I've been haunting this site for three years and finally registered. Maybe I'll get around to sharing my story. I finally stop denying what I knew the truth really was seven years ago but I still have days where the impact of the religious trauma creeps in. Last weeks HB330 brought up a lot of emotion.

Living in Utah, everyone, even the TBMs knows there is a huge problem with the separation of church and state here. Even when I was a TBM this issue got under my skin. Like many, I feel powerless to do anything about it because the church is so big and powerful, and the majority of state legislators and judges are more than willing to do the church's bidding, so its something we seem to have to live with.

The recent HB330, although dead at the moment (thankfully), really increased my blood pressure. I am a victim of some serious spiritual abuse by two bishops (one of them had an affair with my ex-wife while we were still married) and a stake president. Besides the adultery, I've went to this stake president, my current stake pres, and church headquarters reporting the abuse of my son at the hands of my ex-wife. I have been laughed at, hung up on, or with the current stake president, struggled to convince him of my experience. In hindsight I wish I had recorded some of these conversations.

The church has once again inserted itself in the political process and with this issue I felt I was being abused all over again. My wonderful wife who still believes, was upset by this issue because in her divorce from a truly bad man she secretly recorded him and this saved her and her kids in court. If the church gets its way, she, and many like her, would have run the risk of being felons because the church very selfishly wants to protect itself. The ramifications of what the church wants in this regard are significant and would only harm the innocent while protecting the guilty. I know the Salt Lake Chamber is also in support of this (I still don't understand how they got into it) but no one person or institution asks for something like this unless they have something to hide.

Sorry for a rambling manner while trying to get to what I'm after. This is what I'm hoping to get some responses about: What would it take to get a watchdog group, or a movement of some kind together, that really tackles this issue and tries in some manner to enforce the church/state separation that should exist in Utah? The church says it only involves itself when it's a moral issue.

In my opinion, the church has the right to free speech like anyone else or any other institution. They have the right to even tell members how to vote if they want to (no matter how inappropriate it is), as long as it's only from the pulpit. But when it lobbies (the church says it doesn't and could loose tax-exempt status if it gets caught and everyone knows they do it. They nearly lost their tax-exempt status in California), writes bills for legislators to submit, asks bills to be written, or summon legislators and judges for a captive audience to wield influence of their voting, or inserts itself into law making in any manner, then the separation has been violated.

I'm well aware that in Utah this would be an uphill battle and likely a huge lesson in futility but this issue is always present and nothing is ever done about it.

What do you all think?

"But when it lobbies (the church says it doesn't and could loose tax-exempt status if it gets caught and everyone knows they do it."

The church employs registered lobbyists. They get the full attention of the 90+ % of our lawmakers. They can request, they can suggest, but when they call Representatives to a meeting to "strongly urge" and invoke talks with stake presidents, it's a not so subtle threat. They always get their way. People, not from here, refuse to believe it could be that blatant.