Salt Lake City Overview!

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Salt Lake City is a strange and unusually
pleasant place. It has it's scarry mask
concealed in acts of kindness with ?
unknown intents.

Families spring up in large doses and
population here. Children sprawl the
mallscapes, and landscapes.

The Energy is unusual! It is pleasing
on one hand and makes you leary
on another. Hmmmmm? How do I
explain this one......?

Here's a attempt at explaining it!
..............let's say you worked here
and went to school here. If you
weren't mormon, there is no real
support system. Some alternative
churches exist, but minimal support
system for non-mormon's.

So you earn a income, $1200 per month.
So you go to school and $500 gets you
a studio. "Something is hauntingly
odd here-this way comes".

It feels like a vacum. To explain this
vacum you have to understand the
paranormal mind set investigator.

I feel! I see! I hear? I sense!! !! !! !
"non-tangible" = You just know.

Even Reno has it's level of permisquence
level, but not here in S.L.C.......!

Strange place to be....!





...........Hmmmmmm?

So welcome to the Not-So-NT Zone,
Feel it's vibrancy(S.L.C), and dread
it's outcome!(S.L.C)

Hmmmmmm?

Sincerely,
Ghosthunter

The Mormon social structure is bizare. I've been over at their churches several times when they hosted Boy Scout events, and they give me the creeps...and I suck at understanding social intraction. I can only try to imagine (and shudder) at what a government run by them would be like.

the mormons are odd characters indeed. they are friendly and outgoing but have something strange in their infrastructure that makes one who is not feel left out.
a

As an ex-mormon (spent the first 34 years of my life on the inside) it is always reassuring to hear from "outsiders" that all my impressions about how weird and spooky mormons can be are correct. The only thing worse than being an outsider with no support system is being a recently ex-insider. I've lived in Colorado for almost 7 years now after escaping from Utah, and going back to visit relatives is NOT a pleasant prospect these days. You think it's a little weird wandering among them on the street, trying sitting down to dinner with them, knowing that they are all quietly hoping in their hearts that you'll see the light and come back to the fold. Ewwww.

Sean's comment about imagining a government run by mormons is right on target. It is truly creepy. I have a number of ex-mormon friends who live in Utah who have plenty of first hand horror stories.

Could summarize for me what Mormons believe please? All I have a vague idea that it has something to do with a guy who put on a magical pair of glasses that allowed him to see visions. Am I thinking of something else?

I don't know a whole lot about the mormon church, or the LDS church as it's often called.

I once worked with a person who was a reformed mormon. Although I never asked what being a mormon was all about, the mormon church from what she told me was very strict about how people had to live their lives and put great pressure on it's members to live their lives with in the bounds that they set. Also any form of sexual exploration other than for the purpose of procreating is strictly forbidden, and even then it is not to be enjoyed.

The home of the mormon church, Utah is noteworthy in three respects as it relates to the church

- Utah has the highest rate of suicide in the US, double the rate of the next highest state, Nevada
- Utah has the highest use of anti-depresant drugs of any state in the US.
- A disproportionate number of porn actors and actresses have mormon back rounds.

Yeah, that's the one. Only the "magic glasses" were to supposedly translate these golden plates that had no equivalent to the Rosetta Stone. The founder, Joseph Smith, claimed he was praying in the woods when an angel appeared to him and showed him the location of the gold tabets that he claims he translated into the Book of Mormon, and he carried the stack of tabets to his home. He had 19 different accounts of the story at different times, the plates he claimed to have carried in his arms woud have weighed about 1000 pounds and he would have had to carry them 3 miles to his house. Nobody but Joseph Smith has ever claimed to have seen the gold tablets or the magic glasses for themselves. They were supposedly written just shy of 2000 years ago by the last surviving member of a white race that was supposed to be about as technologically advanced as the Eastern Hemishere during the same time period that was wiped out by the Indians. There has never been a single shred of archeological evidence to support Joseph Smith's claims despite the size and tech level of the races that supposedly lived in North America at some point in time. The National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Intsitution do not recognize the validity of any of the Mormon Church's claims. Joseph Smith was arrested in 1844 in Nauvoo, Illinois for ordering his followers to burn down the offices of the Nauvoo Expositor- a newspaper that was critical of the Mormons. He was killed by a lynch mob. A Jupiter Talisman was found on his body during his funeral preperations. The Talisman is in the posession of the Mormon church and they acknowledge it's existence. I can probably find a picture of it if anybody is interested.


As for living in Utah, the geography makes it look like an apppealing place to live, but the locals were often dificcult to deal with. Even when trying to order lunch at a fast food place.

I once heard a statistic that 70% of all people comitted to mental hospitals in Utah are women suffering from depression due to not being able to live up to what is expected of them. I can't even begin to imagine the kind of stigma that would have in their social circles.

That's the right story. Back in 1820 Joseph Smith clamied he talked to god in person, and was later given the magic glasses and a set of gold plates with ancient writings on them by an angel. He used the glasses to see visions and to tranlate the writings into English, which he the published as "The Book of Mormom" (Mormon is the name of a main character in the book, and it stuck as the nickname of the church).

The important part about this story is that mormons believe that

1) God is a physical being with a body just like a human and he appears to people and talks to them when he feels like it.

2) The mormon church was personally authorized by God and therefore is the only "true" church.

3) They are loosely Christian (in the sense that they believe in Jesus as their savior) but their interpretation of just about everything in the Bible is vastly different than what most Christians believe.

4) They believe that their church has been led (since Joseph Smith's time) by an unbroken succession of prophets who are personally guided by God in running the church. Hence, there is no room for disagreeing with official church doctrine. They actually teach that when the prophet of the church makes a statement about the mind or will of God that it is the same as God sitting down across the table from you and telling you himself. This is why the government of Utah is so screwed up - almost all of the state legislators and officers are devout mormons, and they believe that they must obey the church first. But they don't want to admit this to the general public outside of Utah, so they try to make it look they are thinking for themselves when in fact thay are really puppets for the church.

5) One of Joseph Smith's greatest accomplishments was to introduce polygamy (plural marriage where a man is allowed to have multiple wives), claim that it was a commandment from God, and then get all his closest buddies to buy into it. He had a situation going for quite a while where he was secretely getting himself married to his friends' wives and several teenage girls, but keeping it all quiet in public. When he was killed by an angry mob (long story, but he deserved it), Brigham Young took over as leader of the church. Soon afterwards, the mormons, who had built their own city in Western Illinois, were all driven out by force by their angry neighbors. Brigham led them to Utah (which outside the U.S. at the time) and they set up their own independent kingdom there. Once he was safely in charge, Brigham went public with the polygamy policy and started sending out "missionaries" to Europe to recruit new converts, particularly desperate, poor young women for himself and his cronies as extra wives. But then the U.S. government stepped in, made Utah a territory, and installed a non-mormon governor. In 1890 the federal government seized all the church's assets (and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to do so because the mormons were violating federal law with their practice of polygamy), and the church leaders all went into hiding. The church finally caved in and renounced polygamy (publicly at least, they still continued it in secret for another generation). They still officially teach the polygamy is sanctioned by God and will be practiced in heaven, but for now they agree to abide by the law of the land. Of course most members of the mormon church would rather not discuss any of this and wish the whole issue would go away because it is embarrassing to them.

6) One thing that the mormons try to be really low-key about because it REALLY upsets mainstream Christians, is their doctrine that people who earn the highest degree of heaven eventually become gods themselves to rule over their own priavte universes. That's right, the God of the Bible was just an ordinary schmuck in a past life who earned his way into this current position, and you can do the same if you just follow ALL the rules perfectly. This gives mormons the motivation to blindly follow every whim of the church. It's buying lottery tickets for the ultimate cosmic jackpot. You never know if you're being obedient enough to qualify for the big prize, so all you can do is spending your life frantically trying to be as "good" as possible.

7) And finally, since any Christians in the audience are now groaning in agony that mormons call themselves Christian, but they teach that you have to earn whatever "reward" you get... they totally don't get the concept of grace. It's all about earning rewards and meaningful dialog with normal Christian is hopeless. They see Jesus' atonement as the magic touch that makes it all possible after you have done all the work yourself. (NOTE: I am now an atheist and don't personally grasp the Chrisitian concept of grace either, but at least I know that if you're going to call yourself a Christian you should understand basic Christian teachings).

So you put all this stuff together in a sociological beaker (where most people are fairly well insulated from the outside world), add water, stir, and you get Utah. It's really rather frightening.

utah actually has the second highest suicide rate, alaska has the highest. utah has the highest bankruptcy rate.

joseph smith ended up going to prison for arson where he was shot in an attempt to escape. the funny thing about the plates is that those plates would have weighed a whole lot for him to have carried them under his coat.
a

Thanks, Sean and Brian. I also heard that the guy who wrote "7 habits of highly effective people" is a mormon.

I forgot to mention... if anybody is really curious about how wild and wacky mormons can be, I have a few books to reccomend.

For a good overview of the early history of mormonism and it's scariest offshoots:

"Under the Banner of Heaven", by Jon Krakauer

(My wife and her family were actually personally acquainted with both the murder victim and the parents of murderers in this book. The story hits very close to home).


For a good look at politics in the theocracy of Utah:

"Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders", by Allen Dale Roberts and Linda Sillitoe


Both books recount true stories of religiously motivated murders that took place in Utah about 20 years ago. The point is not to suggest that murder is rampant in Utah or anything, but that a society run by religious fanatics can get out of control in some pretty scary ways. Since most mormons in Utah don't consider themselves in any way fanatical, the fact that these muders were entirely motivated by people's religious beliefs warrants a closer look at what constitues fanatacism when you actually dig into the details.

Here's an online expose of Mormonism written by ex-Mormons. Appears to be quite comprehensive.
http://www.exmormon.org/

They also go into what the Mormon church doesn't tell you
http://www.exmormon.org/tract2.htm

As well as a comprehensive series of links to other ex= Mormon people who have left the church, Blacks, Women, Gays, etc.
http://www.exmormon.org/goodsite.htm

For what it's worth, whan I was a fifteen year old runaway in May of 1982, I got picked up Nephi, Utah by the State Police because I had fallen asleep at a construction site just outside of the town where they were still constructing I-15.

I don't remember events that happened immediately after that, only, that I woke up the next morning in what was apparently a Detention Center Isolation unit in Provo. Three days hitchiking with about 4 hours of sleep can do that.

I spent two days there which was OK, but a bit boring due to a complete lack of anything to read. After getting treated for a horrible ear infection, I was then transferred by Utah DHS to another Youth facility in Salt Lake City. This was more or less a group home environment next to the Detention Center there. Here, I spent ten days more or less reading magazines and watching cable TV, which was an improvement over Provo, before I was shipped out on a Greyhound back to Maine.

The supervisors of the group home were married couples, (House Parents) who both had families. They alternated weekly. The forst couple was Ok, the Husband was from California, and his wife was from Charlestown, Mass. Neither of them were Mormon. I hit it of pretty well with the Wife, as we were from the same area of the country. We talked a bit about the the culture shock, and differances from back home.

One of the things that I noticed right off, as I was being driven from Provo was that the Mormons were more or less very strange people . Completely alien to somebody such as myself who was from a working class inner city neighborhood that was primarily Irish and Italian. These people were differant. Like something out of a 1950's TV show. --Much differant than people back home.

The next house parents were Mormon, and I didn't really get along with them. They were a bit colder, a bit stricter. Most of the kids there were OK to me, ( I really did nothing but read and watch TV) I think part of the reason for this, was that except for a couple of us, they knew that if they screwed up here, they would get transferred back to the Juvenile prison next door. One of the other kids there was essentially in the same position that I was in, He had run away from Indiana, and we more or less got along ok.

I don't live in Utah, but my city has a large Mormon population. There is a temple here. I have a Mormon friend. She's nice, and doesn't push her religion like some other people I know. The religion is odd, though.

Later this summer I'll be spending two weeks in Utah for a dance thing.

[quote="BrianR"]That's the right story. Back in 1820 Joseph Smith clamied he talked to god in person, and was later given the magic glasses and a set of gold plates with ancient writings on them by an angel. He used the glasses to see visions and to tranlate the writings into English, which he the published as "The Book of Mormom" (Mormon is the name of a main character in the book, and it stuck as the nickname of the church).[quote]

I remember finding a copy of this in a used bookstore in Maine about 15 years ago. I bought it, read it, and was amazed at how linguistically and stylistically it read like somebody was trying, (Quite badly) to copy the linguistic style of the King James Bible.

[quote="BrianR"]5) One of Joseph Smith's greatest accomplishments was to introduce polygamy (plural marriage where a man is allowed to have multiple wives), claim that it was a commandment from God, and then get all his closest buddies to buy into it. He had a situation going for quite a while where he was secretely getting himself married to his friends' wives and several teenage girls, but keeping it all quiet in public. When he was killed by an angry mob (long story, but he deserved it), Brigham Young took over as leader of the church. Soon afterwards, the mormons, who had built their own city in Western Illinois, were all driven out by force by their angry neighbors. Brigham led them to Utah (which outside the U.S. at the time) and they set up their own independent kingdom there. Once he was safely in charge, Brigham went public with the polygamy policy and started sending out "missionaries" to Europe to recruit new converts, particularly desperate, poor young women for himself and his cronies as extra wives. But then the U.S. government stepped in, made Utah a territory, and installed a non-mormon governor. In 1890 the federal government seized all the church's assets (and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to do so because the mormons were violating federal law with their practice of polygamy), and the church leaders all went into hiding. The church finally caved in and renounced polygamy (publicly at least, they still continued it in secret for another generation). They still officially teach the polygamy is sanctioned by God and will be practiced in heaven, but for now they agree to abide by the law of the land. Of course most members of the mormon church would rather not discuss any of this and wish the whole issue would go away because it is embarrassing to them.[quote]

From what I understand, Polygamy is still practiced, not only by Mormon Fundamentalists living in the desert, but by regular mainstream Mormons as well. It is my understanding that even though this practice is a for the most part an underground phenomenon, it is essentially tolerated by church elders.

[quote="BrianR"]So you put all this stuff together in a sociological beaker (where most people are fairly well insulated from the outside world), add water, stir, and you get Utah. It's really rather frightening.][quote]

It is kind of frightening to a certain extent, but to me it's just plain Alien. My lvery limited view of Utah ( See above) is more akin to finding out that you're not on Earth anymore, you are on Mars, instead. --Sound Familiar????

This is a bit of a circumstantial recall, due to the fact that really deemed Book of Mormon to be more or less unimpotant, and forgot most of it Mormons also believe that the America's were settled by one of the 'Lost Tribes' of Jews several thousand years ago, (Before Jesus) and built a great and flourishing civilisation here that died from it's own corruption. The Semitic people died out, and the remnants interbred with the Native American population. A second wave of semitic Chirstians then arrived in America shorltly (before or after, I forget) the Great Jewish diaspora and flourished briefly befor ebeing either killed/absorbed into the Native American Populations.

About ten years ago, there was a pre-columbian archeological dig in Tennesee that was heavily funded by the Mormon church. The were trying to pass it off as some form of Yeshiva, or minor Jewish temple. I don't know what happened with it, but I figure that anything of archeolgical relevance disseppeared into the Black Hole that Mormon Church Beaurocracy uses to store sensitive church information.

That being said, there is also another branch of Mormonism which schismed off from the main branch of LDS in a way not dissimilar from the way that Islam split early after it's formation. They were originally called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, though they have recently changed their name to what the LDS orginally billed itself as in the 1830's (Church of Christ) They are based out of Independance, MO. Thier website is listed, here:

http://www.cofchrist.org/

I have no clue as to whether or not they are more 'progressive' than the main Utah LDS.

Most people these days know about the fundamentalists in the desert still doing polygamy, but if it's still going on in the mainstream Utah church, they do a very good job of keeping it quiet. Mind you, it's still the official doctrine of the church, and there are a LOT of mormon men out there who can't wait to get their extra wives assigned to them in heaven (my dad was definitely in that category), but it is NOT openly sanctioned. It was quietly sanctioned until about the 1930's among the church elite, so I wouldn't be surprised if being from the right bloodlines still gets you into the club today, but if that's the case, the mainstream church members don't hear about it. I was never in any leadership positions (I was a sunday school teacher and choir director for a few years each), so I certainly did not ever get any sort of elite status.

The mormon belief in semitic peoples in the Americas has become a problem for them since the advent of modern DNA analysis. When I was a kid I was taught that ALL of the native peoples of the Americas were descended directly from a group of Jews that fled from Israel just before they were conquered by the Babylonians. (There had been an earlier migration, as you mentioned, at the time of the tower of Babel, but they had all died out.) In fact, the preface page in the book of mormon still says as much. In the last 10 years or less they have begun teaching their kids that the Jews in America were mostly wiped out, and the rest mixed with other people who had come here from other parts of the world. Basically, they couldn't refute the overwhelming evidence that the native Americans came from central Asia. And there is no trace of semitic ancestry to be found among them. So the mormons quietly adjusted their teachings to match modern science, but it is a total turnabout from what they were teaching when I was a kid. So if you ask any mormon young adults today about the origins of the native Americans, they give the new answer, and they don't even know that the anser was recently changed (and their parents are quietly avoiding discussing this with them).

The RLDS church is a lot closer to mainstream Christianity. They split off when Brigham Young took over the church because they belived that Joseph Smith's son was God's chosen heir to lead the church. So Smith's own family never endorsed Brigham Young, but Young already hated Lucy Smith (Joe's wife) because she very vocally opposed polygamy.

My wife was born and raised in Provo, and I believe I know right where the youth detention center is on State Street between Provo and Springville. I moved there (Provo, not the detention center) when I was 15 (in 1979) and it was quite a change from the San Francisco area where I had been living before. I can definitely see that coming from a big city on the East Coast that Provo would seem like some flash back from the 50s on another planet.

There is actually a tie-in to AS in all of this. Conformity is much more strongly enforced in the mormon culture than in main stream America (or anywhere else in the modern world). There were some quirks that were OK, like being academically gifted, or having musical talent, or obsessing over you achievements. But thinking for yourself or expecting answers to life's questions that actually make sense were NOT tolerated. So I learned to adapt by either keeping my mouth shut and hiding quietly in my ow corner of the world, or by learning to act out my assigned part.

But the iron grip of mormonism over its people, even in Utah, is beginning to loosen. It should be pretty interesting to see how this plays out as some of my nieces and nephews grow up. I have one nephew who is a classic case of AS / ADHD (just like his dad, who is a closet atheist but terrified to stand up to my sister that he's married to). And I have a teenage niece who's a very butch lesbian (and her mom is is serious denial about it). So "different" was swept under the carpet when I was growing up, but I don't think that's going to go over too well with the next generation.

There's actually a lot of geeks and intellectuals in the mormon population who have been taught to keep their mouths shut. You can enforce that sort of expectation when they can be kept in social isolation, but the internet is changing all that so that even those who are hopelessly socially inept can actually find people to communicate with.