no obligation to tell the whole truth if it is against the interests of the church incorporated. And then Jonathan Streeter provides a link to that that you can see in the video. I just want to say that again, we have, as you've mentioned, Jonathan Streeter gives us another example of the church leaders literally saying, we are not going to tell our members and our investigators the full truth, and we're under no obligation to. To do so. We are. And that's what's hard for many people is we as Mormon growing up were taught that the partial truth is a lie, that when you tell the truth, you tell the full truth. And so we have the Mormon leaders teaching us that we have to tell the full truth if we masturbate, if we touch someone's boob in the backseat of a car, you know, we have to tell the full truth. And if we don't tell the full truth, then we're lying and we haven't repented. And thus we need to get the full punishment for telling the full truth. And that's what true honesty and true repentance is. And yet we have our top church leaders on record saying either in privately to church education employees.

Radio Free Mormon [02:01:44] Oh, that's not privately.

John Dehlin [02:01:46] What's that?

Radio Free Mormon [02:01:47] I'm just saying that's not privately. Sorry about the lawyer. We jumped on it. And publicly that's publicly.

John Dehlin [02:01:51] And publicly we have them saying we as church leaders are under no obligation to tell the full truth. And that's. That's kind of disturbing.

Radio Free Mormon [02:02:01] It is. And what Kate Burningham with her lawsuit is trying to say to them is, yes, you do. You do have an obligation to tell the whole truth. And that's really what this hinges on. And whether it's a sincerely held religious belief because it all has to come back to that, by the way. By the way, the things that makes it so rich, if it's not rich enough for your taste already, that when Elder Ballard says this, that there's no attempt on the part of the church leaders to try to hide anything from anybody, he's sitting right next to Elder Oaks on the stage when he says we would have to say his two apostles. The other apostle he's talking about is Elder Oaks, who's sitting right next to him. He is sitting right next to the guy who in 1985 says the church has no obligation to tell both sides of the story. And yet in that context, I mean, thank goodness it's not Elder Oak saying it that would make my head explode, I suppose. But Elder Ballard, sitting right next to this guy who made this statement back in 1985 and from anything I know presumably still holds the same beliefs, is saying that there has been no attempt on the part of the Quorum of the twelve from the beginning, including this guy sitting right next to me, there's been no attempt on the part of the church leaders to try to hide anything from anybody. And then he makes this wonderful statement, which I would have also liked to have seen included. Just trust us wherever you are in the world and you share this message with anyone else who raises the question about the church not being transparent. We're as transparent as we know how to be in telling the truth. We have to do that. That's the Lord's way. Quote, unquote from Elder Ballard in the same presentation, 2017. Can I. That's all I had to say about that. That would be the framework. Can I mention something about Joseph Fielding smith hiding the 1832 account of the first vision?

John Dehlin [02:03:50] Please.

Radio Free Mormon [02:03:51] Okay. The briefing does a great job of talking about this, and this is starting to get traction ever Since, I think, 2014 when Stan Larsen wrote the article that appeared in Dialogue. Just absolutely fascinating aspect of church history, where apparently, well, seems like Joseph Fielding Smith, who is the church historian, finds letter book one, which is 1832. Joseph Smith writing down his account of the first vision in his own handwriting, earliest account that we know of. And he only mentioned seeing one being. Joseph Fielding Smith finds this. It's on the first six pages of this book. Three leaves, six pages written front and back. Either tears them out, cuts them out, has him removed from that book, puts him in his safe in the church historian's office and restricts access to it. Nobody can see these unless they get permission from somebody above Joseph Fielding Smith. In the church hierarchy. And then in 1965, they're finally released. And it's only because news of their existence gets leaked to the public through an unfortunate series of events which I detail in episode three, I think it is, of Radio Free Mormon. But. But here's the really beautiful part. Okay, the beautiful part is something that I recognized. I think a listener brought it to my attention. Joseph Fielding Smith wrote an article for the Improvement era at the church magazine. He wrote a lot of them, but this One was in 1960. 60. And in 1960, he decides to write an article trying to prove that Joseph Smith was telling the truth when he came out of the Grove announcing that he had seen God and Jesus Christ as two separate beings. And his argument is this, is that everybody at the time of Joseph Smith believed in the Trinity. So there's no way that Joseph Smith, if he were making it up, would have come out of the Grove reporting that he had seen two separate beings. If anything, he would have reported seeing only one being. And the fact that he reported seeing two is evidence that he's telling the truth. If he were lying, he probably would have said he only saw one being. Now, this is being written by Joseph Fielding Smith at the very time that he has the 1832 account of the first vision mentioning seeing only one being locked in his safe so nobody else can see it. This is out and out deception. It is hard to believe for me personally that Joseph Hilling Smith had a sincere belief in the truthfulness of his representation at the time, while he knows that his argument depends upon his audience not knowing about the existence of the 1832 account of the first vision, which he has taken extreme steps in order to prevent them from knowing about. So going back to what Judge Shelby said about likening religious beliefs to Jesus Christ's resurrection on the third day, and that this is factual, but it's also religious. They're inextricably intertwined and it doesn't make any difference. You know, if, if that, if people think that's ridiculous, you still have a First Amendment right to believe it and to teach it. Now it's different. I think now it's different. In the amended complaint, what we're saying or what the gaddy is saying now is not that the church is teaching, just that Jesus Christ rose again on the third day. The church is teaching that Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day while they have the body hidden in their basement. That's a different thing entirely because now they don't sincerely hold the belief because they have the evidence. They know that it's not true, it's not complete, it's not a full truth, there's material omissions. And now we get into this idea of it's not a sincerely held belief.

John Dehlin [02:07:55] Got it. Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:08:00] So can I say something about Elder Snow? This is still the complaint?

John Dehlin [02:08:06] Yeah, sure.

Radio Free Mormon [02:08:06] Elder Snow, church historian after Marlon Jensen. He's since been retired. Okay. It complete. It includes as an exhibit a transcript of something that Elder Snow said about the. The church essays. By the way, the church essays themselves are interesting because they are sort of a tacit admission that the church has been holding back on releasing this information for, oh, decades, until, starting in 2013, they start releasing it, well hidden on the church website. Right. Where they start admitting to things that prior to that, they called anti Mormon lies. All right, so that's kind of evidence of deception, isn't it? And let me think here. That's actually why I did that Episode one on Radio Free Mormon, because the idea that was being promoted by certain apologists. Well, the leaders of the church, they're just finding out about this stuff now. They didn't know about it before, and as soon as they're finding out about it, they're releasing it in these essays. There's no attempt to deceive, because obviously, if they knew about it, but they're hiding it and not telling the members, it is deceptive. That's why I went to what Boyd K. Packer said back as far as 1981. No. At least back then, they knew about it and they hid it and they told everybody else who is a teacher in the church to hide it as well. This is not something that they're just finding out about. I mean, there might be a couple things that are coming to their attention or also the Seer Stone. I'll get back to Elder Snow here in a second. The Seer Stone is an interesting thing too, because the church has had possession of that Seer Stone, like, forever. I mean, basically, ever since Joseph Smith dug it out of the ground, they've had possession of the Seer Stone. And yet it's been hidden in the church safe along with, oh, I don't know, the 1832 account of the first vision. And God knows what else is in there, for crying out loud. But it's been hidden in the church safe. And then news of its existence, you know, got bandied abroad because of that pesky Internet, people were able to find out about it. They've certainly never had a representation of it or really talked about it, to my knowledge, in any church literature or church talks. And there might be a minor exception to that, but anyway, with few exceptions, I'll say, which are minor in nature, they've never talked about it, and they presented things that. That appear to be different. And so now they. They have an essay they released about the manner of translation where they admit that Joseph Smith translated with the rock in the hat. And as part and parcel of that, in 2015, in the Ensign magazine, they bring that seer stone out of the safe for a photo op, and they put it out there, get the lights, all right, Have a photographer take some pictures, put it back in the safe, and then they find. They. They show it. They. They print those pictures in the inside. So now, finally, people are seeing this. Well, at one and the same time, that's a good thing. I think it's a good thing that the church is being more transparent, regardless of whether they wanted to do it or they were forced to do it. Okay, I think it's a good thing. On the other hand, it also is an admission that they've had this the whole time. I mean, they're only bringing it out of the safe now, which means that all the time, they weren't bringing it out of the safe. They're not talking about it. They're giving all these pictures of different ways that Joseph Smith is translating the Book of Mormon by looking at the plates. Right. Instead of having the plates hidden somewhere else or under a cloth with his face and a hat. Now, that becomes somewhat damning as far as this lawsuit goes. I think it's sort of a damning admission because the admission means that you knew about it all the time, but you were concealing it and keeping it under wraps. Back to Elder Snow. Okay, so there is a transcript of his talking about the rollout of the essays, and he talks about how this was done for a specific reason and in this way, for a specific reason, because, you know, we don't want everybody to hear about it. We just want those people who have issues, they already know about the issues, to find our answers to those issues. And there's some good things in that statement. I thought that when I saw that it was going to be the Elder Snow statement, I thought that it was going to be this other statement, which I thought was also helpful, maybe even more helpful. It depends on your point of view. But this is actually from 2013, and this is found in the BYU religious study center. There was an interview with Blair Hodges, 11, 8, 2013. And this is what Elder Snow says there. And I think this is very, very revealing. My view is that being open about our history solves a whole lot more problems than it creates. Thank you, Elder Snub. He goes on, we might not have all the answers, but if we are open and now it says, and we now have pretty remarkable transparency, of course, what does that mean about what you've had up till now? Well, apparently it was less than remarkable transparency prior to now. If we are open, then I think in the long run that will serve us well. I think in the past there was a tendency to keep a lot of the records closed or at least not give access to information. This is Elder Snow, church historian. I think in the past there was a tendency to not give access to information. But the world has changed in the last generation with the access to information on the Internet. We can't continue that pattern. I think we need to continue to be more open. So he's not only telling us that the church has not been transparent that they've hid stuff, but that they are hiding less stuff now, but that they're still hiding stuff. Because he says, I think we need to continue to be more open. Well, if you need to get a

John Dehlin [02:13:57] little bit Orwellian, because what he's basically saying is we need to stop hiding and misleading people. But. But he wants to use euphemistic words. So continue to be more open is sounding all positive, when really what he's saying is we've been misleading people and hiding things. We need to stop that and start being. Start telling the truth and stop hiding things. Right?

Radio Free Mormon [02:14:22] Well, yeah. When you say complimentary things about a thing, sometimes it's obvious that the opposite applies before. I mean, I don't know if you've ever complimented your. Your wife, Margi, about her clothes or her hair or something, that she looks very nice today and gotten the response, well, what, you thought I was ugly yesterday, right?

John Dehlin [02:14:44] Have you ever heard that today you look great today?

Radio Free Mormon [02:14:47] Yeah, yeah. That's a trap, right? Don't fall into it. But he's sort of falling into that trap because by. By lauding the church's transparency to today, he's also saying that they have not been transparent in the past. And he's very kind and he goes ahead and he says why. He says, why they have to be transparent now in this generation, in the last generation, with the access to information on the Internet, we can't continue that pattern. So he is admitting, as a representative of the church in the church history department and as a 70, he's admitting exactly what's being alleged in the complaint.

John Dehlin [02:15:22] Yeah. One thing that I want to do really quickly, and I think this is really a central point, and I'm going to first start by sharing a comment from one of our awesome listeners. One of the most important assets on the Mormon Internet in 2020, 2021 is a website called LDSDiscussions.com which is actually separate from Bill Real's podcast, but it's this unnamed, amazing Mormon, progressive Mormon, post Mormon who does deep, rich historical analysis. So I want to tell everyone, please, if you love CES Letter, if you love Radio Free Mormon, if you love Mormon stories, check out LDS discussions.com for some of the best analysis on Mormon history. Mormon truth Claims. One of the things he does is this whole series of breaking down the Saints book and talking about deceptions in the Saints book. But anyway, it's a great website. LDS Discussions has joined us and he writes, there's a reason that the church historians have always been lawyers. They know exactly what they're doing. And I just want to I was going to ask you this and kind of bring attention to it. Marlon Jensen, sort of like one of the most well known and most beloved church historians. He was the president of the Church History, the executive director whatever of the Church History Department, presiding over the Church the Gospel Topics Essays project in their release. Marlon K. Jensen was not a historian, trained historian. He, he was an attorney. Snow, who you just mentioned, Stephen Snow, the successor, the successor to Marlon K. Jensen. Not a historian, not a trained historian. He has an accounting degree from the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University and a law degree from byu. And again, Richard Turley, currently, as I understand it, no, maybe he's not a church historian. Maybe he's head of pr. But again, noted, you know, noted church historian. I say that in air quotes. Richard Turley, the person Marlon Jensen brought to the Swedish rescue to answer the questions of Hans Mattson and the kind of the Swedish rescue insurrection. Again, Richard Turley, not a trained historian, a trained lawyer. Is there, you know, is there a method to this madness? Rfm, in your opinion, is there a reason why the church continues? And by the way, Joseph Fielding Smith, who was church historian for decades, not a trained historian, wasn't an attorney. I don't even think he graduated from high school. He was a loyalist for the church and the son of a son of a prophet, Joseph F. Smith, and grandson of Hyrum Smith, who was the martyred brother of Joseph Smith. But the point is, is there an intent to the church either not putting in trained historians as their top historians and. Or rfm, Choosing lawyers as the top historians for the church. Is there some method to that strategy or madness? Rfm?

Attorney Kay Burningham Joins the Conversation

Radio Free Mormon [02:18:59] Well, yeah, the method is that the lawyers are taking over the world. And the beauty of it is, is that lawyers can write history, but historians cannot practice law.

John Dehlin [02:19:11] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [02:19:12] So I don't know. I mean, Leonard Arrington, actually, he wasn't even trained as a historian. Technically, he wasn't a lawyer, thank God. But was he a statistician or something like that? Anyway, economics, economics, economics, economics, Right. But they had a really bad experience with him, and I think they don't want to repeat it, which is they don't want the church historian to be writing church history. What they want the church historian to be doing is writing church propaganda, damn it. And lawyers seem to be better at it than historians. Historians, that's another thing. Just briefly, in man was far, far greater than the intellect that Boyd K. Packer talks about. He likens historians to lawyers. Okay. And he's talking about Leonard arrington. This is 1981, right? When Leonard Arrington is busy having almost

John Dehlin [02:20:03] a package shut down. They shut down Leonard Harrington's history department in 8182, as I understand.

Radio Free Mormon [02:20:08] Yeah, it was in the process. And of course, Boyd K. Packer was leading the charge on that. And what he ends up doing is he says, look, historians. Historians are like lawyers. If a lawyer represented a corporation. He actually likens the LDS Church to a corporation in this analogy. It's wonderful. If a lawyer represents a corporation and by representing the corporation comes into possession of secrets that this corporation has, and then he takes those secrets and he communicates to the other side in a lawsuit, then that lawyer would be acting unethically and would be deserving of condemnation. And of course that's true, but the problem is he's liking it to a historian because he sees historians as lawyers. This is a good insight he just came up with. He sees historians as lawyers who have a loyalty to the church and are not supposed to be revealing the church's secrets in writing history. In the same way, a lawyer representing a church in an action should not be revealing their secrets to the other side. Absolutely not. But what he does, the mistake he makes, I think there is that a historian's loyalty is supposed to be to the truth, not to a certain version of the truth that's promoted by an organization or that helps an organization look good or not look bad. That's the. That's the mistake he makes, I think, in that Analogy. But that's where he comes from. He sees historians as. They should act in the same way as lawyers. And afterward, and I think even before him, after Leonard Arrington. Yeah, it's lawyers all the way. Because lawyers understand their place and to whom their loyalty lies.

John Dehlin [02:21:53] Yeah, yeah. And. And so, yeah, I think it's deeply. I think it's a. It says a lot that. And by the way, we have another comment from Zach D. One of our listeners. He writes church historian. Currently is LEGRAND R. Curtis Jr. Also an attorney. So we've got like three or four of the church's top historians for now decades have all been attorneys. And I think that should say something to orthodox, active believing Mormon to the world, to progressive and liberal Mormon, that the church continues to not have historians be their historians. They continue to choose to have lawyers. And nothing, no, again, nothing against lawyers. I love you, rfm. I love lawyers. I almost went to law school myself. But lawyers pick a side and defend the side. They don't have their core allegiance necessarily to the truth. I think that's a great point. I appreciate LDS discussions for sharing that. I appreciate Zach for filling in that information. Suzanne writes, I want my hours of service and my tithing back. Thank you. And now rfm. I'm going to pull a little bit of an audible. I hope this is okay. Kay Burningham has agreed to join us, and she's only joining us by audio. But Kay, originally I think she had a scheduling conflict, but now I think she's freed up and she wanted to call in and maybe share a thing or two. So, Kay, can you hear us?

Speaker C [02:23:34] I don't know. I can hear you, but can you hear me?

John Dehlin [02:23:36] We can hear you. Great. Welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Speaker C [02:23:43] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:23:44] And you don't have the audio on a computer and your phone, right? It's just on your phone.

Speaker C [02:23:48] Right.

John Dehlin [02:23:49] Okay. Because I'm hearing a tiny bit of. Are you hearing echo rfm?

Radio Free Mormon [02:23:52] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:23:54] Okay. So I'm going to try and turn down my audio a little bit. Kay, maybe if you can turn down the speaker on your phone a tiny bit, it may help reduce the echo a little bit. Brent is saying the audio is a little bit buzzy, that he's hearing echoes as well. So, Kay, let's have you talk just a tiny bit more and see if we can get the audio. Okay.

Speaker C [02:24:16] Okay. Does. Does that sound better?

John Dehlin [02:24:20] Okay, so if you turn. Yeah, if you turn your speakers down. Rfm, is that better for you?

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:24] It was. There was just a little bit of an echo at the End.

John Dehlin [02:24:27] How about. So, okay, so listeners are saying, that's better. K. If we can, why don't we just have you jump in, tell us if. If we've got things wrong, if we've got things. Okay. Or any important things you want to add or take away from what we've said so far.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:42] Sure.

Speaker C [02:24:43] Basically, I just caught the last maybe 20 minutes of your presentation, and I intend to watch the whole thing because I think you're. You're doing a good job between the both of you, and I appreciate the support. As attorney of record, I can only comment on what is a matter of public record. And of course, the pleadings that you have listed there under your podcast are a matter of public record, including my opposition to the church's motion. And one thing I'd like to comment on. You were mentioning the tone of the complaint or the amended complaint. The. The complaint or the amended complaint is the initial pleading. And I'm sorry, I don't know the name of the RFM podcaster. What's your name, sir?

Rule 11 Sanctions and Church Legal Tactics

John Dehlin [02:25:30] He goes. He goes by rfm. He doesn't share his public name.

Speaker C [02:25:34] Okay. Rfm. He knows this, of course, but the first pleading or the first filing in a case is the complaint, or in this case, we were granted leave to amend. So it's now the amended complaint. And so there you do. You throw out every claim or cause of action and everything you think that will legitimately stick. One of these could stick and we could go forward. But where the argument, where the measured legal argument comes in is in the motion by the church to dismiss the case and my opposition to that motion. And that's where I have. My tenor is much different. When I was drafting the complaint and the amended complaint, you have to know the backstory. And I'm going to tell it as attorney of record, I can't comment on strategy or anything in the future. But this is what happened. The church. Actually, as soon as we served the church with a complaint, their attorney called me threatening Rule 11 sanctions. And RFM knows what this is. This is a sanction. Yes. They were claiming that the lawsuit was frivolous. And I told Mr. Jordan, who's the attorney for the church, that, well, obviously we both know the law. We've read the same cases, but I have a different interpretation than he does. And I tried to be very respectful, and he just, he didn't agree with me. And so after a few weeks went along, then he sent me a letter threatening the Rule 11 sanctions. And the case went along. They filed their original motion to dismiss. I responded to that, and I can't remember at what point it was, but it was after the amended complaint had been filed and after I opposed their second motion to dismiss or no, excuse me, before I opposed their second motion to dismiss, that they actually drafted a motion, sent it to my office, and said, we're going to file this right away. There were three attempts to dissuade me from going forward with the case. I just did not feel like it was frivolous. The test for frivolousness under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is whether or not you can make a good faith argument to support your claim or if the law is not settled in the area that you're talking about or that you're litigating, if you have a good faith pathway to get through. And I'm simplifying this. I'm putting this in layman's language. I don't have Rule 11 right in front of me. Maybe you could help RFM, but. But it wasn't frivolous.

Radio Free Mormon [02:28:05] And Kay, isn't the third. Isn't there a third element there about if you, even if it does conflict law, that with standing law, that you have a good faith belief that that law should be overturned?

Speaker C [02:28:15] Yes, exactly. Those three things, if any of those apply, it's not frivolous. And I, I have to say I had all three, because I don't think they're interpreting it right. Even if they are, I think there is a way to make new law. I think it needs to be clarified or even overturned. So in any event, they finally dropped it after we filed our opposition to the amended complaint, and we made some really good arguments there, I think.

Radio Free Mormon [02:28:38] When you say they dropped it, did they ever file that motion for sanctions?

Speaker C [02:28:43] No, they didn't make one. Well, I think it was just. They were just trying to threaten me into submission. They see me as a sole practitioner. I'm female. I went to BYU law school. I was a BYU cheerleader. I mean, my background is not that of a serious lawyer, but I have practiced for over 30 years, almost 35 now. That tells you how old I am. And I initially was with a firm in San Diego practicing insurance defense litigation. And I've had a lot of jury trials. And I think they were just trying to intimidate me. So I'm letting that down because I think that was a really, really bad tactic.

Radio Free Mormon [02:29:21] Well, I don't. I don't know that there's a rule on it, but it seems to me that their threat to file A sanction against you itself was frivolous.

Speaker C [02:29:30] Exactly. That was the argument I was going to use, and it never came before the court. And in fact, in the first oral argument on the original complaint, David Jordan, the attorney for the Church, alluded to the fact that it was frivolous. And Judge Shelby became indignant and said something to the effect that if you think there's no basis for this claim, you need to file A Rule 11, and it needs to be before me, because it wasn't before the court. He had never filed it. So, yeah, I thought that was very unprofessional.

Radio Free Mormon [02:30:01] Good for the judge.

Speaker C [02:30:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:05] If. If Kurt McConkey is involved representing the church, or if the Church is using an inside legal counsel or both, I

Speaker C [02:30:13] can tell you what I know. And this, too, would be a matter of public record. David Jordan from Stol Ribs, which is a firm, I think it's a regional firm. I don't think it's national. But I could be wrong. He, I believe, used to be with the DOJ as the U.S. prosecutor or a U.S. prosecutor. He's about 70. He's a good Mormon. I believe he served two missions. He is lead counsel on the case. Now. I didn't know or even Wonder if Curtin McConkie had anything to do with it until at oral argument just last week. It was Tuesday the 5th, when they made their appearance. Two attorneys From Curtin and McConkey were also appearing, just to listen, I believe, and maybe take notes. But they also were referenced by Mr. Jordan. So I do believe there's some involvement with them. They have a whole constitutional law department, and they, you know, they've been representing the Church forever, so I'd be surprised if they're not in there somewhere, but

Radio Free Mormon [02:31:12] I can't say so would I. I would expect that they'd be bouncing these ideas off of everybody they possibly could.

Speaker C [02:31:18] Right.

John Dehlin [02:31:19] Kay. If there was a range from, like, the church are sitting there, you know, on the one hand, the church laughing at this and saying this is dumb and silly and just haters trying to persecute us, let's say that's one extreme, and they are not taking it seriously and they're kind of making a joke about it to, like, they're trembling in their boots, afraid that this is a really serious, significant problem. And I know I'm asking you to speculate. Do you have a sense for. For whether they're. They're concerned about this case or just kind of blowing it off and not being super serious about it?

Speaker C [02:31:52] You know, I. I really can't speculate. I think at first that they were blowing it off. I think at first they just wanted to get rid of it. And they do that with. With other people. I have heard suggest a Rule 11 or threaten a Rule 11, but I don't know how they're feeling now. The oral argument on the fifth was two and a half hours, and I can say that Judge Shelby's tentative was to dismiss most of our claims, but to allow one of them to go forward. And then we had oral argument on that, of course, I argued that all of them should be preserved and that the motion to dismiss should be denied as to every cause of action. Plead pleaded in the amended complaint and Jordan argued against the one that he was inclined to deny the motion for. And I can't really tell you what that was because he hasn't rendered his decision, and I don't think that would be right.

Radio Free Mormon [02:32:52] I'm sorry. Okay, you piqued my curiosity now. Are you saying that Judge Shelby from the bench, while you were arguing or sometime during the hearing, said that he was leaning toward denying the motion to dismiss? On one ground, yes.

Speaker C [02:33:08] That was his what's called a tentative decision. And he offers that at the beginning of the argument. And again, I don't want to say anything more than that because he has yet to issue an opinion other than I argued again that all of the claims should be the motion to dismiss as to all of the claims should be denied. The church argued that as to this one claim, even that should also be granted the motion to dismiss.

Radio Free Mormon [02:33:39] Right. So there's. There's potentially a glimmer of hope. At least he's indicating that as of that point, he's considering ruling in your favor on one of your allegations.

Speaker C [02:33:51] That was what he said is his tentative. And again, he can change his tentative. He can do something else.

Radio Free Mormon [02:33:56] Well, we know that after the administrative judge reversed field on the decertification of the BYU pd, don't we?

Speaker C [02:34:03] Oh, right, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:34:05] They can say one thing. It doesn't make any difference what they say. It's what they end up ruling that matters. Right.

Speaker C [02:34:10] And historically, Judge Shelby took I believe it was 45 days from February 13th to issue the written opinion on the original complaint. So I expect it'll be at least a month, if not more on this one before we get to the decision.

Radio Free Mormon [02:34:28] Can I just give it. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, John.

John Dehlin [02:34:31] Go ahead, rfm.

Radio Free Mormon [02:34:32] I'll ask after you got two lawyers convincing. Now, can I just give us my opinion on the air that I Consider it highly unprofessional to threaten another attorney with a motion for sanctions that you do not intend to bring.

Speaker C [02:34:49] Yeah, I do, too. I mean, you know, and at this point, I think it would be. It's laughable for them to file it because we do have some arguments, as you have explained, the sincerity argument, and there's also the argument on material omissions. And there, the question is whether or not there's a duty that the church owed under RICO. A duty is not necessary in the 10th Circuit, but under Utah law, the issue of duty is more complicated. So, yeah, I think it's ridiculous to file a Rule 11 on this case.

Can Tithe-Payers Recover Money Through the Lawsuit?

John Dehlin [02:35:27] Kay, one of the biggest questions that I always get from people is, can I get my tithing back? And we just have, you know, just right now, you know, we have a listener saying, you know, how do I get that back? And meaning is tithing. What can you say about what types of reparations this class action lawsuit is potentially seeking for the participants in the class action lawsuit and how it relates to people's tithing, their back tithing and anything you are able to share about the topic of tithing and the discussions you've had with Judge Shelby and the arguments in the case relative to tithing?

Speaker C [02:36:17] Well, sure, in the complaint and now in the amended complaint, we have seven causes of action, which are just seven different ways of getting at the damages, one of which, and the biggest of which is the tithing. So we want to get everyone's tithing back for as long as they paid it. But we have to have a theory, a legal theory upon which to do that. So we have different legal theories, and it's really complicated to get into that now. It's just if we prevail on any of the fraud claims, then we have a legal theory to get the tithing back. Because as RFM said, if you're induced to join or remain in the church, and this is. Is what I've explained, and because the pleadings are so dense, I understand that you may not have picked up on this, but as a child, certainly you follow your parents. You don't have the wherewithal to enter into a contract. So most of us were either, well, there were one of two ways we were converted as an adult or we grew up in the church. And both of those ways we were susceptible to what the church taught. And if they didn't sincerely believe what they were teaching us, and if they had a concerted effort to deceive us and to omit facts that were Very important, then we have a basis for claiming that tithing, whether we were a born in the church, Mormon, or a convert. And so we're claiming all the tithing we can. The problem is the statute of limitations on the fraud claims related to the stone and the hat and the First Vision and the Book of Abraham, because this material has been out there for a while. There are only certain people, like my client, Laura Gaddy, who only discovered all of this in 2018, that can bring these claims within the three or four year statute of limitations that applies, according to which claim in the complaint we're talking about. For instance, WECO is a four year statute of limitations. Utah state fraud claims have three years. So if you discovered the case way back when you did, John, you're too late, because you should have brought your claim against the church within three or four years. And so we've narrowed the class action to those who only discovered and resigned because we don't want to get people who don't think it was a big deal that they were, you know, that things were misrepresented. They could stay in the church, but for the people that just could not, because of their integrity, stay in a church that taught them one thing and it turns out to be completely wrong, and they based all their beliefs on these facts that were taught and they resigned. They felt so strongly about it. If you didn't resign until a certain date and didn't discover the fraud claims until after August 4ths in the complaint of 2015, and that's paragraph 167, this is based on my recall in the original complaint. I'm not sure the paragraph number in the amended complaint. But if you resigned and discovered these fraud claims before late 2015, you're just too late to bring a case in Utah anyway. I don't pretend to have expertise in other jurisdictions and I'm not giving legal advice in other jurisdictions. So you would have to check where you lived and what happened in the state that you were at or the country you were at. But for many of the people, they're too late. But Laura was just going along, teaching in the church and living a life where she dedicated hours and hours, you both know, to service and never heard about any of this stuff. She lived in North Carolina. She never even saw the picture of the Rock and the Stone that was published in the Salt Lake Tribune in August of 2015. So she did not know. And we're claiming that she had no reason to know because she trusted her leaders. They invited our trust. They said we will never lead you astray. And my argument in the opposition is that when you invite that trust, a duty arises when you only tell half truths or partial truths. There's an Amshur section right on point. No case law in Utah has interpreted that section unfortunately. But it basically says if you only tell a half truth or part truth, partial truth, a duty arises to make a full disclosure so that the partial truth isn't misleading. And that's the theory of at least two or three of our other causes of action in the amended complaint. Okay. That doesn't call for an adjudication of whether the matter was true or false. It's would a reasonable person want to know these other things before acting, before joining the church, before donating their lifetime and their finances to support the church? That's an objective standard. It has nothing to do with the truth or the falsity of what was withheld. Would you want to know that there was a stone that was found in a well that had been used to search for buried treasure in the process of creating the Book of Mormon? Would you have wanted to know that when you were being proselytized by the Book of Mormon missionaries or growing up in the Church? I think so.

John Dehlin [02:41:34] So this is great, Kay. And I'm so grateful you're on, and I'm so grateful you're doing this, and it's so nice to hear from you. I. I would welcome you to come back to Mormon Stories. And also in addition to today, we'll have you for as long as you want. In addition to today, have you on for a full extensive interview. We're getting a lot of questions in about who qualifies. Then can you give our listeners a full. If somebody wants to join the case now, who qualifies and if somebody needs to do something to qualify, what do they need to do? If you're able to talk to that.

Speaker C [02:42:12] Yeah. Well, the motion for class certification is on hold right now. As soon as we filed, there was a stipulation between us to hold off on discovery. And I can't remember right now, but I whether it included the motion for class certification. But the theory was, is that we were going to litigate this First Amendment issue because it's so important and just the core of the case. And so whereas ordinarily class certification motions are brought early on in the case, this one's not going to be brought until later. And it's up to the plaintiff to show that Laura Gaddy is representative of the class and that it is appropriate for a class action. So we don't know if it will be a class action, if it'll be certified. That's why it's called a putative class action or potential class action. If people are interested in being on. We have an email list where we just keep people updated as to the status of the case. They can go to my website, which is kburningham.com and at the bottom of the landing page there's a contact window and you just, I think there's even a link to the Gaddy vs copy case. Click on that or just fill in a message and say, I'd like to be added to the list. And what would be helpful if you can put in when you resign. Because we're only representing people who have resigned and when you resigned and then we can get back to you. It takes a while sometimes, but we'll get back to you and add you to the list. And then, then if, if you're in the class that the court determines they can certify, you'll get notice at that time. So you don't really have to do anything now. But if you want to kind of follow along and see what's going on and be in our database, you can just add your name by going to my website. Does that answer the question?

John Dehlin [02:44:13] Yes. That's great. And people are asking, should they resign now if they want to be in the case? If they have learned just over the past few years, some people are saying, should I go resign if I, if I want at some point to be a part of this case?

Speaker C [02:44:26] You know, we cannot encourage people to resign. That's a personal decision. I can't even comment on that. You have to decide for yourself if you think that resignation is what you need to do. And we will talk to you if you resign. Otherwise we can't. And there, there are different other people out there know, know how to do that. So I cannot help you resign.

Radio Free Mormon [02:44:49] Yeah. And since I'm a sort of a third party commitzer here, I would say that even as the allegation is that the church is not sincerely holding these religious beliefs, any resignation has to be sincere as well and not just done for legal benefit. It has to be really. I just found out about this in the last few years. Church has hidden it from me and I am resigning because I was misled.

Speaker C [02:45:10] That's right.

John Dehlin [02:45:13] Okay. And of course QuitMormon.com is a way that people are choosing to resign these days. But again, you know, what I'm hearing is listeners don't go run out and Just resign for insincere or inauthentic reasons. This case is for people who sincerely, conscientiously have objected or object to not being fully informed about the church's truth claims, who have chosen or choose to resign on, you know, within the past few years on those grounds, and who. Who feel like they are, have been betrayed or misled and who feel like they deserve reparations for that treatment.

Speaker C [02:46:00] That's right.

John Dehlin [02:46:01] And the website again, is kburningham.com to sign up for that email list or to follow.

Speaker C [02:46:08] Follow.

John Dehlin [02:46:08] What's going on, Kay, is there anything you want to share or can share about your optimism or pessimism or just predictions about the prospects of the. Of this case going forward?

Speaker C [02:46:24] Only that once we receive Judge Shelby's ruling, his written ruling, we'll look over the transcripts. I've ordered the transcript for the hearing and the transcript for the original hearing. And if it's appropriate, we will appeal. If not, if he allows us to go forward, depending upon how that happens, we will go forward. But we're not going to just quit. We're not going to go away. We're going to see this to the end. So that's really all I can say on that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:46:56] Can I say something about Kay that she probably would not be saying about herself here?

Speaker C [02:47:01] I don't care.

Radio Free Mormon [02:47:03] Okay, what's about last Saturday night? No, seriously, folks. K is an attorney who is. She has devoted already not just hundreds of hours, but thousands and thousands of hours into this case. She has received not one dime for any of this. You can correct me if I have any of this wrong. She has not received one dime for any of the work that she's put into this, for the thousands and thousands of hours, for the briefing, for the research, for the appearances, for the argument, for having to deal with church attorneys, which should be like double pay. But she, but she's doing all this because she believes that she has a case against the LDS Church. And if this ends up being dismissed, well, yeah, she can appeal it, which means she can pour hundreds and hundreds more hours on top of the thousands of hours that she's already done that she's not going to get paid for, with the hope that eventually a judge either here or above will agree with her that she does have a case that should not be dismissed, there is a cause of action here, and that then she can proceed forward. But really all that that does is that now opens the gate to even more work. I don't care how many thousands of hours she's put into it up to this point. This is going to be double or triple that before she can get to a point where it's ready to go to trial and maybe hopefully see any kind of remuneration for her client or clients as the case may be at that time, which is the only time I'm betting that Kay can hopefully can hope to see any kind of remuneration. So I just want to let everybody know that if you're not familiar with what goes on behind the scenes in a lawsuit of this type, that Kay is being incredibly not just selfless. I know there's a hope for something at the end, obviously, otherwise nobody would do it. But she's done so much work, she's done so much briefing and she's going to continue to do it for nothing so far except the hope of bringing a case on behalf of her client which she believes in and believes has been wronged by the LDS Church and bring that to trial. Do I have any of that wrong, Kay?

Speaker C [02:49:12] No, generally that's, that's correct. And it has been, I would say close to a thousand hours. But there is one thing, though. There was a, that is a little sort of a qualification to what you said. There was the Ex Mormon foundation set up a on their webpage. I'm not I saw it one time, but they have a place where you can donate to support the case. And I don't think there's been much, much going on there. But that's on their website. You can go there to donate if you support case. But for the class action representatives, we don't. I have to certify that I have the resources to see this all the way through. As to the class action participants, and yes, that is an expensive matter. And like I say exmormon.org on their landing page they have a place where you can donate to support and there's been a few donations, but it's nothing really much because I don't think people know about it and I can't really advocate that because I don't know enough about it. But so yes, it's a labor of love. I went to BYU. I went to BYU Law and I was taught these things and in 2004 or so I discovered the fraud. And so yes, there is a bit of a passion in my complaints but, but it is personal to a degree.

Radio Free Mormon [02:50:40] Kate, what did you think when you saw the the motion to dismiss or some of the briefings from the church where they characterized you as a disgruntled former member who's Just sort of lashing out to get back at the church that she feels let her down.

Speaker C [02:50:55] Well, I'm not. I mean, I, I've tried a lot of cases. I had a case in front of the Utah Supreme Court that made case law on a man who had outrageous radiation. And I won a unanimous verdict. I'm a trial lawyer, and so this is not true. But I take cases that I'm interested in, so in that way everyone can see me. Now, is that true? No. Just hear me. I just got a. Okay, you're in the show. Nevermind. I just got a new message from you. But that's what I do. I take cases that I'm interested in. I'm able to do that. So that didn't really bother me. I just sort of. I let it roll off my back because I know how they are.

Radio Free Mormon [02:51:41] Yeah. And how are they?

Speaker C [02:51:44] They're true believers. They, they. It seems like they believe that their arguments and their interpretation and everything they do is sanctioned by God and therefore be followed. That's the sense I get.

Radio Free Mormon [02:52:02] Okay, well, of course, this is the typical tactic that anybody takes. If somebody, you know, quits a job because of harassment of some sort, then of course the people representing the corporation are just going to say, well, they're a disgruntled former employee and they're just lashing out because they're, they're upset that they, they, they got fired or something.

Speaker C [02:52:22] Right, right.

Radio Free Mormon [02:52:24] I was just kind of surprised to see that in legal briefing against an attorney who's representing the plaintiff.

Speaker C [02:52:31] Well, I think it has something to do with some writing I've done before too, but I don't need to discuss that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:52:38] Okay. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:52:40] Kate, I have a k. I have a strange question that I hope is okay to ask. And I guess this is both for you and for rfm, let's just say. Okay, let's just all hope. I, I do think, you know, as someone who. Let's just say I'm trying to put my objective hat on because of course, none of us are objective, but I can strive for objectivity. As someone who genuinely, as a believer, felt betrayed and like fraud had been, you know, committed upon me, you know, two decades ago, and as someone who's spoken with tens of thousands of, you know, Mormon over the years that have also felt like they were betrayed, like they were not told the truth, who feel convinced that the church was dishonest and withheld truthful information or misled them, you know, let's just say that all of us hope that there is some accountability towards the church and, or that there are reparations that people can, some groups of people can get reparations even if it's not us. Let's just say that that's all true, that we do want there to be a reckoning, a true atonement, as the Church likes to use that term, atonement and true repentance, which includes making good on the mistake. Let's just say that we all hope that this case is successful. Now I'm going to ask a harder question. Let's say worst case scenario, this case isn't successful. Is there anything about the legal system that would either forbid or allow future attempts at a similar type of case? Or is this like some type of case or are there some type of structure in the legal system where like this is the one shot and if this isn't successful, then all the rest of the cases are going to be denied or turned down and they won't even have the possibility of being successful. Are you able to speak to that? And then rfm? Yeah, I'd love to get your view on that as well.

Speaker C [02:54:47] Yeah, absolutely. I know what you're saying. And in 2018, SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States came down with a case called China Agritech. And I forget who the defendant was, but before China Agritech, people could file class actions based upon a certain set of facts. And once filed, that would toll or sort of pause the running of the statute of limitations. After China Agritech, Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion and that case held that. And I'll put it in the context of my case. Laura Gaddy filed this claim on August 5th because it was a weekend, so the deadline would ordinarily end on Saturday because of the local rules. It ran to Monday. She filed it August 5th of 2019. That stopped the statute of limitations from running on the fraud claims, at least in Utah, for the fraud and the RICO causes of action. Now, it used to be that that would pause the case for all other potential class actions everywhere. But after China Agritech, that's no longer the case. And if the class is not certified, an individual could file a claim based upon the same types of theories, the misrepresentations. That is, if it doesn't get dismissed by a court of last resort as we appeal all the way, and that decision is binding. But if it's not certified, then somebody else could theoretically file. But there can't be another class action based on these misrepresentations because I believe in most cases, and if not virtually all, they would be too late under the statute of limitations. Now, I'm not, I don't. This shouldn't be construed as legal advice to any one person. I'm just talking generally that it probably would be too late. But there could be people out there that even yet have not heard about this stuff and have a legitimate reason for not having heard it and they may have a way to still file. So I really can't give global legal advice. It has to be a one on one. But it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough after this case.

John Dehlin [02:57:07] So what you're hearing, what I'm hearing you say is that this might be the 1 best shot for anyone who's ever wanted either a, the church to be held accountable for fraud and, or to get their money back. You're saying this might be the 1 best opportunity in the United States for that to happen. Did I hear that right?

Speaker C [02:57:29] It might be, but I can't say that with a guarantee. I mean, I just can't. I don't know the law in every state or every country. I know Utah law, I know California law, but I'm not active anymore in California, so I can't. I can say that we have a good case, I believe in it and we're going to pursue it to the end.

John Dehlin [02:57:50] RFM do you have any questions for Kay besides what we've shared so far?

Radio Free Mormon [02:57:55] I don't really. I did want to mention that I thought, Kay, that you made really good use in your briefing of the John de Lind's LDS Personal Faith Crisis Report. You referred to that a number of times. And my impression of it was it's one thing to experience this as a member of the church and to live and move and have your being and breathe Mormonism for years and years and years and decades. And all of a sudden you find this stuff you've never heard of before because it never got mentioned to you and it just kneecaps your faith. Now it's one thing to experience that and realize that you weren't being given the whole picture for a long time and probably intentionally. It's another thing to be able to prove that because my sense is that you've got this client named Gaddy, Laura Gaddy, I think. And you know, she's a member of the church, she doesn't know about this stuff and then she finds out about it. Well, what's to say that, you know, she never studied, she never really took it seriously. And then it's her fault that she didn't know about it. Right. And that's where I think this, the LDS Personal Faith Crisis Report, is so important. Because what it shows and what it's used to show to the judge in this case is that this isn't just Laura Gaddy. This isn't just some peripheral, inattentive, nominal church member who finds out later on that what she signed on for is not what she thought it was. You have got hundreds of people who are bishops, Relief Society presidents, stake presidents, people who have been moved up the ladder in the church. They have shown their fidelity, their loyalty, their devotion to the church. And yet after decades in high church callings, they still didn't know about this stuff, and they're only finding out about it now. And I thought that was very effective, the way you used that to highlight the fact this isn't just your client, Laura Gaddy, who never paid attention. This is lots of people who really, if the church wasn't hiding this, they should have known, and they would have known.

John Dehlin [03:00:00] Thank you, RFM for that. We have a question from Leslie for uk Is there any inclusion within the suit about how the church spends the tithes and fast offerings? Leslie is saying, I would assert that this is also fraudulent. In other words, that members are told that, for example, church funds aren't used, you know, tithing funds aren't used for City Creek Mall. But in reality, we know that, you know, the church gives money to Ensign Peak and that inside. And Peak gave a billion dollars at least, to bail out City Creek Mall. So is that. Is that part of. Of this case? K. Oh, and by the way, K. I. I muted you, so I just unmuted you.

Tithing Fund Allegations and the Amended Complaint

Speaker C [03:00:51] Yeah. Those allegations came out after we filed the original complaint in August of 2019. They were publicized in December of that year, and I added those to the amended complaint. So, yes, that's part of it. Just how that works in with everything else is a matter that we'll have to wait for Judge Shelby's decision. And I don't want to speculate right now, but, yes, that's part of it. And then John and rfm. I did want to say that Laura was a gospel doctrine teacher. She went to a mission on Germany for two years, spoke German in high school, and she was kept at the MTC because she was such a good teacher. She has been absolutely a gospel doctrine teacher. She has been very active, and she is one of those people who were like the Relief Society president. She is a smart young woman who I believe is about 35 now, and it has devastated her. And then I'd also like to say, John, yes, your research has been wonderful. And at the time, I actually sent it to Judge Shelby, filed a notice with the court, because I didn't want to make it a matter of public record, because I wasn't sure that it was at the time. But I sent him a copy of it personally, and he was very moved by it. He mentioned something in the first oral argument that something to the effect that made me realize he had read it. And he knows that these people have real concerns and feel real strongly about their case. And I think that was based upon your report. So thank you for that. And we'd like to talk to you some more as the case goes forward.

John Dehlin [03:02:24] Okay, great. So you guys are talking about the faith crisis survey that we did that was released@whymormonsquestion.org right?

Speaker C [03:02:34] That's right.

John Dehlin [03:02:34] It had some qualitative responses to the impact of their leaving the church.

Speaker C [03:02:43] Right. And the significant part was that the main reason was because of these misrepresentations of historical fact, or what we then characterized as fact. But one thing that's also interesting that I'd like to bring up, and this was in oral argument, and it's an interesting issue. And again, There were about 30 people, I think, that actually signed in and listened to the oral argument, because the public can do that. So this is, again, a matter of public record. What was interesting is that the Church brought up the Catholic Church's doctrine of transubstantiation. And if you recall the Ballard case and its progeny, the holding of the Supreme Court is that a civil court can't litigate faith, belief, or doctrine. But we've argued, first of all, that this is a fact, and second of all, that this is not. If you characterize it as a belief, it's not a sincerely held belief. One thing we do know is that it's not doctrine. These things that we're talking about are not doctrine. And so when David Jordan brought up transubstantiation, I said, certainly the court can't litigate whether or not that's a true doctrine. That's beyond the ken, as they say, of the civil court's ability that just can't be figured out in this earthly civil life. It's something that's beyond. But the things we're talking about can be figured out and should be put to the test if they're not sincerely believed, if what the Church has argued or what the Church has taught for years in a carefully combined correlated system of deception. And I use those words because that's what it is, then those are not beliefs or facts that they sincerely hold. And if they don't, then this case should be tried as any other, as any other fraud case, because the First Amendment is a defense. It's an affirmative defense. They have to show that going forward with this case somehow violates their free exercise of religion. And as one of you mentioned, I think it was you, John. If the church teaches honesty, I think there's even a quote about half truths and partial truths. I mentioned that in my oral argument. And free agency. You have the agency. You should be able to choose what you believe and what you don't. That's diametrically opposed to actions that are more in characterized as lying for the Lord. They do not believe that. They teach us honesty and free agency, the ability to choose. Well, what do you need before you choose? You need the truth, you need the whole truth, and then you can make an intelligent choice. So we made that argument that this is not something that they believe in. Lying is not something that they've taught to us. It's not right. Anyway, that's it.

Listener Questions on Fraud Claims and Evidence

John Dehlin [03:05:31] Okay, this is great. We have a question from a listener. Noah writes, what about when the church says paying your tithing before your bills or feed your family? I feel like that should merit some legal action. Do you have a thought on Noah's question? Kay?

Speaker C [03:05:47] Yeah. That, to me, that falls squarely within doctrine. That's not something we can litigate because they believe that if you do that, then you're blessed. And so that's something that a court can't litigate. There's no way to do that.

John Dehlin [03:06:04] Okay, okay, let's see. I think there's. Oh, we do have a comment. Let me mute you guys really quick. I'm getting a tiny bit of feedback. If you guys can mute yourselves when you're not talking and unmute, we won't get that little bit of feedback. James Tatum writes, I'm an attorney. There's specific language surrounding motion to dismiss and summary judgment. No party can bring a motion for summary judgment during the initial pleading stage. Because a motion for summary judgment dismisses a case and resolves claims, it has certain legal implications. A motion to dismiss is filed by a defendant in lieu of filing an answer to the complaint without making an appearance. Appearance. You're filing an answer. And then he. I don't know exactly what he's trying to say here, but, but, but maybe k. You can, you can share with us why you perceive James maybe writing in and talking about these issues. I don't mean to make you speculate.

Radio Free Mormon [03:07:11] Do you have the rest of his comment, John? Because apparently it continues. Maybe it answered the question. It'll be clearer.

John Dehlin [03:07:17] Yeah, it actually kind of blocks off.

Radio Free Mormon [03:07:21] Oh, okay.

Speaker C [03:07:23] Yeah. I don't know. I can address real briefly the difference between a motion to dismiss and motion for summary judgment. A motion to dismiss is just based on the pleadings. It's a legal so what? It's even if everything that the plaintiff says or alleges is true, so what? We have the First Amendment to cover cover us, and it doesn't matter. You can't go forward with the case. Whereas motion for summary judgment is usually brought after there's some discovery and you have facts that are found on this side and facts that way on this side. And if the facts are not in dispute, if everybody agrees that, for instance, A, B and C happened, then the judge orders, as a matter of law, this is the judgment. Oh, here it is. Is that his question?

John Dehlin [03:08:08] No.

Speaker C [03:08:09] Okay. Well, there's just a difference in procedure, and I have no idea what he's asking. Those are two different sort of methods to get rid of a case. And the summary judgment is often brought before you go to a trial so that a judge but after discovery, so that a judge can say, even though we've had all these depositions and this written discovery, I think that the plaintiff or the defendant wins because there's no material factual issue that is in dispute. It's sort of beyond the average person to really get that right now without some loss, some more background. And so I apologize.

John Dehlin [03:08:49] Well, I think at a minimum, I think at a minimum, while we've been able to today, we've been able to talk about kind of the history of this sort of thing, some of the some of the, you know, the Tom Phillips case in your case. And we've, it's just been we've been able to get RFM's analysis and we've been able to have you on K. Kay, are there any final things you want to add before we give some listeners some final points before we close? Any final words from you, Kay?

Speaker C [03:09:19] Well, one thing I would just say is that one of the issues is that if we were to litigate sincerity, how do you litigate the sincerity of a corporation as opposed to an individual? And my response to that has been that correlation is the alter ego of the group of men that have taught these things, because since the early 60s, they've had a department that Basically says, this is the truth. This is what we're going to teach. And it's all the same. It's the same in all the stakes and all the wards. It's the same from the pulpit. And let me just read you this quotation from Leonard Arrington, and he's describing what it was like writing Mormon history. This is from his book By Greg Prince, May 30th of 2016. Quote, Correlation procedure as described by Leonard Arrington in Gregory Prince's words. With some amazement, Leonard recorded that the editors first used their own judgment regarding what to publish, but then submitted it to Managing Director Doyle Green to check. He in turn, worked through correlation committee review. If a disagreement then emerged, the proposed publication went to the Quorum of the Twelve, where Thomas Monson, Gordon Hinckley, and Boyd Packer made the ultimate decision. There were subjects the editors were not allowed to broach, unquote. So what I told Judge Shelby was that in the end, it's the first presidency and the 12 who are making these decisions. They as a group are correlation. And they as a group tell correlation what can and cannot be taught. And so it's whether or not correlation believed, sincerely believed in the things that it taught. If it didn't, then it shouldn't be able to raise the First Amendment as protection.

Radio Free Mormon [03:11:09] Yeah. Kay. I thought that the several quotes that you used from Leonard Arrington's diaries were very helpful for your case.

Speaker C [03:11:20] That's all. I just appreciate the interview, and I think it was done very well, and I appreciate being able to jump in in the last part.

John Dehlin [03:11:30] Okay. Kay. Well, if. If you do want to come back on Mormon stories and tell your, you know, tell your story and, or talk about this case and, and have you give your own framing. I'm happy to. To do that. We had a scheduling conflict today, and I wasn't even sure you'd be able to talk about it. And then once we got in touch, you had said you weren't really going to be able to talk much about the strategy of the case. And so RFM and I had already kind of set. Set that, that train going. But I'm really, really glad you were able to call in. I'm really glad you're involved in this case. I'm also going to just say openly and honestly, at some point, I think you reached out to me, seeing if I could help provide some information for the case. And I'm just going to be totally upfront and honest. I was worried that I would have to share private information from people who had shared things with me privately. And I, I was just afraid. I didn't want to betray any confidences or give people the impression that if they reached out to me with private matters, that there was a risk that that could be made public. So if I erred in that, in being non. Unresponsive to uk, I just want to publicly say I was, I was only trying to protect the confidentiality of the people who reach out to me.

Speaker C [03:12:46] Oh, that's okay. And if we do go ahead and get to discovery and we need to talk to you whether take your deposition or get some of your records, it's all subject to your own privilege, privileged confidential relationships with your clients. So that's all understood. So no problem. No offense.

Final Thoughts, Predictions, and Closing Remarks

John Dehlin [03:13:03] Okay, well, everyone, go ahead. Rfm. Do you want to say something really quick?

Radio Free Mormon [03:13:07] Can you hear me?

Speaker C [03:13:09] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:13:09] Okay, great. Well, hopefully you'll be coming back in about 45 days for what I hope will be a victory lap.

Speaker C [03:13:19] Well, thank you. Yeah, we'll let you know what the. I'll let John know what the decision is. And of course, anybody can log on to PACER and just put in the case number. Pacer.gov has all the federal court filings. We're on number 72 now, as of a couple of days ago. There's been a lot of work in the case. And the decision, when it comes out, we'll let you guys know what it is and, and I'll see what I can. I can probably talk about it because by then it'll be a matter of public record.

John Dehlin [03:13:45] And Kay, if. If judge, If Judge Shelby moves forward, what will be the next steps of the case and tell us why the discovery is sometimes the most interesting part of the whole process?

Speaker C [03:13:58] Well, I really can't speculate as to that. I. I can't get in his mind and I don't want to. To talk about that because they don't want to jinx anything. So let's just wait until the decision comes out and then we'll take it from there.

John Dehlin [03:14:13] Beautiful. All right, Kay, Bless you. Thank you. And we wish you all the success with this case so that the LDS Church can participate in what it teaches us, which is complete honesty, repentance, which means making amends and admitting you're wrong, and then, you know, restitution. Restitution and making it right. I think what you're symbolizing at the end of the day is the church, an opportunity for the church to live up to its own teachings around honesty and repentance and restitution. And I'll just say atonement.

Speaker C [03:14:52] That's right.

John Dehlin [03:14:53] So bless you, Kay. Good luck. And anyone who wants to follow Kay Burningham or follow this case, go to K. Burningham.com go to the bottom and you can sign up for a newsletter to follow the status of the case. So good luck, Kay, and hope you come back.

Speaker C [03:15:09] All right. Thank you both. It was very good.

John Dehlin [03:15:12] Rfm Any final comments you want to make before we make one final plug for people to donate to you, which was a core impetus for our engagement today.

Radio Free Mormon [03:15:24] Yeah, it was. And I really appreciate that, John, very much. I will tell you that I know that Kay cannot speculate. She's bound by certain rules of ethics when it comes to talking about the case that she is involved in litigating. I, however, am free from that. And I think that what's going to happen, you know, if she wins just on one, all you need is one. All you need is one to not get dismissed. And Katie, bar the door because now it's open to discovery. And that means subpoenas for church documents. It means depositions with church leaders, because I cannot imagine how in a case where you're alleging insincerity of belief on the part of church leaders that they are not witnesses as to that issue, which means that you get to depose them, which means having them come to a meeting with the court reporter and have them put them under oath and answer questions that Kay's going to pose to them. And here they are in varying states, I think I said earlier, of mental acuity, she gets to depose these people. And so what I would speculate would happen is that if she gets to go forward, then there's going to be discovery, there's going to be depositions. The church is going to fight these tooth and nail every step of the way to prevent them from happening for whatever reason that they can possibly come up with. And then if they lose and finally the depositions are going to happen of the top church leaders where they're going to be put under oath and made to answer questions by Kate Burningham. That's the point at which I think the church is going to be motivated to settle the case because I think there's no way that they want that to happen anyhow. They can avoid that. Then they're going to be motivated. And I think it was something similar that was going on in the Mark Hoffman case that managed to help him avoid the death penalty.

John Dehlin [03:17:17] And I'm not sure I, you know, on the one hand, settling sounds good because it means the church Makes some restitution, hopefully admits some wrong. On the other hand, I would really like to see what would come out of discovery. I would really like the church leaders to post. I would really like some of those internal documents to be a matter of record to the extent that they can be. So I'm torn because I, I. Part of me would want to see a settlement, and part of me would want to see this go. Go the distance. Right?

Radio Free Mormon [03:17:50] Well, sure, of course you would. But that's why the church is motivated to settle, because that's not what they want. They don't want to see what you want. They don't want you to see what you want to see. They don't want the public to see what you want to see. And who knows what the heck? I mean, Elder Ballard, just as an example, do you really want to have him depose and answer questions under oath? You know, just. Just from stuff I've talked about now, you know, you said that they've never lied about anything to anybody. Okay, you're sitting right next to Elder Oaks. How long have you known Elder Oaks? Okay, so back in 1985, did you know him then? Oh, yeah, I know. We're really good friends. And were you aware that he made this statement that the church has no responsibility to tell both sides of the story? Then you start getting, you know, the deer in the headlights look, and who the heck knows what he's gonna say after that? So that's what I think the church does not want to have happen. So they'll. They'll be motivated. Sweeten the pot. Speculative. Speculative. They'll be motivated to sweeten the pot sufficiently to keep that from happening. And they got tons of money to do it, for crying out loud. It's the money they already took from people, plus leveraged and got lots of interest on so they can pay them back out of the interest that they took from the people in the first place.

John Dehlin [03:19:09] All right, so the best we can hope for is either a discovery, you know, this case moving to the. The stage of discovery, and either a settlement or some type of adjudication, right?

Radio Free Mormon [03:19:24] Well, yeah, if it survives. If it survives, then there's only two ways it can end, and that's for the parties who agree to a resolution, some sort of settlement, or it has to go to trial and have a jury decide.

John Dehlin [03:19:36] And then one of our listeners writes, settlements usually always end with them paying out but admitting no wrongdoing. And that would not be fun, but that's a likely outcome if there's a settlement, is that right, rfm?

Radio Free Mormon [03:19:48] Oh, yeah, of course. They admit to no wrongdoing. The money itself bespeaks the wrongdoing.

John Dehlin [03:19:53] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:19:55] Every dollar bill has written on it. I did wrong. I did wrong. I did wrong.

John Dehlin [03:20:01] One final comment from one of our listeners. Mike writes, I want my life back before I became an active, faithful member at age 22. I think Mark speaks on behalf, and this is an okay way to close. I think other than one final plea, Mark speaks for a lot of our listeners and viewers, which is so many people feel like they gave their time, their money, their reputations, their life to a church under false pretenses without full, informed consent. And that's really what the heart of this case comes down to. And that's why we're really grateful that Kay is doing this and we wish K the best.

Radio Free Mormon [03:20:34] You know why they feel that way, John?

John Dehlin [03:20:36] Tell us why rfm?

Radio Free Mormon [03:20:38] Because they did. That's what happened.

John Dehlin [03:20:40] Right?

Radio Free Mormon [03:20:40] They gave their life under false pretenses. It was not the whole story. And I think that the vast majority of people who join the church or remain in the church probably, probably would not have done so if they had heard the full story.

John Dehlin [03:20:58] Yeah. All right, listeners, do not go away. I have one final plea. The impetus for this entire episode was that I want to make sure that RFM gets the financial support that he needs to continue his amazing podcast years and years and years into the future. And so what I want to ask everybody to do to close if you enjoy this episode, if you enjoy rfm, he's not as bold as I am in terms of asking for financial support. And so I want all of you to go to radiofreemormon.org find the donate button. There's a donate tab. There's also a donate button. Click on it. Become a monthly donor to Radio Free Mormon so that 10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford, so that RFM can be paid for his efforts, so that his efforts can be sustainable, so that we don't burn him out like other past podcasters who disappear, so that RFM can get the financial support he needs, so that Bill Real can get the financial support that he needs, so that things like marriage on a tightrope bill, real stuff, Radio Free Mormon can continue years and even decades into the future. That's one of my main reasons for asking RFM to do this episode. Rfm, we love you. We adore you. We're grateful for your important work. We're grateful for your analysis, for your courage, for your voluntary sacrificial efforts up until now, I imagine you've been paid pennies per hour for your efforts over the years on the podcast. Is that fair to say?

Radio Free Mormon [03:22:38] Oh, sure, that's easily fair to say.

John Dehlin [03:22:42] Pennies per hour. And if we can get RFM paid, you know, let's just say 50 grand a year, 100 grand a year, whatever

Radio Free Mormon [03:22:52] it is, or a million a year,

John Dehlin [03:22:53] RFM doing Radio Free Mormon full time. Can you imagine that? The way I know that church headquarters is trembling in its metaphorical boots at the idea of RFM being able to do Radio Free Mormon full time. Just imagine what could happen. And that's a possibility if you guys will step up and become supporters.

Radio Free Mormon [03:23:18] And I will tell you that it is in this difficult stage of transition where I certainly nowhere near make enough through Radio Free Mormon to do that full time. But I've got a full time law practice I'm trying to do Radio Free Mormon where I spend, gosh, 20 hours a week probably doing that in Mormonism live with Bill Real. And all the research and the stuff that happens behind the scenes that you never get to see, sort of like Kate Burningham when she's in court arguing, if that's all you saw, you wouldn't have any idea of the hundreds of hours that she put into it prior to that. But yeah, please, if you can and just go to radiofreemon.org go ahead and donate today. I appreciate it. I appreciate you, John Dehlin, because actually John Dehlin did reach out to me and said he wanted to do a program with me about trying to get some donations rolling in to support Radio Free Mormon. And then we came up, actually John came up with the idea of, well, why don't we talk about the legal case since you're a lawyer and has to do with Mormonism. So that's what started it a week ago. And that's when I've been, geez, how many hours have I been spending reading the legal briefing in this case? I don't know, quite a few. Probably. Probably around 20, probably around 20 and talking with you and thinking about it, making notes. So thanks so much, John Dehlin. I appreciate you. I appreciate Mormon stories. You are a big turning point in my spiritual journey from about 10 years ago starting. And I appreciate that very much.

John Dehlin [03:24:50] Thank you. RFM. So the website is radiofreemormon.org there's a donate button on the right column if you scroll down a little bit. I also posted the link in here, radiofreemormon.org donate-radio-free Mormon PayPal, I think, is the way that people donate, become a monthly donor to Radio Free Mormon. And that way we can get an annuity, a revenue stream going so that RFM can do more and more and more of his amazing work well into the years going forward. And again, thanks to Bill Real and all he's done to make that possible. So rfm, you're great. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for your analysis and keep doing your great work.

Radio Free Mormon [03:25:34] Okay, I'll do that, John. You too.

John Dehlin [03:25:38] All right, I will. And listeners, just thanks for joining us today. We love you, we appreciate you. I'm not going to make my normal plea to donate to Mormon Stories because today I want you to donate, become a monthly donor to Radio Free Mormon and make it so financially we don't lose him like we've lost so many other good podcasters. But thanks to our viewers and listeners for joining us. Please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com Please give us a positive review on the Apple podcast app. Please give us a positive review at our Facebook page. Mormon Stories Podcast. Please share this episode with everyone and their pets. Please spread the word. Word of mouth is a great way. Please do the same for Radio Free Mormon and his stuff and keep doing great stuff. Please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com with any feedback you have. RFM also has his own email if you want to reach out to him. We love your comments, we love your engagement, we love your suggestions. If you want to come on the show. If you have other ideas, I always want to hear new ideas. And just thanks for being loyal supporters. If you donate to Mormon Stories or the Open Stories Foundation, I just want to thank you. Your donations make it possible for me to do what I do to support my family, to pay back all my loans and debt, all my student loans and debt that I assumed that to do this work and just to pay for the ongoing work that I do, I receive a generous salary and compensation for what I do. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud of it, I'm grateful for it. And I want to thank all of you that make my work possible. So if you donate to Mormon Stories Podcast or the Open Stories foundation, thank you, thank you, thank you. I'll keep doing this for as long as you guys support. So you guys take care. Tune into Mormon Stories for more good stuff. Tune into Radio Free Mormon for more good stuff. Check out Bill Real as well. Marriage on a Tightrope. We love you guys. Thanks for joining us and we hope to see you guys all again soon for more episodes of these very various podcasts. And again, thanks to Kay Burningham for her case for coming on. And we hope to have Kay Burningham on again soon on Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody. Be good to each other, be kind, love each other, and we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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