What does their crime have to do with them being mormon?
Can you imagine a story starting with ‘two democratic women’, because they met at a democratic committee meeting?
I expected to find they were punishing kids at the church or something. But the article doesn’t give any reason to associate their crimes with the mormon faith or that they are mormons.
So it seems like it was just a swipe at the religion.
Seems to me like an all-out effort to avoid taking a swipe at their sexual orientation. We aren't even told which woman was the natural mother of those children, or if neither one was. The cat doesn't come out of the bag until the end of the article, when judge refers to the older woman as a "matrimonial figure".
Instead the author goes on and on about Mormon this and Mormon that, as if the Mormons would actually sanction this arrangement.