I think it is safe to say that this will be another PR hit for the church. When I travel on business, I cringe when someone asks me where I live. Yes, it is Utah County.
I knew one of the Lafferty brothers. He was our home teacher. He was younger than Ron and Dan, but just as messed up. They were 2nd amendment, antigovernment fanatics who thought the Republican party and the Mormon church were on the wrong side of liberal. It is true that their father, was abusive. I heard this from the brother.
Our Lafferty home teacher talked me into going to a court hearing in Spanish Fork. One of the Brothers, I think it was Dan, rolled a highway patrolman's arm up in his window and drove off. This was during a traffic stop. It ended up in court. I reluctantly showed up, mostly out of curiosity. It was one of those decisions you wished you had a do over on.
The room was filled with right wing nuts. All were agitated. The Judge found him guilty. I think the sentence was probation and a fine. Lafferty got up along with some of his supporters and caused a disturbance which got him a contempt of court charge and 90 sentence at the point of the mountain for a psych evaluation. While at the prison, Lafferty showed my friend, who was a guard, a letter he had received from the first presidency. They were asking him to please stop what he was doing and return to the fold. My guard friend (who also knew the Lafferty family) said the letter had a sincere and kind tone to it. I guess Lafferty remained unconvinced.
Our home teacher started spending more and more time at what he called his brother's compound in AF. He was sharing weirder and weirder thoughts and beliefs. It scared us. He finally crossed the line when he wanted to have a prayer circle with our family. This was a couple of days after the cops were called to his house, which was just down the street from us, for firing a gun in town. He had taken his T.V. (instrument of the devil he told us) out to the back yard and shot gunned it. I went to the Bishop on this, and requested a new home teacher. The Bishop did more than this. He released Lafferty from all his callings. Lafferty was very upset and continued to come to our house to vent. I worried he would find out who ratted him out.
At the time, I had just graduated school and had accepted a job in the Bay Area. We left the state within the month. It wasn't too soon for us. We heard about the murders a few months later. It made all the California papers,
The early 80s-90s sure were a troublesome time, there was the Hoffmann the Lafferty, LeBaron, the Marion scandles, all one right after the other. I suppose part of the trouble was backlash against women's lib, and the changing American society, and loss of values, and morals. This was also when the Christian right was at its peak, Billy Graham, Jerry fawlwell and the TV evangelists. It was an interesting time.
I find that the phrase "loss of values and morals" implies a degree of rigidity of mind. Perhaps you might ask yourself if values and morals are lost, or if they are more commonly shifted, sometimes detrimentally and sometimes beneficially. You might also ask yourself which of these shifts might be propitious, for example, the swerve from misogyny as the status quo, and to what degree your personal values and morals should remain rigidly fixed.
What morals and values were lost, exactly? The undoing of the Jim Crow laws? Allowing mixed-race marriages? Allowing women to obtain contraceptives? Title IX women's sports? Allowing women to get credit cards without a male cosigner? Voting rights? The Fair Housing Act?
I get a kick out of people (and Mormons are very big on this) who think that morals begin and end with the proper disposition of semen.
Hey, maybe Putin invaded Ukraine as a backlash against the legalization of same-sex marriage in the western democracies. That makes about as much sense as your claim.
I really, really hope that they bring up the fact that the New and Everlasting Covenant is a covenant of plural marriage.
The New and Everlasting Covenant is what we entered into during the temple sealing ceremony, but we had been told that it was just that, a sealing for all eternity. We were NOT told that it was a covenant of plural marriage. It wasn’t until I read Under the Banner of Heaven that I learned the truth. I had planned on just leaving the Mormon church without bothering to resign, but after learning this, I didn’t want to be associated with that church or their doctrines at all. So my two kids and I resigned.
As I see it, the Laffertys felt that Brenda had covenanted to uphold the New and Everlasting Covenant™, and when she opposed them taking plural wives, she broke that covenant, and deserved to have the penalty specified in the Endowment inflicted upon her. So they slit her throat.
It was about 3 years later that LDS Inc deleted the penalties from the Endowment. The Laffertys did not try to use the Endowment as a justification for their murders, but I think the Q15 were worried that some nutcase in the future might actually use that as a defense - "your honor, we were just carrying out what we covenanted to do before God and witnesses, to uphold the New and Everlasting Covenant".
The church's modus operandi is to see a fundamental problem, wait long enough to create a decent interval, and then make the change on their own time schedule. That way they can claim it was inspired and not a reaction to worldly developments.
The Laffertys were acting in accordance with D&C 132 and the temple ceremony. That was the problem.
I read once that D&C 132 was never intended to be included as scripture, he just wrote it to convince Emma to quit complaining about him getting a little of what he had comin to him, being the righteous seed and all, with God’s AOK to spread it far and wide.
" Hey, maybe Putin invaded Ukraine as a backlash against the legalization of same-sex marriage in the western democracies. That makes about as much sense as your claim."
Now we can blame the whole thing on MITT ROMNEY - the Governor who first made Gay Marriage legal.
Fake religious deserve disrespect in direct proportion to their fakeness, and the harm caused by it.
I'm more worried about the poor viewers who would witness such a pathetically silly liturgy; they'll need a healthy sense of humor to come out of it unscathed.
dealing with leaders. I was just a means to an end meaning children for the kingdom. My life was worth the sacrifice to make sure of "the proper disposition of semen."
I am anxious to see the movie. I did read the book.