Introduction to the Marriott Lawsuit

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Why would a British ex Mormon woman sue a Marriott franchisee, a Marriott hotel franchisee, for providing a racist text or racist literature? Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's September 22, 2026, and today we have. All the way from the Other side of the pond, fresh off the. I don't know. Mormon. Mormon. What is it? Ex Mormon Cruise. What was it called?

Amanda Barnett [00:00:31] Post Mormon Cruise.

John Dehlin [00:00:33] Post Mormon Cruise. We have Amanda Barnett from the uk. Is that right, Amanda? That is welcome.

Amanda Barnett [00:00:41] Thank you, John. It's lovely to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:43] Yeah, what a treat. We don't always have Brits here in Salt Lake City to interview. Yeah, well, you might be the third because we had Martin sh. Martin Locke.

Amanda Barnett [00:00:54] Martin Locke.

John Dehlin [00:00:55] Do you remember him?

Amanda Barnett [00:00:55] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:00:56] Do you ever know him?

Amanda Barnett [00:00:56] Yeah. Well, we thought we were in the country and how could we not drop in and meet you.

John Dehlin [00:01:04] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [00:01:04] And present our story.

John Dehlin [00:01:06] And I provided a bit of a hook because at the end we're going to talk about a legal matter that you're currently involved in.

Amanda Barnett [00:01:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:15] Suing a Marriott hotel franchisee.

Amanda Barnett [00:01:18] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:19] For providing the Book of Mormon. But it's not a religious lawsuit.

Amanda Barnett [00:01:25] No, it's not. No. It's particularly narrow and it's about the language in the book, the racist narrative and the white supremacist message that is enshrined in that book.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] Well, we're grateful that you would come all the way here and kind of break this story, at least in the States, with us. So thank you. And you're not alone. Who is accompanying you, Amanda?

Amanda Barnett [00:01:56] My husband, Jeremy.

John Dehlin [00:01:57] Hi, Jeremy.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:01:58] Hi. Hello. You go by Jez either, or just oi. You? Whatever. I answer to many things, but okay. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:07] And Amanda, what role will Jez be playing today?

Amanda Barnett [00:02:12] As always, he's great support and always a sounding board and always somebody who will challenge me when perhaps others might not. So he's my wingman.

John Dehlin [00:02:32] I love it.

Amanda Barnett [00:02:33] Yeah. Great support.

John Dehlin [00:02:35] And not only is he wearing a hat with the picture of a taper that says horse, but he designed that hat.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:02:42] I made it.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] You made it?

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:02:44] I literally made it.

John Dehlin [00:02:45] You made it?

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:02:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:46] Wait, what's the difference between designing and making?

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:02:49] I actually cut the material and fabricated the hat.

John Dehlin [00:02:52] Oh, my goodness. Yeah. And your shirt. Tell us about your shirt. Did you make the shirt?

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:02:58] No, I didn't. This is. Well, Amanda wore this actually on cruise.

John Dehlin [00:03:03] It's a little bit cheeky. Is that a word?

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:03:05] It is Jesus 2.0.

John Dehlin [00:03:09] It's kind of Jesus with Terminator vibes.

Amanda Barnett [00:03:11] Yeah.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:03:11] Skynet. I'll be back. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:13] Is this British humor or is this.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:03:15] It is very British humor.

John Dehlin [00:03:16] It is.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:03:16] It's a British company that make these.

John Dehlin [00:03:18] Okay, got it. Well, welcome, Jez.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:03:21] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:03:22] And welcome, Amanda. And you know Nemo. Let me know. Nemo made the introduction. And I thought, in addition to having you announce your story and your lawsuit, that we'd first just get a traditional hour and a half Mormon story in before we talk about your lawsuit. Is that all right?

Amanda's Family and Mormon Beginnings in the UK

Amanda Barnett [00:03:44] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:03:45] And we'll save that to the end. So, you know, you probably know if you've watched a Mormon story or two, that we always begin by asking people where their Mormon story began. And because you're in the UK, I have to ask, were your parents LDs? And if so, where did their Mormon stories begin?

Amanda Barnett [00:04:03] Yeah, so I think my Mormon story begins with my mother's and my grandmother's story. They both grew up in Liverpool and moved to Plymouth in 1953. And they were from a Liverpudlian background, which is quite sectarian. So they grew up in a city that was split and divided on terms of Protestant and Catholic. And I don't think either suited either of those religions suited them. They moved to plymouth and in 1957. So after four years, the oldest child in that family, my mother's sister, my grandmother's first child, dies, age 35.

Amanda Barnett [00:04:58] Then we move on. I'm born in 1960, and I live with my grandparents, my mother's parents. And in 1961, the Mormon missionaries knock on the door. And I think that those two women were predisposed, perhaps, given their background, to accept another.

Amanda Barnett [00:05:28] Another religious explanation, another Christian explanation. And they joined. They joined the church. Interestingly, neither of their husbands did. My father was away a lot. He was Royal Marine Bandsman. He played the cello and the euphonium for the Royal Marines. And it took him all over the world for very long periods.

Amanda Barnett [00:05:56] He didn't join. He wasn't actually there when they knocked on the door. And my grandfather didn't join. So I think my story belongs. Begins back in Liverpool, back with my mother. Back with her mother. And then children really don't have any agency, do they? So they just follow. I'm just. I'm a Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:06:24] I'm curious if you've heard about Teabowering Woodbury and the baseball baptisms scandal in the British Isles, you know, between like, 1960 and 1963. Have you heard of that?

Amanda Barnett [00:06:35] I have heard of it. I didn't, obviously, I was too young to have experienced it, but I Did hear of it, yes, because Jeffrey R.

John Dehlin [00:06:41] Holland was in the British Isles mission at that time. Quentin Cook was in that mission at the time. They're both. Jeffrey Holland has passed, but he's an apostle, Former apostle. Quentin Cook's a current apostle. But all that stuff happened just in the same years that you were born and your parents, your mom and your grandma joined the church.

Amanda Barnett [00:07:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:03] Yeah. It's kind of interesting.

Amanda Barnett [00:07:06] It's interesting, isn't it? I mean, I'm in Plymouth. We thought you'd all sailed off on the Mayflower. Unfortunately, some of you came back and knocked on the door 300 years later or something.

John Dehlin [00:07:23] It's hard to get rid of us.

Amanda Barnett [00:07:24] Hard. Very hard.

John Dehlin [00:07:26] So what was your Mormon upbringing like as a girl in the UK in the 60s? Do you remember? Was there a primary. Did you go to church every. What strict rules did you follow in your family, or did you.

Amanda Barnett [00:07:40] I think you described my family as devout. We attended church twice on Sundays for Sunday school. First in the morning and then we return in the afternoon for sacrament. So that was Sunday taken care of. During that day, we would not be listening to pop music. We certainly wouldn't be watching the television. We'd be in our Sunday best all day, and it was pretty arduous. Monday was family home evening. Tuesday, my mother would go off to Relief Society. Wednesday, what if I recall being primary, I don't recall anything on a Thursday, so maybe I had a day off on that day. Friday was to become mia. And Saturday, well, that was the day we got ready for Sunday and continue. That was.

John Dehlin [00:08:48] So Mormonism took over a huge part of your family's life.

Amanda Barnett [00:08:52] Oh, it was all encompassing.

John Dehlin [00:08:54] Wow. Yeah. I have to note, because I'm a huge Beatles fan, that the 60s and 70s, that's the British Invasion. We're talking Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin. And you're not allowed to listen to. Or were you allowed to listen to that pop music?

Amanda Barnett [00:09:15] Well, some of that music is. Right. Some of that music is. You can. You can watch my. There was a program called Top of the Pops, and if. If some. Some hairy lights came on with, you know, a heavy heavy metal, then it would be turned. Turned off, most likely. So the Beatles was fine. My mother's Liverpudlian. So, you know, that's. That's. That's a special. The Beatles had a special place for her, and they were pretty innocuous as far as Mormonism was until. And that, because you've mentioned it and I haven't thought about it until John Lennon says, we're more famous than Christ,

John Dehlin [00:10:06] which may have been true, but as Boyd K. Packer says, not all things that are true are useful.

Amanda Barnett [00:10:11] Very unuseful and very. We are not. We're not supporting the Beatles anymore. And I'd forgotten that, John. I'd forgotten that moment.

John Dehlin [00:10:21] I know they did Beetle Burns where they burned the Beatle albums here in the United States.

Amanda Barnett [00:10:25] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] But maybe they didn't do that. Were. No, again, you were very young, so you might not even remember a lot of this.

Amanda Barnett [00:10:32] No, we wouldn't have had that because the UK isn't quite as religiously. How could I describe this?

John Dehlin [00:10:40] I.

Amanda Barnett [00:10:40] Strong, fanatical, potentially loaded word for you, but no, we didn't. I certainly didn't. I've never heard of it and I certainly don't recall it. Have you heard of that?

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:10:55] I was aware of that happening, but it wasn't. I mean I was. I'm younger anyway, so I wouldn't have been aware of it at the time anyway.

John Dehlin [00:11:03] So David O. McKay would have been prophet or president in the 60s. Do you remember him as a prophet?

Amanda Barnett [00:11:08] Yes, I do. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:11:08] Or do you remember anything specific you remember about him?

Amanda Barnett [00:11:13] His white suit is what I recall. He was the prophet of my generation. Yeah, I don't recall much. I know we went to see a prophet's visit in. I think it was in the Bellevue in Manchester. The prophet comes over and I think it's after David O. McKay dies. So that would be Joseph Fielding Smith

John Dehlin [00:11:46] or Harold B. Lee.

Amanda Barnett [00:11:47] It was Joseph Fielding Smith.

John Dehlin [00:11:48] Okay.

Amanda Barnett [00:11:49] Yes. And we're all taken to what's to meet the prophet in what was actually a boxing venue. Oh, I remember that being a bit odd.

John Dehlin [00:12:00] He didn't last long as profit. It may have been less than a year. It was not really.

Amanda Barnett [00:12:04] Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. And maybe I'm misremembering it, but I'm pretty sure it was Joseph Fielding Smith probably. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:13] Early early 70s would have been 70s. See, fun. So this is a question I ask people a lot. Do you feel like your parents, their lives, their quality of life improved by joining the church? Because usually people join the church, the Mormon Church, when they have deep needs because it's kind of an odd church to join. But oftentimes the community and the standards provide structure and support and I'm wondering whether your. Your grandma and your. And your mom benefited by all that structure and community and. And support.

Amanda Barnett [00:12:54] That's quite a difficult question for me to even consider, actually. My mother, even within the church, was rather removed, I feel, from the congregation. I Don't know why that's my sort of knee jerk response. The UK is rather different. There are lots and lots of organizations which one could join huge community programs.

Amanda Barnett [00:13:25] I don't feel that necessarily their lives were improved in the sense of community. I think their lives might have been improved by the fact that they saw this notion of families being together forever as something in the future.

Amanda Barnett [00:13:47] I think they clicked on to something that other religions, they felt were not going to provide them, which was a celestial, eternal life with a family together. So the notion of community in the immediate now, here and now for them, I don't think that, that, that they really truly benefited from that.

Amanda Barnett [00:14:14] And certainly having gone back to the church recently, not as a believer, but for other reasons, they've certainly been forgotten in the wards of their, of their upbringing. So I'd say neutral on that.

John Dehlin [00:14:34] How do you feel like the doctrine of eternal families was beneficial in the lives of your, of your mom and grandma? What was it about that doctrine or teaching that? Because that actually resonates. I'm studying the life of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and it turns out a lot of his power came from teaching not only about the endowment, the special power that the temple endowment would provide, but then the ceilings and the eternal families. That was core to why people were so devoted to the church. And it sounds like that was true for your mom and grandma too.

Amanda Barnett [00:15:10] I think it was. I don't think they actually noticed that. The caveat was can be together, not will be. I think they glossed over that bit and that was something as a child who never truly believed was in some way very detrimental to our family.

John Dehlin [00:15:36] Because this, the idea of an empty chair that like, if you want everyone to be in. Oh yes, in heaven, they've all got to follow the Mormon path. So if anyone doesn't believe or doesn't follow, then it's sad heaven because there's family members missing, Is that what you're saying?

Amanda Barnett [00:15:53] Absolutely. And the fact that your eternal salvation is predicated on the acts of somebody else. So for my mother, her joy in eternity is actually predicated on whether her family are going to make the same choices. And she knew I didn't believe and therefore this was problematic.

Temple Sealing, Family Tensions, and Teenage Faith

John Dehlin [00:16:21] Okay, so I think I read in your outline that your dad ends up joining the church. Is that right? And were they sealed in the temple?

Amanda Barnett [00:16:28] They were sealed.

John Dehlin [00:16:29] Okay, and were you sealed to them?

Amanda Barnett [00:16:31] I was sealed to them.

John Dehlin [00:16:32] Do you remember being sealed to them?

Amanda Barnett [00:16:33] I do remember.

John Dehlin [00:16:33] What temple was that?

Amanda Barnett [00:16:34] So it was in the London Temple.

John Dehlin [00:16:38] How old Were you. Do you remember?

Amanda Barnett [00:16:39] I was just about 14.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] Oh, wow. What was that like to be sealed to your parents in the London Temple?

Amanda Barnett [00:16:47] I'm baptized. My father's away for 18 months of my life. When he returns, I think my mother converts him. I've actually got the little document here that demonstrates that she converted my father to the Mormon religion. And he baptizes me at 8. And then for six years, I think they spend their time paying tithing enough to actually get their temple recommends. And so in 74, me and my four sisters and two brothers are taken to the London Temple and sealed to them. And I found it a very jarring experience. I recently watched Severance and I couldn't get over how that gelled with my experience of being in the London Temple.

John Dehlin [00:17:50] Now, you wouldn't have taken out your endowments at 14, so you wouldn't have seen the Masonic shocking. No, you know, violent Masonic stuff. What was shocking about just getting sealed to your parents?

Amanda Barnett [00:18:00] Well, the first thing was that we had to put our clothes in the locker and wear white garments. And then my parents went. Were taken off. Now there's me, I'm 14, my youngest brother's three. So we're all corralled into this room with a very strange continuous loop movie of the. Of the Church's view of salvation, I think it was. And I remember I used to watch loads and loads of Westerns as a child and I remember thinking, oh, this is a really crummy movie and why are people in this white? I'm literally looking around feeling very, very out of sorts. And then we all. Then we're all grouped together and taken into a room with a green, I thought looked like the vaulting horse from the gym in school. And we all.

John Dehlin [00:19:07] This is the altar you're talking about with the mirrors on both sides?

Amanda Barnett [00:19:13] With the mirrors on both sides and my parents either side. My father is there, but my overriding memory is of my mother's. The look on my mother's face, I think I describe it as just wondrous. She is clearly. This is the moment she has worked her adult life. Her children are going to be sealed to her forever. And that's sad for me.

John Dehlin [00:19:52] Well, did you feel at the time happy, knowing it made her so happy?

Amanda Barnett [00:19:58] No, no, no, no. I didn't feel neither happy nor sad. I just felt like this was another tick box exercise, Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:20:14] Well, let's check in with you at 14, then. Where was your belief like? Had you grown up singing the primary songs and going to primary and reading the scriptures and hearing the stories of Jesus and Joseph Smith and feeling good about your Mormon upbringing or not?

Amanda Barnett [00:20:29] Never.

John Dehlin [00:20:30] No, never. Do you remember when you first were kind of consciously listening to Mormon teachings and deciding that you didn't like or believe in them or did you?

Amanda Barnett [00:20:45] Yes, I can describe that. So as I've. I've explained my father's Royal Marine and it takes him all over the world for very long tours and when. And I also live with my mother's parents and so my grandfather is my surrogate father, I guess, and he dies and we spent all day together, we're out in the garden, we do loads of things. And on this particular morning, I can't find him. And my mother and grandmother tell me that he's gone to heaven. Now, I don't know what they were transmitting, whether they were actually really transmitting, that they believed what they were telling me, but I'm nearly four years old and I look at them and I can look up and see them and think, you're lying. That inoculated me. Whoa.

John Dehlin [00:21:44] So at 4 years old, your grandfather, who you love, dies, your mom and grandma tell you he's with Heavenly Father and your conclusion as a four year old is that they're lying to you?

Amanda Barnett [00:21:55] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:21:56] That's kind of precocious.

Amanda Barnett [00:21:57] Very precocious. Very precocious.

John Dehlin [00:22:00] And a little, I don't want to say dark, but like usually the belief in Santa Claus or Jesus or God, and I don't mean to say they're all the same, but like these types of teachings tend to make a kid feel better, or at least that's the adult perception, that these types of beliefs would make you feel better that your grandfather just passed away. Why didn't that work for you?

Amanda Barnett [00:22:23] It just seemed illogical. It didn't resonate. I can't really answer other than that was what I felt, John. You know, there was no sense of something beyond what I was experiencing for me. And so growing up, to come back to your question, growing up within the church and feeling like this at 5, you know, I went along, it was Sunday, I saw some folk. It wasn't too arduous.

Amanda Barnett [00:23:10] By the time I'm at school, and I'm not being brought up in Utah, so I'm brought up in, in the uk where I am the only Mormon in my school, I'm never to meet anybody who's a Mormon until I'm 10, and that's for a brief year at school. There was one, two Mormon girlfriends in school.

Amanda Barnett [00:23:35] So we're not, we don't have that indoctrination right through our lives. So Sunday, really Sunday is a day when I have to be a Mormon the rest of the week. I really do not need to be a Mormon. I'm going to make sure I'm not. I actually disavow the church. If anybody asks me what religion I am, I will say church of England. I will never, ever admit to being a Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:24:08] I have never had a Mormon story like this before. Like, it's almost always, I believe the church until something fell apart.

Amanda Barnett [00:24:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:15] What I'm hearing from you is from age 4, you never bought it.

Amanda Barnett [00:24:18] No.

John Dehlin [00:24:19] Whoa. Okay.

Amanda Barnett [00:24:20] No.

John Dehlin [00:24:21] But you were still raised in it.

Amanda Barnett [00:24:23] I was still raised in it.

John Dehlin [00:24:24] So what was it like for those 10 years between age 4 and age 14 where you're being brought to a Mormon church every Sunday, but all week long you're not believing it?

Amanda Barnett [00:24:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:33] Yeah. What was that like?

Amanda Barnett [00:24:35] Tough.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] Yeah, tough.

Amanda Barnett [00:24:38] Yeah, it was. I think I would rationalize it by. I started asking my mother questions, and when I got a rise, I dig another question out. So my questions would start quite innocently. I recall saying, asking her, will there be animals in the celestial kingdom?

Amanda Barnett [00:25:06] Because I thought, well, if there are animals in the celestial kingdom, what have they done together? And then I'd look, I just stare her down. So what's your answer, Mum? Will there be animals in the celestial kingdom? Well, that was. Oh, well, I'm not sure about that. And also, I was quite interested in that because animals would eat each other.

Amanda Barnett [00:25:37] So I was like, that. All of the. All of the teachings of the church was leading me to suspect that she should answer, there aren't any animals in the celestial kingdom. And then I would ask, later on, I would ask, is God a man or a woman?

Amanda Barnett [00:25:56] Well, he's a man, of course. And then I asked her the most. I knew what the answer would be, but I felt I really needed to ask her, who would you choose, God or me? The answer was God.

John Dehlin [00:26:18] Ooh. How was that for you?

Amanda Barnett [00:26:23] It was not unexpected, but I wanted her to actually tell me that. I wanted her to reveal the truth behind the religion that she believed in that was about families being together, whatever that would be usurped by God.

John Dehlin [00:26:44] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [00:26:45] So that was me. That was me in the church. To the age of getting sealed. If I take you forward to being my 16th birthday, really quick, do you

John Dehlin [00:27:01] remember what they were wearing when you got sealed around the altar? And

Amanda Barnett [00:27:07] I just remember them. I don't know if this is correct, but I remember some tabs hanging down from Some hats and everybody in white and there being a green cloth. I don't recall very much of that.

John Dehlin [00:27:26] So they would have worn green aprons probably. And he might have worn a white hat with a little string.

Amanda Barnett [00:27:31] Oh, that's what I was remembering.

John Dehlin [00:27:33] And your mom might have had a veil on. Yeah, maybe. And you didn't really enjoy that experience. It sounds like in the temple, I

Amanda Barnett [00:27:42] think we describe it, describe it now as culty. And that was the vibe that I was getting as a child.

John Dehlin [00:27:50] Wow. So I'm just trying to like. I think a normal, an average Mormon kid would know that you got to obey Heavenly Father and that obedience was a part of the whole thing. But I think they would just sort of look at loving Heavenly Father and obeying Heavenly Father and parents loving their kids as just all together instead of it being like one or the other. I think most kids would kind of look at it as all one big beautiful thing instead of sort of a zero sum game where it's like either Heavenly Father or me. Who are you picking? But I mean, I can

John Dehlin [00:28:27] see the logic there because what it comes down to for many couples or marital couples or parent child relationships is if a kid leaves the church or if a spouse leaves the church, that relationship might be over. So I mean, you were onto something for some people, you know what I mean?

Amanda Barnett [00:28:44] I think so. For me it was a zero sum game by the time I'm baptized. And then tithing takes precedent and fasting takes precedent. I'm now asking on the tithing. And we came from a poor family. Family, let me get that right out. We had very, very little. So my pocket money is taxed essentially. And I look at now, I would say it was taxation without representation. But as a female in the church, I hadn't actually, at 8, got. Got that. But I then asked my mother, where does the tithing go? She doesn't answer. She can't answer.

John Dehlin [00:29:34] Yeah, it came back here, by the way. And yes, it did have built a really beautiful valley and lots of nice buildings around it.

Amanda Barnett [00:29:43] It's predicated on 6 pence of 10% of 6 pence a week of my money.

John Dehlin [00:29:50] Yeah. And it went to the families of a lot of the leaders here.

Amanda Barnett [00:29:53] Yes, in the valley. Very sad. A very sad tale of financial grifting, I think.

John Dehlin [00:30:04] Okay, so as, as you're in your teenage years and you know, graduating from. Would it be. How would you call the equivalent of high school?

Amanda Barnett [00:30:16] So yeah, we have secondary school.

John Dehlin [00:30:19] And then did your faith, did you have any faith during your secondary school? Years.

Amanda Barnett [00:30:26] Petron, I'm so sorry to tell you.

John Dehlin [00:30:28] No, don't apologize. Okay. So you're never buying into it, but you're still forced to go through those years?

Amanda Barnett [00:30:37] I'm still forced to go. At 16, on my 16th birthday, 28th of May, 1976, I wake up knowing that this is the day. And I approach my mother and I say, I will never believe and you will never make me, and I am not going to church ever again.

John Dehlin [00:31:01] Whoa. And did you?

Amanda Barnett [00:31:04] I did for some other reasons, but not. Not because she made me. To my shock, she said, okay. And it felt like I remember standing, coming out of the house and waiting for a bus to take me into town. And I remember looking around and thinking, I'm free,

John Dehlin [00:31:30] man. I've never had this Mormon story before. I'm loving this. Thank you for sharing your Mormon story.

Amanda Barnett [00:31:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:37] So as you're thinking about your future college, university, career, what vision do you have for yourself by the time you're 17, 18? Where do you see your life going?

Amanda Barnett [00:31:52] I don't have one.

John Dehlin [00:31:53] Okay.

Amanda Barnett [00:31:54] I don't have one. I can honestly say that neither of my parents really took an interest in my education. I was woken up out of bed at six in the morning to do seminary, but I cannot recall ever having anybody ask me what homework I had, what I was doing in school, what was my future. We never had those discussions. I leave school with very few academic qualifications, and I, with my. With my pronouncement I'm never going again, comes a big outside world, a very loving outside world, but also a very dangerous outside world. I'm not equipped in the way that perhaps if I hadn't been brought up in the Church, I might well have been. What was it my mother used to say? You can help me out here, Where I thought, we're not in the world,

John Dehlin [00:33:09] or, yeah, we're in the world, but not of the world, but not of the world.

Amanda Barnett [00:33:14] And that kind of setting apart, you know, that skipping down the street, thinking, I've got a monopoly of the truth type, well, didn't set me up terribly well. So I didn't have any visions of going to university. That wasn't something that was ever discussed in my family. Nobody in my family had been to university. I knew of Brigham Young University, and as you say, in part, I furnished the education of a lot of Mormons in. In the usa. A lot of UK people have. So I didn't have that. I went out partying hard, meeting lots of great people. I met my first husband, and then I got pregnant at 19, did you

John Dehlin [00:34:14] end up marrying that? So you married the husband?

Amanda Barnett [00:34:17] I married that husband. And so when you asked me, did you return to the church? This is when I returned to the church. It's really quite difficult being pregnant at that period. Since 1979, my mother suggests that maybe I can go to Canada and have the baby in Canada with my aunt. I don't want to do that. I don't ever consider having an abortion. And at eight months pregnant, I'm married in the relief society room, not in the chapel. Cause I'm not quite worthy enough to manage that. So I'm married to my first husband, Rob, and Rob and Jez are good friends.

John Dehlin [00:35:13] Oh, fun.

Amanda Barnett [00:35:14] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:15] How long were you married to Rob?

Amanda Barnett [00:35:16] So I was married to rob for 10 years.

John Dehlin [00:35:19] And how many children did you.

Amanda Barnett [00:35:20] We have two children.

John Dehlin [00:35:21] You have two children?

Amanda Barnett [00:35:22] Yeah. Jenna and Amelia.

John Dehlin [00:35:24] Okay. And were you a stay at home mom at that delicious?

Amanda Barnett [00:35:28] Yes, it was. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:35:29] Okay. And during those 10 years, did you reactivate in the church or develop belief or stay away from the church?

Amanda Barnett [00:35:38] No. What happened? I'm married. We set up home. We have two children. My parents adore Rob. He's an adorable guy, is he not? Yeah. And we're just carrying on with our lives until one day I'm talking to my mother in the city center outside the shops, and she has a fit. It's 1984. And I'm talking to her like I'm talking to you. And she is looking straight through me. And then the next thing she is fitting on the floor. She has a brain tumor that's to kill her within six months. The oldest of seven children, my younger brother is 11 years younger than me. He's 13. The next brother is 14 and my sister is 15. And so they're very young. The other four children are adults. And that's when I then am on the pointy end of Mormonism again.

Loss of Her Mother and Drifting from the Church

John Dehlin [00:36:47] So your mom dies when you're 24 or 25 years old?

Amanda Barnett [00:36:50] My mother dies when I'm 24.

John Dehlin [00:36:53] And you have two kids and a bunch of younger siblings?

Amanda Barnett [00:36:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:57] And so do you take over the mom role for your younger siblings?

Amanda Barnett [00:37:01] I'd always done that. I guess I would ask her when she was pregnant again. I remember one occasion asking her, why are you having another baby? Because I knew that it meant that the load on me would be doing all the sort of second mothery type, the nappies. I don't. I've mixed feelings about that, you know, because obviously they're my brothers and my sisters. And I love them deeply. But I was also a child that didn't get to have some of the child experiences instead of having the responsibility of being a second mother insofar as looking after them, babysitting them, doing errands, all of those things that might have required a nanny, perhaps in a more affluent family to provide. So I was very much used to being a mothering type in that sense and being the oldest to take responsibility. Yeah. But the family is literally devastated by this event.

John Dehlin [00:38:20] Do you have a sense that your mom had seven children because of her Mormon beliefs or at least in part because of her Mormon beliefs?

Amanda Barnett [00:38:27] In part.

John Dehlin [00:38:28] Okay.

Amanda Barnett [00:38:28] I don't think. I don't think because she was a Mormon, I think she might well have had a lot of children. Would she have had seven? I'm not so sure. Society at that time time still had larger families. For example, we lived next to a family who were Catholic and had 10 children. So who knows?

John Dehlin [00:38:50] That reminds me of the Monty Python skit, Every sperm is sacred. I don't know if you've seen that. Have you seen that? You're laughing. Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [00:38:57] Yes. J J has a ry sense of humor. And Every sperm being sacred is. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:06] I am a Monty Python fan. I don't know if you know that about me.

Amanda Barnett [00:39:09] Yes, I do.

John Dehlin [00:39:10] Okay, so are you saying that when your mom passed away, you became more involved in the church at that point?

Amanda Barnett [00:39:17] No, I didn't. What I found was the church had. The church did not provide anything for my mother.

John Dehlin [00:39:25] Oh, okay.

Amanda Barnett [00:39:27] So for example, she is nursed within the community by the Marie Curie charity which provides in home care. I'm very interested in the lay clergy aspect of the church. Everybody's busy doing their own thing, aren't they? Looking. Doing their own jobs in the church and then the clergy is kind of laid on top of that. That doesn't really happen in the uk. The clergy is a paid role in other religions and it's taken very seriously.

Amanda Barnett [00:40:06] So the church members would do their best. But it was the charities that stepped in to help my family substantively. And so the St. Luke's Hospice, they stepped in and helped our family. And that's important to me because the medical director, Dr. Sheila Cassidy, had been a Catholic nun.

Amanda Barnett [00:40:48] And with my mother's real abhorrence of the Catholic religion, I found it quite ironic and sad that this is the. It is this church. St. Luke's Hospice was set up by the. By the Protestants within Plymouth. And so that was very important. There was literally nothing. The church were not there Only the members were there, the organization was not there.

John Dehlin [00:41:25] And I'm noting the irony because in the 60s and 70s and 80s, the Mormon Church certainly taught that the Catholic Church was the great and abominable evil whore of all the earth. Church.

Amanda Barnett [00:41:36] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:41:37] And it sounds like your mom shared that view.

Amanda Barnett [00:41:39] She did.

John Dehlin [00:41:40] But it was the Catholic Church and Associated Charities that ended up picking up the pieces in your family's life when your mom died and not the LDS Church.

Amanda Barnett [00:41:50] Not the LDS Church. Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:53] Wow. Okay, so if I'm getting my math right, you're married, you. You are divorced by 29, is that right?

Amanda Barnett [00:42:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:42:01] Which would be 1989. Ish. So. So through that, so through that time, you're never an active believing Mormon. Right. Okay. And so you don't go back to, you don't go to church at that point.

Amanda Barnett [00:42:15] But I should, I should explain though, John, that two of my closest siblings, one, she remains in the church. With my mother's death, the grip of the church has loosened on the family. But my next sibling down, she is. She marries in the church, she marries into a reasonably well known family within the church. She becomes State Relief Society President, mission President's wife.

John Dehlin [00:42:57] In Plymouth.

Amanda Barnett [00:42:58] Not in Plymouth, she lives in Herefordshire. The next sister down, after my mother dies, she goes on a mission and serves her mission in Los Angeles. And her husband Bea serves his mission in Chicago.

John Dehlin [00:43:20] Wow. So at least two of your siblings that are close to you really jump on the orthodox Mormon track and take it farthodox.

Amanda Barnett [00:43:27] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:43:28] How did that affect your relationship to them or how did your relationship to them persist as they became more and more orthodox and devout?

Amanda Barnett [00:43:37] They had always been really the believing core of the children. Another sister would describe going to church as just something that she did and did a little bit of singing and then came home. But then she was relatively young when my mother died.

Amanda Barnett [00:43:59] It was, there was a tension, but there wasn't like a real. We weren't cleaved apart by it. There was a tolerance, and that's about as good as you could describe it, I guess, that I would question, I'd still question them.

Amanda Barnett [00:44:26] They would occasionally. One of my sister's husbands mocked me because when I came to Salt Lake in the late 90s and I went and asked for my tithing back in headquarters, he found that hilarious. You know, why do you want your tithing back? He didn't see the principle.

Amanda Barnett [00:44:46] And so it was like, oh, yeah, you're just being difficult, not ever really wanting to look at the actual, the application of the doctrine of tithing, of what it truly meant and as to why I would want it back given that I didn't really give it freely.

John Dehlin [00:45:11] When you say give it, you mean as a teenager when you were paying whenever.

Amanda Barnett [00:45:15] Well, whenever I had, I was made to pay it.

John Dehlin [00:45:18] Okay. When you're a teenager.

Amanda Barnett [00:45:20] Yeah. Whatever money I was given, I had to tithe 10%. Got it, got it, yeah. So that sort of thing would rumble on at family gatherings and there was always the Mormon type. Oh, do we bring some wine? Who's going to say who's going to be wearing what? That's not, you know, another, another member of my family would love or that's not church standards. And in the main we all managed until we didn't. And my family is fractured.

Processing Anger and Leaving the Church

John Dehlin [00:45:59] Let me ask you that there. You know, I obviously, I think I sense a lot of antipathy from you for the church. And it's one thing. And there's no judgment when I say that like, and there's, and there's one thing to have non belief or skepticism which you had from age 4 on.

Amanda Barnett [00:46:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:27] And that's fine.

Amanda Barnett [00:46:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:28] There are secular brains and there are skeptical brains and the church just from age 4 never was compelling to you belief wise. But I do know people that can be fully secular. But like, oh great, if it works for them, great, I'm happy for them, you know what I mean? And in that sense, they don't care if belief brings someone joy, they're happy for them. Or even if they know the church isn't true or know that the church has problems. They're like, oh, everything has problems.

John Dehlin [00:47:01] So like it's not any worse than the government or it's not any worse than some corporation. Just so you know, there are different ways to view the world. Even from a non believing and a secular perspective. I'm getting the sense from you that there's antipathy for the church, like anger at the church. And I know that there's a trope that's unproductive to call ex Mormons angry. So I'm saying that with sensitivity. But am I right saying you have some anger or antipathy towards the church?

Amanda Barnett [00:47:35] I think I have some concerns, some valid concerns regarding the finances and we'll get going regarding some of the doctrine. What I would like to make absolutely clear, John, is that people's right to believe in religion is very, very important to me and I do not have any problems or consider that people shouldn't believe. I don't have that with the Mormon Church. What I have with the Mormon Church is their paradigm that says society will look like this, society must do that. And so we transcend. We move out of religious belief, we move out of magical thinking. And we're now entering into the structure and the culture of what community looks like.

Amanda Barnett [00:48:44] And it is at that intersection that I have to say, hold on a moment. I'm really not going to be supporting the financial burdens that you're putting on people. I'm not going to be supporting your LGBTQ ideas, and I'm certainly not going to be supporting the way in which you have gendered roles within the community. So at that point, you're absolutely right. It might come across as anger, it's righteous indignation. I prefer to frame the test.

John Dehlin [00:49:23] So the fact that whether or not the church is true, people can believe whatever, but as soon as the church is racist is sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, unduly demanding of people's finances, dishonest with their history or judgmental of others, or imposing its beliefs or standards on the broader society, judging other people. That's when you start having a problem.

Amanda Barnett [00:49:55] That's where the problems begin.

John Dehlin [00:49:57] Okay. And it sounds like you were feeling those things. Cause like in 78, you would have been aware when black members finally were able to attend the temple and men could get the priesthood. You would have remembered that that was.

Amanda Barnett [00:50:15] I'm gonna take you back to 1974 when there's a. The only black person in our church. I observe in church because I don't listen, because I don't believe. I find myself like watching things or, you know, how long will it take for me to go to the loo? Can I go via the stage? Who's around? Oh, maybe I should go out in the car park and have a wander around and eat up 10 minutes time.

Amanda Barnett [00:50:44] So I tend to look at things and I notice the only black person in our church does not do what even the boys do. And I turn to my mother and ask her and her answer to me is that this is because he bears the mark of Cain.

Amanda Barnett [00:51:05] And at that point the church changed from being this sort of culty, weird temple corridor, all in white experience to being something quite benevolent. I have to say that a black person would be less than that. Couldn't. It was so shocking to me. I was really, really upset by it. And really that is why at 16, I have to say I'm out.

John Dehlin [00:51:40] So as a 16 year old teenager in 1976, you're, you're saying that church is racist. This Church.

Amanda Barnett [00:51:46] Oh, absolutely. And it was a big thing in the family because I was always saying it. Oh, always. So in 78.

John Dehlin [00:51:53] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [00:51:54] Oh, we're not racist anymore. And yeah. And you have to, at one level laugh. It's, you know, Rye, you're good at.

Racism in the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [00:52:07] We're going to be talking about the Book of Mormon and the racism in the Book of Mormon because it ties into your lawsuit against the Marriott hotel franchisee.

Amanda Barnett [00:52:16] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:52:17] Had you become aware of the. The racism in the Book of Mormon as a teenager or young adult?

Amanda Barnett [00:52:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:27] Was that also something that you paid attention to?

Amanda Barnett [00:52:29] Yeah, that was at that point when I'm told that. And then the scriptures mean something completely different.

John Dehlin [00:52:37] What were you told in the Book of Mormon about race and, well, that.

Amanda Barnett [00:52:44] So I'm then doing a little bit more of a deep dive into something I really try not to read. I avoid reading. So the white and loathsome passages that.

John Dehlin [00:53:03] Dark and loathsome, right?

Amanda Barnett [00:53:04] Yes, sorry. Darkened. Loathsome. I beg your pardon, John. And that you can't mix seed. And that if you do mix seed that you will take on the mark of Cain. And that I was not to know then that I would have mixed race grandchildren.

John Dehlin [00:53:29] That makes it more personal.

Amanda Barnett [00:53:31] Yeah, yeah. Just gonna take a moment.

John Dehlin [00:53:36] I'm sorry. Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [00:53:40] It's not fine. It's far from fine. It's far from fine. But it's still there when the second declaration is made. It's a word salad. It actually does not do anything to discount the racism.

John Dehlin [00:54:01] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [00:54:01] It's a cleverly crafted piece of legalese and it sidesteps all of the previous 126 or how many ever years it had been practiced. And this is heralded to me as, oh, we're not racist anymore. Except that that legacy that is dragged on and on and I just look at people and think, really? So, yeah, you're not worthy. And I knew what not worthy felt like. Cause I'd felt like it from the get go. Really. I knew that I was the person literally putting the family at risk, you know. Oh, will you be able to visit me in the telestial kingdom? I would ask.

John Dehlin [00:55:08] You know, man, I just want to. I just want to take a moment to thank you for being willing to share the story. Because, you know, most of the people I interview, it's like, oh, I. The church was great and I loved it and I believed in it and I loved it and served a mission and got married in the temple. And it was in my 30s or 40s or 50s where I learned it wasn't true. And then it was hard. But it's very reasonable to notice that there are problems. It is precocious. But it is very reasonable to notice even from a young age that there are things that are wrong.

John Dehlin [00:55:43] Most Mormons raised don't notice those things. Or if they notice them, they just kind of compartmentalize them and forget them. But there's gotta be a bell curve of people who notice it early and aren't with it and speak out about it. And those people don't. Probably don't have a very good experience continuing on in their Mormon family when they're dissenters, when they're critical, when they don't go along.

John Dehlin [00:56:14] And then they have other siblings that become the good children because they do go along. And then you. Just because you have a conscience and something doesn't feel right and you feel strong enough to speak out about it, you become the layman, you become the bad child, the disobedient one, the wild one, and fall out of favor.

John Dehlin [00:56:40] That would be a horrible upbringing, probably. And it would make. It might scar me for life, but I was Nephi. I was the good one. You know what I mean? And. And so I just want to say what I perceive you experienced would have been very difficult. And I'm really sorry you had that experience. And I can see why you feel so strongly, because that would be very hard.

Amanda Barnett [00:57:11] It was hard. Don't get me wrong, John. There were marvelous moments in my family life. You know, I do not believe that my mother didn't love me. I know that she told me that she would choose God before me. I was testing her. I wanted her to answer that question. I was a particularly challenging child. I didn't know if I'd have been brought up in Catholicism, would I have been as challenging on that religion? I think it's just my nature. I don't think that. Is that Mormonism can own that challenging person. But I do feel that my mother. It was best endeavors. She did her best, which she thought was for her children. I didn't see it that way, and

John Dehlin [00:58:11] that's the verb, but it seems like the Mormon Church was a lifelong wedge between. Partial wedge between you and your entire family.

Amanda Barnett [00:58:20] Yes. Yes. I think that's a fair. Do you think that's fair?

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:58:24] Yeah. I mean, When I first met you 31 years ago.

John Dehlin [00:58:34] How many?

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:58:34] 31.

John Dehlin [00:58:35] Oh, wow.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:58:38] That. I met all your family and they were welcoming, but there was always a tension and a bit of a dig from certain members about, you know, is Amanda going to return? You know, Coming back into the fold. And that was fairly. It was meant to be good natured, but there was a kind of serious undertone to it, I think.

Amanda Barnett [00:59:11] Yeah.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [00:59:11] But, you know, as things moved on to certain events, kind of focus differences in outlook, and there have been recent events where things have really been unresolved and that element itself has kind of been a fracture point for the family.

Amanda Barnett [00:59:38] Yeah.

Life After Divorce and Reconnecting with Ex-Mormons

John Dehlin [00:59:39] So after Your divorce, after 10 years from your husband with two kids, did you end up getting a career? Is that.

Amanda Barnett [00:59:48] No, I marry a second man, not him.

John Dehlin [00:59:51] Okay. Okay.

Amanda Barnett [00:59:53] So I marry again.

John Dehlin [00:59:55] Was he lds?

Amanda Barnett [00:59:57] No, he's not lds. He's a lovely person. And again, they're good friends.

John Dehlin [01:00:01] Okay.

Amanda Barnett [01:00:01] Okay. I'm very fortunate. You know, I have. I've been married three times, John.

John Dehlin [01:00:06] Okay.

Amanda Barnett [01:00:07] To three wonderful men.

John Dehlin [01:00:09] So you stayed married to that second husband for how long?

Amanda Barnett [01:00:12] For another 10 years.

John Dehlin [01:00:14] And you were a stay at home mom? Just continued.

Amanda Barnett [01:00:16] Yeah, I. What a privilege.

John Dehlin [01:00:19] Yeah. And no children with that second husband?

Amanda Barnett [01:00:21] One child. So I have three daughters. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:00:24] Beautiful. Okay. During any of that time, did you ever become active in the church or participatory in the church?

Amanda Barnett [01:00:34] No. People would, you know, like, my nephews and nieces got married in the church. I'm just trying to think. My sister returned from a mission and we got married. Church was something that the other part of the family did.

Amanda Barnett [01:00:59] I spent a lot of time trying to resolve and tease out the threads of my mother's illness. And what was it? She had a brain tumor. So I did spend quite a lot of time thinking about, was it the brain tumor that made us so devout or was it, for example, when my mother died in the lead up to her death, rather, she had £1,000, which I guess in 1980, forced a lot of money, and she wrapped it to protect it. She kept it in her handbag with her patriarchal blessing wrapped around it.

Amanda Barnett [01:01:49] And this was really bizarre behavior. And like the magical thinking extended into like, protect. Why she was carrying around such a large watch of money, I don't know. And why she felt she needed to protect it by the patriarchal blessing. So there's things like this and did some of the more.

Amanda Barnett [01:02:10] The more extreme elements of her belief did she tell me that she choose God because she had a brain tumor? You know, I couldn't. I wrestled with those for quite a while, but at no point did I return.

Amanda Barnett [01:02:31] I watched my third. My. The two of my siblings that are in one had five children, the next one down. She has 10 children, so, you know, very devout moments. But we Just one big family who had now lost their mother.

John Dehlin [01:02:55] Did any of your three children ever join the church?

Amanda Barnett [01:02:58] No.

John Dehlin [01:02:59] Okay.

Amanda Barnett [01:03:00] No.

John Dehlin [01:03:01] So here's just, you know, here's the dots I'm trying to connect.

Amanda Barnett [01:03:07] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:03:08] This past week you were on a cruise with Radio Free Mormon and Bill Real and Sam Young and Rebecca Biblioteca and Randy Bell and all these lovely ex Mormons and ex Mormon influencers and a couple hundred post Mormons and Mormons. I'm guessing some Mormons were there, right? They were, yeah. And, you know, I'm guessing you're in your. You know, you're like me in the second half of your life, and there are a lot of things you could be doing with your time, and you chose to go on a post Mormon cruise, and yet not only were you not really actively attending church, you know, past your 16th year, you kind of never believed it.

Amanda Barnett [01:04:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:01] So I'm trying to understand how you go from leaving the church at 16 and never really returning to wanting to go on a post Mormon cruise in 2026 with a bunch of post Mormons. Help me understand, because I, I was just waiting for like, some part of your story where you, like, you got sick or you married someone who believed and so you decided to go or somehow something bad happened and you garnered some faith. And so for certain years you were in and you ended up getting married in the temple, but none of that ever came up in your story. So how did you end up on a post Mormon cruise with the life that you've left?

Amanda Barnett [01:04:45] Well, here's the thing. It's a lonely existence. Being a non believer in the Mormon family.

John Dehlin [01:04:56] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [01:04:56] I get a sense of very lonely existence.

John Dehlin [01:04:59] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [01:05:01] You are not understood outside of the community. You're certainly misunderstood inside the community. So when I alighted on your podcast and on elements out in the. In the digital world. What do we call that? Yeah, let's call it that. Yeah, I've. I found myself going. Yeah, that's what I did. That. Yeah, definitely. I can see why he's asked for his tithing bag. Is it Phillips?

John Dehlin [01:05:44] James Huntsman.

Amanda Barnett [01:05:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:47] Or Tom Phillips.

Amanda Barnett [01:05:48] Or Tom Phillips.

John Dehlin [01:05:49] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [01:05:50] Yeah. So, okay. And I had always had this. I had started growing this theory of. Of American exceptionalism. Oh, yeah, they're talking about that. I'll have a bit of that. That's very interesting. Oh, oh, yeah. Political. Yeah, that's a tick.

Amanda Barnett [01:06:14] Or people like John. John Landwell. It's theology and people are trying to make out that it's historical. Yeah. I'll have some of that it's the people who are ex woman really my tribe, aren't they? Except that I never went through their crisis of faith. Thank goodness. Because on that cruise there was a lot of trauma and a lot of traumatic stories and have to say the most traumatic seemed to be coming from the female voices on board.

Amanda Barnett [01:06:57] So when I saw that I could go and meet some people who I would have loved to have surrounded myself with as a child, as a teenager, who would have supported me, who would have been able to converse with me at the level I wanted to converse about, about the things that I was being told that I needed to believe and that I should believe. And if I didn't believe, I was going to be damned. And yeah, count me in. I'm in. So that's why I went on a post.

John Dehlin [01:07:33] It's almost like you found a trib. A community.

Amanda Barnett [01:07:37] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:07:38] Whoa.

Amanda Barnett [01:07:39] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:07:39] How long have you been listening to Mormon or ex Mormon social media?

Amanda Barnett [01:07:45] Probably. I want to say, was it pre lockdown?

John Dehlin [01:07:50] Like a year, five years, 10 years?

Amanda Barnett [01:07:52] Yeah, about seven or eight years. Okay, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:56] So maybe pre Covid.

Amanda Barnett [01:07:57] Yeah, pre Covid.

John Dehlin [01:07:58] Late night, late 2000 teens.

Amanda Barnett [01:08:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:02] That's when you first discovered it.

Amanda Barnett [01:08:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:04] Do you remember what you first discovered? Which show?

Amanda Barnett [01:08:07] Or I'm going to say yours. Not because I'm sat here opposite you, but because you're so prolific and you have quite a back catalog. So I think I started. There were some other things that had made me look. Became quite interested in some child abuse. Grumblings were coming out through the press and so I started like looking at that and then I had been, you know what? In the past, I think at the first point of the Internet I'd gone on some forums but they were quite shouty. I think yours is giving a coherent approach to Mormonism. So yeah, I just started dipping in.

John Dehlin [01:09:10] I'm just going to say that I've become quite devout. John, I love it. I love it. No, I'm just going to say that for your particular journey it must have felt incredibly validating. After suffering 50, 60 years of feeling on the outs, of feeling lonely, of feeling misunderstood, of having these secular ideas, non believing ideas, concerns about the implications of Mormon doctrine and theology on the lives of the members and of on others, to finally discover Mormons and ex Mormons talking about, but most importantly validating the concerns that you had from the age of 4 on but felt totally alone without anyone to talk to about it. It must have felt incredibly validating.

Amanda Barnett [01:10:03] Very validating, Very validating.

John Dehlin [01:10:06] Because you were kind of right, it turns out.

Amanda Barnett [01:10:09] I think I was kind of right.

John Dehlin [01:10:11] Yeah, but you. But, but oftentimes the people who are right and figure it out early pay the highest price.

Amanda Barnett [01:10:21] I can see Jess nodding in the background. I have paid a high price in some respects. In other respects I haven't. I tell you what, if there's one good thing that comes out of being brought up in the Mormon organization, I think that's probably a fair description, is

John Dehlin [01:10:45] they don't like to be called Mormon. I'm teasing, I'm teasing.

Amanda Barnett [01:10:49] Tease away. They need to get over that.

John Dehlin [01:10:53] They just don't like us being called Mormon either. But anyway, keep going.

Amanda Barnett [01:10:56] Well, no, quite.

John Dehlin [01:10:57] I'm teasing. Keep going. Well, the benefit from not being raised

Amanda Barnett [01:11:01] in the Mormon Church for, from my insights into organizations. So eventually I do go to, I, I do go to university in the University of Aberdeen and I study there for a couple of years. I leave and go to university, Robert Gordon University and I, I do management and law there and I do organizational behavior as part of one of the curriculum. And I realized that I get organizations, I get the motives, I get the playbook.

Amanda Barnett [01:11:46] Because that playbook I had witnessed as an observer, I had seen where all the power bases, all, all the non hierarchical messaging would go within the church, who was really, whilst the bishop might be there, who'd put him there. I was always interested in those questions and I would notice where the factions were within the ward, who was grumbling about what. And that gave me a great insight into organizations and, and that's helped me an awful lot.

John Dehlin [01:12:32] And I guess you would say from all the trauma you experienced on the cruise on behalf of others, maybe some of that religious trauma you escaped.

Amanda Barnett [01:12:43] Maybe I definitely escaped it.

John Dehlin [01:12:45] I'm sure you see that as I

Amanda Barnett [01:12:46] never ever had to put something on the shelf. Yeah, there was no shelf.

John Dehlin [01:12:52] And you never were disillusioned cause you never believed.

Amanda Barnett [01:12:55] I couldn't be disillusioned. Cause I never believed. Yeah. What an OD position. And I often think when I'm, you know, I go on ex Mormon Reddit, I, I watch you, I listen to Nemo. I would say he's like to say he's a friend of mine. The relationships that I'm forging, those who's a really, those are really important watching Rebecca Bibliotheca, she's pushed her way up through and is a female voice great.

John Dehlin [01:13:40] Is she brilliant? She's brilliant.

Amanda Barnett [01:13:42] Lovely. And all of the people, rfm, Bill Landon, all of the people that are in this space that we met and Julia. Julia. Yeah. They are literally embracing.

John Dehlin [01:14:01] Yeah. So embracing.

Amanda Barnett [01:14:05] They embrace. They embraced me. They embraced me last week. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:11] How'd that feel?

Amanda Barnett [01:14:13] Great. Sitting down. Sitting down with Janice Spangler in the Havana Bar and her reaching out to me and, you know, I said, look, I'm going to be on Mormon Stories. You know, this. This. This is going to be both interesting and daunting to me. And she's like, hey, look, Amanda, if you need me, I'm there. I haven't had that. I haven't had that. I've had. When are you coming back? Why don't you believe. And you do realize you're upsetting the rest of your family.

John Dehlin [01:15:01] Yeah. You know, I love this story. I love. I love this story that you have been able to find some healing and some acceptance and some community through our extended community. It makes me very happy.

Amanda Barnett [01:15:17] Yeah, it makes me very happy, too. I'm very, very grateful for it. You know, there's been some. I can't speak for my family. I can't speak for them. But although we are fractured, there is one message that I would like to take the opportunity to usual platform to say is I love you.

John Dehlin [01:15:40] You. You're saying this to your Mormon family.

Amanda Barnett [01:15:43] To my Mormon family. To my. My brothers and sisters. I love you all.

John Dehlin [01:15:51] You want to tell them that on Mormon Stories podcast?

Amanda Barnett [01:15:54] I do.

John Dehlin [01:15:55] Do you think they're going to watch?

Amanda Barnett [01:15:56] Well, if they want to hear me tell them I love them, I guess they're gonna have to.

John Dehlin [01:16:01] I love it. Okay. If it's all right. This has been lovely. I'm so grateful that I got to hear the story so far. Now I want to turn and understand. Is this a lawsuit? Is that what you call it?

Finding a Book of Mormon in the Marriott Hotel

Amanda Barnett [01:16:15] Yeah, I guess. You do call it a lawsuit. It's a claim.

John Dehlin [01:16:19] Okay.

Amanda Barnett [01:16:19] I've made a claim in the English and Welsh courts.

John Dehlin [01:16:24] Tell us the story. We've got. Let's just say we've got 30 minutes. Tell us the story.

Amanda Barnett [01:16:28] 30 minutes. Wow.

John Dehlin [01:16:29] John, tell us the story of this claim.

Amanda Barnett [01:16:34] Yeah, go.

John Dehlin [01:16:35] Yeah. So there's Marriott International.

Amanda Barnett [01:16:37] Yeah. I go and stay in the Marriott Hotel in Leicester, and we're together and I open up the drawer and see a Book of Mormon. And I'm really, really upset by this. Like, there was no warning when I booked the room, it didn't say there would be a Book of Mormon. When I paid for it and I got my receipt, it didn't say among all the services offered, there's. There's a, you know, breakfast comes free and you get a Book of Mormon in your room. None of that. So I was completely taken aback to open up the drawer and find one. I was so upset I didn't even mention it to Jaz.

John Dehlin [01:17:35] Now was this the first time you'd stayed in Marriott?

Amanda Barnett [01:17:37] No, I had stayed in the Marriott.

John Dehlin [01:17:39] Cause haven't they always had Books of Mormon in the Marriotts?

Amanda Barnett [01:17:43] Well, I've been with Jez in other countries, so I may well have been a country that they don't have them because I have traveled all around the world.

John Dehlin [01:17:55] But maybe you just. Just didn't notice her. It didn't really.

Amanda Barnett [01:17:58] Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I'm like, wow. So I, I don't tell Jazz, and I go down to reception and I say, I'm not happy that there's this book in my room. I get home and I receive an email from the Marriott. How was your stay? So I say, my stay was all right, except this is what you put in my room. And I copy out verbatim. Nephi 2, Nephi 5, which says 25.

John Dehlin [01:18:39] Do you want me to read it or do you want to read it?

Amanda Barnett [01:18:41] Read it. You read it.

John Dehlin [01:18:44] All right, so this is second Nephi 5, 5. I'm going to pull it up.

Amanda Barnett [01:18:50] Pull it up.

John Dehlin [01:18:52] I'm going to pull it up on and read it. All right, Here we go. Second Nephi 5.

Amanda Barnett [01:18:59] What, 21 to 25 is it not okay?

John Dehlin [01:19:02] And it says, and he had caused the cursing to come upon them. He being God or Jesus had caused the cursing to come upon them. And when I say them, I'm guessing it's talking about the descendants of Laman and Lemuel in the Book of Mormon. The Lamanites and the. The Lamanites, we'll call them. Yea, even a sore cursing. So they're being cursed because of their iniquity. So they're sinners. That's why they're being cursed by Jesus and God. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, meaning God. And they had become like unto a flint. What color is flint?

Amanda Barnett [01:19:43] It's black.

John Dehlin [01:19:44] Black. So they had become like unto a flint. Black. Now, I didn't realize that when people became bad, they turned black. But that's what the Book of Mormon's saying, that because they had hardened their hearts against God, there's a lot of white Europeans that don't believe in God. Am I wrong?

Amanda Barnett [01:20:03] Oh yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:05] Like, aren't the Netherlands, aren't the Scandinavian countries full of people that don't believe in God? God. That are atheist or secular? And aren't they? Very white people.

Amanda Barnett [01:20:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:17] So I'm just trying to.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:20:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:19] I don't think becoming an atheist turns you dark skinned. I don't know how that's in here in Europe.

Amanda Barnett [01:20:27] No, we wouldn't hold through that.

John Dehlin [01:20:30] I'm just checking in. Okay.

Amanda Barnett [01:20:31] Yeah, you check in.

John Dehlin [01:20:32] That hard hearts they turned against God and they. So it says wherefore as they were white and exceedingly fair and delightsome. So it's equating attractive and beautiful with being white according to this, that they might not be enticing so that they won't be sexually attractive. Okay.

Amanda Barnett [01:21:04] That's my interpretation unto my people.

John Dehlin [01:21:08] So Jesus has people. I'm assuming Jesus's people in America are the Nephites who are believers in him, so that the descendants of Laman and Lemuel who have hard hearts against Jesus so they won't be sexually attractive to the white followers of Jesus in America. A couple thousand years ago, God and Jesus say, according to the Book of Mormon, the Lord God did cause a skin. Now it says skin, a skin of blackness to come upon them. Okay, all right. That seems. I mean, that's pretty. I mean, obviously we've covered that a gazillion times on Mormon stories, but that's a pretty horrific text right there.

Amanda Barnett [01:22:00] It is a very horrific text text, but also it's a white supremacist text a thousand percent.

John Dehlin [01:22:06] And for a Mormon, it's like, oh, you're.

Amanda Barnett [01:22:09] It's not.

John Dehlin [01:22:10] I mean, you know, like we don't. You know, to a Mormon, that's just like, oh, yeah, that's scripture. That's holy scripture. Right. But if you read it from a secular perspective, it's. It's horrific. It's. I mean, it's kkk.

Amanda Barnett [01:22:23] That's exactly my point.

John Dehlin [01:22:25] It's KKK material.

Amanda Barnett [01:22:26] Absolutely. I mean, absolutely. If you put the clans of America in my drawer, you wouldn't be far off.

John Dehlin [01:22:33] No, no, no. It's probably worse. Oh, because it's saying God's doing it. It's basically called God, Jesus, white supremacists.

Amanda Barnett [01:22:41] Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:22:44] And that they're the authors of the Curse of Cain or the Curse of Laymen or whatever. Okay. Yeah. That's objectively horrific text. If you're not raised in a Mormon context and if you take it so seriously. By the way, we've talked about this before, even the Bible doesn't say this. Like, a lot of Mormons don't realize. They think, oh, well, that's just from the Bible word to Mormons, the Bible doesn't say any of that. It doesn't. The curse of Cain is not in the Bible in terms of it being dark skin for Cain's killing Abel, not in the Bible. Am I right?

Amanda Barnett [01:23:20] You're right.

John Dehlin [01:23:21] I'm ranting. Please forgive me. I'm ranting.

Amanda Barnett [01:23:25] You're absolutely right. And I think it's a really important point to make. It is not in the Bible.

John Dehlin [01:23:31] Yeah, yeah. And most Christians not only don't believe this, but never believe this, Right?

Amanda Barnett [01:23:38] Never, Never.

John Dehlin [01:23:39] So it's not a normal Christian belief.

Amanda Barnett [01:23:42] No.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:23:43] But if you, if you had, say, a hotel employee come into a room and talk to a guest and say those words, that would not be something that would be acceptable either. Just because it's in a book doesn't change the nature or the meaning of those words.

John Dehlin [01:24:03] Yeah. And because we know a tiny bit of your story, this is personal to you as well.

Amanda Barnett [01:24:10] Highly personal.

John Dehlin [01:24:11] Because. Phil, just tell us why again.

Amanda Barnett [01:24:15] Well, I have mixed race grandchildren. I have a history with the Mormon Church in which I was expected to accept this violent teaching. I was expected as a white person to somehow to be better than. I mean, what an awful, an awful condition to set upon somebody. You are better than them. And it is that we're based on skin color. Based on skin color. Based on skin color. I mean, it's just, it's just horrendous. And the fact that it has survived as a text within the Book of Mormon, despite 1978, despite the second declaration, despite, despite all of the activity surrounding their disavowing of that, it was never a doctrine doctrine. It's appalling.

John Dehlin [01:25:32] Not only was it a doctrine doctrine, it still is a doctrine doctrine.

Amanda Barnett [01:25:35] It still is a doctrine doctrine.

John Dehlin [01:25:37] It's in the scriptures.

Amanda Barnett [01:25:39] And until it's not, it is still. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:25:43] And a judge in an English court is going to have to read those words and determine the plain and ordinary meaning of them. And there's nothing that they can do to stop that happening. It just will be determined.

Amanda Barnett [01:25:59] Yeah. So.

John Dehlin [01:26:00] So you give your feedback to Mary.

Amanda Barnett [01:26:04] I give my feedback like that. I don't mention that it's. It's in a religious book. Yeah, I'm not giving them that. You put, you put racist text in my room.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:26:14] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [01:26:14] It's irrelevant in what form it's taken.

John Dehlin [01:26:17] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [01:26:18] So as you know, those are sort of in automatically generated emails. Now we're at home when this email comes through and we're watching telly. We've, we've come back. He knows nothing of what I've Done. Done. He knows not a dot that I've actually written in the book that I've put that this religion practice segregation up until 1978, that I've taken a photograph of it, that I've gone and complained about it. He knows nothing. And this email comes in on my phone. I pick up my MacBook and I'm now watching the telly going.

Amanda Barnett [01:26:59] And he's okay, what are you up to? Nothing. So I write this email, I write out to Nephi and we haven't finished all of it, but I think we've covered enough and to save the world from having to listen to the hideousness of that text.

Amanda Barnett [01:27:18] We'll move on within 40 minutes. I get a real person's response back to that email. Oh, well, thank you for your email. We would like to assure you that most guests like it while some guests don't like is and this is an important thing for me that it is a tradition set up in 1957 by the Marriott family who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Amanda Barnett [01:27:58] 1957 tradition that you're asking me to uphold. That's interesting. I'm going there. I want to see what 1957 human terrain looks like for the Marriott Hotel. This causes me now to go and research. Still watching telly. He's going, what are you doing? Nothing.

Amanda Barnett [01:28:27] To go and research about the Marriott hotel. So you probably know about JW Marriott. So question for you, John JW Marriott, he finishes his stake presidency. I think he's stake president from around about 54 to 57 or maybe even earlier than 54. Maybe it's back in 47. He's stake president in Washington D.C. whilst the first Marriott has been obviously planned, designed and implemented, where does Marriott place his first hotel?

John Dehlin [01:29:06] I actually don't know, but I will tell you. My wife and her family joined the church in Potomac, Maryland into the ward where the Marriotts lived. So my wife grew up with the Marriotts in Potomac, Maryland. But I don't know. I thought they started out as an A W root beer.

Amanda Barnett [01:29:24] Yeah, they did franchise hot shops.

John Dehlin [01:29:27] Right. And then. Yeah. I don't know where the first.

Amanda Barnett [01:29:29] So where do you think? JW Maryland Hotel Utah?

John Dehlin [01:29:32] I don't know. Utah.

Amanda Barnett [01:29:33] Yeah, Utah. Wrong, but a good guess. He's Washington D.C. perhaps he said Maryland. No, no, he didn't said.

John Dehlin [01:29:42] Okay.

Amanda Barnett [01:29:43] He built his first hotel on the Jefferson Davies highway in in Arlington, Virginia, a Jim Crow state in the 50s, 1957. Oh, that origin story you will not find on the Marriott website. Yes, we opened up our first hotel. It was this, but not that. It was in the Jim Crow state. That meant that black people couldn't stay in their hotel.

John Dehlin [01:30:27] Wow, I didn't know that.

Amanda Barnett [01:30:29] So I'm asked to observe a tradition set in 1957, in 2025 in the Leicester Hotel in the UK. Which part of that tradition were they asking me to uphold? Jim Crow state first Marriott not having black people stay. I am really now besides myself with like they've just, they've not only placed a Book of Mormon, they're now asking me to honor a tradition.

Amanda Barnett [01:31:05] So that's how my case began. And I then wrote to the Marriott Group, to the Leicester Marriott Hotel, what's called a letter before claim setting out that I had experienced and conduct unwanted conduct related to race that caused me to feel harassed and that I'm inviting them to remove the books as the remedy. If they do not, I will take them to court.

Amanda Barnett [01:31:55] I give them several weeks to come back to me. They do not and I therefore file a claim in the small claims court in England in my hometown. And we then I'm traveling along and I receive a phone call and I screen my phone calls. I don't know if you have the same thing, but you can see who's coming in. And it's the VP of Marriott. Yeah, hi. Of corporate or corporate Marriott. VP of the United Kingdom, Scandinavia.

John Dehlin [01:32:33] Got it.

Amanda Barnett [01:32:34] And she wants to talk to me. So I pick up the phone, I say oh, hi. And I explained to her that I'm, I'm traveling and whatever it is she's got to say to me, thank you for the phone call but put it in an email because I'm not going to have off the record discussions.

Amanda Barnett [01:32:59] And she answers me a very vague, writes me a very vague email, doesn't mention that I'm complaining about racism in her hotel. It doesn't mention anything to do with a legal claim. And so I do write back and say to her, look, if you have the permission of the defendants, because Marriott Group are not the defendants in the case, they are the franchisor. It's the franchisee that I'm taking into the court. If you get their permission, I will speak to you and I will meet you anywhere. I will meet you at any time. You just say I never hear from her again.

Amanda Barnett [01:33:44] And fast forward. We have gone into the small claims court. The defendants have lawyered up as one would expect. They are represented by DLA Piper and a partner in DLA Piper on a no cost remedy of removing the books. Has been allocated to a partner in DLA Piper, the most lucrative by. By income lucrative law firm in the uk.

John Dehlin [01:34:18] Really?

Amanda Barnett [01:34:19] Yes. And a King's Council from Outer Temple and her junior. So they are. They're in it for. For the long run.

John Dehlin [01:34:39] So there. And I wonder if Marriott and. Or the church are financially supporting this lawsuit. I guess we wouldn't know.

Amanda Barnett [01:34:47] I don't think we would ever know that.

The Legal Claim Under the Equality Act

John Dehlin [01:34:51] And what ordinance or law or statute are you saying they violated?

Amanda Barnett [01:35:01] There are a couple of laws that they have violated. The first one being the Equality act and the other being the echr. I'll let Jez help me out.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:35:17] Here are two aspects of the Equality Act. One is racial harassment, which it's quite broad in its definition. It's unwanted conduct related to race. Now related to race is very, very, very broad category. The fact that black or dark skin is mentioned almost certainly puts it into that category.

John Dehlin [01:35:42] That does the fact that neither of you present as you don't have to

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:35:47] have those characteristics in that aspect of the Equality act in either an employment setting or a commercial setting, that you don't have to have those characteristics for it to produce that effect. If, for example, to go to one extreme, you know, they put a swastika in your bedroom drawer, you wouldn't have to be Jewish to be offended by what that meant. Yeah. So it produces an offensive or degrading environment and that it is in all the circumstances reasonable for that person to experience that reaction.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:36:22] So that's what the judge will have to determine. There's a second aspect to the claim which is sort of an indirect discrimination claim. So where you might have a general provision, a policy that you apply broadly without discrimination, that has the effect of impacting a group in a unexpected way and that again, you don't have to share those protected characteristics, but you have to experience a similar kind of harm.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:37:04] So there's two prongs to the claim. The interesting one about the indirect discrimination is that often a employer or a commercial entity can get over, or even if they fail on those previous hurdles, there's a catch all at the end, which is it was a legal proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:37:34] We will argue that it's not a legitimate aim to put racist material in a bedroom. But even if they manage to squirrel that way under some sort of religious argument, the proportionate means issue is a problem because they already admit in certain parts of the world they place a card system in the drawer. So if where they can't place a book through more rigid local Laws. They put a card in a bedroom drawer saying if you'd like a Book of Mormon, call reception. So they already have a less intrusive means of achieving that aim, whether we agree it's legitimate or not. So when you get to that point there, they already operate a card system elsewhere in the world, so they could easily do it at no cost and that's going to be problematic to them.

Amanda Barnett [01:38:24] The judge is going to have to decide whether that language is racist.

John Dehlin [01:38:31] Really?

Amanda Barnett [01:38:31] Yes. So that is going to be ventilated. Those elements of the Book of Mormon

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:38:39] are going to be scrutinized in a court in England and that will be public because that's the nature of a, of a court case.

John Dehlin [01:38:48] Is there a date where this hearing is going to happen?

Amanda Barnett [01:38:51] Well, we've.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:38:53] The final hearing's not set yet.

Amanda Barnett [01:38:54] Yeah, the final hearing isn't set, but on the 12th of October this year we'll be looking at case management hearings. So that will look at the way that the case is to be conducted, whether witnesses are to be called and it will be looking at costs and those elements of the case as it goes forward.

John Dehlin [01:39:20] Is this going to be costing you both a lot of money or not that much money? If I lose, what happens? Wait, what happens if you lose?

Amanda Barnett [01:39:28] If I lose, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:29] What happens?

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:39:30] Have to pay that cost.

Amanda Barnett [01:39:31] I will have to bear that cost.

John Dehlin [01:39:33] Oh my gosh. Yeah, well that, that sounds risky it for me.

Amanda Barnett [01:39:41] I think that we have public interest element to the claim because this isn't just about. And the court has already decided that there is a public interest element to the claim. What about my family? What about my friends? What about employee who place their employees in Marriotts on contracts all around the world with people like British Airways and Big Big Pharma? Are they going to want their employees to be subjected to that text?

John Dehlin [01:40:25] They haven't complained yet as far as I know.

Amanda Barnett [01:40:28] No, they haven't. But I really. So they. That's quite interesting because they haven't complained yet. The franchisee had just bought, just spent 900 million on buying 33 franchises in the UK. When I didn't know this at the time. I mean it's just by dint of what's happened. I've learned this since they had just completed that in September. I stay in October and as far as I can ascertain, DLA Piper were the law firm that were in part involved in that contract, that substantial contract. I'm not so sure any of them knew what was in the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:41:19] Yeah. So just really quickly I like to try and be fair and balanced or even take devil's advocate position. So if I were to try and come up with potential concerns or criticisms of what you're telling me, I could hear someone say, oh, society's too litigious, especially in America. We're always suing people for spurious reasons. Or this is a publicity stunt, this is just a gimmick. Or y' all are trying to make money, or you hate, you're religious bigots, you just hate religious people and you're trying to discriminate against people that are religious. So those are like some of the criticisms I could think of, or that you're not really hurt. You're not even a person of color. People of color maybe have a right to complain, but they're not complaining. So this is just all silliness.

Amanda Barnett [01:42:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:42:14] Some of the reasons why I, I don't really feel any force behind any of those responses are because, number one, there's a lot at stake for you if you have to pay if you lose. But it is objectively racist.

Amanda Barnett [01:42:29] I don't think there's anything spurious.

John Dehlin [01:42:31] Yeah, no, no, no. And the final thing is this is your grandparents and your grandchildren and I'm assuming an in law or a partner or a former partner of one of your children. And so those are the things that make me think, no, no, no, this is. I can't believe it's taken until 2026 for me to hear about this idea, but I can see why you're doing it.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:42:56] So anyway, whoever's ever complained before is not a particularly strong defense.

John Dehlin [01:43:01] Well, we don't know if people have

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:43:02] complained before and if they've just been pushed away. But as a kind of, as a legal defense, which no one's complained before, it's not a strong one.

John Dehlin [01:43:11] I totally agree, Totally agree.

Amanda Barnett [01:43:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but I don't feel that it's spurious. I think it's really important. I think it's important for society. I think it goes back to many of the, the issues that we have. And you don't get a, you don't get a carve out form religious racism in our country.

John Dehlin [01:43:39] You don't.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:43:40] No, that's our view.

Amanda Barnett [01:43:42] That's our view.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:43:43] I mean, the court here.

John Dehlin [01:43:44] You do?

Amanda Barnett [01:43:45] Yeah, well, we think. Good luck.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:43:51] You can discriminate on the basis of gender. On sex.

Amanda Barnett [01:43:56] Yeah.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:43:56] Within religion, because, you know, you have callings.

John Dehlin [01:43:59] Oh, I see what you're saying.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:44:00] That they get a special carve out.

John Dehlin [01:44:02] I see, I see an exemption. I see what you're saying there is

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:44:06] an exemption for race.

Amanda Barnett [01:44:07] There is no exemption for race.

John Dehlin [01:44:08] Got it.

Amanda Barnett [01:44:09] It doesn't matter. What, you can't squirrel in racism because otherwise you would. Let's put the clans of America. If the Book of Mormon is allowed to sit in the Marriott hotel room in the uk, then so there's the clans of America. And I guess it's not. And that's my. That is the only parallel that I can, that I can give the. To my story.

John Dehlin [01:44:34] Yeah. Find a more racist text than 2 Nephi 5. 25 Find a more racist text than 2 Nephi 5 where God, because you

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:44:42] cloak it in a religious descriptor, doesn't change the meaning of those words.

John Dehlin [01:44:49] It makes it worse because it's God and Jesus.

Amanda Barnett [01:44:52] Well, it does if you believe. It does if you believe. And if you don't, it doesn't shine a very, very particularly pleasant light on that. That, that strain of Christianity.

John Dehlin [01:45:08] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [01:45:08] Because if Mormonism is a Christian religion, then it's a very racist Christian religion.

John Dehlin [01:45:16] Or at least its scriptures are racist.

Amanda Barnett [01:45:17] Or it.

John Dehlin [01:45:18] Yeah.

Amanda Barnett [01:45:19] Well, what else it's predicated on?

John Dehlin [01:45:21] No, scriptures are doctrine. So they're canonized. They're the word of God.

Amanda Barnett [01:45:27] They are.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:45:27] And the claim has no real monetary value. It has a nominal amount for, you know, the actual experiencing the harm, but it's a virtually no cost remedy. And faced with a remedy that would literally cost them nothing, might even save them money over the long term because wouldn't have to maintain so many books and pull them out of the bin and replace them with new ones because people have ripped them up and expressed their dissatisfaction, shall we say, with the placement of those books. It would probably save them money.

Amanda Barnett [01:46:04] Yeah.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:46:05] So it's hard to see why they've, you know, gone to such lengths.

Amanda Barnett [01:46:10] I said I would ask my employees to take that book and place it somewhere. I don't think, I think legally that's, that's. I think that could be questionable. Who do you ask to put that book in? Somebody's got to pick it up. Somebody's got to place it.

John Dehlin [01:46:29] What about the argument? Come on, it's scripture. Scriptures are problematic. They're old, but they have good stories that teach us values and morals.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:46:38] And that's fine in a religious setting when you're expecting that, but in a private hotel room, you've paid for that space. Your another interesting point is the right to religious freedom in the United Kingdom is based on a personal. Only an individual has the right to hold a religious belief because a corporation or a company cannot hold a religious belief.

Amanda Barnett [01:47:04] Marriott Lester cannot hold a religious belief and cannot manifest therefore a religious belief.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:47:11] Only an individual can. And so that's problematic for why a company is putting religious material in a bedroom. If they want to run the religious argument, we say it's not about the religious element of it, it's about the meaning of the words. But even if you go down the religious route, the defendants do not have Article 9 rights. And Article 9 is Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights which covers most of Europe.

Amanda Barnett [01:47:38] And even those are qualified. So my rights can't.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:47:42] Yeah, your right to religious freedom is also your right not to experience unwanted religion as an individual. So it's a balanced right. So an individual has an absolute right to hold a religious belief. But when you manifest that belief, when that manifestation starts to interfere with other people's rights to have religious freedom from religion, then there's a balancing act to be done. And it will be for the court. If they manage to succeed in sort of squirreling it to a religious debate, the court will still have to determine that balancing act. And the words are gonna get looked at. And you would think that would be the last thing they would really want to have in public is a scrutiny.

John Dehlin [01:48:34] No, the last thing they would want is a headline saying Books of Mormon removed from Marriott Hotels for racism. That's the last thing. You would think so. You would think so. Some judge scrutinizing some text and writing an opinion and some local verdict.

Amanda Barnett [01:48:54] Well, it will have. John, if the judge finds that and it does have. Have that knock on effect, those books will have to be removed.

John Dehlin [01:49:02] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I can see why you're doing this and I hope you're successful. Not cause I hate Mormons or even hate the Book of Mormon or hate the Church, but just cause you're right, it's an offensive text, objectively. And until I think the church should change it. Like they change stuff all the time.

Amanda Barnett [01:49:25] Absolutely.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:49:25] They just change it passages. They could produce their, you know, special edition version that.

Amanda Barnett [01:49:30] Yeah, I think it's time.

John Dehlin [01:49:32] Yeah, I mean they have changed the Book of Mormon thousands of times. In fact, they changed the racist part one of the racist parts from Wine Delights and Mapurin Delights and they just didn't change all the racist parts, which I never understood by the way.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:49:46] But they didn't change the fact they're equating pure with white either. No, because that link is still.

John Dehlin [01:49:52] And they left the skin and the dark skin. They let that in.

Amanda Barnett [01:49:54] They let that all Right.

John Dehlin [01:49:56] Well, listen, I want this to be under two hours so that people of all nations tongues, kindreds and people can get an audible translation of this story. So let me just, you know, so we have to wrap up to get it under. So I want to say, Amanda and Jez, I'm so delighted you came here to Utah to at least in part to do this show because you. You went on the cruise, but y' all came aboard in California. Thank you for coming all the way to Utah to tell this story. I'm really honored that you would. And I think this is a worthy cause that you're fighting for. I'm also delighted to hear that you had a great experience on the post Mormon cruise. And mostly I'm. Maybe I made a couple friends today.

Final Thoughts and Hopes for the Case

Amanda Barnett [01:50:45] Yeah. Well, hopefully. And thank you for hosting us. Thank you for taking the time and hopefully the viewers will understand how important this is.

John Dehlin [01:51:01] I'm sure they will. Really quickly. Have you spoken with any. They're not called attorneys or lawyers, they're called barristers or something like that.

Amanda Barnett [01:51:09] In the uk, the humanist societies have taken an interest in my case, so. And I am lobbying elsewhere. This is as much as I can say at the moment.

John Dehlin [01:51:22] But have any legal experts in the UK given you their sense of the

Amanda Barnett [01:51:26] prospects that that is yet? That's still in the pipeline. Okay, yeah, I don't want to say too much about that.

John Dehlin [01:51:34] So I'm working with civil rights groups in legal context here. And you're working.

Amanda Barnett [01:51:39] I'm working there. Yeah. So I, yeah, I have. I have reached out and I will continue reaching out.

John Dehlin [01:51:48] So will you come back on the show when there's developments and update us on what's going on?

Amanda Barnett [01:51:52] Absolute pleasure to do that, John.

John Dehlin [01:51:54] All right, well, any final words that we have believing Mormons, non believing, still attending Mormons. We have inactive, you know, Mormons, ex Mormons, never Mormons. Jez will give you the penultimate word, and then Amanda will give you the final word.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:52:14] I would just like to say briefly the experience of meeting so many post Mormons on that cruise and listening to their stories and knowing that they gained such comfort from being able to share their stories and know that they weren't the weird ones, because from what I understood, the church is very good at making their failings your fault as an individual. And that was the bit that most people struggled with. And it was just a wonderful experience meeting such good, kind people. And I suppose this just comes down to filtering through from Amanda. Looking at your podcast, then I got close to the event horizon. I'M sucked into that space. And it's been fascinating and interesting and really enjoyed it. And thank you for speaking to us today.

John Dehlin [01:53:22] And, Jess, it's cool. It's cool from my perspective that you're so supportive of Amanda in this way.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:53:31] Well, it's just. I don't know how you couldn't really.

John Dehlin [01:53:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, beautiful. Well, lots of people don't, so thank you for being so supportive.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:53:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:42] And wearing your taper. Creating your taper hat. Yeah. That's fun. So very much. Yeah. Kudos to you and Amanda. You get the final word.

Amanda Barnett [01:53:53] Yeah. Well, thank you, John. And thank you to all of the community of Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Whether you're in or whether you're out, I'd like you to look at those words that I've brought to your attention and answer from the bottom of your heart, do they have a place in your religious doctrine right now, today? And ask yourself, isn't it time we moved on, that we owned it? We apologized properly and we said, no more. And that is my message. And as George on the Panorama, Cruz would say, his final words would be, be kind.

John Dehlin [01:54:45] I love it.

Amanda Barnett [01:54:48] I think George had it right, didn't you?

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:54:49] I do.

John Dehlin [01:54:51] Beautiful. Well said. Beautiful. Well, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories for this amazing episode. Thanks to Julia for producing this one, Brooklyn for her post production as well. Thanks to Nemo for the referral. Thanks to Rebecca and RFM and Bill and all those who ran that cruise.

John Dehlin [01:55:11] Anytime liberal progressive or post Mormons gather, John Dehlin is thrilled. So any community that's created, Clinton, Jenny, Martin, the Thrive community, all of that, huge thanks to everyone that creates community and builds and supports community, including all the ex Mormon and liberal Mormon creators, and thanks to all those who support and donate to Mormon Stories podcast. We couldn't do it without you. And yeah, y' all know how to donate and apply to be on the show. But again, Amanda and Jez, thanks for coming on. Hope to see you all again.

John Dehlin [01:55:47] Stay in touch. We can't wait to hear about the status of this case. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Take care.

Amanda Barnett [01:55:59] Thank you, Joe.

Jeremy (Jez) Barnett [01:55:59] Thank you.

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