Sen. Hatch Blasts S.F. Supervisors

Senator and presidential candidate, Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, spoke in San Francisco before an audience of about 40 at the Commonwealth Club of California. He depicted himself as a "compassionate conservative with guts" and the candidate with the deepest government and legislative experience and the one most qualified to make as many as five Supreme Court appointments required of the next president.

Santa Fe High prayer to continue

In a continuing battle that pits a member of the LDS church against school prayer, prayer has won out--at least for the rest of the football season.

LDS Church sending aid to Mexico

In the wake of torrential rain that has flooded rivers in central and eastern Mexico, the LDS Church is sending thousands of food boxes and $80,000 to LDS Church members and their neighbors in the affected areas. Boxes and crates containing everything from lasagna to crib quilts were loaded onto trucks at the LDS Church's Humanitarian Center on Friday, ready for the trip to the affected areas.

Sex Doesn't Sell With LDS Shoppers

Stores such as American Eagle Outfitters, The Gap and The Body Shop USA use a one-size-fits-all national approach to marketing, shipping the same window displays and posters to every store. However, in conservative Utah which is more than 70 percent Mormon, many are complaining about store windows and displays that feature a little too much mannequin flesh here, a little too suggestive a sales pitch there. Complaints weren't to bad until conference time when an influx of out-of-town conference visitors came, shopped, and were offended.

Is the LDS Church being stonewalled on Kiev, Ukraine Temple? (Former USSR lurches toward religious freedom)

The LDS Church announced more than a year ago that a temple will be built in Kiev, Ukraine, the first temple in the former Soviet Union. But so far, no groundbreaking has been scheduled. While delays of a year or more for a groundbreaking are not unusual, a comment in this Deseret News article on religious freedom in the former Soviet Union gives a hint at the reasons for the delay.

LDS mum on gun petition

Backers of the petition drive for a law to ban weapons from churches and schools believe that the LDS Church supports their cause, but have been disappointed that the Church has not taken a position on the drive. In the wake of the shooting at the LDS Church's Family History Center in Salt Lake City, President Gordon B. Hinckley and other General Authorities made several statements about guns, and the group has been given permission by Elder Alexander B. Morrison of the First Quorum of the Seventy to use those public statements.

LDS Struggle to Keep Proxy Baptisms Appropriate

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' well-known practice of posthumous baptisms, has come under attack for Jewish Holocaust victims, noble and ignoble historical figures and other questionable submissions by members of the Mormon faith.

If Polygamy were legal . . . . (Polymaritally Perverse)

In the influential political review magazine, The Nation, Pollitt takes on the 1991 ACLU policy that says that polygamy should be legal, and in the process examines the current state of polygamy in Utah and among Mormons. The ACLU's policy reads: "The ACLU believes that criminal and civil laws prohibiting or penalizing the practice of plural marriage violate constitutional protections of freedom of expression and association, freedom of religion, and privacy for personal relationships among consenting adults."

Terrorists who attacked LDS Churches no longer seen as a threat (U.S. Revises List Of Terror Groups)

A Chilean terrorist group that had often attacked LDS targets in Chile has been removed from the U.S. State Department's list of "foreign terrorist organizations," the State Department announced on Friday. The Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front Dissidents, which was also known for attacking U.S. businesses active in Chile, was removed because it had not engaged in any "terrorist" acts for the past two years.