|
I sent this to Kevin and thought maybe some of you
might be interested also
My daughter has a business aquaintance she corresponds
with who was born
and raised in SLC. He is not Mormon neither is he
Christian - these are his
observations as to the situation Kevin and the
other Street Preachers have
gone into in Utah. judyt
*************************************
And speaking of goofy, I have three amusing tidbits from the local
culture
to share with you: First, in the polygamist communities, the female-to-male ratio has
been
really bothering me. I know how hard it is to find a female in a big city, and I couldn't imagine how each guy could find 7 or 8 in a small closed community. There is no way there would be near enough girls to go around, and I wondered how they did it. But I just found out! Periodically they expell a bunch of guys from the community with no explanation. (If a guy has ever done anything to make the leader mad, or question authority, or if he has more desirable women or posessions, he's history. He'll get kicked out.) About 30 guys were just kicked out of one of our local polygamist towns recently, including the chief of police, and other prominent members. When these men are kicked out, all of their wives, children, and posessions are then re-distributed to men that remain in the community. The banished men are forced to leave town with nothing, and are never allowed to come back. The second amusing tidbit is in preparation for the mormon
"general
conference" that is going on this weekend. (Twice a year, they cancel church on Sunday, and hold 2 big day-long meetings full of speeches from their leaders on Saturday and Sunday, to which mormons from all over flock to Salt Lake to attend). Each time they do this, "street preachers" (non-mormon preachers that want to expose mormons to truth) gather around temple square with signs and shirts that say horrible things like "Read the Bible". Last conference, two of these street preachers were beaten up by angry mormon conference attendees, who stole their signs and some of their belongings. (One preacher was holding up a pair of mormon garments, and I guess that really set off the mormons). Well, to avoid similar violent clashes, the city this year has designated several small "free speech" zones off away from temple square where it will be legal for the street preachers to exercise their freedom of speech, but on all the public sidewalks around temple square it will be illegal for any of them to gather. They just announced the new laws, so there was only time for one lawsuit from the street preachers claiming that the law is unconstitutional and violates their civil rights, but a mormon judge upheld the new ordinance last night, and there is no time for appeals to go higher (where the state and US constitutions would have to be upheld). And, incidentally, mormons are immune from the new ordinance, and they can still send missionaries on any sidewalk and even up to your door to push their beliefs, and they do not have to stay within the little free speech zones. Amzing how that works, isn't it? The third, and most amusing item to me is about the latest mormon film.
I've mentioned to you how big of a push there is lately for these mormon films. Well, the latest one that they just finished making just received an "R" rating. That is extremely amusing because mormons are not supposed to see "R"-rated movies. (They went through some appeal process, and somehow got it reduced to a "PG-13" rating, which makes everything OK, and mormons can go see their movie now.) |
