Free Republic

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its investment arm have been fined $5 million for using shell companies to obscure the size of its $32 billion portfolio, which was under church control, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday. The faith, known as the Mormon church, maintains billions of dollars of investments in stocks, bonds, real estate and agriculture. Much of its portfolio is controlled by Ensign Peak Advisers, a nonprofit investment manager overseen by ecclesiastical leaders known as its presiding bishopric. The Mormon church was allegedly worried that the size of its portfolio, which reached...

To the extent that Mitt Romney, handsome rich guy, is a sympathetic figure, it is because his attempts to prostrate himself before the left fail so consistently. The “binders full of women” comment, perverted as it was by the media, was also a total capitulation to the idea that there ought to be more quotas and affirmative action in hiring. But even then – even then! – they still painted him and Paul Ryan as racists who wanted to kill grandma and crawl through your window at night to steal your birth control. The lesson Republican voters took away was:...

A special election for a House of Commons seat in Wales on Thursday with the Labor Party holding the seat well ahead of the Conservatives 40 percent to 31 percent with the party of Brexit, UKIP, more than tripling their share to nine percent of the vote..... The "Daily Mail" publishing a poll with 48 percent calling on Mrs. May to resign..... Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini meeting in Paris Friday with France's leading opposition politician, Marine Le Pen of the National Rally.... Debate and discussion in France's National Assembly over giving the government of French President Emmanuel Macron new...

The Senate has been in session all night with senators speaking about the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The final vote will be today and it could be..... Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke faces a minimum of six year in prison after being convicted of second degree murder.... A new tone from the European Union about Brexit..... The latest on the disappearance of the Chinese official who heads Interpol is that Chinese authorities took him into custody..... We still don't know what happened to Saudi journalist and critic of hte Saudi Arabian government Jamal Khashoggi.......

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, May 9, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The Mormon Church has announced that it will end all association with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and other worldwide Scouting programs, a week after the BSA announced it would cut “boy” from the name because it now accepts girls. “Effective on December 31, 2019, the Church will conclude its relationship as a chartered organization with all Scouting programs around the world,” the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) announced on May 8. Instead, next year it plans to launch its own youth programs to “help all...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has said it will be re-evaluating its long-standing participation in the Boy Scouts of America, following the latter's decision to end its blanket ban on openly gay adult leaders. "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today's vote by the Boy Scouts of America National Executive Board. In spite of a request to delay the vote, it was scheduled at a time in July when members of the Church's governing councils are out of their offices and do not meet. When the leadership of the Church resumes...

Mormons and LGBT people historically haven’t gotten along. The church has been active in efforts to end gay marriage, and even the Supreme Court’s most recent opinion hasn’t deterred them from fighting. So that’s why it came as a surprise to almost everyone that the historically anti-gay church just made its first donation to an LGBT cause. While the church still doesn’t approve of homosexuality, that didn’t stop them from making a recent donation to the Utah Pride Center, an organization that helps to serve homeless LGBTQ youth... ...The Mormon Church donated approximately $2,500 to help fund the Pride Center’s...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Mormon-church-backed anti-discrimination bill that protects LGBT Utah residents and religious rights received final approval at the state's Republican-controlled Legislature on Wednesday. The House of Representatives voted 65-10 to pass the bill, which was only unveiled last week. The Senate passed it Friday. The bill earned a rare endorsement from the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which helped fast-track the measure through the Legislature. Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican and member of the church, has said he'll sign the bill.

Eugene Volokh relates an action by the Westminster Magistrate's Court in England that would be chilling if it were funny. It seems that the court is summoning a leader of a major religion to prove whether the doctrine of his church is true. The court is summoning Thomas Monson, the current President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to answer charges under the Fraud Act levied by two disaffected ex-Mormons.

The Mormon Church owns one of the most active and unregulated gun sale portals on the web, according to a national investigation released by the New York City Mayor's office. The website in question is KSL.com, the online hub for Utah's NBC affiliate and sister radio station, which are both owned and operated by the for-profit arm of the Mormon Church. In addition to local news, KSL.com produces a popular classifieds section that reaches millions of users well beyond Utah.The LDS connection drew little notice when Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a leading financier of the gun control movement, published the report...

As Mitt Romney spends the next leg of his campaign courting evangelical voters in South Carolina, his Mormon faith is expected to re-emerge as a subject of serious scrutiny. But concerns won’t belong exclusively to theologically suspicious Baptists: a newly revealed episode from the candidate’s time as a lay leader in the LDS church could raise eyebrows among women’s advocates. While serving as bishop of a Mormon congregation near Boston in the early 80’s, Romney once threatened to excommunicate a young single mother if she did not give her soon-to-be-born son up for adoption, according to a passage from a...

I have always prided myself on the fact of being a grassroots Conservative and when I find a tidbit, I try to put it out there where the goats can get it. Even I with my PHD(Plain High School Diploma)am smart enough to step off the train tracks when I see a light in the distance getting closer to me. This ranting may come from the mouth of a complete fool, but trust me, you will see this narrative again repeated in the Obama Media as he has no record of actual achievement to run on and if the establishment...

Two leading Utah activists embody opposite views on the issue – and both cite the church's teachings as the core of their positions. At the Sandstrom family table on the edge of the Wasatch Mountains, eldest son Stephen listened carefully as his parents talked about politics, the divine nature of the nation's founding and the importance of the rule of law. -SNIP- At the Yapias family table in Peru, eldest son Tony felt the strain of a family divided.   -SNIP- This summer a list of purportedly illegal immigrants was anonymously circulated — complete with birth dates and, in some...

Grass-roots protest calls leaders of the Mormon Church to account for involvement in California election. Salt Lake City, UT - Resentment and mistrust of the LDS Church is growing with voters as revelations surface in the Prop. 8 court case in California showing key leaders of the church engaged in tactics meant to deceive the voters and influence the election through fear and misinformation. This sentiment has reached fever pitch in many circles and spawned vehement protests like ExcommunicateTheChurch.com where people can download a letter of excommunication and send it directly to the president of the Mormon Church, Thomas S....

PORTLAND - Two grown brothers sued the Mormon Church and the Boy Scouts of America Monday, claiming they were sexually molested as children by a man who served as a Scout leader and church teacher. The brothers, who are in their early 30s and are identified only by initials in the $6.5 million lawsuit, say they have suffered "severe debilitating physical, mental and emotional injury." The suit, filed in the Oregon state circuit court in Multnomah County, claims the men were molested as boys in the early 1980s by Timur Dykes, a home teacher for the Church of Jesus Christ...

One year ago, Arizona authorities set up shop in a double-wide trailer here at the edge of the nation's largest polygamous community, trying to bring at least a semblance of secular law to an American small town like no other. Theirs was the first independent government presence in half a century at this settlement straddling the Arizona-Utah border, a place frozen in a 19th-century frontier theocracy inspired by the early Mormon Church. But the twin towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, continue to defy the law, the authorities and dissidents say: under the direction of leaders of the...

Brigham Young Sermon: Joseph Smith's Consent Needed to Enter Heaven(Journal of Discourses, Vol. 7, p.282-91)Quick LinkJOSEPH SMITH'S CONSENT NEEDED IN ORDER TO BE WITH GOD AND CHRIST IN HEAVEN Brigham Young, October 9, 1859 Intelligence, Etc. Remarks by President BRIGHAM YOUNG, delivered in the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, October 9, 1859. Reported by G. D. Watt Journal of Discourses, Vol. 7, p.282-91I shall address you this morning upon a subject that is more interesting to me than any other pertaining to the life of man. It is a subject of deep study and research, and has been from age...

LYNNWOOD -- The unassuming instructor with the soft voice holds a phone to each ear, juggling cell and land lines. The desktop in his office pings with endless incoming e-mails. One may laud him as intellectual dissident, another rip him as religious heretic. He apologizes for the interruptions. "The phone hasn't stopped ringing," says Thomas Murphy, the cultural anthropologist whose challenge of Mormon doctrine has landed him in hot water with his church and thrown his name into headlines across the country.Not that it has cramped his style. "I think it's fair to conclude that the Book of Mormon is...