Introduction and Guest Welcome

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John Dehlin. It is December 2, I believe, 2022, and we have a very important story that we want to share with you today. Today we're going to be telling the story and bringing on one of our dear friends who is no stranger to Mormon Stories podcast. Today's story is Mormon Apostle Emails Nemo. Or as I like to call it, Nemo versus D. But basically my dear friend Douglas Stilgo, who has been interviewed on Mormon Stories podcast and who has appeared occasionally as a co host on some of our international Mormon Stories episodes, and then finally has appeared on a co host on several of our LDS discussions episodes, the much beloved Douglas Stilgo, or as he's known in the YouTube world as Nemo the Mormon, part of the Brit Vengers, which is a group of amazing UK Mormons and ex Mormons that are taking the ex Mormon and Mormon YouTube world by storm. So without any further ado, Nemo, welcome back to Mormon Stories.

Nemo [00:01:16] Pleasure to be here. As always. It's. It's great.

John Dehlin [00:01:19] Yeah. And I just want to say that this is something that's been in the works for well over a year, if my calendar is correct. And when you felt ready to go ahead and talk about this, I think we brainstormed a bit about what would be the best way to get the word out. And we decided that we definitely wanted to collaborate across the Mormon YouTube and podcasting world. And so I want to make sure and refer everyone to an amazing episode that we collaborated on Wednesday night with Bill Real, Radio Free Mormon and Mormonism Live. So some of you will may have already heard that episode. We want to refer everyone to it because basically Bill and RFM are amazing. But we're going to do a Mormon Stories angle to the same story and hopefully just get the word out more. And we're live streaming at a time that's actually a little bit more UK friendly, but I just want to give a shout out to our dear friends Bill Real and rfm. Please check out Mormonism Live. And that was an amazing episode. Anything you want to say about any of that so far, Nemo?

Nemo [00:02:26] No, just if I stuff this all up royally, then it's preserved already on Mormonism Live, so the story's already there, but I'm really excited to talk about it again.

John Dehlin [00:02:36] Yeah, yeah, me too. Okay, so where I want to begin is backing up a little bit. I know that we have a full episode where you kind of tell your story and I'm going to have Maven include that link in the show notes. If we would just wanted to give a five minute version of your background in the Mormon Church in the uk would you mind starting there with our viewers and listeners?

Nemo's Background and Reasons for Opposing

Nemo [00:03:03] Okay, that's fine, yeah. So I'm Nemo the Mormon. I grew up in the church in the UK from a multi generational Mormon family. So I'm third generation Mormon, which here in the UK is, you know, that's a fairly old Mormon family. Some go back further but I grew up and was very heavily active in the church. I really took it all very seriously. And then towards the beginning of 2020 my shelf broke. My eyes were uncovered to the sort of dishonesty that is at play within the Mormon Church and the problems within the institution. And I thought rather than just turn my back on it and leave, which is the right decision for some, some just decide they're going to move on. I realized this was my tribe, these are my people, I can't just abandon them. So I began to be more vocal about the problems within the church, about the issues with the truth claims, about the issues with certain doctrinal teachings, with the way that the kind of church leaders present themselves while actively attending church still while working within the church paradigm. And so about 18 months ago I started on this journey that we're going to explore tonight with my first opposing vote because I thought for the first time in my Mormon life I have reason to oppose the sustaining of these men. And so I'm going to make my voice heard.

John Dehlin [00:04:23] Okay. Yeah. And. And I guess in between that time or parallel to that time, you decided to start a YouTube channel called Nemo the Mormon and you've been a part of of the Brit Ventures group which is a really amazing group of talented and courageous and brilliant uk, you know, progressive and ex Mormons. Right.

Nemo [00:04:47] Mm. And a big shout out to the Britvengers for being by my side through all of this. You know, I am the face of what happens now. And Nima the Mormon is the kind of the brand under which it took place. But it was with the support and help of the Britvengers as well as with John Bill real RFM and just generally the, the kind of post Mormon community and blogosphere blogger knack or whatever you want to call it. So it's not just me but yeah, I started my YouTube channel two years ago. Almost, almost two years ago to the day. I think my first video was December 2020. So we're getting very close to my two year anniversary.

John Dehlin [00:05:25] Yeah, yeah. It's a great channel. You do great work. Okay, so let's back up a tiny bit. So you, you basically lost your traditional LDS faith a few years back, and you kind of did what I did, which is, hey, just because I don't believe in this literally anymore, I'm still going to stay in the church and try and change it from within. So taking us back to the beginning of this idea of both voting opposed and of engaging with your church leaders, can you enumerate. And I know we're going to get into it with the letters that you've written, but as you're starting to contemplate engagement with church leaders and this voting opposed, you know, what were the major issues that were kind of in your cross, so to speak, that were bothering you, that made you think, I need to have a discussion and to try and engage, you know, what were the main issues that were concerning you?

Nemo [00:06:32] It was simply the dishonesty of church leaders that they're not honest with members of the church, and that because I had reason not to sustain them, I then couldn't get a temple recommend. And so what that does is essentially holds the pinnacle of Mormon religious worship hostage to the egos of these men. Because if you're not willing to get on board and say, yes, I will sustain them, even if you've got concerns, then they won't let you go to the temple, which for many people, it's a very significant cultural part of the Mormon experience. Temple worship is the. The pinnacle, like I said. So I was at a temple recommend interview with my bishop knowing that I wouldn't be able to answer that question. He knew I wouldn't be able to answer that question. And so I wasn't given a temple recommend. And I was saying, well, why? Why do these men stand between me and God? Because I'm pretty sure that was Lucifer's plan. If you're following Mormon theology, Lucifer's plan in the beginning was to be the one who took us to God. It was always through him. It was all about him. Whereas Jesus was like, no, I'll walk alongside you, I'll enable you, and we'll go back together. And these men are acting the way Lucifer would. They're standing between the members and God. And so theologically, within the Mormon sphere, that's not an acceptable position for them to hold.

John Dehlin [00:07:47] Now, I'll put on my skeptical hat here and there if somebody were to say, well, come on, emo, you didn't really believe anymore, and you were kind of starting to speak out against the church. Why would you even want a temple recommendation? You know, and, and do you have any business entering the temple if you kind of don't necessarily believe it? What would you say to that?

Nemo [00:08:08] I serve my mission at the temple. It's an important place to me. Part of the catharsis and the, you know, dealing with these things would be to go to the temple. I wouldn't, I would be happy to enter again and, and, you know, spend some time there. As I expressed to my state president, I feel like it would be one of the last times because I expect that I won't be allowed a temple recommend. And sure enough, that was it. So I didn't really get to say goodbye to a big part of my life. And also just, it is the right of members who have made those covenants, despite wherever their faith journey has gone, to be able to continue to uphold that part of their religious belief. Because you can, you can think the church has fallen apostate in the modern day and still believe in the endowment, for example. All this is about showing that people can have diverse and different beliefs or should be able to have diverse and different beliefs and still be able to worship within Mormonism. And it's not fair that orthodoxy is so tightly pressed into people's ability to express their kind of religious worship.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] Yeah, the truth is there are all sorts of active Mormons that don't believe any of it. And depending on who your bishop or stake president is, they may or may not care. I am 100% aware of Bishops and stake presidents that will absolutely grant a temple recommend to someone who has zero belief, zero literal belief. They're just like, hey, if you want to go to the temple, we want you there. I'm even aware of non believers called into bishoprics and stake presidencies as non believers. And they're told, we want you in the bishopric or in the stake presidency because you're a non literal believer and we want other members to, you know, we want you. We think you'll be an important way to connect with those people who are engaging Mormonism in a non literal way. So that's just my way to validate the fact that you have every right to be able to go to the temple. And in some sense, even though you really care for your bishop, you know, this is such a matter of what we call ecclesiastical roulette. Right.

Nemo [00:10:15] And in some ways I won ecclesiastical roulette with these leaders, as we'll see. But in this instance, he wasn't willing to just let me go because he Seemed determined to want to put me in a position where he said, I believe that you can think they're liars and you can think all this, but you can still say you'll sustain them. His view of sustaining was fundamentally different to mine and we couldn't overcome that difference in our understanding of what it means to sustain them.

John Dehlin [00:10:40] Okay, all right, so that makes sense. So you're up, you're non believing, but you're still engaging like many people. You try, you try and get your temple recommend. You're denied and you feel like you want justice, but how do you pursue it? And you're generally upset that, that Mormon church leaders are not honest. So where do we go next?

Nemo [00:11:01] Well, you vote a post, you stand up in ward conference and you say I oppose. And you make that known. And I, the actual, the first one I did was the, was the April General Conference. I sent my state president a text and said I oppose these men.

John Dehlin [00:11:20] And because half of our Mormon stories audience has never been Mormon, I'm going to explain this really quick. So.

Nemo [00:11:25] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:11:25] So tell me if I'm well, Nemo, do you want to explain just the concept of common consent and then the ritual, I'm going to call it a ritual, the ritual of the vote and what that's normally like in a Mormon ward stake or in general conference and why it really isn't a vote, even though it sounds like one. Talk about ritual. Yeah.

Nemo [00:11:49] Is the principle within the church that essentially the leaders are accountable to someone and by sustaining them, by offering a sustaining vote, an affirmative vote, you say I have no reason to think they shouldn't be in that position and I will support them in that calling. If you offer an opposing vote, it's because you have reason to believe they shouldn't be in that calling. You have information that would disqualify them from that position. And in the early church that sort of thing went on and it was a democratic process in that sense. God had still called them, but the members had an opportunity to ratify that decision and if any information had come forward, then they could present it. Whereas now what we see is in scripture, leaders of the church should not be in like the president of the church shouldn't be the president of the church without a common consent vote of the people. That doesn't happen anymore. They ordain themselves behind closed doors because it just so happens that the, the next person in seniority becomes the president of the church and so they sustain themselves behind closed doors. That's what Russell M. Nelson did. He was made prophet and president of the church in January. And it wasn't until April that a sustaining vote was in place. So his presidency, effectively scripturally was illegitimate for three months or so. But it's all changed. It's all changed now so that at every general conference, we are offered the invitation to sustain or oppose. And at those meetings, if the majority of people will always sustain, and if anyone does, which is very unusual, they are referred back to their state president while they're local ecclesiastical leaders. So there's a glass ceiling on your concerns. And then twice more a year in your ward conference, your local level conference, and in your state conference, which is a slightly higher tier, like a diocese, you are given the chance to sustain or oppose them again, and your state president will be present, and then we'll be able to address your concerns.

John Dehlin [00:13:42] So tell me if I remember right. So six times a year, basically twice the entire global church. But when you potentially would vote opposed, it would be, you know, if and when you happen to be in a large church building with potentially thousands of members all standing around you, or if you're at the conference center at church headquarters, you would be in a room of, I don't know, 15,000 people. But twice a year at the general conference level, twice a year at the stake level, which would be thousands of people, and then twice a year at your ward level or branch level, which would be probably hundreds of people, the leader gets up, reads off the names of all the church leaders, and then says, hey, members, you know, do you sustain or vote opposed? All in favor of these leaders as prophet seers, revelators, bishops, stake presidents, and all the members raise their hand in support. It's all pretty much always unanimous. In my 45 years as an active, devout Mormon, I literally never once, six times a year, I literally never saw once anyone vote opposed ever in 45 years of activity. So it's basically just this ritual of everybody pretending to be engaging in a democratic process where everybody. It's like communist China, basically. 99, everyone says yes. Nobody, you know, everybody keeps their hands down when the voting opposed happens. And we all feel like we're engaged in the appearance of a democratic process, when in reality it's a Potemkin town. It's a fraud. Now I'm gonna do something we didn't mention prior to you. Nemo, you probably know this. Before Sam Young did protect LDS children, he did a six months to a year with where he would vote opposed in his ward, stake and general conference kind of levels. And that was the first time I ever heard of anybody really trying to do what you did. But I do want to give Sam Young a shout out because he did engage in this sort of process as a bit of a pioneer.

Voting Opposed in Local Congregations

Nemo [00:15:59] And what you'll see is, I was just checking, one of the ladies from 21st century saints voted opposed in her ward. And the video from that shows that the person reading the list didn't particularly even look up when he said, there's a pose. So she had to stand, speak vocally, because the normal sign is just to quietly raise your hand to the square like that, your right hand, and that's it. So you've got a whole room full of people just going like this.

John Dehlin [00:16:20] Yeah.

Nemo [00:16:21] And then anyone who opposes stands out, but they're not really looking because they don't expect it. So you have to stand and make it known audibly, especially if you're somewhere near the back, so that it will actually count your vote and hear it. So we're going to see later in the presentation, there's a video of me doing that, and you'll hear the state president reading out the names of those that are being sustained. Then the whole room of 300 people around me all put their hands up and sustained. And then I was the only one in the room who stood up and photoposed.

John Dehlin [00:16:46] Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, so basically, you're taking advantage of a system that, you know, allegedly was created and certainly creates the appearance of the ability to object if you don't like something about your church experience or if you don't support some or all of your leaders. You had the audacity to actually take the church seriously and engage in the objection process that they themselves put forward six times a year. Right?

Nemo [00:17:19] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:17:20] Because

Nemo [00:17:22] this is what they're asking me to do. They're asking me. They're asking if anyone is opposed to. And so I'm saying. Well, as a matter of fact, seeing as you asked, yes, I do oppose, and I have very legitimate concerns about the leaders of this church. I feel like what they're doing is. Is damaging to members who are still within this church. I think it matters that they're held to account for this.

John Dehlin [00:17:40] Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so you start to engage in the voting opposed process. Was that like a year ago or how long ago was that?

Nemo [00:17:47] 18 months ago.

John Dehlin [00:17:48] 18. A year and a half ago. Okay, so eight. Eight. 18 months ago, you start voting opposed in your local congregations. Take us. What? Take us from there.

Nemo [00:17:57] Okay, well, I mean, let's get the PowerPoint slides up, shall we? Okay, let's do it because that's where the story goes.

John Dehlin [00:18:02] Yeah. So now we're gonna have some visuals for those who are listening. We'll try and, and read off what, what you're going to be seeing.

Nemo [00:18:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:09] Okay, let's do it.

Writing a Letter to Dallin H. Oaks

Nemo [00:18:10] So, dear Dallin.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] Okay, what does Dallin have to do with this?

Nemo [00:18:14] Well, Dallin H. Oaks would be the ultimate recipient of my ayah.

John Dehlin [00:18:17] So explain to our non Mormons who Dallin H. Oaks is.

Nemo [00:18:21] Dallin H. Oaks is the first counselor in the first of the Church of Jesus Christ Letter Day Saints. So the top structure of the church, you've got three men at the top, the first presidency, the president and two counselors. And then you've got the quorum of 12 apostles beneath them. And they all hold the same rank essentially, but there is some slight hierarchy in there. So he is pretty much as close to the top of the church as you can get. He will be the next president of the church.

John Dehlin [00:18:44] He's the number two guy.

Nemo [00:18:46] He's the number two guy. Yeah. You know, putting to one side any potential lightning strikes from God, he will be the next prophet. Prophet, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:55] Which means he's been, in terms of seniority, he's been one of the 12 apostles for, for the longest, next to Russell and Nelson, the current prophet. And all these dudes are. I just, I need to say this. They're all ordained as prophets, seers and revelators and they're presented to us as special witnesses of Christ. And we're all kind of led to believe as Mormons that they literally talk to Jesus. Am I, is that, is that fair to say?

Nemo [00:19:22] Yeah. They speak for God. They speak for him. There's a now infamous video of Russell M. Nelson, the current prophet of the church, talking to a group of primary children in a log cabin and saying. Do you know what a prophet means? It means he speaks for God. Not on behalf. Like it's for him. Not he speaks to God, not he translates messages from God. He speaks for God is a very clear, direct, thus saith the Lord type relationship for me.

John Dehlin [00:19:50] For me, I would say both that I was in my understanding of Mormonism 45 years in it. He's. They speak to God and for God. Both.

Nemo [00:19:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:58] Yeah.

Nemo [00:19:59] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] So. So how does Oaks. What does Oaks have to do with this story?

Nemo [00:20:05] Well, he will be, like I said, he'll be the eventual recipient of a letter that I wrote.

John Dehlin [00:20:09] Okay.

Nemo [00:20:10] Outlining the reasons why I oppose the sustaining of this group of 15 men. And there's someone in the comments saying it's not a vote. It's whether or not you sustain the leadership. To sustain, to support it is called a sustaining vote. It is called an opposing vote. These are the words that are used by the church within their manuals and handbooks and within the common vernacular. It said at general conference. We will now present the first, the presiding officers of the church for your sustaining vote. Words like that.

John Dehlin [00:20:38] That's right.

Nemo [00:20:39] The words. The phrase vote is used. That's right.

John Dehlin [00:20:41] For sure.

Nemo [00:20:41] Give me for believing. That's what it is.

John Dehlin [00:20:43] I mean, if people are raising their hands, they're voting. You know what I mean? Okay. All right, so let's go back to the slide.

Nemo [00:20:50] Yeah, let's do it. Okay, so this is an example of what happens at General Conference. If you roll that video, please.

John Dehlin [00:20:57] All right, so we're going to play a video now. And again, the video is about what.

Nemo [00:21:02] And this is a. This is a sustaining vote being.

John Dehlin [00:21:04] Oh, so we're giving example.

Nemo [00:21:06] This is to give an example. This is the actual message that I got from Dallin H. Oaks when I first raised my first opposed vote. This is from that General conference specifically. Okay, so this is 18 months ago.

John Dehlin [00:21:16] All right, we'll roll. Brothers and sisters, I will now present the general authorities, area 70s, and general officers of the church for your sustaining vote. Please express your vote in the usual way, wherever you may be. If there are those who oppose any of the proposals, we ask that you contact your stake president.

Nemo [00:21:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:46] Okay.

Nemo [00:21:46] I was told to contact my state president.

John Dehlin [00:21:48] Okay. Was that it?

Nemo [00:21:49] Yeah, that's it.

John Dehlin [00:21:50] Okay, so that's an example of. Of what they do. Okay, who's is Maven clicking or you? Because we're someone.

Nemo [00:21:56] I'm moving through the slides.

John Dehlin [00:21:57] Okay, Just.

Nemo [00:21:58] Who's gonna put the video up? Okay, so.

John Dehlin [00:22:00] All right.

Nemo [00:22:01] That's a picture for those listening. There's a picture up on screen of me voting opposed at ward conference.

John Dehlin [00:22:06] And. Okay.

Nemo [00:22:08] Raising my right hand and voting opposed.

John Dehlin [00:22:11] Got it. It's during COVID time. So you've got a mask.

Nemo [00:22:13] During COVID time. So I got a mask on. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:14] Okay. All right.

Nemo [00:22:16] I then sent my stake president a letter. And this is a type and shadow of letters to come. That's how I like to phrase it. But I sent him a letter basically explaining the reasons why I oppose the First Presidency and quorum of the 12. And so we then had a meeting. And what I do after each of these meetings with my leaders is I then sum up what was said in the meeting so that we're both kind of on the same page, moving forward. So this is the 24th of October, 2021. So this is by the time I actually got to speak to him after that ward conference. So it took a little while. So that was about a year ago.

John Dehlin [00:22:50] So this is your. This is your email to your leader, your stake president, explaining why you voted Opposed. That was at a state conference. So he would have been there.

Nemo [00:23:01] That was at a ward conference.

John Dehlin [00:23:02] Okay.

Nemo [00:23:03] He was attending. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:04] Oh, he was in. Got it, Got it. Okay.

Nemo [00:23:06] This is. This is just outlining the meeting we had because I presented him with that document and then we had a meeting to discuss my concerns.

John Dehlin [00:23:13] Got it.

Nemo [00:23:14] And so I summarize, and I say at the top of this email, I wanted to summarize the conversation we had and establish the positions held so that we are on the same page, moving

John Dehlin [00:23:21] forward, kind of making a record of this, of these conversations. Yeah.

Nemo [00:23:24] Which is coming useful.

John Dehlin [00:23:26] Okay. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Do you want to read this email?

Nemo [00:23:29] I'll read this.

John Dehlin [00:23:30] All right, go for it.

Nemo [00:23:31] So, hi, President Blank and President Blank, or I will say High stake President, just to make it clear who I'm talking about. Firstly, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me today. Whilst our time was cut short by other commitments, it was nonetheless illuminating. I want to summarize the conversation we had and establish the positions held. So we are on the same page moving forward. I'm grateful that you answered the question posed in our previous correspondence, although I have to say I am somewhat surprised by your answer. This being that you do not invalidate the observations I have made regarding the First Presidency on factual grounds. But it is your position that this behavior should not preclude them from serving in their current capacities. This was based on the idea that were these prospective bishops and elders, Quorum or Relief Society presidents, this sort of behavior would not lead you to release them. So this behavior being the dishonesty? Yeah, I believe this was comparing apples to oranges as the calling of the First Presidency and Quorum of the twelve Apostles comes with a much greater sphere of influence and therefore a greater potential to cause harm. And these brethren also claim direct access to an all knowing deity. So we can't expect that whatever they say in their official capacity, acting in his name, to be honest, at the very least, we can expect that this is why their dishonesty is far more problematic than that of a bishop or such. The same goes for their acts of unrighteous dominion. Because this dominion is much greater, we must surely have less tolerance for the mouthpiece of God exercising unrighteous dominion.

John Dehlin [00:24:56] Okay, Nemo, really quickly, Nemo, really quickly. Normally I would ask you to tell us what examples of dishonesty you called out, but I know we're going to cover that in just a second. So, audience, hold on. We're going to tell you in what ways Nemo thinks the apostles have been dishonest. But what I heard from that summary is where much is given, much is required. Because they have such a high level of responsibility, the severity or the consequence of their dishonesty is actually more significant than just an average member. Is that right?

Nemo [00:25:28] He who receives greater light, receives greater condemnation. Yeah, that old chestnut.

John Dehlin [00:25:33] Yeah, and that's what we're taught by the Mormon Church. Okay, so keep going.

Nemo [00:25:36] Yeah, no worries. More than once you stated you do not have an answer for me. I appreciate and respect your honesty. I requested and would like to redouble this request now that I be put in touch with someone who does have the answers. This is why I have included the area authorities in this email in the hopes they can help me or pass me on to someone who can. In order for the opposing vote and common consent to be meaningful, it has to be more than a formality. Concerns have to be addressed because my opposition was not made lightly and I maintain my position despite the personal cost to myself, such as the refusal of a temple recommend. What should be mentioned in this vein is your agreement with Bishop Blank, my bishop, that I can be a good Christ like person and not qualify for a temple recommendation. I express my concern to you that this is indicative of a church structure focused less on Christ and more on loyalty to the top leaders, as my participation in the most sacred ordinances is gatekept by sustaining of the First Presidency. In this sense, my ability to worship in the temple is held hostage by a declaration of loyalty to the first presidency and quorum of the 12. You said this was comparable to others who are unable to attain a temple recommend. However, I am in disagreement that my opposition to leaders of the church is a matter of personal worthiness. In the same vein as someone who does not keep the law of chastity. For example, I know you and Bishop Blank are sincere in your sentiments that I am welcome in the Ward and stake and that my opposition is not a problem. However, practically within the structures of the Church, I am still a second class member of the Church due to my opposition to church leaders. I would therefore like to resolve this. Thank you again for your time, Brother Douglas Stilgo. And that's important to note. I signed off all these emails as Brother Douglas Stilgo, all this was done and engaging with my local leaders was done not as Nemo the Mormon, but as a, any other member of their congregation. And during this entire experience, this is the first time I've talked about any of this publicly. So during this entire experience, they had no reason to believe this was going to go live. I was using this for content in any way. I was just a sincere member asking questions.

Temple Recommend Denied and Area Authority Visits

John Dehlin [00:27:37] Yeah. And I'll just say for those other parts of the email involving your area authorities made perfect sense to me because historically, if you know, and part of this is just a practical thing, of course, these 15 men that run the Mormon Church can't possibly communicate with all 5 million members that are kind of active members. And so there's always been this idea of like, let me write the prophet and he'll understand my concerns. For many, many decades, the church has had the policy of if any member sends a letter to one of the apostles and it does not get answered, traditionally, it just gets rerouted back to the stake president and it's pretty much always held locally. But there are these middlemen in these area authorities that often sit between your bishop and stake president and the general authorities that are going to be notified. So for me, it made perfect sense for you to include the area authorities. And again, I totally get why you, you would not feel okay about being denied a temple recommendation and that even though your leaders might say, hey, you can still be a good person and not ever recommend, but it does make you a second class citizen. And it feels just like, just think of the civil rights movement and you know, people, well, just think about the priesthood ban. Like it was awful in pre1978 that members of color in the church couldn't attend the temple, couldn't engage in the rights of the priesthood. You know, Rosa Parks sitting at the back of the bus. Nobody wants to feel like a second class citizen. It feels awful.

Nemo [00:29:16] Well, so my most recent time at church, they were announcing a war temple trip and the bishop was saying, those that need a temple recommend, go see a member of the bishopric and the state president and we'll get you sorted before the trip. And I sat at the back like this, just looking at him, made eye contact with him up at the front, just giving him a look and he went, oh, and even those who can't enter the temple, we would still welcome you to come and enjoy the grounds. It's like that's what I've been reduced to. Oh, you can come all this way you can travel two and a half hours and then you can sit outside.

John Dehlin [00:29:47] Yeah. And for those, again, who aren't Mormon, you need to understand that, like, you know, the temples are where Mormons get married and temples are where missionaries go, you know, before their missions as a family ritual and the. And baptisms for the dead happen. But in all those instances, it's very common for immediate families, extended families or entire wards or stakes to all go to engage in very sacred Mormon and important life kind of rituals or passages, rite of passages. So when all your family goes to a wedding in the Mormon context and you're sitting outside, at best, that signals that there's something wrong with you to the rest of your family because they're all there watching the wedding happen inside the temple and, and you're sitting outside. But at worst, it signals that you're into porn or you've cheated on your spouse. It basically not only gives you a black mark in front of all your family or all your congregation members or all your stake members, it not just sets you apart as being bad and unworthy, it oftentimes raises flags of you having potentially committed some of the worst possible offenses. Because generally speaking, the only thing that keeps you out of a Mormon temple is like adultery. Right. And so it's a real.

Nemo [00:31:14] Sustaining your leaders.

John Dehlin [00:31:16] Well, which. Which I guess for many Mormons is actually worse than adultery. Right.

Nemo [00:31:21] The last time I voted opposed, you could hear people behind me going, oh, that's the guy that does it last time. Oh, he's always standing up and doing this. Like, people are chattering about me. Looks from Relief Society on the stand. That could kill. I actually, one of the emails, I've not included it in this, but I sent an email to my state president and said if looks could kill, then the Relief Society president on the stand would have killed me off and we wouldn't be having this conversation because there was some people very much not happy with me voting opposed publicly. It upsets their worldview.

John Dehlin [00:31:49] Yeah, yeah. And the point is, it's just. It's a. It's absolutely this massive scarlet letter. Not having a temple recommend that that makes you be viewed as. As wicked and unworthy to the rest of the membership. And, and it's just valid. It's just valid. Okay. All right, so let's, let's go ahead and go to the next slide.

Nemo [00:32:11] Yeah, to the next one. So this did get the attention of the area authorities, and when I was sending these emails to them, there was a visit by the three. Three Apostles came to the UK and I sent emails to the area presidency who are sat on the stand. And I said, I'm watching you sat on the stand next to men who can answer my questions right now. So if you could just take, you know, five minutes of this, of time just to show them my concerns, that would be wonderful. Instead, they sent Alan Phillips to come and speak with me.

John Dehlin [00:32:44] And can I. Is this the Alan Phillips that's the son of Tom Phillips? Is that, is that the same person? So just to give a little context, Mormon Stories listeners, people have been listening for a while will remember the name Tom Phillips. Tom Phillips was the former twice stake president and former church administrator in the UK that was friends with Elder Holland, who was at the highest levels of the church, who received the second anointing with his wife and has told his whole story about receiving the second anointing on Mormon Stories podcast. That's where you're promised that you're going to go to the Celestial Kingdom unless you murder somebody while you're still living. It's an amazing episode. Tom Phillips since has left the church. He lost his family as a result of leaving the church. And then the Mormon Church calls his son Allen to be a area authority for the church. Is that right in the uk?

Nemo [00:33:44] Yeah. Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:33:47] Yeah. Yeah.

Nemo [00:33:48] Keeping a watchful eye.

John Dehlin [00:33:49] That's a significant thing as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. Okay, so you're, you're in a. You, you get to meet with Alan.

Nemo [00:33:55] Okay, I do. And so he was here. If you want to read this, John.

John Dehlin [00:34:01] Yeah.

Nemo [00:34:01] What are we speak with?

John Dehlin [00:34:03] What am I about to read?

Nemo [00:34:05] So this is Alan Phillips inviting me to meet with him in the Oxford Ward.

John Dehlin [00:34:11] Okay.

Nemo [00:34:12] Of which there are two. And he invited me to come and meet with him because he was asked to by the area Presidency.

John Dehlin [00:34:19] Okay. So this is December 8, 2021. Alan Phillips. So, dear Brother Stilgo, I serve with Elder Defeo and Elder Kopichk. I don't know how to pronounce that.

Nemo [00:34:31] Kapishka.

John Dehlin [00:34:32] Kapishka. And they shared with me your feelings regarding sustaining the senior leadership of the Church. They discussed it with me during the recent visit of President Ballard, Elder Holland and Elder Cook and asked if I would meet with you on this matter as we near Christmas. My official assignments and travel have come to an end. If it works with your schedule, I could travel out and attend the Oxford Ward on either Sunday 12th December or Sunday 19th December. We could possibly attend sacrament meeting together. And Then sit down together afterwards. Would either of those dates work best for you? Please let me know and I will let Bishop Blank know, and I will attend the word accordingly. I will look forward to meeting you soon. With love, Elder Phillips. Now, let me ask you, Nemo, what. What was it like? What did it mean to you to receive this email from Alan Phillips, and how did it make you feel?

Nemo [00:35:24] I. I felt good about it, to be honest, because it meant that, you know, they had the. The first president, the area presidency. Sorry, Had. Had met. Had met together and discussed my problems. So it hit their radar. So it's gone already. I was excited because it's gone beyond my stake president, which is the normal sort of ceiling. That's the normal sort of place where people get stuck. So I was really happy about that. But equally, I was a bit nervous because, you know, I don't know him. I don't know what it's gonna be like. He could be there to re reprimand me. He could be there to retell me off. Turns out he was just there to, you know, discuss it. And he shared some concerns of his own about the way the church isn't moving forward quick enough generationally and things like that. He explained that, you know, the. The current leaders of the church are two or three generations removed from people like me. And so of course, change will take time. And I pointed out to him that then maybe adopting a model like Community of Christ where they can retire, rather than keeping them in until they're 97 might help speed that process.

John Dehlin [00:36:28] How about the Catholic Church, where the Pope steps down voluntarily. Right?

Nemo [00:36:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:33] Yeah.

Nemo [00:36:34] Anything like that would help, rather than clinging to power until you lose, until you're literally 98.

John Dehlin [00:36:40] Right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so that sounds like a healthy conversation.

Nemo [00:36:47] It was good. And so I will say that if

John Dehlin [00:36:51] these guys are prophet seers and revelators, talking to God and Jesus, and for God and Jesus, it is weird to have a mid level. It's weird to me to have a mid level bureaucrat, area authority, kind of making excuses and apologizing for them and, and kind of saying. And I've heard this many times, you know, give the brethren time. They're old, they kind of need to catch up. That's kind of interesting that behind. They would never, ever, ever say that publicly or in front of these men. But it's interesting that behind the scenes they're willing to say things like that.

Nemo [00:37:23] Yeah, but I, I was telling him, they. We don't have time. We don't have time here in the uk for them to catch up. The church is falling off a cliff. Members are leaving. Like, if they. If they want to stand any chance of keeping people like me in. Because what's the statistics? 70% of people leave the church before they're 30? Yeah, something like that. Right.

John Dehlin [00:37:43] Yeah.

Nemo [00:37:43] It's not. It's not going well for them. So action needs to happen now, which is why I'm being a bit of a squeaky wheel, which is why I'm making this point.

John Dehlin [00:37:53] Peter Bleakley calls it Mormon civil war. Like, the church is in of front freefall. It's in freefall over the world, except for in Africa, but it's definitely in freefall in the uk. The. The church is literally in steep decline. Not flatlined steep decline in the UK. So the, you know, this idea of let's wait 20 or 30 years for the Brethren to catch up. The church can't afford that. Yeah.

Nemo [00:38:18] Yeah, okay. It's true.

John Dehlin [00:38:20] All right, so where do we go next?

Nemo [00:38:23] Clear that up. Yeah. Well, I summed up my meeting with him. I went straight home, wrote down everything I could remember, and made kind of some main points because he'd asked me to outline some things for him. So I said, hi, Elder Phillips, it was great to meet with you today. Thank you very much for taking time to meet with me and for coming out of your way. Thank you also for engaging with what is a difficult conversation. I feel I've walked away with a better understanding of why the culture and systems of the church do not progress as quickly as we'd like to and found your generational explanation enlightening. With that said, and avoiding the use of the word lie because he didn't like when I used that word, it is still apparent to me that the evidence indicates the Brethren have made statements to lead members to believe one thing which they would know are factually incorrect. They have also denied things that have happened and they know happened. That's the kindest way I can think to put it. By the standards set out in Gospel principles, they have been dishonest, arose by any other name, and all that. Below is my main point from my notes. The evidence clearly shows that church leaders including Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks, M. Russell Ballard, and Jeffrey R. Holland are not always honest. They have repeatedly made false, dishonest and misleading statements publicly in their capacity as prophets, seers and revelators. These lies fall into four categories. Lies to cover misdeeds. Oaks and conversion therapy. Lies to bolster faith. Nelson and his plain story. Holland talking about the growth of the church Lies to protect the Church Holland Prop 8 John Sweeney interview Lies to gain Trust Ballard saying, just trust us. We've never tried to hide anything. Why is it permissible for mouthpieces of God to be dishonest? And if it is not permissible, what is to be done about it? Can we hold senior church leaders accountable? Are they accountable for their actions? If so, to whom? If not, why not? Is it the second anointing? God is the one that gave these rules regarding the need to be honest. He also gave us common consent, the way by which we can oppose the leaders. It would seem they aren't even accountable to God as they have faced no consequences of common consent, nor have they acknowledged or apologized for their dishonesty as of yet. So the only other things I spoke about in this email was that I talked to him about the I talked about the Strength in Church Members Committee and Shane M. Bowen being the head of that, and he said he'd look into it. Never heard anything back from that. And he also said that would he he offered that if a general authority was in the UK they could perhaps meet with me. And I said that'd be great. I also offered to crowdsource a flight to Salt Lake City and said I would go meet them or I'd be willing to take a zoom or telephone call. And that offer, when I then followed up with that, when I was just about to head out to Utah in October, that off I was ignored. I received no email back when I said, hi, Alan, further to your offer, could you ask that question you promised to ask about whether they would meet with me? Because I'm going to be in Salt Lake City at the end of next month and I'm there for five days, so whatever day works for them. Fine. Nothing.

Evidence of Dishonesty from Church Leaders

John Dehlin [00:41:34] Okay. Yeah. And if it's okay, I know we're going to talk about this in a bit, but I'm just going to go through some of those lies just really, really briefly. So, yes, recently, in the past several months, when Oaks was when Elder Dallin H. Oaks was at the University of Virginia, he was asked in the Q and A why he presided over electroshock therapy, you know, where they shock the genitals of gay BYU students. You know, and he was just asked to be accountable for that. And my recollection is him saying something like, you know, if that happened during my administration as president of byu, I was unaware. Is that kind of what you remember?

Nemo [00:42:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:19] Yeah.

Nemo [00:42:20] He said his quote was, let me show you. Let me say about electroshock shipments at BYU that had been discontinued. When I became president, that had been discontinued and it never went on under my administration, I believe is the quote.

John Dehlin [00:42:31] Yeah. And we've got, and maybe we'll show this later, we've got documents where he signed up saying another example is when Elder Holland said that the church is growing. You know what, two stakes, you know,

Nemo [00:42:43] like double digit stakes every week. Every week of our lives was what he said. And then if you look at the church data for those weeks, there was no new stakes created.

John Dehlin [00:42:52] Yeah. Yeah. And then let's bring on Bill Real. So we've got special guest Bill Real on Mormonism Live. Bill Real. And RFM revealed looks regarding Elder Nelson and an airplane. Hey Bill, welcome. Thanks for joining us.

Guest [00:43:07] How's it going?

John Dehlin [00:43:08] Great. Tell us, just give us a quick summary. We're going to have you jumping in here. Tell us what you guys found out about Prophet Russell M. Nelson's, you know, lie regarding the airplane event.

Guest [00:43:21] Yeah. Back in the 1970s, Russell M. Nelson claims that he was on an airplane flight that had a almost crashed. It was a small airplane. He claimed the engine had blown up, was on fire. The plane did a death spiral. It landed, it did an emergency landing in a field. And on the Discuss Mormonism board they had been searching for weeks, maybe months, trying to figure out if they could find the data. Because anytime a plane has that serious of an incident, there are multiple places where emergency reports have to be filed. And finally somebody found the emergency report. It was one day off from what he claimed was the plane trip. But it makes sense because it, it's one, it's two days before the event or one day before the event he was going to. And RFM and I did an episode titled Flight of Death on Mormonism Live where we show all the data and it becomes conclusive that President Nelson was highly embellishing because the actual report that was filed shows that it really wasn't that serious of an issue. I think the plane maybe lost one engine for a moment. So it did have to land. But there was no explosion, there was no fire, there was no death spiral. The best we could tell. And it landed actually at an airport in Delta, Utah which sort of looks like a field. But again for the story purposes of President Nelson, that story was deeply, highly embellished.

John Dehlin [00:44:56] Yeah. All right, Bill, thank you for that summary. We'll put in the show notes a link to the Mormonism Live episode that, that goes into detail on that, a couple of the others. One of the most amazing things I've ever seen is when Elder Holland interviews with John Sweeney of the BBC wasn't Meet the Mormons was the, was the name of that series Nemo.

Nemo [00:45:18] It was this world. The Mormon candidate was what that one

John Dehlin [00:45:20] was about Mitt Romney.

Nemo [00:45:22] It was about Mitt Romney running for the President of the US So they wanted to investigate what kind of man would be in the White House.

John Dehlin [00:45:27] And basically Sweeney asks Holland, is it true that, that Mitt Romney would have raised his arm to the square and done death penalties and you know, to indicate his allegiance and support for the Mormon Church. And basically Romney just flat out lied and said we don't do that type of stuff, Holland. Sorry, Holland. Yes, we don't do that type of stuff in the temple, meaning in a sly way we kind of stop doing that stuff. But that wasn't, that wasn't Sweeney's question. Sweeney's question was would, would Romney have have engaged in those sorts of promises and death oaths? Did I get that kind of right?

Nemo [00:46:06] Yeah, yeah. I mean I've done a video on it on my channel. So go check that out. I've gone through the whole thing. I've shown just how Holland was being dishonest and how John Sweeney does a beautiful job of keeping him honest. It's excellent.

John Dehlin [00:46:20] Yeah. So. So that was a real blatant lie. And then of course we all know that Mormon Church leaders, including Holland, denied investing any Mormon Church money in Proposition 8, which was an attempt for the Mormon Church to take away same sex marriage from the citizens of a sovereign state in California. And then it turns out that what, over $40 million was invested by the church in different places.

Nemo [00:46:46] A lot of money. The plane tickets alone for L. Whitney Clayton to fly back and forth to California were over $4,000. And that was domestic flights. You know, there was. Yeah. Lots of av. I've got the numbers. Later on we'll go through the numbers.

John Dehlin [00:47:00] Yeah.

Nemo [00:47:01] And then a lot of money.

John Dehlin [00:47:02] Yeah. And then of course, you know, there have been other things. I'm just going to call out one that you didn't call out. We've known since the early 20th century that the Mormon Church has intentionally lied and withheld its factual history from Mormon Church members. And whether it's the secret Mormon meetings of 1922 with B.H. roberts, whether it's excommunicating Fawn Brody for her book no Man Knows my history in 1945, whether it's the way they treated the Tanners or the Book of Abraham stuff in the 1960s, whether it's the Shutting down of the Leonard Arrington historical administration from 1972 to 1982 because they got uncomfortable with the factual history that that was being told or the September 6th excommunications in 1993 of Mormon scholars for telling truthful history all the way to the excommunication of people like me and Bill Real and Jeremy Runnels and others. The Church has a more than a century history of hiding its history, misrepresenting its history, and excommunicating as truth tellers. While the apostles are fully aware of these problems and, and behind the scenes, Nemo or. Bill, I don't know if you guys.

Nemo [00:48:20] My. My focus was really just on those that are still alive now.

John Dehlin [00:48:23] Right.

Nemo [00:48:24] You know, and I've still got plenty of detail to. To get on with. And I did kind of look at previous things in the document that I sent where I kind of said, well, Russell M. Nelson says prophets always teach the truth. And here's examples of previous prophets teaching things that turn out to be false, for example. So, yeah, the show's got a long history of hiding things. I look at the hidden account of the 1832 first vision that was then sellotaped back into the volume.

John Dehlin [00:48:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So was it Ballard who said, we've been as honest.

Nemo [00:48:58] Yeah, we're as honest as we know how to be. Just trust us. Since the beginning of time, the leaders of the church have not tried to hide anything from anybody.

John Dehlin [00:49:04] Yeah. Bill, let's bring you in.

Guest [00:49:06] Yeah. Just a quick question going back to the Elder Holland. Double digit state creation every week of our lives. It's bigger than just during those couple of weeks. There wasn't double digit state creation. It's that the number of stakes created that year were like a half a stake a week or something. It was some smaller, much smaller number than what he was claiming. These guys are dishonest continually in ways that are demonstrable to anybody who's willing to sit with the data. And it reeks of some sort of unhealthiness, some sort of wanting to hide things and keep things out of the average member's view. Everything is carefully worded, everything is withheld. That is damaging and only shown in an apologetic, carefully worded way without really dealing with the data in a way that's honest to it.

John Dehlin [00:49:58] Yeah, yeah. The fact that they don't. Thanks, Bill. The fact that they don't even publish activity rates. They don't make that available. But even worse, for how many decades did they release every year, you know, church membership and Statistics at General Conference when they had created the appearance of growth through all those fraudulent baptisms in Latin America and the Philippines. But as soon as the numbers start declining and the statistics start looking really bad, what do they do regarding the releasing of statistics in General Conference Nemo?

Nemo [00:50:33] And they just stop.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] They just stop.

Nemo [00:50:35] They just stop.

John Dehlin [00:50:36] Yeah.

Nemo [00:50:37] They stop doing financial reports, they stop doing membership statistic reports and everything just becomes very hush hush. It's not good.

John Dehlin [00:50:46] It's played. So anyway, I, I know that we're going to be talking about some of this later, but I just felt it was important to really establish the dishonesty.

Nemo [00:50:55] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:50:55] So that, so that it gives more power and weight to your pursual of this. And you know, he questions your use of the word lie. But like, why are we going to use a euphemism to describe it in some other way when these really are known intentional. When there is known intentional deceit. Right.

Nemo [00:51:18] Intent is the question and intent is the question that will come up a lot. And it's one of the reasons I was able to escalate this so far was I said, okay, fine, if you want to say to me, we can't know their intent, let's ask them. Let's ask them, did they intend to lie? Let's ask the people who can tell us, was I lying? Yes or no.

John Dehlin [00:51:37] Yeah.

Nemo [00:51:37] Because you can be incorrect and that's fine. Like people can be factually incorrect. I'm not going to jump on you for that necessarily, although my channel is a lot about fact checking, so I might. But you can be factually incorrect and not be trying to lie. So the question is then motive and intent, and you have to ask the people involved.

John Dehlin [00:51:54] Yeah. And Bill, Real, I need to give you credit on this as well, because you, you coined the term liar, liar, pants on fire, and applied it to maybe Holland and others. And I think that was probably the, the final straw that led to your own excommunication. Is that fair to say?

Guest [00:52:09] Yeah. My stake president agreed that it appeared as though Elder Holland had lied, at least in some of the five examples that I had used in that episode. And when I went to my disciplinary court, which is online by the way, as well, both the transcript and the audio, although the audio isn't as great as I wish it was. But in that process, my stake president essentially said, you cannot call the leaders of the church liars. And I said, even if they are? And he says, even if they are.

John Dehlin [00:52:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that goes with Oaks himself saying it's wrong. He's quoted publicly as saying it's wrong to criticize the church leaders even if the criticism is correct. Like Oaks is on the record saying that, right?

Nemo [00:52:55] Yeah. The exact phrase is, it is wrong to criticize leaders of the church even if the criticism's true.

John Dehlin [00:53:02] Yeah, exactly.

Nemo [00:53:04] That's my best Dallin H. Oaks impression. That's all you're getting tonight, people.

John Dehlin [00:53:07] Well, we're gonna get Bill doing Elder Oaks later, which is gonna be even better. Okay, So I think we've established some really good ground there. Thanks, Nemo and Bill for helping out with that. Let's jump back. Let's jump back to the slide deck.

Nemo [00:53:19] Yeah. Okay. So jumping on from this, then we're going to look at I opposed again. So this time it was state conference.

Opposing at Stake Conference and the Reaction

John Dehlin [00:53:25] Okay.

Nemo [00:53:26] And this time I videoed it so that you can all see, or those that are listening can at least hear what a sustaining vote at a state conference sounds like. Okay, let's roll that video.

John Dehlin [00:53:37] Okay, let's do it.

Nemo [00:53:40] Reading England Stake center and via broadcast on 30 January 2022, it's proposed that we sustain as general authorities of the church, Russell M. Nelson as prophet, seer and revelator as president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Dallin H. Oaks as first counsellor in the first presidency, and Henry B. Eyring as second counsellor in the first presidency. Those in favor may manifest it by the uplifted hand. Those opposed in any may manifest, I oppose. The counselors of the first presidency and the quorum of the twelve apostles as prophets, seers and revelators. Those in favor manifest it. Those opposed, manifest, I oppose. So that was a short that I put out that I put out after I'd done that. And if Covid has given us anything, it is the live streaming on unpassword protected YouTube videos of state conferences. Which means that I've then got access to the live feed of the state conference, which is public domain, is out there and I can then commentate on it and talk about it and critique it and under fair use can put it out there and then put the recording of myself up saying, I oppose.

John Dehlin [00:54:59] Yeah, I'm going to just really quickly share some of the comments being made. I want to thank everyone for their comments. Oh, really quickly, Maven asked me to correct. Apparently the BYU experiments didn't involve the shocking of actual genitalia. They measured the genitalia in terms of arousal at byu, but they definitely did aversion therapy. You know, providing aversive stimuli to Homosexual porn. So there was aversive therapy going on, but it didn't include the shocking of genitalia, according to Maven. And I'm. She's probably more clear on the, on the facts than I am. But anyway, as I was watching that video of you opposing channeling my own emotions, I was just thinking about how terrifying that truly is in a Mormon context to stand up surrounded by your fellow members and vote opposed. And it made sense that others who are watching right now shared things like Derek saying, ballsy new Richard Jones saying, damn, Nemo, you are awesome. And Miguel the alpaca saying, yeah, Nemo's got balls. I just want to know, Nemo, how did it feel to do what almost no one in the history of Mormonism has ever done, which is to stand up in front of your entire peer group, your entire community, friends, family, and actually vote opposed and raise your voice? What did that feel like?

Nemo [00:56:36] I mean, if you go back and watch that video, it's on my channel, it's one of my shorts, you'll see that my chest moving pretty heavy up and down. I was nervous for sure. It wasn't easy, but it needed doing. And I, funnily enough, I had some members of the Stake come up to me and kind of thank me for doing it because they wish more people would. They wish more people would voice their opinion because, you know, we get asked it and so they wish more people, rather than just kind of going along with the herd, would actually get up and say something. So that was quite encouraging. So there were some kind of more nuanced members that kind of took me to one side and just subtly thanked me for it. Yeah. But on the whole, lots of pearls being clutched, lots of tutting. Brits are great at tutting. So that's the thing going on. People unhappy and the. You could feel the mood in the room.

John Dehlin [00:57:34] Yeah.

Nemo [00:57:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:35] It's a shocking, very courageous and. And terror inducing act. I'm just going to quickly share. Ex Mormon Candle Company says petition for Nemo to do more Dallin H. Oaks impressions. But I just want to say thanks XMO Candle Company for your super chat donation. Your donations through YouTube during these events help financially support what we do. Also check out Exmulmoran Candle Company's candles. They've got some amazing candles right now.

Nemo [00:58:05] I am speaking for God right here. So yeah, check them out.

John Dehlin [00:58:11] This is not a paid endorsement, by the way. We're just fans of any creators in the space.

Nemo [00:58:15] I just love their candles. Yeah. So thank you very much for their support. Tonight.

John Dehlin [00:58:20] Okay, Nemo. So where do we go from here in the story?

Nemo [00:58:23] Well, my state president was saying that continuing to oppose wouldn't really change anything, as kind of the substance of my opposition hadn't really changed. And so I did meet with my bishop. He also said, where's the effect of. Well, it'd be great if we could ask them, but we can't. So I had an idea and I went a little bit left field. Uh, so if you just pull up the PowerPoint, I'll show you.

John Dehlin [00:58:49] Is that it or is that. Oh, okay. Here we go. Here we go. Here is the PowerPoint.

Nemo [00:58:55] Yes. So I was hitting that glass ceiling. So I decided to do something a bit different. So what I did was I found the email addresses of the first presidency in Chrome of the 12 online. I found them because some of them have signed up to certain websites using their church email address. And while I was researching for another video, I found a couple of them. And once you found a couple of them, you can work out how all their email addresses are constructed. And so I was able to put together a list of the First Presidency of Chrome of the 12, their email addresses, and I emailed them directly. I sent all of them personalized messages. But I'll read to you the one that I sent to Dallin H. Oaks, and I cc'd in again. Alan Phillips, my bishop, my stake president. I wasn't hiding any of this from anybody. I wasn't being sneaky. I wasn't running around in the background. I was very open with my bishop, my state president, the area presidency, the Alan Phillips, the Area 70. That I had done this. I wasn't trying to hide it. So I said, Dear President Oakes, we met once when I was a primary child in the uk. You attended my ward accompanying a member of the ward. Your visit has left a lasting impact on me. And so it is with sadness I write this email. I am, however, thankful for this opportunity to do as my bishop has suggested and contact you with a simple question. A question that my local leaders, despite their best efforts, cannot answer, but which you, as a prophet, seer and revelator, are perfectly placed to answer. What is the functional purpose of opposing votes when it comes to sustaining senior church leadership? More specifically, what is to be done by a member of the church if they have cause to oppose the sustaining of senior church leadership, and the factual basis of their opposition cannot be resolved by local leadership who holds you as an individual accountable for your actions in your position as a prophet, seer and revelator. In this sense, are sustaining votes a meaningful form of common consent or simply a formality? I have put my question to my bishop, my stake president, two area 70s and the area presidency, all of whom are copied into this email. Warmest thanks in anticipation of your response. Brother Douglas Stilgo. And that's the, that was the main bit was that, you know, I was, I was feeling like they weren't really that common consent wasn't really meaningful. I was starting to feel as though it's not, it's not working, it's, I'm getting stuck. And so I wanted to ask what is to be done if all these local leaders are saying, well, we can't resolve the factual nature of your claims because we can't answer the question of intent. And then none of them are denying that the facts add up to what they said wasn't honest or what they said wasn't true, or what they said wasn't factually correct. None of them are denying though, that that is the sum of the facts. What they're saying is, well, they weren't lying because we don't know their intent. And so I'm saying, well, what happens, what happens when your local leaders can't deal with it? So I sent that off to all of them. And if we just pull up the PowerPoint, I will read the question again because it does bear repeating. What is to be done by a member of the church if they have cause to oppose the sustaining of senior church leadership and the factual basis of their opposition cannot be resolved by local leadership? I didn't expect to reply, but I did get one.

The Purpose and Meaning of Sustaining Votes

John Dehlin [01:02:19] Yeah, well, I just want to say, like, that's a really important concept. I was a political science major. I've worked on Capitol Hill. One of the first things you learn in political science is the balance of power, that there's three branches to the US Government, the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judiciary branch. And the government was intentionally instituted that way so that there are checks and balances in power. And if the President of the United States gets out of control, he can be impeached by Congress. Right. He can be removed from office. And you know, if the Congress starts writing laws that are out of control, the Supreme Court can strike down those laws as unconstitutional and so forth. Checks and balances are a crucial form of checking power and preventing corruption and, and, and, and so forth. And ironically, the Mormon Church views the US Constitution as inspired. But basically what I hear you asking is what are the checks and balances against the Mormon First Presidency and the Quorum of the twelve?

Nemo [01:03:25] Yeah, absolutely. What are the checks and balances? What is to be done if this can't be resolved? By doing what they say to do, which is contacting your state president. If your state president can't resolve what's going on, what do you do?

John Dehlin [01:03:37] What?

Nemo [01:03:38] What do you do? Yeah, and Dallin H. Oaks tried to answer me. Can we get Bill to read this, please?

John Dehlin [01:03:45] Okay, so this is. This is Dallin H. Oaks responding. Responding to you. Is that right?

Nemo [01:03:52] Mm.

John Dehlin [01:03:53] All right. Bill.

Nemo [01:03:53] Is Bill about?

John Dehlin [01:03:54] Yep, Bill's here.

Guest [01:03:56] Dear Brother Sticklo. Still go. I have read your message of February 17th and would like to respond as asked, but due to the volume of such requests, complying with all of them is not feasible. I hope you will understand. I refer you to section 30.3 of the General Handbook, where your question is answered, President Dallin H. Oaks.

John Dehlin [01:04:20] Okay. Thank you, Bill. Thanks, Bill. You're a voice talent. You're a star. Okay, so, Nemo, you asked what. And then what was his response if you had to reframe it?

Nemo [01:04:33] Sorry, I'm just getting over the little. Yeah. That was said in the voice of boys gave.

Guest [01:04:37] Don't touch your little factory.

Nemo [01:04:40] Okay, so my question was, what is to be done? And he said, I'd love to answer your question, but I can't. But look at this section of the handbook, which answers your question. I don't know why he thinks I've gone through all this. I told him that my bishop, my stake president, two area authorities in the area presidency, can't answer my question. What makes him think none of them have referred me to the handbook, the very publicly available handbook, because it's not like, oh, check out this. Get your bishop to share with you such and such from Handbook 1, which is the old handbook that used to be just for church leaders. It's not even like that. It was a publicly available handbook. He was like, have you tried looking in the handbook? Yes, funnily enough, I had. So it didn't answer my question. And so I told him such.

John Dehlin [01:05:26] Well. Well, I just want to say, like, on the one hand, what a lame response. On the other hand, I'm surprised. And when you shared this with me, I was just floored that he would at all respond in any way. Now, having said that, I mentioned on the Mormonism Live episode, I've had my own personal interactions with Elder Oaks when I had a corrupt mission experience, I sent him a letter in the early 1990s telling him about my corrupt mission experience. And to his credit, not only did he correspond with me in written letters? But he actually called me and we talked about it. So on the one hand, I want to say kudos to Elder Oaks for giving you a direct response. On the other hand, it was a pretty worthless response. So I'm torn. I'm torn about that. Yeah.

Nemo [01:06:20] And. And so I decided that. And I keep laughing at myself because I'm looking back at this and I can't quite believe I did it. I don't know what. Yeah, I don't know what came over me, but, you know, I was not to be turned away at this point, so.

John Dehlin [01:06:35] But you were also surprised. You were surprised that he was really

Nemo [01:06:38] surprised he got back to me. I was not expecting that at all.

John Dehlin [01:06:43] Yeah.

Nemo [01:06:43] I was not expecting him to get back to me. I was expecting maybe a secretary or just complete to be ignored. I sent. These were like cold call emails. Like I just sent them out of the blue.

John Dehlin [01:06:54] Yeah.

Nemo [01:06:55] So. But I thought, give myself the best possible chance, email all 15 of them. And I tailored each of the emails to each of them, you know, to what I thought would spark them, either to feelings of love, like Dieter Fuchdorf, feelings of care, like he wants to look after me. And so I kind of approached it and I put more emphasis on just my concerns. I was a bit more combative and a bit. Put a bit more emphasis not on the fact that I was on concern, I was concerned, but on the substance of my concerns and how that related to the dishonesty of the people I was sending it to, like Jeffrey R. Holland. I called out the fact that he had lied. I. I spoke about how he once spoke so powerfully about truth that it brought me to tears, or about honesty that it brought me to tears. So imagine my disappointment. I discovered that he's lied to members of the church.

John Dehlin [01:07:37] Yeah.

Nemo [01:07:38] Because I was. I was just trying to appeal to each of them as individual characters and see if the email would actually get through to them and whether it would spark them into responding. And for some reason, Danlate jokes did. But all of them received the email. I've been told. I was told by Alan Phillips that all of them received the email and Jeffrey R. Holland called him personally on a Friday night to ask him what was going on and how he could help. So it permeated the entire first presidency in quorum of the 12th.

John Dehlin [01:08:04] And Holland would have done that again because he was friends with Alan Phillips's dad, Tom Phillips, and because that Holland served his mission in the UK during the baseball baptism scandal of the early 1960s and he served there during his apostleship and even maybe before in various administrative capacities over the UK and Europe. So he has a special connection to both the Phillipses and the uk, Correct.

Nemo [01:08:31] Yeah. He's the reason we're getting a temple in Birmingham rather than the places that we actually need it in the uk. Because Birmingham is where he lived and it's got a special. Yeah, I do not doubt that it will be in the Solihull area, which is where he lived.

John Dehlin [01:08:44] Right. Really quickly, a huge thanks to Doug Vincent for his Super Chat donation and to Eric Packer, those donations here on YouTube really, really make a difference. Okay, Nemo, so how did you respond to Elder Oaks?

Correspondence With Church Leadership Escalates

Nemo [01:08:59] Yeah. Okay, so if we open up the slide deck. I've loaded this one up. I said, dear President Oaks, thank you for taking the time to reply. That section of the handbook had been reviewed and discussed by myself and my stake president prior to my email of the 17th of the second 22. It does not answer the specifics of my question. What is to be done by a member of the church if they have cause to oppose the sustaining of senior church leadership? And the factual basis of their opposition cannot be resolved by local leadership. For example, the member has evidence that a senior church leader has made dishonest statements publicly. The local leaders admit the veracity of these facts, but state it was not the intent of the senior church leader to be dishonest. When a matter of intent is involved, what is the procedure for resolving the question of intent? Who holds you as an individual accountable for your actions in your position as prophet, seer and revelator? In this sense, are sustaining votes a meaningful form of common consent or simply a formality? In the March 2020 ensign, you said Bill. Where's Bill?

Guest [01:10:10] Oh, I don't. I don't see the. I see your letter still up there.

Nemo [01:10:14] Yeah, yeah. So the quote within the March 2020 enzyme.

John Dehlin [01:10:17] Yeah, it's a quote within the letter that. That is quoting Oaks.

Guest [01:10:21] Oh, I'm sorry. I got you. The essential unity on doctrine among different leaders is presented by the long standing rule that questions addressed to individual apostles or other authorities about doctrine or policy that is not clearly defined in the scriptures or handbooks are to be referred to the first Presidency, unquote.

Nemo [01:10:42] Cheers, Bill. So, given that neither scripture nor the handbook clearly define the answers to those questions, I must insist that you uphold your self professed long standing rule and refer these questions to the first presidency of which you are a member, so that we may continue to have the essential unity on doctrine I look forward to your response. Brother Douglas Stilgo, thank you for reading that, Bill. It's really good to get you doing that voice because it will make it easier for the podcast listeners.

John Dehlin [01:11:12] And Bill, I just want to say we love you and respect you for more than your voice.

Guest [01:11:20] Just the real quick. I mean, please. Elder Oaks. If you guys remember years ago, not too long, four years ago, five years ago, whatever it was, there's this quote from him. You know, however appropriate for a democracy, there's no warrant for this concept in the government of God's kingdom, where questions are honored but opposition is not. And these guys all along the way set up quotes that then from that point forward, the church now gets to use as its rules and policies. And this is the, you know, one of the quotes by which this whole process seems to be operating by.

John Dehlin [01:11:52] Yeah, absolutely.

Nemo [01:11:53] But then that's why it's important to quote them back to themselves and say, well, you said this in the Ensign. You said that doctrinal unity is important. And so we need to ensure doctrinal unity. If the scriptures and the handbook don't answer it, then you need to send it to the First Presidency. That question needs answering. So I told him he needs to live up to that really super quickly.

John Dehlin [01:12:14] I'm just going to share a comment my dear friend Gerardo makes. Hey, everyone, please subscribe to the channel. We're close to 80,000. For anyone on YouTube right now or for anyone who watches it later, we're about to hit 80,000 subscribers. We're trying to hit 100,000 subscribers within the next year. We hope to do it within the next four months. The more subscribers we have, the better. That helps with the algorithms and it just gets the message out. So please, if you can, subscribe to us on YouTube and while you're at it, subscribe to Nemo the Mormon and to Mormonism Mormon discussions YouTube channels, because that, that just is really going to help get all of our, our channels the attention that they deserve to, to, to reach as many people as possible. Okay, Nemo, so you didn't love his answer, and, and so you responded back and you basically said, hey, where, where, where can we turn to for resolutions? Who's checking your power? Is that right?

Nemo [01:13:15] Yeah, essentially. And so I thought, well, I'll push back on that and see if basically putting him in a position where he'd have to ignore his own advice will get him to respond again. And it kind of worked. If we put up the PowerPoint, you'll see that Brooke P. Hales, Secretary to the First Presidency responded, okay, so now this is.

John Dehlin [01:13:39] This is. And the secretary. It actually sounds less prestigious than it is. But the secretary to the first presidency is an incredibly powerful position because they're basically. They know where all the bodies are buried. They're in every meeting. They in many cases are the handlers or the screeners. And so the Secretary of the First Presidency is an incredibly powerful position and

Nemo [01:14:06] they're general authority 70s, so they're full time paid clergy of the church, essentially. You know, that's their job is they are paid a stipend by the church to do that. At least 120,000 if it hasn't been reduced and it's probably gone up. So, yeah, that's his job essentially is to sit at church headquarters and to do this sort of stuff.

John Dehlin [01:14:29] So him responding is still significant, even though Oaks is kind of pushing it off.

Nemo [01:14:33] Yeah, well, he's in the office of the first presidency. He's within that office. Right within that. That organizational structure.

John Dehlin [01:14:39] Do you want me to go and read it?

Nemo [01:14:41] Yes, please, John.

John Dehlin [01:14:41] Okay. This is March 3, 2022. Brooke P. Hills. Dear brother, still go. I have been asked to respond to your further question addressed to president Dallin H. Oaks. A copy of this email is being sent to president Blank, your stake president, I assume for his information. You asked what is to be done by a member of the church if they have cause to oppose the sustaining of senior church leadership and the factual basis of their opposition cannot be resolved by local leadership. Hales goes on to write, the response is da, da, da. That one should meet with his, her stake president to present the information to him. The stake president would then forward that information to the office of the first presidency. Once one does that, his, her obligation and the obligation of the stake president are fulfilled. The information would be carefully investigated and appropriate action taken Based on the evidence presented in and the investigation of the facts. It is hoped that this answers your question. Sincerely, Brooke P. Hales. Okay, so what I'm hearing there is you've done your job, Nemo. You presented the facts to your leadership stake president. He's presented it to the first presidency in the quorum of the 12. You've done your job. You can rest assured and feel good that this has all been taken care of.

Nemo [01:16:06] Well, not yet, because what he's saying is that in the event that they all can't answer it, then the evidence should be sent to the office of her presidency. I haven't sent it yet because I didn't know to do that. He's just Cracked open. Wide open.

John Dehlin [01:16:22] Okay.

Nemo [01:16:22] The Office of the First Presidency.

John Dehlin [01:16:24] Okay. So. So even though you had talked about the deceptions and you had maybe even talking a bit about examples of your deception. The deceptions, you're saying you hadn't really presented the detailed evidence yet, Right?

Nemo [01:16:38] I had to my local leaders, but not to the Office of the First Presidency. Okay. Because as far as I would concern, they were untouchable. This is a big deal that Brooke P. Hales has now said that what is to be done is your evidence should be sent to us and we'll investigate. But I had a few questions about that because obviously we all knew that my concerns were about Russell M. Nelson and Dan H. Oaks lying as well as other members of the quorum of the 12. So two members of the Office of the First Presidency were caught up in. In these accusations or in these. This evidence of lying. So are they going to be investigating themselves? And I asked Brook P. Hales this and we kind of went up and around the garden and then. If you want to go to the slide deck. John.

John Dehlin [01:17:21] Yeah.

Nemo [01:17:21] And read this next one. This was Brooke P. Hales final response to me when I asked him the question. What happens if the people needing to be investigated are within the Office of the First Presidency? Do the Quorum of the Twelve help? What happens?

John Dehlin [01:17:35] All right. This is March 9, 2022. Dear Brother Stilgo, thank you for your further inquiry. Unfortunately, I do not know the answers to your questions, nor do I have the time to research them simply in order to satisfy your curiosity. If such a situation were to arise, obviously important decisions would need to be made by those who have the authority to do so. The appropriate parties would be informed as needed. Sincerely, Brooke B. Hales. What I'm hearing there is. You're getting on my nerves. You should have just been satisfied with my previous email. Why are you still agitating? I don't have time for this. Please go away.

Nemo [01:18:15] Yeah, pretty much. I sent a follow up email to that just to be a little bit cheeky and just to let him know that it wasn't mere curiosity. I said, dear Elder Hales, thank you for your quick response and for your honesty regarding your lack of answers to my questions. My questions are not asked simply out of curiosity. I wish it were so. They come from a need to understand the procedure that is in place when a member raises legitimate concerns regarding the public behavior of members of the Quorum of the twelve and First Presidency and how they are held accountable for those behaviours. My questions come because such a situation has indeed Arisen. My stake president will forward you these concerns in due course. So it would be beneficial to continue researching the answers to these questions as we have successfully been doing together. And I am grateful for your commitment to doctrinal unity thus far. I know you must be busy, and I'm grateful for your time. Though I would ask if you, in your position within the office of the First Presidency, do not have time to research answers to questions of such gravity, then who does? Warmest regards, brother. Still go.

John Dehlin [01:19:23] Yeah, those are fair questions. If you can't answer me, who can? Quick, quick. Thanks to Debbie Donovan and Mike Baer for their super chat donations. Those really help. Okay, so you're saying who do I go to?

Nemo [01:19:39] Yeah, because I'm at the top of the church now. I'm at the top of the organizational structure. Who. Who else knows the answers to these questions?

John Dehlin [01:19:46] Yeah.

Nemo [01:19:46] So if it needs researching, he is perfectly placed to do so. But what we are left with if you throw up the slides, John, is we are left with a bit of a flowchart. Now, this is the new standard. Share this with all your active, believing Mormon friends. This is what happens when an opposing vote is raised. The member opposes the sustaining of senior church leadership in ward or state conference or even at general conference. You meet with the stake president and discuss the evidence. Now the question, can the stake Presidents resolve the factual nature of your concerns? If yes, then all good. They've resolved the factual nature of your concerns about those brethren and you can move on if they can't. What Brooke P. Hales teaches us now, what is official church. The official church position or the position of the Office of the First Presidency, according to Brook P. Hales, is that the stake President sends evidence to the Office of the First Presidency, and the Office of the First Presidency investigates that evidence. I've put this chart on my Instagram. It's on John's Instagram as well. It's on the Reddit. It's, you know, it's everywhere that I can think to put it. This is the new standard. So screenshot this, send it to your friends. That is so far. Even if nothing else goes on in this story, this is huge because Brooke P. Hales has just shattered the. The glass ceiling that was over the top of stake Presidents.

John Dehlin [01:21:17] Yeah. It's an invitation to all of us who are still members to present their concerns to the. To the top of the church. Basically because we deserve support and answers. Yeah.

Nemo [01:21:28] Via your state president. You still have to go through your state president, but your state president doesn't get to say, oh, it stops with me. The book stops with me because it doesn't. Brook P. Hale says, well, if they can't resolve it, it has to go higher.

John Dehlin [01:21:40] Yeah, that makes sense. Hey, Bill, I just want to give you a chance. Anything you want to weigh in on on that slide or anything else so far.

Guest [01:21:48] Yeah. So there's the part earlier on where Oaks wants to handle it one way and Nemo brilliantly points him to the Church's own teaching, saying it needs to go back to the First Presidency. And that's when Hales, Hale. And by the way, Hales is the guy who, I think you maybe mentioned this earlier, but he's the guy who reads the membership info every, you know, every year in conference in the April to tell you the statistics for the year before. No longer do they do that now. Now they just say them in print, await everything. I don't know what's going. Sorry. Yeah, sorry about that. So. So just so you know who Hales is, but I thought it was brilliant of Nemo to essentially tell them like, hey, this isn't how those things works. You've got to do it this other way. And then to get a response back from Hails tells you it worked. It tells you that they are, they are to some degree having to appear as if they're following their own rules. And while it's all, you know, it's all made up and make believe and not legitimate, there still is ways in which you're able to kind of hold them accountable. And I thought Nemo did just a brilliant job of doing that.

John Dehlin [01:22:58] Yeah, totally agree.

Nemo [01:23:00] Thank you. Thank you. Someone said in the comments, I'm guessing it went higher because Nemo runs a YouTube channel about the church. Maybe. But like I said, I signed none of this off as Nemo the Mormon. This was all just me in my local ward on a Sunday talking to my bishop and state president about my concerns.

John Dehlin [01:23:17] I would also imagine that they're concerned about how this could affect the church in the UK and maybe your parents, maybe it's a tight knit community where they realize that in some of these international areas the community is so tight knit and so connected, sometimes even more so than here in the United States, that you can't afford to alienate people who have been long standing pillars of the strength of the church in some of these non US countries. Isn't that possible?

Nemo [01:23:51] Yeah, I mean you're reliant on some people, like quite a small number of people to do the heavy lifting. So you don't want to kick those people out. I mean, I don't have a ton of social like capital capital in my current ward because I've just not been there very long. But I get on with people, I contribute in Sunday school. Like it goes well. It's quite a nuanced ward in many ways, which again is why it's thanks to the Bishop of the ward, I think is why I got this far.

John Dehlin [01:24:18] But my sense in the UK is that a lot of people know each other throughout the country.

Nemo [01:24:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:24] You know, not, not just in the warden stake level. Right.

Nemo [01:24:28] Well, yeah, like I know of Alan Phillips before I met him. You know, his dad was my stake president when I was growing up. You know this. It's like it's all connected in the uk. Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:24:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so let's go to the next slide.

Meeting With Stake President and Bishop

Nemo [01:24:43] Next slide. And so what, what's going on now is Alan Phillips then gets back in touch and wants to meet with me, my state president, my bishop, and discuss what's going on here. Now, because he's been cc'd into this, he's seen all this correspondence and so he knows the score is that we're now to be sending evidence to the Office of the First Presidency. And so I sat down in a meeting with my bishop, my stake President and Area 70. I had to hold my own against the three of them and justify why this needed to be sent. And the long and short of it is that it was sent. And I sent this just as a follow up to send my document. This is a three and a half thousand word document that's entitled Evidence of Dishonesty. This document is hyperlinked with all the evidence. So I lay out the narrative, I lay out the claims. And with those claims there is, you know, the evidence is in there and it's hyperlinked. So it'll take you straight to whatever scripture I'm referring to, whatever document I'm referring to, whatever video I'm referring to. So this is. Dear Stake President, thank you again for taking the time to attend the meeting on Monday night. I'm particularly aware that all three of you were away from your families on family home evening, and I'm grateful for that sacrifice. I've done my best to be as objective and respectful as possible whilst directly addressing the evidence. For my concerns about the honesty of senior church leaders, I understand this document is likely to cause some discomfort. In much the same way my mother was nervous about me reaching out to the brethren, I already expressed him that my mother was nervous when I told her I started communicating directly with the senior leadership of the church, which in itself is telling that we as members are nervous when someone goes outside of the hierarchy, outside of the normal structure. It goes against much of our cultural upbringing to directly acknowledge any negative behavior of senior church leaders. But together we can bravely pursue this inquiry. And we have the backing of Elder Phillips and Elder Hales to do so. So I'm reminding him here that this is all legit. We've been told by the Office of the First Presidency and he's been told by an Area 70 that we should go ahead and send this evidence to the Office of the First Presidency. On that note, I would like to reiterate my need to be cc'd into your sending of this letter to the Office of the First Presidency. I have the email address of everyone involved, so there should be no privacy concerns on that front. I also trust that their response to this letter will be shared directly with me or via yourself. I am so grateful that you are willing to support me on this journey of inquiry. And it is my prayer that we will both be strengthened by the truths that come to light. All the best, Brother Douglas Stilgar.

John Dehlin [01:27:24] Okay, so what? What? So you're basically providing a huge PDF of the honesty. You're providing the evidence. Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [01:27:34] And so we keep talking about this letter, this document. Let's just have a quick whistle stop tour of it, shall we?

John Dehlin [01:27:39] Yeah.

Nemo [01:27:41] So it starts off, Dear President Blank, as a member of the Church Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I'm here by opposing the sustaining of Russell, Marion Nelson, Dallin Harris Oaks and Henry Bennion Eyring as prophets, seers and revelators. In addition, I oppose the sustaining of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers and revelators. This letter constitutes an overview of the evidences for that opposition. As per our meeting together with my Bishop and Elder Phillips, and in accordance with the instruction from Elder Brook P. Hales that we received, this will be forwarded to the Office of the First Presidency to seek resolution of these concerns. These are no trivial concerns such as, and this is a direct quote from my State President, evidence of President Nelson washing his car on a Sunday. Rather, they pertain to a clear and repeated pattern of dishonest behavior amongst the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. By the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. And so here are three witnesses amongst several that attest to the dishonest behaviour of current prophets, seers and revelators of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. A pattern of dishonest behaviour amongst men in their position must be investigated so as to protect the sanctity of their office and the integrity of the conduit they provide between the members of the church and the deity for whom these leaders claim to speak. Finally, it is important because there is a narrative actively propagated by senior church leaders that prophets always teach the truth. Another example of this rhetoric of infallibility comes from Henry B. Eyring's talk the Power of Sustaining Faith, in which he encourages us to ask ourselves, have I thought or spoken of human weakness in the people I have pledged to sustain? If we have, he warns us that we need to repent. We are being taught that even thinking of church leaders as having human weakness is something we need to repent of if we have sustained them. This narrative is unsustainable in light of the following. And then I lay out some of the key lies that have been told, which I'll do a whistle stop tour of now, unless you guys want to jump in first.

John Dehlin [01:29:45] No, no, go ahead, Go ahead. Bill, is there anything you want to add before. Before. No. Okay, yeah, Nemo. I mean, we've talked about these a little bit just to give people the

Nemo [01:29:54] heads up, but please, this document will be available, so.

John Dehlin [01:29:57] But go ahead and do the whistle stop tour just to reinforce.

Nemo [01:30:01] Yes, we'll do so. The witness number one was Dan H. Oaks did not speak truthfully at a University of Virginia Q a session in 2021 when he said, let me say, about electroshock treatments at byu. When I became president at byu, that had been discontinued earlier and it never went on under my administration.

John Dehlin [01:30:17] Definitely, definitely. I lay out.

Nemo [01:30:20] Yeah, exactly. I lay out when Dallin Hokes was present at BYU, 1971-1980. I lay out the fact that Max McBride's study went on in 1976. I then went on to say that in 1977, a BYU student produced a booklet known as the Pain Papers, which discussed the practice of electroshock aversion therapy. That booklet was disseminated to all BYU administrators and every general authority. It was also covered in national media, which Oakes was made aware of in the September 1977 BYU Executive Committee meetings. There was a booklet. That booklet was discussed. And while he's not on that committee in the minutes, it says that he was working with Boyd K. Packer on this matter. So Dallin H. Oaks was cc'd into documents. And this particular witness is very important. I'm laying into this one more because it will come up later. But there were documents that I sent him in these hyperlinks that show that Dallin H. Oaks knew that electroshock therapy was going on under his administration as president of byu.

John Dehlin [01:31:20] He signed off on it. Yeah.

Nemo [01:31:21] So witness number two is Jeffrey R. Holland in the Harvard Q and A saying institutionally, not a single dollar, not one red cent of money from the Church Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints went into Proposition 8 or any other comparable proposition that I know of.

John Dehlin [01:31:33] That's just a super. That's a super outrageous lie.

Nemo [01:31:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:37] And he.

Nemo [01:31:37] Outrageous.

John Dehlin [01:31:38] It's outrageous that four years after Prop 8, he was still telling people that. Because we all knew by 2008, 2009, the church was like 40 million in to Prop 8. Yeah.

Nemo [01:31:51] Yeah. And I lay out the numbers in this. I say that the church was fined because they failed to make a timely report of late contributions totaling $36,928.

John Dehlin [01:32:02] Yeah.

Nemo [01:32:03] According to California Secretary of State, the church spent $223,940. 85 red little cents on Proposition 8. And they had to file a major donor report. And I even laid it out further, that $157,706.28 was what they valued. Church employee time that was spent on that campaign at the audio visual productions the Church made were valued at $30,000. 806. 26 Southwest Airlines flights had to be paid for totaling $4,927. L. Whitney Clayton was reimbursed for trav of $4,471.75. The church paid for travel expenses for one of its institutional leaders to travel back and forth between Utah and California in Support of Prop 8. Jeffrey R. Holland should have known all this. And if he didn't know, he shouldn't have been making declarative statements in public which run contrary to the sum of the facts.

John Dehlin [01:32:57] And it's also. It's also to this Harvard crowd, you want to make sure and look good in front of your Ivy League elite. And he's saying it behind closed doors. But I just also, I want to say we covered Prop 8 on Mormon. That's how old Mormon stories is. We covered Prop 8 while it was happening. And I have the testimony of BYU students. The Church rented out entire floors of office buildings and recruited BYU students to. They set up call banks, phone banks, brought in, you know, members of wards and stakes and BYU students and had these massive floors of call centers established to call down citizens of the state of California to influence their votes. And that was all organized, paid for and funded by the church and through volunteer efforts as well. But. But certainly money is being used to rent out to. To rent out entire floors of office buildings and to set up phone banks and then to recruit members and students to man the call banks. I mean, how much money does that cost, right?

Nemo [01:34:08] Tons.

John Dehlin [01:34:09] Tons.

Nemo [01:34:09] The church spent loads of money on this. They may not have directly given money to the charitable organization, but they spent their money on it.

John Dehlin [01:34:15] It's dishonest to suggest that that wasn't a massive investment. Yeah.

Nemo [01:34:22] And then. So the third witness is that M. Russell Ballard in 2017 at a face to face event said there has been no attempt on the part of the church leaders to try and hide anything from anybody. And I point out that that is untrue because images of Wilford Woodruff's 1867 journal on the church's website have been redacted, like blacked out to hide mentions of the second anointing. Why would you redact documents if you're not trying to hide things from people? The transcript of the original text from a. From a different website confirms that the redacted parts are indeed references to the second anointing. The statement is also untrue in the instance about which he's speaking because he's holding up this 1970 improvement era article saying that the church has talked about multiple accounts of the first vision. They were never hidden under Joseph fielding Smith. The 1832 account was hidden away. And I also make the point that the churches. Why do they not make pre1971church magazines available on the church website? Why are they on Internet archive? Because they teach members consistently not to go outside of approved church sources to look for things. So they're not going to go to Internet archive to look for old church magazines. So again, here that's hidden away from the members of the church anyway.

John Dehlin [01:35:33] And that's just a small sampling. As I already discussed, for well over 100 years, the church has whitewashed and hidden its history, kept it in vaults, kept scholars away from even having access to journals and records. One amazing book that really chronicles this is Lighthouse Gerald and Sandra Tanner. They go in depth to how much the church has withheld and hidden information. Let me go ahead and turn the time over to Bill. Bill's got something he wants to share. But that is one of the most massive areas of guilt in the church is the way it's handled its history from its members. So there's just so much evidence there. Bill, what do you want to add

Guest [01:36:17] yeah, so I've got a slide there, if you don't mind maybe putting it up on the screen.

John Dehlin [01:36:21] Yeah, absolutely.

Guest [01:36:23] The church, if you remember, Elder Holland and other leaders in the top 15, claimed during Prop 8 that they had not just the no red cent, you know, that whole idea, but it's the idea that this was a local effort to participate politically. It had nothing to do with the top leadership of the Church, but it was a flowchart that got discovered. And it's this flowchart which shows that Elder Ballard, Elder Cook, Elder Clayton, Sister Dalton and then President Packer were absolutely connected to Proposition 8. This was the organizational chart. They are lying all the time. It's kind of their mode of operandi. And so if you wanted Nemo, you could certainly add this one to the paper as well. That they were very dishonest about how far up the participation in Prop 8 went, I'm sure.

Nemo [01:37:11] And I was trying really hard to, you know, just share very simply something that would get read. And it still went to three and a half thousand because I wanted to make sure I captured every single member of the Church who is currently involved with it. And so if we go to the slides, I'll really, like spin you through very quickly, further witnesses. So Russell M. Nelson and his plane of death. We've covered that already. We've talked about that. I talked about how Russell M. Nelson said prophets are very popular, but we always teach the truth. And I've given some examples of times when prophets haven't, such as Brigham Young teaching

John Dehlin [01:37:49] Adam God theory. Blood atonement.

Nemo [01:37:50] Yeah, blood atonement. And then Dallin H oates giving justification for the Salamander letter, which, you know, he was treating something fraudulent as though it was legitimate and he should have discerned the difference.

John Dehlin [01:38:04] Not to mention when all the prophets and revelators taught the the curse of Cain as doctrine. Now we're saying that that was. Was not doctrine. It was. It was, you know, policy or the misunderstandings of men. How's that? How's that?

Nemo [01:38:19] There's plenty more in that category.

John Dehlin [01:38:21] Yeah, absolutely.

Nemo [01:38:21] Plenty more.

John Dehlin [01:38:22] Absolutely.

Nemo [01:38:24] Then I go for down at jokes again and I point out that he was saying that in the Restored Church, doctrine is not canonized until the body of the Church has received it by the law of common consent. That principle was revealed in 1830 and has been applied since that time. I've made points that essentially the doctrine of the Church includes the Church's essential salvific ordinances, and those have been changed without vote of members of the church. So that's not true, right? Jeffrey R. Holland lied in his BBC interview with John Sweeney. Again, we've looked at that. EM Russell Ballard said some missionaries have felt pressure to invite people to be baptized during the first lesson or even the first contact. These missionaries have felt that inviting people to be baptized the very first time they meet them demonstrate the missionaries faith and support their thinking that inviting people to be baptized early is what is expected supports their thinking. Other missionaries have felt that an invitation to be baptized early allowed them to promptly separate the wheat from the tares. In this case, some see the baptismal invitation as a sifting tool. Church leaders don't know where these practices began. EM Russell Ballard knows where this practice began because he was responsible for creating Preach My Gospel which teaches missionaries to invite people to be baptized on the first lesson. He was in the room, he was there when it happened. So him blaming 19 year olds, other than just being a bit pathetic is just vastly untrue. Yeah, next slide.

John Dehlin [01:39:44] Now I'll just add that in my mission in Guatemala, you know, they were baptizing over 750 people a month. Some companionships were were baptizing 40 people in a month. There's only 30 days in a month. Some of the companionships in my mission were baptizing 40amonth. Elder Ballard came to my mission in Guatemala and called the Mission to Repentance. And these practices were not only led by my mission president, but they were institutionalized in the early 1960s with T. Bowering, Woodbury and Holland and Cook and all the baseball baptism stuff that happened in the 60s. So this challenged people and baptized them the same day. It's been going on for 50 years and Ballard's known about it and has been a part of it since the beginning.

Nemo [01:40:31] Yeah, definitely, yeah. Quinton L. Cook said with respect to slavery, our scriptures have made it clear that no man should be in bondage to another other than throwing Brigham Young under the bus because he had some very strong feelings about slavery. It also is simply not true according to DNC 13412 which talks about how it's not just to preach the gospel to that might interfere with bond servants and basically don't teach the church, don't teach the gospel to slaves. So the scriptures haven't been clear that no man should be in bondage to another. In fact they have taken steps to respect the slave owner relationship and not to interfere with that. So that's not true. Neil L. Anderson was visiting in Zimbabwe with the vice president of the country this I love this one. He said, we want to help in every way we can. We are not a wealthy people, but we are a good people and we share what we have. The Enzyme Peak Fund of The church in 2018 stood at $100 billion. The GDP of Zimbabwe in 2018 was 19.2 billion. The church's Enzyme Peak Fund was over five times larger than the GDP of the country in which he stood and made that statement.

John Dehlin [01:41:39] Yeah, we know the Mormon Church is worth a few hundred billion. At least.

Nemo [01:41:43] At least.

John Dehlin [01:41:44] Yeah. In 2022. So that's just. That's outrageous.

Nemo [01:41:48] Yeah. And then. Yeah, go.

John Dehlin [01:41:50] Oh, no, just really quick. Super. Thanks to Nathan and Nikki for your super chats. Okay, keep going.

Nemo [01:41:56] Sorry. Thank you. And then the final one is Gary E. Steven, which this one's a doozy. And it kind of came in late when I was kind of compiling this document at the NAACP 36th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Luncheon that was January 2020. Gary E. Stevenson said, one of our recent church manuals includes a paragraph with some outdated commentary about race. I mean, that's arguable in and of itself. It was mistakenly included in the printed version of the manual, which had been prepared for print nearly two years ago. Well, that. That stuff was still problematic two years ago, Gary. Like, that's not a defense. Oh, we did it two years ago. Those things weren't. Fine. Then why was it ever included? When it was brought to the attention of church leaders late last year, they directed that it be immediately removed in our annual online manual, which it was, which is used by the great majority of our members. We have also directed that any future printed manuals will reflect this change. Fine. We are asking our members to disregard the paragraph in the printed manual. And then he goes on to say, you know, I'm deeply saddened by this, and we condemn all racism, past and present. Da, da da. I'm not aware of any direct communication to the members of this church to disregard the paragraph in question. No letter from the First Presidency Quorum of the twelve, or General Sunday School Presidency was read over the pulpit telling people to disregard that paragraph. The instruction for Curriculum 2020, a place it may be found, says nothing about disregarding the paragraph in question. The online version of the manual, while it has been changed, does not instruct members to disregard the print version in relation to the aforementioned paragraph. It is dishonest to tell attendees of that luncheon that you are instructing members to disregard racially offensive materials in a church study manual and then fail to actually instruct Those members to do so. It is just virtue signaling and it's not. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:43:44] Yeah, super fair. Those are great.

Nemo [01:43:46] There we go.

John Dehlin [01:43:47] And that was it.

Nemo [01:43:48] That was my document.

John Dehlin [01:43:49] And there are thousands of other examples. But we'll make sure to include that document in our show notes so people can access it because it's great. It's almost like a 95 theses that you're nailing to the wall of church headquarters a little bit.

Nemo [01:44:02] Almost.

John Dehlin [01:44:03] Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [01:44:04] And then we'll just. We'll just zip through this last little bit here.

John Dehlin [01:44:06] Okay.

Nemo [01:44:06] Where you know, so I, as well as hyperlinking it, some of these things which I thought may disappear, I also included as kind of physical addenda at the end. So there you can see the redacting of the church documents. And it's only because you go to a different website with the transcript, you can see it talks about the second anointing. But there's the redaction again on the church's website there. There's the adhesive tape on the spine of the page that was used to fix the 1832 account back in to the Joseph Smith papers. That is Bill Real's wonderful list of the story of the flight of death as it was told by Russell Nelson and others. You can see it's very prolific story. It's not just a one off. And then seven is beautiful because it shows the 2004 and 2018 edition of Preach My Gospel. Both include the instruction to invite people to be baptized on the first lesson.

John Dehlin [01:45:00] Man, you should have been an attorney, Nemo. I think you missed your calling. I think RFM is probably. He's in the comments. He's probably looking on with envy.

Nemo [01:45:09] Yeah, I'm not sure about that. I don't know whether I'd make a very good attorney, to be honest. I don't know. Maybe it's just I'm very passionate about this. Yeah. So anyway, that document, my state president, being the very brave man that he is, he sent it. But he did change the narrative around sending it slightly, which made me somewhat uncomfortable. But I was kind of willing to accept it if you just throw the slides up.

John Dehlin [01:45:32] Yep.

Nemo [01:45:35] So despite my request to be cc'd in, he didn't. But then he did forward me the kind of the email as it was sent. But you'll see in the next slide, my state president changed the narrative from following the instructions of the office of the first Presidency to a new narrative, which was my local leaders weren't able to satisfy my questions and so I asked them to send this document, which isn't true, as you've seen in the emails. Brooke P. Hales asked me to send my evidence.

John Dehlin [01:46:04] Yeah.

Nemo [01:46:04] It's not me. It's not me agitating and saying. I really want to send this letter. Please get them to read it. I'm say. I'm saying. Here's what I've been told now by the Office of the First Presidency. So let's have a look, shall we? Let's send it to them.

John Dehlin [01:46:18] But what's wrong? What's wrong with you sending that evidence? You know what I mean?

Nemo [01:46:23] Because it's insubordinate.

John Dehlin [01:46:24] I know.

Nemo [01:46:24] In their view.

John Dehlin [01:46:25] And they're not used to people actually questioning or challenging them. They're just not used to it.

Nemo [01:46:30] It. No, not at all.

John Dehlin [01:46:32] Yeah.

Nemo [01:46:34] So we can read it here. It being sent. If Bill would like to read this. This is my stake president. So we don't need the D voice, but if Bill wants to just jump in, be great. Perfect.

Oaks' Official Response Is Delivered

Guest [01:46:47] Hi, Doug. Here's the outgoing message as requested. I sent it to the Office of the First Presidency and CC Elder Phillips. As you can see, I changed the name of the attachment as I felt the name connected with the title of the email would be helpful. I felt a name connected with the title of the email would be helpful. I'll let you know on further developments. So and so Stake President.

Nemo [01:47:08] So what I want to jump in there real quick, and we don't need to take this off the screen, is just that the original name of the document was evidence of dishonesty, and I'm pretty sure he was uncomfortable with the document being called that, and so he wanted to change it to something a bit less inflammatory. That's my feeling. Okay, Karen.

Guest [01:47:25] Consistent with the direction at General Conference for members to express their opposing votes to their stake President, I have received the attached communication from a member of the reading Stake. I have been working with Brother Stilgo for some time, along with Bishop so and so and Elder Phillips, to help resolve multiple concerns he has expressed, in particular regarding historic and recent communications from senior church leaders. I have counseled with Brother Stilgo to express that even if the basis he asserts for his concerns are valid, such concerns would not disqualify any leader from serving in the church. However, despite best efforts, we have not been able to provide answers to his satisfaction, and he has asked that I forward these concerns to the Office of the First Presidency. I will continue to work with Bishop so and so in helping Brother Stilgo make the steps necessary to fulfill his express desire to return to the temple. While this may be a long journey, I hope that this blessing can be available to him in the future. Signed, the stake president.

Nemo [01:48:29] Yeah, really quick, Nemo.

John Dehlin [01:48:30] It's. Is it. I. I mispronounce this. It's reading, not reading. Is that right?

Guest [01:48:34] Yeah, reading. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:48:34] Yeah, thanks me. Thanks, Maven, for calling.

Nemo [01:48:36] That spelled exactly the same way, though. So that's the English language for you.

Guest [01:48:39] Yeah, I lived close to Reading, Pennsylvania, so I think maybe that's reading, too.

Nemo [01:48:42] I don't know. It might be. It's probably reading. Yeah. But. So you can see that he changed the narrative, and he made it all about how I was insatiable. So they had to try and. They had to try and do this to shut me up and that, you know, don't worry. He's still loyal. Don't worry, guys. I'm still loyal. I've said his concerns don't matter. You should still be able to continue in your callings. This is all him. He's the problem. Which I. I understand to an extent, because, you know, there comes a time with every church leader when they're dealing with someone like me that they have to choose between the individual and the institution. And so far, I've yet to see many that choose the individual. So he's had to side with the institution on this. He has to make sure that his standing within the institution remains good.

John Dehlin [01:49:25] And I mentioned this in the Mormonism Live episode on Wednesday, but, you know, I was at Microsoft when Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were being basically, you know, sued by the Justice Department for, you know, monopolistic behaviors. And what I realized is these men at the tops of these massive corporations, they're not really used to be ever being told that their poop stinks, right? That they're making big mistakes. It's the whole king has no emperor has no clothes kind of dynamic. And so your stake president has to be terrified to be sending any information to the First Presidency, the quorum of the 12, that any of them would, heaven forbid, ever do anything wrong, let alone be systematic liars. He's got to be terrified. And that's why he's softening all the title, the subject, you know, the framing, the narrative, because it's. He's got to be terrified because the church leaders have never, ever been accused of lying by people in the rank and file. Right?

Nemo [01:50:33] I can't say never ever. I don't know. But, like, certainly it's not common. And he. He said he wasn't prepared for it. And so I Sympathize with him.

John Dehlin [01:50:43] Yeah.

Nemo [01:50:43] And then good old Dallin got assigned to investigate. He was assigned to investigate it. So if Bill wants to read this

John Dehlin [01:50:54] again, this is state president may 3rd,

Nemo [01:50:58] my state president, updating me 3rd of may 2022. So this is. Yeah, a good year after everything else.

Guest [01:51:07] Perfect. Hi, Doug. Just to update you, I had a brief phone call yesterday from President Oaks to let me know that he has the assignment regarding the questions raised in your letter. He apologized for the delay in making contact following general conference and indicated he would come back with a response as soon as he could, highlighting that the questions will require some investigation. Questions, plural. Of course. I'm conscious that President Oaks has many other responsibilities, so I'm not sure when that response may come. However, it was very clear to me that President Oaks wants to help support you in your desire to return to the temple. I'll keep you appraised of the developments. Sign the stake President.

Nemo [01:51:44] Yeah. So questions, plural. And they will need investigating. So what Dallin H. Oaks has been assigned to do and what he has said he will do is investigate my questions, plural. Because he has. He has seen this. And he knows there's more than one question in here. He knows that there's more than one point in here. So he's clearly looked at it to some extent. So now the question is, what's he going to say about it all?

John Dehlin [01:52:11] Yeah, what's he going to say about the multiple questions you asked? Right. Nemo 11.

Nemo [01:52:16] There's 11 instances of dishonesty in that document by seven of the current 15, quorum of the 12 and first presidency.

John Dehlin [01:52:23] And as an attorney and former judge, he knows how to be exhaustive in his analysis of. In response to all the evidence you provided. Right.

Nemo [01:52:34] You would think, you would think he'd be able to deal with little old me. You think I'm a 25 year old nobody from little old England. He should be able to deal with me. He should be able to answer these questions to my satisfaction, particularly if he speaks to and for God, he should have answers to all this. And yeah, he doesn't have time to answer it every time somebody asks him, but hey, they asked me to send it to them. So I'm now expecting he's gonna invoke his apostolic position and his position as a member of the First Prince and actually give some answers.

John Dehlin [01:53:05] Yeah, well, I am literally on pins and needles to find out what his answer was.

Nemo [01:53:10] Yeah, I do not know how to prepare the audience for this. I didn't know. Wednesday. I don't know how other than to say Bill Real is about to read the response I received from Dallin H. Oaks three months after I initially sent my document. And this is his response to a three and a half thousand word document that outlines 11 different instances of dishonesty by seven of the current 15 top leaders of the church.

John Dehlin [01:53:35] I can't wait.

Nemo [01:53:36] Bill. Bill, please.

Guest [01:53:38] Dear Brother Stielcoe, thank you for Your message of August 2nd and appropriate follow up since you have not heard an answer from me. On July 6, I sent President so and so a lengthy letter suggesting how he talked to you about this subject and giving a reference to the public study that concluded I had not lied in my response at the University of Virginia. I'm sure that you will be hearing from him and that is the help I promise to give you. You have my best wishes. Sincerely, President Dallin H. Oaks.

Nemo [01:54:14] That is not the help he promised to give me. That is not what he promised to do. And why does he have to appeal to an external authority on a matter of his own honesty? Why is he not able to say I didn't lie? Not. Here's the study that concluded I had not lied. Why could he not say I didn't lie?

John Dehlin [01:54:35] Well, to me, there's several things about that letter that jump out, you know. You know, he took, he took several months to come up with that response. The first is he sends a letter to your stake president coaching the stake president how to talk to you. That's great. If you get to see the letter and you get to understand it and if the, and, or if the stake president communicates all that effectively to you. But my first question is, what was in that letter? Right. And then the second thing is he's only talking about one issue. He's talking about, you know, how many issues did you say you, you presented in your documentary, you know, evident evidence?

Nemo [01:55:18] 11.

John Dehlin [01:55:19] 11. So somehow it goes from 11 to 1. And then the other thing that jumps out is he's talking about some public study just about the University of Virginia episode. I'm dying to know what public study was conducted in response to Elder Oaks's comment at the University of Virginia.

Nemo [01:55:38] I can tell you. So, John, do you want to just read this from my stake president?

John Dehlin [01:55:43] Yes. This is August 9, 2022, which is actually just a few months ago. It says three month follow up. It basically says it starts weird. It doesn't actually have any address. What's going on with there?

Nemo [01:55:58] So this is him talking to me. This is from the middle of our conversation where, okay, we're discussing how we're going to meet up to discuss what Elder Oaks sent okay, so the stake

John Dehlin [01:56:07] president writes, I'll also check with Bishop Blank on timing and location, but as a starting point, I'd propose 8pm at Blank Chapel on August 17th. President Oakes, in the email he sent you made reference to a public study which can be found using this link fairlatteraints.org Therapyu Nemo's applauding the remainder of this letter was directed to me, highlighting some general principles regarding common consent and the fallibility of church leaders, which we could touch on at our meeting. Looking forward to meeting next week. Now obviously you know, as someone who did my PhD dissertation on the LGBTQ Mormon experience and on aversion therapy, I'm just, I'm flabbergasted that he's outsourcing any answer to Fair Mormon or Fair Latter Day Saints. Not only because they do horrible work. They're paid apologists for the church. Their answers are terrible. But also they have no authority and the Church always wants to distance anything that Fair Mormon does from the church. So why would he be appealing to what the Church wants us to believe is an unofficial nonprofit when he is literally a representative of a special witness of Jesus Christ? He's the voice of God. He's sustained as a prophet, seer and revelator. Why is he referring you to this unofficial tangential nonprofit that gives horrible answers? It's outrageous that he's punting the answer to these awful answer givers, right?

Nemo [01:57:51] Yeah. Like I've forget the 10 other issues I asked him to investigate and that he said he would investigate. Let's just take this one. This one that he himself was specifically involved in and is accused of lying. So all he has to do is say I didn't lie, as he is in the best, simplest position to just say I didn't lie. Instead, he's having to appeal to a public study that proves he didn't lie.

John Dehlin [01:58:17] Yeah.

Nemo [01:58:18] Why?

John Dehlin [01:58:18] Yeah. How is that a public document? A public study like that's paid apologists giving apologetic answers in a completely self admittedly biased way. There's nothing public about that other than it was published on the Internet. But by using a public document he's trying to create the impression that that it's some sort of journalistic, scientific, unbiased, neutral analysis. When it's these apologetic, apologetic, it's just not.

Nemo [01:58:51] If you throw this up on the screen for a second, you see that this is really significant because this point here at the bottom says there is no evidence President Oaks had knowledge of the research during his time as president of byu. BYU is a large university with many students conducting many research projects. There is no reason why Oakes would have known about the research. And no evidence that he did know. No evidence is said twice there. What's very interesting is that by outsourcing to Fair Mormon, what Dallin H. Oaks is doing is essentially making their position his position. So what Dallin H. Oaks is saying is that there is no evidence that I knew about this research. There's no evidence that I knew. And that is a very funny position for Dallin H. Oaks to take, given that I just sent him a three and a half thousand word documentary that contains evidence that he knew.

John Dehlin [01:59:44] It's also a very lawyerly response. Instead of saying, I didn't lie like you said, Nemo, he's saying, there's no evidence that I knew.

Nemo [01:59:52] Yep, right.

John Dehlin [01:59:54] But that. But the problem is there is evidence that he knew.

Nemo [01:59:58] There's absolutely evidence that he knew. Let's put it up on screen, shall we?

John Dehlin [02:00:00] Yeah.

Nemo [02:00:02] This is a memorandum talking about how there is a. There's that leaflet going around. I was talking about the pain papers. And in this it talks about how Dallin Akejokes was involved and knew about this. Here is he was cc'd into this one, for example, cc'd President Dallin. Eight jokes says it right at the bottom. This one's excellent. This is that he wrote to Boyd K. Packer. Like I said, they were closely involved in dealing with some of this. And this is to do with the publication, the Advocate that was going on out of state. Again, talking about this stuff that was going on at byu. So it's signed at the bottom. Sincerely, Dallin H. Oaks. So again, he knew. He absolutely knew. And I sent him this evidence.

Analyzing and Reacting to the Response

John Dehlin [02:00:48] Yeah, absolutely. Really quickly, I just want to give a quick thanks to Desiree, to Emily and Nikki, all for their super chat donations. Your donations are super valuable and we really, really value it. Also, please YouTubers subscribe to the More Mormon Stories podcast YouTube channel. We're really trying to break the 80,000 K threshold. So, yeah, he knew and he's saying there's no evidence, but you've shown him the evidence and it's lying. He's lying about lying, right? Yeah.

Nemo [02:01:20] And so I was like, well, okay, he's done that. The only other part of his response I have would be his letter. So if we throw the slides up on screen.

John Dehlin [02:01:27] Yeah.

Nemo [02:01:28] I met with my bishop and state president to discuss the letter. The letter which apparently contained some general principles regarding common consent and the fallibility of church leaders, which we can touch on our meeting. So that letter contained principles regarding common consent and the fallibility of church leaders. So I thought, great. Dallin H. Oaks, in this letter has given some counsel. He has highlighted some principles regarding the things I have questions about common consent, I. E. Who investigates them, who's in charge of all this? And then the fallibility of church leaders, because the next thing they do is they're going to push and say, well, Churchill is a fallible, which, okay, fine. That's what they want to do. I discovered that that letter had been destroyed. My stake president destroyed that letter. So we were actually unable to touch on any of those things. The letter was binned. It was got rid of.

John Dehlin [02:02:20] Okay, so Oaks says, I sent this awesome letter to your stake President to talk about Mormon church leaders and imperfection and honesty and accountability. And then when you say to your stake president, hey, can I read that? Can I see it? Can I hear from the horse's mouth, so to speak, what his arguments were. He tells you it was destroyed, which is another example of hiding evidence and destroying things. But it also leaves you unable to really understand directly what Oakes response to you even was. They now have to be filtered through the memory and the understanding of your stake president. Right.

Nemo [02:02:59] Yeah. And if, if my state president wants to prove me wrong right now and say, no, I never destroyed it, I've still got it. Perfect. Brilliant. Please let me read it. But I doubt it. I, I, I, I don't think he threw it away of his own volition. I think he threw it away because he was told to.

John Dehlin [02:03:20] Yeah. And I can just say that I mentioned this in the Mormon as Live episode when I appealed my excommunication. I wanted the letter back of the first presidency denying my appeal. And the best I got was my stake president saying he had received a letter denying my appeal. But when I asked for a copy of the letter, he refused to give it to me. And I just think it's just this idea. Number one, you don't want to introduce new evidence ever. He doesn't want to be held accountable for his arguments defending church leaders and their dishonesty. And then even less, he doesn't want copies of any of his arguments ever being leaked out on the Internet because he doesn't want to be. Again, to the whole point of your exercise here, he doesn't ever want to be held accountable for his, you know, for his arguments or for his actions. And so they're Going to destroy even the very evidence that's calling into question their. Their practice of destroying evidence.

Nemo [02:04:22] Yep. Can we put the video of Russell M. Nelson up on screen? Because what I really want to do is I really want to make the point that prophetic fallibility is not something that we. That I'm not making. Like, I'm not making this up when I say that they teach us they're not fallible. That they are. There is an explicit idea in the LDS Church that leaders are to be trusted and are a trusted source of truth and information.

John Dehlin [02:04:49] Absolutely right.

Nemo [02:04:50] So you just.

John Dehlin [02:04:51] Yeah. Listen to sources you can trust, seek for answers to your questions through prayer, searching the scriptures and studying the words of prophets, seers and revelators. There are 15 on the earth today. You can trust them completely. Their only desire is to help you find joy in life and the pathway to your eternal home and happiness with your loved ones.

Nemo [02:05:26] Am I the only one that finds that slightly threatening, the way he talks about with your loved ones, as though, like, if you don't follow us, if you don't listen to us, we will cut you off.

John Dehlin [02:05:37] Yeah.

Nemo [02:05:37] And I'm sure that's the vibe I get.

John Dehlin [02:05:39] That was Mormon prophet and president Russell M. Nelson, for those who don't recognize that voice. And I'm just going to say I don't even trust my wife Margi completely. I don't even trust myself completely. So it is super disturbing for him to suggest we can trust to the worldwide membership that we can trust top Mormon church leaders completely, especially when they have such a history of. Of deception, you know, to the membership. It's just outrageous. Yeah.

Nemo [02:06:15] Yeah. And I did study their words. He says we should study their words. I did. Unfortunately, their words weren't always honest, which is the problem. And it's what led me to this point in the first place. So I had a big kind of Barney, a big bust up with my stake president and my bishop. I was really unhappy about that letter being destroyed and I sent a response really, really quick.

John Dehlin [02:06:34] President Bill, do you want. Bills, you want to share what you're sharing now or do you want to wait? Bill, I see you got something to share. Okay.

Guest [02:06:41] It really depends. It really depends, John, on. It comes from another YouTube video from. Let me look. I think it's maybe a Sam Penson. And so I don't want to break any kind of copyright, but it's President Nelson saying that we will always teach the truth.

John Dehlin [02:06:53] No, I think there's fair use here. Let's go ahead and play it really Quick. And then we'll get right back to you. Nemo.

Nemo [02:06:59] What?

John Dehlin [02:07:01] We may not always tell people what they want to hear. Prophets are rarely popular. But we will always teach the truth.

Guest [02:07:13] Yep, they'll always teach the truth.

John Dehlin [02:07:15] Yeah.

Nemo [02:07:16] And I make reference to that in my document. That statement, when he said that, I said that is categorically untrue. Because blood, atonement, Adam, God doctrine, teaching that the salamander. And the salamander letter is legit, all these other things that they've done where they say that it's true, and then it gets rescinded like the. The curse of Cain as a doctrine that just gets redacted, you know, and. And kind of thrown down the memory hole.

John Dehlin [02:07:41] Yeah, absolutely.

Nemo [02:07:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:42] Okay. Thanks for that, Bill. All right, Nemo, go ahead and take us where you were. Where you were going.

Nemo [02:07:46] Okay. Well, the place I'm going to take you all, and certainly where I'll leave this story is my reply to Dallin H. Oaks and my stake president. I sent this to my state president. I addressed part of it to him. I addressed part of it specifically to Dan H. Oak. And after what I'm about to read to you, I have heard nothing. So if you'll indulge me, I will read this to you.

John Dehlin [02:08:12] Please.

Nemo [02:08:13] Okay. Dear President. And this is my state president. Thank you to you and Bishop Blank for your time meeting with me. Whilst at times tangential and circular, our conversation was nevertheless illuminating. I wish to candidly lay out my thoughts moving forward and hope you will receive them in the spirit of friendship and robust conversation we have shared so far. In response to my document which outlined evidence of dishonesty amongst seven of the church's 15 top leaders. Dallin H. Oaks, one of the men shown to have lied multiple times in the document, told me that he had sent a lengthy letter suggesting how he talked to you about this subject, the aforementioned lying and dishonesty, and giving reference to a public study that concluded I had not lied in my response at the University of Virginia. President Blank, my stake president. Throughout this process, I have provided evidence and sources. Not only did you not bring the lengthy letter with you to our meeting, but you destroyed it. You kept referencing quotes or counsel that President Oaks shared with you in this letter regarding prophetic fallibility, but you gave no actual quotes. If President Oaks felt the quotes he shared with you about fallibility were enough to overcome the weight of evidence I sent, if his counsel was meant to reassure me that the level of systemic dishonesty that my document showed was not of concern, then we really ought to be able to discuss these things accurately from the original source and not just from your recollections. I don't did not receive President Oaks counsel. I received your limited recollection of it. I politely request that President Oakes sends a second copy of the letter as the original has been destroyed, so that we may actually discuss his counsel properly. Now to President Oaks response, at least the part we still have access to. I provided a three and a half thousand word document to the Office of the First Presidency as instructed by that same office, with evidence that seven of the 15 men currently called as prophets, seers and revelators have engaged in public dishonesty while acting in that office. Dallin H. Oaks has not addressed any of that evidence. He has pointed to what he calls a public study which was in fact undertaken by a church funded apologist institution, fair. In doing so, he is not making a statement of his own as to whether he lied or not. I find this odd that he cannot simply deny the wrongdoing himself and must rely on apologists to answer the question of his honesty. This fair public study, however, confirms that electroshock aversion therapy did in fact take place when President Oaks was present at byu. Which is what President Oaks was denying when he said, let me say, about electroshock treatments at BYU when I became president at byu. That had been discontinued earlier and it never on under my administration. The study states that there is no evidence that President Oaks would have known about the electroshock therapy and so he did not lie. However, my document contained evidence that he did know. So to send this study by way of response to my document shows a limited reading of my document and its included evidence. When Bishop Blank kindly contacted Elder Hales to ask can you confirm that Brother Stilgo's complaints were duly considered? The response from Elder Hales was to simply resend President Oaks initial response to myself I address the following to you, President Oaks. Do you personally maintain the position that you did not lie in your Q and A response at the University of Virginia despite the evidence I provided that shows that you were aware of the electroshock therapy? Irrespective of your answer, why did you choose to focus on this one issue within my document while the evidence of dishonesty amongst six of your fellow servants in Christ remains unaddressed evidence your office asked me to provide? Why have you relied on an external source of authority in the matters of your own words, actions and honesty? Scott Gordon, as president of fair, is not a prophet, seer or revelator. And he was not the one consulted in this matter. You were. When an appeal is made to and granted for prophetic insight and all that is returned are the philosophies of men mingled with Scripture in the guise of an apologist's article, it does nothing to assuage the worry that there is a pharisaical attitude taking hold within the highest levels of this Church. After all, we have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Public dishonesty by someone acting in your position of authority is an abuse of the trust which the members place in you as a mouthpiece of God. It is also incongruent with President Nelson's teaching that prophets are rarely popular, but we will always teach the truth. Unless President Nelson was being fallible, unless he was speaking as a man when he said that the letter you sent to my stake president, as far as he recalls, focused heavily on prophetic fallibility. Is this focus, along with your silence in regards to your apostolic brethren, to be taken to mean that apart from the University of Virginia incident, all other evidences of lying are not contested and that this level of dishonesty I have described is acceptable under the caveat of prophetic fallibility? It is a strangely dichotomous situation to find oneself in. To be surrounded by men telling you to accept the fallibility of modern prophets, while those same men refuse to countenance the idea that prophets would be dishonest. If you want me to accept the idea of prophetic fallibility that in turn necessitates an admittance of when you have been fallible, how else am I to accept it? And given that this month's ensign teaches when prophets are inspired to teach us, it is the same as if God were speaking to us. You can understand why I would be concerned to hear someone who, as though God himself is speaking, is saying dishonest and misleading things. The voice of God is not one of dishonesty. If this is the case, if the Lord's name is being taken in vain by men who claim to speak for him but instead speak dishonestly, then we must consider D and C 107. Inasmuch as the president of the high priesthood shall transgress, he shall be had in remembrance before the common council of the Church, who shall be assisted by 12 councillors of the high priesthood, and their decision upon his head shall be an end of controversy concerning him. Thus none shall be exempted from the justice and the laws of God that all things may be done in order and in solemnity before him according to truth and righteousness. The prophets and apostles cannot act as King Charles I and put themselves above the law by declaring I am your King because no power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood. Your position in the priesthood as prophets and apostles does not justify dishonest behaviour nor exempt you from the Church standards of honesty as found in places such as gospel principles. Chapter 31 Honesty if you and your apostolic brethren are truly our fellow servants in Christ, then the standards to which you are held as members must also apply to you because none are exempt from the justice and laws of God, not even you, President Oaks, and because neither you nor your apostolic brethren are exempt from the law of common Consent, I have voted opposed to your continuation in your role, a vote I am invited to make multiple times a year in accordance with the law of Common Consent as found in Scripture. Under that law and your instruction, I brought forward evidence of behaviors which are unbecoming of men called as apostles, and that evidence was ignored. If you are not willing to be accountable to the members of this Church in blatant disregard to common consent and our democratic scriptural heritage, then please counsel me. What is the true purpose of common consent? I look forward to you addressing this soon, perhaps at General Conference, as it seems the current enactment of common Consent and its Scriptural origins are at odds and a clear explanation from a prophet, seer and revelator speaking as though God himself were speaking ought to be able to clear things up not just for me, but for the whole Church membership. In sum, can I have a copy of the lengthy letter in its entirety? This owing to the fact the original was destroyed and so I received a limited recollection of its contents. 2. Do you personally maintain the position that you did not lie in your Q and A response at University of Virginia despite the evidence I provided that shows that you were aware of the electroshock therapy? 3. Can I infer from your silence on the many other evidences of lying by your Apostolic brethren that some of those sorry that those are uncontested and that public dishonesty is somehow acceptable for those acting as prophets, seers and revelators?

John Dehlin [02:17:39] 4.

Nemo [02:17:40] Do you recognize that you are accountable to the members of the Church as outlined in Doctrine and Covenants and the Law of common consent?

Guest [02:17:47] 5.

Nemo [02:17:48] If you are not accountable to the members of the Church, then what is the true purpose of the law of common consent Sincerely, Brother Douglas Stilgo.

John Dehlin [02:17:59] I think. I think what we deserve maybe. Bill, I'll cut to you. How about some applause for Nemo?

Unexpected Attention and Public Reaction

Guest [02:18:05] Yeah, I can see here.

John Dehlin [02:18:07] Oh, you've got the. There we go. Absolutely. Yeah. Beautiful Nemo. Mic drop. Mic drop. Lots of. Lots of applauses. Lots of applauses from. From our audience. Beautiful stuff. Well, where. Where does I. I guess I do want to ask Nemo, like, and I asked you this a little bit last time. Where do you stand? Like, some would say, well, Nemo just did all this theatrically. He did this to set a trap. He did this to. To make a spectacle of them, to embarrass them, to gather all the evidence and then to make a YouTube series of episodes that would. That would embarrass them all. So on the one hand, there's sort of like. Like Nemo not acting in good faith. Nemo just trying to trap them. You know, like Jesus basically accused his opponents of doing. That's one side of the spectrum. And then you go all the way to the other side of the spectrum, which is like, no. Nemo served a mission. He believed in the church. He gave his life to the church. He cared about the church, and he engaged in a process, not only accepting their invitation to take their process seriously, but also because Nemo was sincerely hoping to get genuine answers. So I guess I just want to ask, like, how, you know, were you genuinely surprised at these reactions and how did you feel at the end about this entire engagement?

Nemo [02:19:44] Oh, I was shocked. Because when you set out on this journey, there is nothing that would be YouTube worthy in this. You go to your state president, you get held down, and you're like, well, okay. But I pushed and pushed and pushed, and I was able to get something I don't think anyone else has got before. And I've rewritten the rules as far as. As far as sustaining votes go. The rules have changed now, but I guess the way to answer that question is it was all sincere. It was all from me, as a sincere member of the church, trying to get an answer to these questions, trying to work out how common consent actually works, trying to test this system and see what happens. But because I have the Nemo, the Mormon YouTube channel, because I collaborate with you, John, because I'm a presence in this space. I'm now able to put this out in public and show that the emperor has no clothes on. I'm able to take pictures of the emperor naked and put them online because. Because of my unique position. But it was never done with the intent to do that because I had no idea what I would get out of this.

John Dehlin [02:20:51] And how are you feeling now having gone through this entire process?

Nemo [02:20:56] Disappointed, frankly.

John Dehlin [02:20:58] How so?

Nemo [02:20:58] Disappointed because Dan Hoax's response was beyond disappointing. He is, he is a 90 year old man. He is a former man of, you know, legal integrity apparently. He's a man who knows the law. He's a man who knows right from wrong, apparently currently. And he should know that this isn't the right way to handle this.

Guest [02:21:19] Yeah.

Nemo [02:21:20] If. If his ultimate good is his ecclesiastical duty to me as a member of his congregation, as a member of his global congregation, as a member of his church, if his. If his duty to me is important to him, this was a failure in that duty.

John Dehlin [02:21:37] Yeah. Bill, let's get you in here.

Guest [02:21:41] In while we you guys were doing the last little segment there, I went on to Fairmormon's website. You can contact the apologist and you can ask them a question. I've given them the data that Nemo has. The two letters with Dallin A, Dallin H Oaks CC'd and the other one with him with a document sent to him along with their link to their misstatement. And I'm sure they'll correct it in no time.

John Dehlin [02:22:06] You can count on that. Fair Mormon is becoming.

Nemo [02:22:09] Someone put it on Wayback Machine quick just before they change it.

John Dehlin [02:22:12] Fair Mormon has become pretty irrelevant. Just like Hunt lost relevance. The Maxwell Institute is losing relevance. Fair Mormon is losing relevance. It's bizarre just how just in the past few years they've become and part of that's the gospel topics essays, they've kind of become elevated as the new official kind of church responses. But it's weird to see how irrelevant Fairmormon has become just in the past few years, you know. Yeah, well, Nemo, this was amazing. We've had a great audience today. So many wonderful comments and commenters. You know, I do want to ask you, Nemo, what's the call to action here now that you've unveiled and even innovated and helped to expand the new policy and procedure as it relates to common consent and voting opposed? I think we should maybe call on our listeners and viewers to take action. So is there a call of action here?

Call to Action and Closing Reflections

Nemo [02:23:16] If you have a membership record number, if you know who your bishop is, if you know when the next time you can vote opposed is, go vote opposed. Because you can't get ignored. Now show them. Show them this email from Brooke P. Hales. Show your state president be like, look, the secretary to the first Presidency Says that if you can't solve my problems, they need to investigate it. That's what you need to go and do. Because they can't sit in their ivory tower forever and just ignore the fact that members are suffering with questions and problems that they are leaving lay leaders, leaders that don't have any formal training to try and deal with. And they sit there in their ivory tower claiming to have direct access to deity and direct access to God and they claim to speak for God and yet they're silent when members ask them questions.

John Dehlin [02:24:06] Yeah, I've often felt if every. Let's just say there's a certain number of progressive or non believing Mormons in the church and we know that it's a larger and a larger percentage of the total church membership. If every progressive or non believing, actively participating Mormon got up every fast and testimony meeting and just shared their concerns openly, the church would change overnight. And if every member who was actively attending would use the six times a year opportunities to vote opposed in every ward and in every branch and in every stake throughout the church, the church would transform overnight. So ironically, the church has given its members the, the means whereby it could affect radical transformation in the church.

Nemo [02:25:00] The only take them up on it.

John Dehlin [02:25:01] The only thing that's, that's waiting is for the members to take them up on it. Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [02:25:06] And you're take them up on it.

John Dehlin [02:25:07] And you and Sam Young are among the first to ever really do this,

Nemo [02:25:11] I guess in, in such a public way. Sure, yeah. But I don't think, I don't think I'll end up like Sam Young in terms of being excommunicated. I think it'll be fine.

John Dehlin [02:25:21] Do you want to be excommunicated and you're just saying right now you don't think you will be?

Nemo [02:25:25] I don't think I will be, no. And I don't want to be. So I'm hoping that that is true. But yeah, I'm not, I'm not gonna be excommunicated. My local leaders have no interest in excommunicating me.

John Dehlin [02:25:35] Bill Real as a fellow excommunicant, what's the over under on Nemo getting excommunicated?

Guest [02:25:41] I said this a couple nights ago. I said if the church decides to excommunicate Douglas still go and it chooses to excommunicate Radio Free Mormon, whoever that is. And under that real name that he is, you know, on his birth certificate and if neither NEEMO or RFM say anything, how would any of us know? And you already see them changing the disciplinary council process, like for instance the DNC demands that somebody being in a disciplinary court at the stake level have access to to having the high council in the room. But then you saw Mormonism get really uncomfortable with the disciplinary councils such as Jeremy Runnels and I think my own where those were recorded and released to the point where they now tell stake presidents not to have those 12 in the room for those kind of high profile disciplinary courts. And you see that change in the current handbook. My two senses, because RFM hasn't been excommunicated, is that Nemo's right, they're not going to do it. And I also to what you guys said earlier, it would be deeply impactful because I know why we don't do it. I know why we don't stand up in fast and testimony meeting and share a problem. I know why we don't raise our hand because there's relationships at stake and there is a sense of shame in front of your community to do so. But if, as you guys are saying, if you really want to see deep change in the church, start raising a voice to the concerns that all of us have in your public meetings. And as you guys pointed out, change will happen very quickly.

John Dehlin [02:27:21] Love it. Thanks Bill. Real. Several people are asking for the email addresses of the apostles or for the formula by which people can figure that out.

Nemo [02:27:31] I'm not going to put that out there. I know others have and they can but. But I'm not putting that out there. Okay, I've redacted them all on the emails.

Guest [02:27:39] I'm happy to if you want it.

John Dehlin [02:27:41] Bill, what do you want to say?

Guest [02:27:43] Yeah, it is the last name of the church Leader, the first letter of their first name, the first letter of their middle name@ LDSChurch.org and I know that they changed their email system, but I believe that still works. And I will simply say these are the leaders of a worldwide religion that has serious issues of dishonesty and deception and deep trauma to groups that don't fit in the box. And I don't see any unhealthy reason why folks who want to and again, I would not suggest spamming them. I would not suggest doing anything unreasonable or unhealthy. But if you want to send an email saying like hey, I've got questions, these are problems, I'd like to have answers or at least draw attention to it. I think that's perfectly within the realm of reason.

Nemo [02:28:37] And what you certainly can do when you or if you email them is you can point out that if There is no clear answer in the handbook. If there is no clear answer in scripture, then as per Dallin H. Oaks, that has to be escalated to the first presidency to ensure doctrinal unity. Yeah, they try and fob you off.

Guest [02:28:57] And again, please, to the bottom of every piece of me, do not do anything unreasonable or unhealthy. Send a legitimate email. Don't try to spam them. Don't try to. Don't try to do anything that would be kind of a black eye on the community. Instead, show these folks that you're people of integrity, that you are folks who in spite of these guys being dishonest, that yours trying to be people of character and write these guys sincere emails trying to get resolution to issues.

John Dehlin [02:29:30] Absolutely brilliant. All right. Well, Nemo, you're a legend and you're only 25, Bill, I guess you and I can pretty much retire now that the Brit ventures are kind of on the scene.

Guest [02:29:42] There's a whole nother generation of these folks who are going to come right behind.

Nemo [02:29:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:29:46] And it's an honor to partner with so Bill Reel and our Radio Free Mormon. Thanks to you guys for all you do. Please subscribe to Mormonism to Mormon Discussions YouTube channel. Please check out Mormonism Live every Wednesday night at 6:20pm Is that. Is that right, Bill?

Guest [02:30:06] Real 6:20pm Mountain Time.

John Dehlin [02:30:08] Please support the good work that they do. Thanks Bill for participating today. Thanks to rfm. He's done great work here as well. We love him. Thanks for his chat in the comments and you and please support Nemo, the Mormon YouTube channel. Please donate to Nemo, please support the other Britvengers and please subscribe to their channels because that all helps you. It helps you stay informed when new episodes come out and it helps the algorithm get their content out to as many people as possible. Any final words, Nemo?

Nemo [02:30:39] Just. Yeah, go check out my channel. The letter. The link for the letter has just been put in the comments. I hope it will be put in the description too. So that letter is just a PDF set on Google Drive so you can read that. And that contains Brooke Hale's instruction to kind of contact the office, the first parentheses. And it also contains all the hyperlinks, all the evidence, everything that you could possibly want to make the claim that they have been dishonest.

John Dehlin [02:31:05] Brilliant. Thanks Nemo. You're a legend. And again, Everybody who's on YouTube now or later, it would mean a lot to me if you could subscribe to the Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel. It will help us reach our goal of 80,000 subscribers in the next little bit, and we're trying to reach a hundred thousand by the end of the year. So please subscribe. Thanks to everyone for their Super Chat donations. If you want to donate to this episode, you can do so right now on YouTube. You can make a Super Chat donation, and that money goes to support this programming. Of course, you can also go to MormonStories.org, click on the Donate button, become a monthly donor. But also, please support Nemo, Please support Mormonism Live, and please support all the great comment supporters out there. But please subscribe to our YouTube channel. It'll help you and it'll really help us. Thanks to Maven for moderating the comments for all that she does behind the scenes. And of course, thanks to all the amazing commenters and chatters. Please be good to each other. Please be kind to each other. But let's keep raising our voices as Mormons and as former Mormons, because that's where all the power is. When people raise their voices, when people take action, things change. And we know that's true. And we know Nemo's making a difference, as are so many others. So again, thanks, Nemo. You're the best. All right, keep up the great work. Thanks, everyone. Be kind to each other. Be good to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. And stay tuned next week for more LDS discussions. We just see LDS discussions. Join the chat. LDS discussions content will return on Mormon Stories podcast next week.

Nemo [02:32:46] Yeah, sorry I stole his slot this week.

John Dehlin [02:32:48] Now it's. It was a good thing. I'm sure he was happy to give it to you. All right, thanks, everyone. You guys take care. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Bye. Bye.

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