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"The Mormon Defense League" is out. "MormonVoices" is in. That change became official Monday, when the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research announced a name change for its website aimed at defending the teachings and practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. FAIR is a non-profit organization that, according to a press release, is operated by "self-motivated Mormons who seek to improve the public understanding about the church" through conferences, workshops and scholarly articles posted on the organization's websites. While it is dedicated to "providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, beliefs and practices" of the...

Similarities between Joseph Smith and Muhammad: The followers of Muhammad and Joseph Smith both killed innocent "infidel" on the same date of 9/11. On September 11, 1857, Mormon militia massacred about 140 men, women and children under the authority of Brigham Young. However 17 very young children were spared and adopted into Mormon families. They were in fact sold to the highest Mormon family bidder and resold and traded many times afterwords. This event is called "The Mountain Meadows" massacre. Mormon leaders engaged in a deliberate rewriting of history to deny they were behind the murders. On September 11, 2001...

SALT LAKE CITY - Imprisoned polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs has released a series of so-called revelations in which he says a succession of natural disasters will strike the U.S. The 55-year-old Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison this year for sexually assaulting two girls whom he took as wives when they were 12 and 14 years old. He released his apocalyptic predictions to the Utah attorney general's office on Monday. Jeffs' apparent prophecies included tsunamis on the East Coast and in Seattle and earthquakes and volcanoes in Utah and Arizona. He also says that Idaho "shall be as...

The pastor who introduced Texas Gov. Rick Perry at a conservative gathering Friday said rival presidential candidate Mitt Romney is not a Christian and is in a cult because he is a Mormon. Robert Jeffress, the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Dallas, made similar remarks about Romney when he ran in the 2008 campaign. Event organizers at the Values Voters Summit selected Jeffress to introduce Perry, but the Perry campaign was consulted about the choice and approved Jeffress to introduce the Texas governor. Jeffress endorsed Perry at the event and introduced him as "a proven leader, a true...

(CNN) - Early on in life, Mitch Mayne knew exactly who he was. He would race home...to watch reruns of “Star Trek” and swoon over his crush, Captain Kirk. At 8, after his parents converted, he was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints... It is where he feels spiritually at home, irrespective of the fact that, for the past 10 years, he’s been openly gay. “I’m a man that lives in two worlds that a lot of people don’t think intersect,” Mayne said... Actively Mormon and openly gay: It's the sort of combo that might leave...

Polygamist leader’s request to remove judge denied SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A visiting judge on Tuesday denied polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs’ second attempt to remove the West Texas judge overseeing his upcoming sexual assault trial, this time because of alleged bias after she made calls to inquire about progress in the case and accepted extra police protection because of threats associated with it. Judge John Hyde of Midland listened to more than five hours of testimony on Jeffs’ motion to recuse District Judge Barbara Walther during a hearing Monday but wrote a day later that much of it rested...

Who’s angrier about this? Traditional marriage activists, or gay rights activists who don’t want to see the debate about same-sex marriage dragged down the slippery slope when they’re trying to build on momentum from New York? Nationally-known constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley said the lawsuit to be filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City will not call for plural marriages to be recognized by the state. Instead, it asks for polygamy between consenting adults like his clients, former Utahn Kody Brown and his wives, to no longer be considered a crime.“We are only challenging the right of the...

(To see Cal Grondahl’s cartoon that goes with this post, click here) I spent some time re-reading the late Richard S. Van Wagoner’s excellent book, “Mormon Polygamy: A History.” The 19th century tales of harems and never-ending teenage-girl hunting were, of course, lies to excite Eastern U.S. readers. Polygamy was a contradictory doctrine, and extremely dysfunctional. Brigham Young once said that he wished it wasn’t a doctrine, but later also raged that those who disbelieved in polygamy — and even monogomous LDS men — were in danger of damnation. And polygamy led to divorce among LDS elite leaders in numbers...

They are more than the people who go door-to-door asking to talk about religion. They are not the polygamists pictured in reality TV shows. That’s what the University’s student branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wanted students to know at their Meet the Mormons event at the Institute of Religion on Wednesday. Set up like a small career fair with colorful posters, the hosts of Meet the Mormons aimed to provide an open forum to religious and non-religious students alike. “A lot of people are curious about Mormons, but reluctant to actually talk to them because...

A purge may be underway in the polygamous communities of Hildale-Colorado City on the Utah-Arizona border. 2News has been told even men who were in FLDS leadership positions have been ousted from the sect. "There's a big shake up," said Isaac Wyler, long-time resident of Colorado City. "There are a lot of people who are shaken by what's happened with their families." Wyler was one of three people, close to the communities, who spoke to 2News Tuesday night. Perhaps as many as three dozen men have been told to leave over the past two months, and the orders to get...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Polygamy practiced by some 19th century Mormon men had the curious effect of suppressing the overall offspring numbers of Mormon women in plural marriages, say scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and three other institutions in the March 2011 issue of Evolution and Human Behavior. Simply put, the more sister-wives a Mormon woman had, the fewer children she was likely to produce. "Although it's great in terms of number of children for successful males to have harems, the data show that for every new woman added to a male's household, the number each wife produced goes down by...

Latter-day Saints aren't Christians?    Criticism Critics claim that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not "Christian." A related claim is that the Church has only recently begun to portray itself as "Christian" in order to gain adherents. See also: Source(s) of the criticism  Response It is evident from what has been said, that the Mormons, as such, can have no part or lot in the religion of Jesus Christ—and we do not see how any one can be their friend, (as Mormons,) without being an enemy to God. —James M’Chesney, An Antidote To Mormonism, revised by...