Building Temples: A Conversation with Rebecca Bibliotecha and Landon Brophy

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett and I am here as always with the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Ian Welks. Ian, how are you, sir?

I'm doing really well, and that's the best introduction anyone has ever given me. Thank you.

Well, of course, because that's the word you say when you can't think of any other word. I learned that from Mary Poppins, and I want to pass that on to our listeners. I'm very excited because we have two supercalifragilisticexpialidocious guests as well. We have been guests on their podcast Mormon-ish, But this is the first time they have returned the favor and joined us here on Inside Out. Would like to welcome the hosts of Mormonish, Rebecca Biblioteca and Landon Brophy. Very glad to have you here.

Hello.

Hello. We're excited.

Welcome.

Well, we're excited to talk to you because you guys have been making the rounds and I think you've been making waves as you've been talking about the issues, particularly with regard to the new temples that the church is building. And we had a discussion last week with Nemo the Mormon, and right after the discussion ended and we'd stopped recording, he said, "Yes, this has been fun, and thank you all very much, and there's going to be a big announcement." Yeah. "Within the next couple of days." And I didn't— Ian, I don't know if you felt like asking him, "What is it?" Because I figured if he wanted to tell us, he would have, but I, I didn't have the guts to just say, well, tell us what the announcement is. And it was a couple of days later that he showed up in Fairview, Texas, at the city council meeting to talk about the, the temple that they're planning on building there that will have a 173-foot spire, which is taller than the Salt Lake Temple and taller than 90% of the temples in the church. I think the Washington, D.C. temple is taller than that, but there are very few temples that are taller than that. And in a town like Fairview, Texas, which is a small town, I'm not sure what the full population is, but it's the tallest building there is a Methodist church that they gave a variance to in order to have a 55-foot spire. And a lot of that—

actually, the LDS stake center is the largest.

I think it is. Is it taller than that?

It is 66 feet.

Yeah.

So they already have the tallest building.

Yes.

So they already have the tallest building and they want to trump that with an even taller building. So can you kind of give us the rundown on what your experience has been as you've been talking to people about all of this kind of commotion? Do you think that the church is shooting itself in the foot here by demanding these huge buildings and these huge spires? And do you think that the only reason to be opposed to a huge temple and a huge spire is bigotry against the church, which seems to be—

Yeah, that's what they would have you think. And I will say, Nemo, absolutely amazing. Landon and I have been following temples for about a year and a half. One of our Mormon viewers actually reached out to several different podcasters and said, hey, I live in Cody and there's something going on here. There's something going on with the residents. And the church sort of steamrolling. Something's happening. Does anybody want to look into this? Because the residents here of the town, they're not Mormons, they don't know anything about Mormons, and they're trying to understand what's happening. Maybe could someone give them perspective? So I think we were the only ones, Landon, that said, sure, we'll do that. Maybe there's a podcast in here, right? So we connected with some of the Kody residents and we just got to know them and we got to know their story and their perspective on what the LDS Church was doing there. And of course, they're building not a very large temple there, um, but it is in a completely residential area with a teeny tiny little road. You know, it just does not really fit there. They had already moved the modules in onto a member's land, the one who donated the land for the temple. And on his other property, the modules to build the temple, the Tip-Up Temple, were there before anyone even knew. I mean, that's pretty confident. We're going to build this thing The pieces are already here. But the thing that kind of struck us at first is that the residents said, you know, we're all churchgoing folks. I'm a Methodist, I'm a Presbyterian, I'm a Lutheran. I'm sure we can work this out with this church. I'm sure they'll understand. I'm sure it'll be fine. And as we continued to talk to the residents and they would ask us questions, what does this mean? What are they doing? What is this? They eventually arrived at, I don't think this is a church. What is this? What are they doing to us? After a couple lawsuits and all this, you know, kind of things happening, And they said, we didn't really have an opinion about Mormons prior to this. And they said, we do now. Unfortunately, it's not a great opinion. And the divisiveness in that town— we actually went to visit. I don't know that the town will really recover because you start to see your neighbor in a whole different way, especially when you're not LDS and you see this mobilization, this sleeper cell-esque kind of thing where suddenly all of them descend on the council meeting, you know, so that you can't get in. You start to see and you go, what, what is this? That's what they kept saying over and over. So we had to try to explain Mormonism to them and the temples and, and what it was. And, and I will say upfront, I say all the time, all of these towns that we work with, they want a temple in their town. They want a temple. They want a temple in a situation where the church would come in and say, hey, we're going to build a temple here, let's talk about What are your codes? What are your zoning? Where might this be a blessing to the town? We hear this over and over. The temple will bless your town. None of the residents can understand this because in all the towns— we're talking Cody, Heber, Lone Mountain, Bakersfield, Fairview, McKinney Temple— they all say it's a blessing. Yet all these people have seen are very sort of unfortunate treatment. They've been called anti-Mormon. They've been called bigots. They've been called doing the work of the adversary. When all they're trying to do is protect their town, their zoning rules, their regulations, their codes, work with the LDS people to try to put the temple somewhere where it works. There's a lot of legal stuff involved. And I will say, when you ask why is the church doing this, we have a recording from a Fairview leadership meeting where the stake-level people— Kurt McConkie flew in. And this is last Sunday night, and I'm sitting there and suddenly on my phone I start getting these texts from a couple people at this meeting, stake-level people. And when I say that people are disturbed by what's happening, I'm talking about active, faithful members who maybe can't say something out loud, but they can maybe text information to somebody that might make a difference. So these people start texting me what's going on at this meeting and what Kirt McConkie is saying. Next thing I know, a recording shows up on my phone. At that point, I'm really nervous. I'm like, "Landon, what do we do? We've got this recording. Oh my gosh." You know, I call RFM, "Can we play this? You know, what is it?" But, and we did put it out on video, but I'll tell you the one thing that they talked about. They said there is a national law called RULUPA, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Law. This was put in place— act put in place in the early 2000s, right around the time where the Boston Temple was having trouble with their steeple, right? And you know about this, Jim, because your dad was one of the senators that helped enact this. And it sounds amazing. It says nobody can discriminate against a church. If a city council is not being very nice and saying you guys can't build your mosque here, this protects them. But what people don't realize is that it also protects towns from egregious, you know, zoning, you know, making something 10 times higher than what you would normally be able to put there. It's kind of fought out in lower courts, and sometimes they rule either way. So there's confusion on what people's rights are. But in this recorded meeting, and then I'll let somebody else talk, um, the Curt McConkie's lawyers, um, answered a question from a stake president. He said, I'm in Fairview, I have my neighbors, I have my community. They're asking me, why does it have to be so tall? Why does it have to be so tall? 16 stories tall in a rural residential area. Why? And he, being honest, stake president, said, I don't know why it has to be so tall. I don't know what to tell my friends and my community members here where I live. And the lawyer said, let me explain something to you. He sort of explained Ralupe. He said, I have other real estate interests. I wish I had that loophole of Ralupe to get them pushed through. He said the brethren do not want to back down on any of the heights that they have assigned to these temples. If they back down on one, if they give 10 feet here, they give 20 feet here, then the next town is going to look at that. And he listed off some towns. Richmond's going to look at Cody. He said pretty soon we're going to have 35-foot buildings. Which is what the zoning codes allow in a residential area. He goes, right now the brethren are emphatic. No, we've got to keep that height because that's part of our worship. And that's the other strange thing that came out of especially the McKinney Temple. Letters went out to residents, and I'm sure you've heard about this, that said you have got to mention how important the steeple is and the height of the steeple, the mass of the walls, the height of the walls. You've got to write letters claiming that this is part of your religious worship, your religious dogma. It's always been there. This is where you get the pushback. Faithful members are like, that's not true. Some of them have gotten up at meetings and said this, this is not true. I can't in good conscience say this. The reason this needs to be said is because that's how you enact this religious workaround. Now they tried this in Kody. They said, Ralupa, you know, we need the steeple. Kody said, uh, I heard from Mormon-ish that there are 11 temples that don't have domes or steeples. So explain that, right? Well, they couldn't. So now they're introducing it. They're having people say it all the time. This is part of my worship. This is, this is very important. And that's where all this, even faithful members are kind of going, wait a minute, wait a minute. So that's kind of where we stand now in all these different towns. And again, welcome a temple. Happy to have a temple. Love the LDS people. They are not anti-Mormon. They are not bigots. They are not devil worshippers, they've been called. They do not deserve to be vandalized, harassed, given negative reviews on Yelp because of their businesses. All these have happened to people that we know personally. And I also understand the LDS point of view. They've got to protect the temple at any cost. I had a family member that I described all this to. I said, do you think this is ethical or fair? And I kind of went through all the things they're doing in the different towns. And the family member said, It's not really ethical. It's not really fair, but it has to be done. I said, what do you mean it has to be done? At all costs. The temple has to be built at all costs. And I think that's when you butt up against residents and they say, who are these people? So soapbox there, trying to give a little context. But it is when you look at all 5 towns that we're following and you see the same— we call it the playbook. You know, send the lawyers in, threaten Raluca, threaten to sue, threaten to sue personally some of the people on the council. We've attended virtually city meetings where they say we can't afford a lawsuit. Stamp of approval. You know, it's just politics. And you can speak to that, Jim, more than I think the rest of us. You know, you know how it works.

Well, it's— you mentioned Boston, and I told this to Nemo as well. Yeah. My cousin Grant Bennett, former Area Authority 70, and was actually in charge of negotiating with this, the city of Belmont, to get a steeple on the Boston Temple. And I wasn't familiar with the federal legislation involved in that, but I know that Grant went through a sort of a painstaking process to work with all of the shareholders and stakeholders in the community, and it took a great deal of time. And it took a great deal of negotiation. And when the steeple finally went up, uh, there was community buy-in to it. Grant had made the case as to why this would benefit the community. And all, all of the things that we're hearing from these other communities were things that were addressed through a lengthy process where everybody was given a voice and given an opportunity to contribute. And the kind of steamrollering that we're doing It makes me very uncomfortable as you're talking. I, a few days ago, I went on Twitter, which is always your first mistake, and I went on and I tweeted, fighting local municipalities about something as irrelevant as a temple steeple size strikes me as a great way to needlessly burn bridges. Wow. And, well, and I mean, and I firmly believe that. And I was astonished at the replies I got from members of the church. So what's your argument? What should the church do differently? Do away with one of the defining architectural pieces of the—

there it is—

house?

That's you.

Convenient to the church's reputation anytime a variance to local zoning is required? My answer was yes, that's precisely what we do. I mean, it's precisely what we do. It doesn't make any sense to me to say that this is a defining architectural feature, uh, that it has anything to do with our worship, when, as you point out, we have 11 temples that don't have steeples. If we have a 35-foot temple, uh, I don't see a problem with that. I don't think the Hawaii Temple is even 35 feet tall, and it was built in 1915.

Maybe those ordinances aren't valid, right? That's what I ask. If it's a small temple, Landon and I were able to find two quotes that Nemo used in his address so well. And one was from Elder Bednar in 2022, where he said, "What does it matter? The size doesn't matter. It's what happens inside. There are no small temples because there are no small ordinances." And then President Nelson said, "It's not the architecture. It's not the building." I mean, we have these videos from the Church. So they're either going to have to spin those around or they're going to have to really do some soul searching because We saw members get up at city council meetings, especially in Lone Mountain. They'd only heard the doctrine of the steeple maybe a couple weeks ago. We saw grown people getting choked up over how much the steeple meant to them. Does it? Did you just hear this? Yes. You never heard this before, don't you think, Landon? What do you think?

Yeah, absolutely. And that, that's what's been so infuriating, uh, and it's not just that because people feel like they're being lied to. And in the case of McKinney, a— there was a flyer that was passed around and the flyer said, oh, we're putting a 2-story building in your neighborhood that complies with all the, all the codes. Well, it's 68 feet to the roof and 173 foot tall. The codes allow for 35-foot roof, so it's twice as high with just the roofline and it's 5 times the height that's allowed by the code. And to say that it's a 2-story building, yes, it's only got 2 floors on them, but those floors are 20, 30 feet tall each. So once the, once the residents found that out, they said, wait a minute, you guys, this is, this is dishonest. This is not a small building. This is not a 2-story building. This is a monster and it's going in my backyard. And so you can see why people would be frustrated by that. They especially have— you have to understand Fairview, that the motto of the town is keeping it country. It's, it's kind of a horse town and they want it to be country and they're trying to maintain that country feel to it and the place where this is going is going right next to the Stake Center and 3 other churches. And all of those churches are in the 50 to 50 to 60-foot-tall steeples with 35-foot roofs. And then all of a sudden you've got this one that just, just dwarfs everything around it. And that's where the people are having a concern, is that this is just completely dwarfing everything around it. And it sticks out so much and then they light it at night and that's all you see. And this is a, you know, they're proud of their night skies. We saw Heber get rid of their night skies in order to allow the Heber Temple and Lone Peak. Believe it or not, it's in Las Vegas area. Lighting is a big issue. This is a community that decided they didn't want to be part of the lights of Las Vegas and they moved out to Lone Mountain and they made it a rural neighborhood.. And this butts right up against the rural protection neighborhood. It's horse property. People ride their horses out there. And now you've got this— it's against a beautiful landmark of this lone mountain. And the temple is almost as tall as the mountain at this point. So it really— you can see why people might be upset when they spent their life savings to move into a neighborhood that they feel is a horse neighborhood, a country feel. And all of a sudden this gargantuan, highly lit building comes into their neighborhood. That's not what they were promised. That's not what they bought or voted on for zoning. Yeah. And yeah, to make the argument that, well, what do you expect? Do you expect them to just comply with the, with the ordinances?

Yeah, well, that's why they're paying. I know it's not just views. I know I've heard members say, oh, your view, you know, very facetiously. No, traffic, sewage, draining, migratory birds, ecosystem affected by light. I mean, there's an immense number of things that a temple, you need to consider it when you're going to build it. And when you just say this is plopping down with no input from anyone, And if anyone does try to give input, you're seen as anti-Mormon, a bigot, you know, called horrible names, doing the work of the adversary, uh, praying that your heart will be softened, that your mind will be open. The residents we talked to were like, what is that? What do you mean my heart needs to be softened? They really don't understand. They're getting a crash course in Mormonism, and the worst part of it. That's what's sad. To this point, they love their Mormon neighbors, everything's been great, but this crash course of, of what it can really look like. And I actually feel that the members are being manipulated by the institutional church. They're being told to do these things, like the stake president in the meeting, I don't know what to tell people, and he's being told and he has to go say it. There's an open letter being circulated that somebody wrote, active member, temple recce money holding person, who details all these things that Lana, that Nemo, all of us talk about, and he's asking for signatures. There are like 40 pages of signatures from active LDS, post-Mormons, you know, everybody that just says, please be more charitable and kind in working with communities. And then you really can be that blessing. You can work hand in hand. And I should ask both of you, because you're old like me, older, Hinckley era temples, it was different. I remember them taking pride in working with communities. I remember a temple in Tokyo area where they were so proud that they had fit it in. They had talked to people, they involved the community. So everybody, like you described, Jim Bennett, was on board. Hinckley era, I feel like the temples really made that effort. I don't know if it is the Nelson era. I have my suspicions about just saying, here you go, but I feel like it might be catching up to them with just the sheer number. So you just see town after town after town, and then it's big picture. And Landon and I, when we first started reporting, we're like, hey, tale of two temples, Cody and Hebert. And we would say at the end of the podcast a year and a half ago, if anybody wants to pick up on the story, it's really interesting, the two together. And suddenly Lone Mountain, hey, there's three, you know, oh, McKinney, four, five. And I will say there is now national interest. Axios just did a big article showing the similarities, the playbook. Daily Mail has been working with residents and talked to us. Their article's supposed to come out. They don't want this kind of PR. The AP is also doing an article. They don't need this kind of PR when a temple could be a real feel-good PR moment in every single town and be that blessing that they claim it is. And the members say things like this: we just have to do what it takes. It's a blessing, and you'll see it after the fact. You'll see the blessing. And the residents that we talked to are like, what blessing? What blessing is this? We can't go in. It's impacted our environment, our culture, our neighborhood. There's divisiveness. People are fighting. They don't see it. They just don't see it.

And Ian, what is— I mean, you've just sort of been introduced to this whole issue fairly recently. What's your reaction to it?

Yeah, thank you, Jim. The church is a business. It's a corporation with $150 billion in the war chest. That's massive. It's behaving like a bully, like a corporate bully. I've spent a good deal of my career dealing with some US, mostly Canadian municipalities, provinces, some states, dealing with fairly large infrastructure projects, including quite large hospitals, rec centers, bridges, roads, highways, et cetera, and become quite familiar with the, procurement process, permitting, planning approval process, etc. Each city's got its own bylaws, zoning classifications, you know, it establishes those over many years. And there is a process to go through to get the project approved. And there's a requirement to follow the bylaws and understand and work with the community to collaboratively to help make sure your project advances and moves forward and gets built. A big component of that, especially these, you know, especially we're talking about a 44,000 square foot building with a 174-foot spire or steeple in a fairly small town. It's significant. And you would expect the church to follow the rules around what they call public consultation. I've been into these meetings many times, planned them and organized them, and the public come along and they have lots of questions of the process and you show big backdrops of the images of the structure, whatever you're building, and they have questions. You bring a team of people that answer the questions and there's a, it can be a fairly lengthy public consultation process. And I suspect Fairview has got that. And so where's the respect for the process? The due process. Um, one thing that I, uh, when I was thinking about, uh, this podcast, um, I was thinking about, um, the, uh, 12th Article of Faith. Yeah, if you look at that here, it says, uh, I'll quote it, uh, and it's a, a key tenet of the church, that we believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying honoring and sustaining the law. Uh, there's a few other comments after, after this. It says, Heavenly Father wants us to be good citizens. Being good, good— being a good citizen means following the laws or rules of the places we live. Uh, you know, well, where is that, uh, in this, uh, in this process? So, you know, building these projects which have a significant impact on the community, especially to Rebecca's point, where You know, what is the value to the community really? You know, they can't go in, they don't understand what happens in the temple. For many, I'm sure it sounds very strange and very odd. They can't participate in that. It's a building that dominates the skyline in a small town like that. And there's no respect for process, they don't care. And so, and I think to the point that you made earlier, Rebecca, I think it's, you know, the church is afraid that if they don't get their own way, this will set a precedent for other communities and municipalities to say, well, hey, you know, look what happened here. You know, that will embolden other communities to take a stronger stance and position, and that's the last thing that the church wants. I also think this is a private personal thing that Nelson's got. He has a fetish basically with aggressive acceleration of temples. That's how the church is manifesting its growth. It's not getting growth anywhere else. In child convert baptisms, not so much. Very few people join the church these days. The church mission program, excuse me, is not as successful as it used to be in the '80s, Jim, when you and I were on our missions. I think it peaked in the '80s, '90s.

Peaked after, peaked with us. You peaked with the whole thing.

You're at the pinnacle. That was it.

I think when Jim Bennett left the mission, the whole church mission program collapse. And, uh, but, but, you know, so where does it show growth? How does it demonstrate that the church is growing and rolling forward into the world unhindered, etc.? And that's the other thing as well, you know, uh, no unhallowed hand will stop the work of the Lord. And so I think this is a, a private personal thing that Nelson's got, that Oaks is behind. And, and I think it's pretty grotesque actually to manipulate and take advantage of the members and to try to attach that to some religious experience that the steeple has to be this big in order, you know, it is part of the revelation. I've never heard of, and I'm not saying we're suggesting this, but I've never heard of any revelation which details deep specific or level of specificity around building design or steeple height, nothing like that. And then as Nemo said and articulated extremely well, what a amazing guy to go to the UK. And to get that very succinct, concise presentation, it gives key facts there. But the key note that I got from that was all temples are the same. The blessings are the same, endowments are the same, the orders are the same. All are alike unto God. It doesn't matter about the size of the building, as Bednar said, or the steeple. It doesn't matter. But I just, I just think the church again is whoever's in charge of business development planning over at that company needs firing because this is just an own goal. You know, where's the respect for the process? Where's the respect for the community? I just don't see it. And I think it's fantastic, Rebecca and Lana, that you are spearheading this and keeping this front and center because it just shows again that the church, to me, is operating exactly like a large corporation. I've worked for massive corporations, billion-dollar companies, and what they do— and I'll finish on this— I've seen them, these big companies, $5, $10 billion EPC engineering companies come in the small community and they bully them and they threaten legal action, and, and the, the community rolls over. So the church is behaving, in my, in my opinion, in my experience, exactly like a large corporation. And the reality is that's, that's what it is. And it's using its religion and it's, you know, claiming that it should bypass the laws and the zoning codes, etc., because it's a religious building, it's a religious experience. That's not what's driving the church here. It's, it's trying to set a precedent and it's, it's bullying its way into building this project.

Well, two quick points I want to make. One, Ian, when you talked about you don't know of any specific kinds of directions, when I got in my Twitter war, somebody quoted to me the 95th section of the Doctrine and Covenants, which lays out specific architectural instructions for the Kirtland Temple. And I said, you know, as soon as the Church comes down, as soon as we can see that all temples are built by direct architectural revelation to the President of the Church, I may have a different position.

Right. They're claiming that. They're claiming that. That President Nelson designs them himself. And how tall is that steeple in Kirkland? No! In Kirkland, it's not.

That's exactly right. And I mean, I know many people that have worked on the temple committees. I have a member of my extended family who was in charge of the art that goes into temples and described the process as being nibbled to death by ducks. Whenever you try to get any kind of art approved temples.

We heard the same thing. Yep, exactly.

How difficult that is. But the idea that these temples sort of come fully formed into the mind of the prophet with all of the architectural design is— other than Kirtland, we don't have any examples where that's the case. And the other point, Rebecca, you already raised the idea that the Hinckley era— the thing about Hinckley, that, that revolutionized temples was he introduced the idea of the mini temple, the idea of temples that were no larger than stake centers, that, that we would go into communities like Fairview, smaller communities that didn't have a huge membership base, and we would create these small, modest buildings that would— uh, that was when they eliminated, uh, or at least started to eliminate, uh, laundries and cafeterias and the other kinds of things that had been in temples up until that point. The temple— it reminds me of when we were in Scotland and I went and was assigned to Dundee, Scotland, where they had this huge, massive church building that looked like it could have been built on the Wasatch Front, Bingham Terrace. And, and it had this massive basketball court in the middle of Scotland, and nobody in Scotland had ever seen a basketball before. They were playing soccer or football, as it should be called, in the cultural hall, in the basketball court, because basketball was only played by American missionaries. I mean, that was a building that had been inflicted on Scotland using a Wasatch Front template. And the more recent buildings that they built I remember very clearly when we were in the Inverness zone, Ian and I together, they wanted to build a chapel in Inverness a few years earlier, and they had to go through all kinds of zoning requirements to make sure that this building was as lovely as all of the other buildings along the riverfront. I mean, and it is, it's an absolutely gorgeous chapel on the outside. And then you walk in and it looks just like something out of Provo. But all the beauty and the stonework and all of the thing make it a unique chapel on the outside because they wanted to be part of the community. And, and the, the other element to this is when they talk about, okay, this is going to be such a blessing to your community. These are buildings that the community does not get to use. They'll be able to go into the temple before it's dedicated. They'll be able to see it and they'll be able to say, wow, neat, that's lovely, and what a beautiful chandelier. And then it's dedicated and it's shut off to 99% of the community, including members.

And that's what some of the residents start to realize. They're like, I'm starting to realize that even your own membership, there are lots of people that can't go in, people who do this or that or this. So they're starting to understand and they're confused. They're very confused.

And, and, you know, the, the Hinckley era made it very clear that these mini temples were going to be designed in order to be as unobtrusive as possible, in order to be able to be the kind of— I, I just don't see— and it's so bizarre to me to, to see the us versus them dynamic amped up to 11, and the idea that the only reason why you wouldn't want a 173-foot steeple in your backyard with lights on it all night long in a town that wants to stay country. The only reason that you could possibly not want that is because Satan has possessed you and you hate the Mormons.

You hit it. No, that's it exactly. But unfortunately, it's—

it happens.

They believe it because they've kind of been whipped up to believe it. And that's why we used to be the champion of the residents, but I feel like now I would like to be the champion of the active members. Because if I had family members in these towns that were being manipulated like that with letters, with half-truths, and making them go out and confront neighbors and things like that, and feel this persecution, this kind of— we're being, you know, they're being scared, they really are, by the rhetoric of the leaders so that they'll, they'll, you know, promote the church and and promote the temple. And I would be mad if my relatives were going through that. I don't have any relatives in those towns, but I feel like I also want to say, stop manipulating the dang members, you know? And I actually feel that's the only way that the church will ever reconsider what they're doing. I feel that when the members themselves push back, we've seen change. We saw that in Provo, right? MTC, it's going to be 200 stories high. Members are like, oh no, it's not. Church dials it back. To Willa, right? That other area they were going to build the temple, the members are like, We can't do that. We don't have any infrastructure here. They quickly moved it to Tooele as if it was kind of a takeaway. So I feel if enough active members in these towns, like the one stake president who said, I don't know what to say, if they were not afraid to speak up— and unfortunately, a lot of our residents are starting to realize in every town, why are Mormons afraid to speak? I've had active members who are friends say, I'd like to help you guys, but I can't. Why can't they? Why can't they speak, you know, that's terrifying that their church has that much of a hold on them that they're afraid to actually voice their own conscience.

The church does have that kind of hold on many of the members that I know, people at Church Broke. You know, the members, you know, they have testimonies and they have this belief that in order to get in the kingdom of God, they have to follow the prophet. And so, you know, they wouldn't question that. I got a question for Rebecca and Landon. What's the construction value of the Fairview Temple?

Landon, you can talk about construction. That's your industry.

Yeah, well, I'm trying to remember, but usually they're running, you know, $60 to $80 million construction. But, you know, one of the other things that you have to keep in mind is that the temples there, although they're worth that much, they don't pay any, any property tax. They don't contribute. So when you have a small town like that that has to provide services, you know, sewer, fire protection, police protection. Yeah. And the church doesn't pay any taxes. And, and I wanted to address one thing that, that Ian said, and that is, you know, I want to point out that the church is not breaking any laws here and what they're doing, but what they are doing is they're manipulating the laws. And that's what the people are seeing. And it's it's not surprising that the first temple that has— the first community that's actually said no, or at least the planning commission has said no, that the city council still has to say no in Fairview, is the one of the five that's outside the moratorium. Inside the moratorium, they've got extreme political power. And we saw in, in Heber, they knew they couldn't get it through on a special use permit because it was such a large— that one's 90,000 square feet. 213 feet tall in beautiful Heber Valley. And so what they do, they did an end run. They passed an LDA, a legislative development agreement, which lets them end run all of the county requirements, all of the zoning requirements without a vote, 20-year lighting restriction, a night, night sky restriction, and they changed it overnight. Now they say, oh yeah, we would have done this for anybody. We all know that's not true. This was changed because the majority of the county council was LDS by far. The planning commission, the city, they changed it to accommodate one religion. And now they're, they're, they're going to have to live with that because now a golf course has moved in and said, we want to build a 70-foot tall clubhouse and we're going to use the— we want to use an LDA just like the temple used. Yeah, they opened up Eliot Bridges in Las Vegas. In Las Vegas, they, they literally went in and the church knew what land they were going to buy. They knew that it was limited, that you could only build 5 acres for a religious facility. So they hired lawyers, land development lawyers in there. Those lawyers made $10,000 donations to every city councilman except one. And amazingly, the zoning codes got all got changed. And now they're voting for this. And all of it's unanimous that it can say what you want. Well, it's legal to make a political donation. Well, it's highly suspicious when the law firm representing the church makes $10,000 donations right at the beginning of this whole process. And we see the county make all the changes that they needed in order to build that temple there. They all got done before the people even knew. City of Las Vegas, all of this happened before the citizens even know that there's a temple going in there.

And we should say that we cannot, we cannot say that that had any direct effect. We can just state that that happened, the contribution, and we can say the coach changed. We can't give any kind of, you know, we can't say. And again, not illegal. I always have to say that when we discuss that. But yeah, Lana's completely right.

Trust in the, in the system. When they start seeing political manipulation of the system, people start saying, what is this?

Yeah.

And, and the church has the, has that kind of power. And that's, you know, the, the Ralupe Law that they're relying on was introduced by Orrin Hatch. And everyone sits back and goes, wow, you're beating us over the head with this that was instituted by Utah senators, that 3 of the people who were supported, who introduced it, were LDS. So people start making that connection. They're going, This doesn't seem fair. It doesn't seem equitable. And it certainly doesn't seem ethical, even though it may be legal.

Right. And Cody's an example of this too, where there is an LDS city planner. You know, there's different ways, workarounds, things that the church uses to get in. So Cody has a city planner. Before anyone even knew a temple was coming there, very subtly codes were being changed. He was introducing things to the planning commission. That would benefit what they knew were coming, right? Very subtly, they moved a bishop onto the planning commission, or he, you know, he just applied to be on it. We again have to say we don't know for sure, right? We're just kind of trying to put the pieces together. But in that city, they had a large enough LDS component and people in key places that they could be instrumental in doing the work that was needed to get the temple through. And of course, Heber Valley, I mean, you don't even have to guess about that. We have a We have a clip from a recorded town, a county meeting on our Mormonish YouTube channel where one of our friends who was heading up the Wasatch Dark Skies Committee that did file a lawsuit because it was all overturned, the dark skies. She gets up in front of the council and she's, you know, very intelligent. She's done her homework. She knows everything. And she stands up there. She goes, I want to address something before I talk about dark skies. She says, we are often called bigots. Anti-Mormons. We're told that we hate the temple, and I want to go on the record and I say that we do not. That is not what we're about, and, and that's not how we feel about you. And she says, I'd like to read a statement from President Nelson, the church, uh, the president of the Church of the Latter-day Saints. And he says this, and she reads a statement from two conferences ago where he talked about being peacemakers. You probably remember, she said, and she read it, can we all please get along? Can we see the good in each other? Can we— you know, she reads this wonderful statement from President Nelson. She stops reading. A member of the council says, "It's the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You said it wrong." She goes, "I'm very sorry. That's how it was written on my paper. I apologize." And then they say, "Are you saying that we are not being Christ—" I mean, it's just like, are you freaking kidding me? It was so devastating to see our friend. I mean, I'm still wounded by it. Being treated like that as this wonderful person, you know. And that's the kind of pushback where you have a mostly LDS, you know, city government in Lone Mountain. We kind of talked to some residents and, and we told them stories of Kody and Heber, and they started on their own thinking, well, we don't have LDS people on our council. What other thing would influence people? And they on their own said, I'm going to look at campaign contributions. And they discovered it in the public record. So when we call it a playbook, and again, I think probably, Ian, you could speak to this, is a corporate playbook. This is not anything different than any development or big corporation does. But the church has something different that the corporations don't have. And the lawyer said it out loud, they have a loophole. They have a religious loophole that was created, like your dad created it, Jim Bennett, to be a shield to religions that might face persecution. Instead, the church is using this as this whopping sword to threaten and hit these people over the head, and they're using their members as collateral damage to help that. And it's just— it's really sad. It just makes me sadder and sadder every day for everybody involved.

And the sad part is, whether that Ralupe law applies or not, it doesn't matter because the church knows those citizen groups They're pawning all their money together. They're doing— oh, they don't have money to fight this. They raised $10,000, $20,000. It's $200,000 to fight one of these. And the church knows that the community groups can't fight them. So it doesn't matter whether the church is in the right or in the wrong. They're just going to sue until everyone else is out of money and has to give up because They have such a war chest that nobody can compete with them.

If we were talking about a corporation, and we've talked about our experience on that, all this would make sense, right? And I acknowledge the church is not breaking the law, it's manipulating the law. But I wanna remind us, and perhaps some of our listeners, that this is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Church of Jesus Christ. Is this how Jesus, is this what Jesus wants? If this is his, if this is his church, and President Nelson is his mouthpiece, and he's following the revelation, inspiration from Jesus Christ directly, is this how Jesus wants this to play out? Is this the approach from the Savior? Is this come from God? Is this how it's— is it— are they— do they approve of the behavior? Is this, is this what, is this what it means in terms of you know, how the, the Lord himself wants to behave and to treat communities like this. I don't accept that at all. The other thing that stands out to me as well, I don't know what the economy is like down in Texas, but I know quite a few areas of the economy in the US are struggling like here in Canada. You know, the cost of living is high, inflation is high. And Jim Bennett kind of referenced this, I think, previously on an earlier podcast. You know, a lot of families are struggling financially. Cost of living is expensive, food, groceries, utilities, et cetera. It's expensive. Gas is expensive. Families are struggling. When they open this, what, Landa, $60 to $80 million temple open house, and people walk through that and see all the chandeliers and the expensive carpets, tens of thousands of dollars for carpets and thousands of dollars for chairs. And I've seen the bill on the Preston Temple that was built back in, way back, but that the cost, the church went to no expense, frankly. And that was back in '98. Obviously things have gone up quite a bit. And so the church spends millions of dollars to create these palaces. I see them as palaces actually. Imagine how people feel walking through that as a visitor and the expense. And then they go back and they're, you know, they're out of work or they're struggling on the catapault, afford to pay the bill. Wouldn't it be more Christlike? Wouldn't Jesus, if he was here, kind of, okay, build a temple, keep it simple, sure, have a few, you know, nice things in there, whatever, but make it smaller, spend less, and then build something else in the community to help those who are struggling, something, a building or structure that's going to help and bless the lives of the members of the community. Isn't that the Christlike thing to do? I mean, what's with the $150 billion? What's, what's the point in having all of that if you're not— if you're only using it to protect your position, advance, uh, you know, your, your, your position? Um, if we look at this as, say, as a business, it makes sense, but it's not. It's Jesus's church, or claimed to be Jesus's church, and it's just not the behavior that I understand that Jesus would, uh, would would be like, as I studied his life over many years, 35 years in the New Testament. This is not how Jesus would conduct himself if he was here.

Well, Ian, I think it does reinforce your point that this is how the church is now measuring growth because this is a terrible, terrible missionary tool. We are essentially punting on the idea that we're going to bring any of these people actually into the church because we are so willing to alienate them and alienate the community and demonize the community as long as we get the temple built. And I would— I have to believe that if President Hinckley were still here, he would see the temple And the temples historically have been missionary tools. They've been, "Hey, here, we built this lovely building in your community. Why don't you come in and take a look at it before we dedicate it? And we'll explain to you what happens in it." And it becomes this missionary tool. And I can't imagine that the community of Fairview or the community of Cody or any of these communities that have had these temples just sort of rammed down their throats, I can't imagine that that kind of goodwill that we rely on in order to be able to bring people into the church is going to be present in those communities. I, I, the idea that a steeple is more important than the goodwill of the people in the area that we want to, to teach the gospel to, it doesn't make any sense to me. And, you know, I, I, I am the only one I recognize. I'm the only one in this discussion that is still an active believing member of the church. And I do believe that, that the men who are involved in this and the men that are making decisions on this, I don't believe that anybody in or out of the church is acting like a comic book villain. That there is some sort of big, devious, terrible plan. I think that the people who are telling members, hey, you know, now start saying that steeples are a part of your worship. I think they're scrambling. I think they didn't anticipate that they get this kind of pushback. We've seen that on a number of things that the church has done on a high level. I look to the Manti Temple as an example of this. Yeah, you know, the Manti Temple, which is one of our historic temples, our historic pioneer temples, is filled with all of these Minerva Teichert murals that they were going to gut, and they were going to tear them out and put in, you know, make it just like all of the other temples. And, and the saints, the act of Rebecca, as you talk about, the act of saints rose up and said, now wait a minute, you can't do that, because they said they weren't going to do that to Salt Lake, you know, that they weren't going to gut the Salt Lake Temple. And then they gutted the Salt Lake Temple. That's a tragedy. Which, which, yeah, that's where I got my own endowments in a live session and moved from room to room and all of these beautiful pioneer era murals. I mean, these weren't Da Vinci's, but it was— they were There was history to them. Yeah, it was Mormon history. Yeah, it was Mormon history. You felt a connection to the past. You felt a connection to your pioneer ancestors. And the fact that they weren't da Vinci's, that they weren't necessarily high art, actually made them, in my mind, more precious because they were— these are pioneers who were doing the best they could to build a temple in the wilderness. And isn't this wonderful that we have this connection to them that has been passed down to us? Well, that's all gone out of the Salt Lake Temple, and they wanted to take it out of the, out of the Manti Temple. And the Saints rose up and said, no, you can't do this. But the thing that drives me crazy about that is that when they made the decision, okay, we're not going to do that, Elder Rasband insisted But this had nothing to do with any of the protests. Exactly. This was just a revelation we received that we're not going to do that. And, and the protests are completely incidental to that. And, and so don't go thinking that you can go protest and get us to change our minds because we don't do that. And, and, and I do not understand that mindset. I do not understand that mindset because it's contradictory to what I was taught growing up about the idea that, well, why do we have the Word of Wisdom? We have the Word of Wisdom because Emma Smith was tired of scrubbing out tobacco stains from the wooden floors in the School of the Prophets. And I remember even as a little kid going, "Well, geez, that's convenient." And my teacher saying, "Well, geez, that's how it works. When you have a question, you take it to the Lord, and that's how you get revelation." There's no shame in that. And that's a fundamental principle of the gospel. And we won't— we're not willing to even admit that that happens. We're not willing to admit the questions or the concerns, not just of non-Mormon residents, but of active believing members, that they don't count, they don't matter. We just have to listen to whatever is dictated to us from church headquarters and, and keep your head down and go forward. I just, it doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't make any sense to me that any organization even if it's a business, any organization that wants to grow, any organization that wants to expand and, you know, in the crassest business terms, get new customers, let alone get new members of the true Church of Jesus Christ. You don't do that by alienating people like this.

Well, have you thought about— have you thought about with Manti and Salt Lake, and I think all the other temples too, Who are making these decisions? Are there any artists or artistic people or musicians in upper leadership? Are there any women who might share a different perspective about, we have to save the art, we have to, or we don't want to do these to people? Is there anybody, and maybe I'm doing some broad stereotypes, but is there anybody who's not a lawyer or a business? Are there any of the other types of people? Who might see and bring a whole nother perspective and want to save and appreciate Manti, or save and appreciate Salt Lake, or explain to some of the people who can't quite wrap their head around it why residents might be just sickened by what is happening to their town and not understand why their neighbors are acting like this. I think it has to do with being in a silo, honestly. And I agree, there's probably no one villain. I think it's just everyone's siloed and they can't see this other other point of view. But we told all the residents right up front, we said— they said, well, how do we fight this? I hate to even use the word fight because they're not trying to fight. They want a temple. They just want everybody to work together. It's not a fight, but it's sort of become a fight because, as I said, in Cody they said, who are these people? What is this? This is not a church. And they had devastation in their voice when they were saying this because they honestly thought, as God-fearing church folk, we can all get together and work this out, you know. And that did not happen. And so they do— they all question who, who is at the top, who is making these decisions. And I think it's just this silo of misunderstanding, non-understanding, this idea that, you know, they can't give an inch. Somebody at the top said it's got to be that tall, and now they just— they can't back down. They're painted into a corner, and there's all this collateral damage. Which I think the majority of it are the members themselves, because you can't believe these letters that go out asking for thousands. With the Fairview town meeting, in 24-hour period, they wanted 15,000 emails. Nemo probably talked about this, and they got 13,500, and very few of them were from Fairview. These are people all over the world. The church is being persecuted. We need a temple. It was circulated through missions and through stakes. Everybody has that chance. Wait, what? Persecution? My ancestors went through that. Now it's my chance, right? It reminds me of Prop 8, rallying for something that really doesn't even involve you. You know, let's just keep this on a community level. When they tell the residents to show up at these meetings, to wear blue shirts in Lone Mountain, to show, to have a photo op in McKinney, Fairview, wear white shirts and show up. 2,500 people did show up to McKinney in white shirts. There were thousands more that were supposed to come, but in the daytime before the McKinney town meeting— Fairview McKinney, I keep saying— um, they worked kind of a thing behind the scenes through legal channels where they were going to have a continuance. So thousands of people were told on Monday, show up, you gotta get there, take a bus. What happens on Tuesday? Another email goes out, stand down. Who says stand down? And thousands of people stand down and don't show up. That's terrifying to residents of a town. Who are these people and who are they listening to that can tell them just walk away and stand down from a civic process? I mean, we understand it, we were LDS or are LDS, but for a regular person in a city, they're like, what is happening? Do you know what I mean? It's disturbing and frightening. They're kind of scared.

And 2,500 is more than the—

more than the population of the town.

So the, the town, it feels like an army has, has besieged them to force them to accept something that means nothing to 90% of them, right?

Singing songs, I love to see the temple, locking arms, walking. I mean, I know Mormons mean well, but they just don't see how they appear. They don't see it and how that could be frightening.

Well, you mentioned silos, and I think that's an interesting way to describe it, because one of the things that I see as people talk about it is, you don't understand, we're giving you this beautiful temple and it's going to, it's going to improve property values. Uh, everywhere we build temple improves property values. And I'm thinking, well, sure, it improves property values in Draper, Utah, where everybody around it recognizes what, you know, that it's part of the community and the majority of the people that live there and they want to build huge, massive houses next to the temple as part of that. But it's not going to increase property values in a rural town that wants to stay country and is going to have that, that spirit of it ripped away by this huge massive light in the middle of the night that's going to pollute the, the night sky. I— let me tell the birds. But, but if you're, if you're from— I— what did you call Atlanta? The Mordor? The Mordor, yeah. That's a little too Tolkien for me. Yeah, it is.

That's what they call it. Those— the Mormon Corridor, which would be Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, you know, parts of those areas, Arizona, where there's just a lot of LDS.

Yeah, and, and in those areas where a temple's being built, it usually does increase all of that. But you— excuse me— you look at Heber, I mean, Heber is a majority Latter-day Saint city, and if they're complaining about it, maybe it's not because they hate the church so much. Hey, maybe we should be listening the other considerations. I don't see why that should be considered an unfaithful point of view. I think it's the M.O.

It's always been persecution. It always has. In fact, listen to this. This is from a stake president talking about how everybody had better, better accept where the temple is going. It's a letter sent out to everybody, and he says, this is in the Fairview area, please know that this is the location where the Lord wants his temple. The Fairview area will be blessed as a result of this temple. It will bring a divine peace and a cloak of protection to the town and surrounding areas. These are promised blessings that come with the building of a house of the Lord. By contrast, these blessings are lost if the opposition has its way. So it's kind of like, it's a nice little town you got there. It'd be a shame if something were to happen to it. I mean, So the residents of the town read this and they go, what do you mean something's going to happen to our town? They just have no idea.

No idea. But just to Jim Bennett's point, if US municipal policies are like Canadian, which I think they are, increased property values translates to increased property taxes. Yep. Yep. And this happens. People lose their homes. Well, the, listen to this conversation, the research that I've done, I'm convinced that knowing what— seeing the behavior of the church and how they're approaching this, they're not going to back down. This temple will be built likely to the specifications that they've proposed. The church will get its own way. Yeah, they've got— they're going to railroad the community with a $150 billion freight train. There's nothing that the community can do. But my question is this. When the church is built, where the temple is built, what is going to go through the minds of the community members when they see that building? What feelings will that conjure? It will conjure resentment, betrayal, um, hurt, pain, disrespect, uh, unchristlike. It will, it will be all the opposite things that the church intends from this whole experience at Jim's Park. It's supposed to be a wonderful experience to members and non-members alike. You know, the church is supposed to welcome people with open arms. We invite you in, listen to our message. We're the Church of Jesus Christ. Jesus leads this church. He loves his kind. He loves us as kind, and he, he's, uh, his arms are open for all to, uh, to receive. This is completely in contrast to, you know, how Jesus would behave. What is he thinking? How is Jesus feeling about this whole thing? I have no idea. But I do know, I'm fairly convinced that the, you know, the regular community member, when they see that building, will not feel very positive when this— and it'll be a symbol of the behavior, the bullying behavior that the church has manifested in this whole process. And that's what they'll remember. And when the missions knock on the door, man, that's going to be a tough sell to convince those members who are paying more tax, and they've got this big building right in front of them that means nothing to them, yet, you know, come and join us. It's just going to fall on deaf ears. It's going to create resentment and anger and hurt for many, many years, and it will be there as a symbol of that for years to come. But it will be built.

It's already there, and we saw that in the Fairview Town Meeting. In fact, one of the members got up and told a story about how her son went out and was trying to get signatures on the petition to support the temple. He was a kid. Yeah, 11-year-old kid. And the church has an open house and they bring in a lawyer and the lawyer stands up and tells them all about the First Amendment and then threatens to sue the entire town. And on the recording, the person that was making it is going, Oh my gosh, is that really threatening? Right here, this is how they're introducing the temple. So the people are already very upset about this, and now you send an 11-year-old kid to go into that? Uh, this— that's something adults should be doing when you, when you've stirred up this much contention in the community. And, and it's, it's sad to see that, and, and it, it doesn't need to be that way. And one of the things that keeps being pointed out is If the church wants to build the temple that size, there are places in that that are zoned for it and you just go in. The problem is they're commercial and business zones and the church wants to control what their neighbors look like. They don't want a Walmart next to the temple. They don't want an AutoZone next to the temple. And that's why they go into these communities. But likewise, the community doesn't want these giant structures. They're okay with a church building. They had no problem with the stake center being built there because it's built to the standard height that churches and schools and neighborhoods are built to. But the temple is a different— it's a different animal. It is not a church. It is more of a commercial building. It's designed— they say in Fairview they're expecting 80,000 people a month. That is not residential use. That's commercial business use. And that's the areas that should be. And in a lot of cities they are put in commercial and business districts. But recently they've gone to, we're going to build giant temples and we're going to put them in residential areas. And the residents are saying the same thing the church is saying when they say they don't want to be in a business area. They're trying to say, well, we should have some protection about who our neighbors are too. And you shouldn't just get to pick our nice neighborhood because they always put them in influential neighborhoods. Yeah, you say, oh, this is a nice neighborhood, we're going to put our temple there now and take advantage of everything these guys have developed. Well, they've spent their life savings trying to make their community the way they want it, and it's not fair that they come in. And the church needs to understand that and say, if we're going to be in your town with this tall of a building, we need to be in a commercial or business zone. If we want to be in a residential area, we should come in with smaller buildings.

Yeah. Well, Rebecca, do you want to sum this up for us?

It's so hard to sum up what you just said, though, Landon. I was talking to somebody in Fairview about the McKinney Temple, and he said, I was reading about the Bakersfield Temple. If it was that size, bring it on. It's a more smaller neighborhood temple. But I think in summary, I just say, having watched this for a year and a half, I really am getting sadder and sadder, and not just for the residents, but for the relationships, for the manipulation of the LDS people who are great people, and the residents are great people. And there's this entity above it all who's just reaching down like a puppet master and stirring these people and pulling these strings and making neighbor against neighbor and resident against member. None of them would do this, but the members have been told God wants his temple at whatever cost. Like what my relatives said. And the residents are saying, what is happening here? I need to protect my town. And it's just this, this boiling pot that's being stirred by somebody at the top who maybe might not even realize what they're doing. But there has to be somebody that sees reason. And, and I feel like it will take the active members to stand up, as they're starting to. I've seen signatures on petitions that just say, please be Christlike in your building, like what Ian said. Please think of the neighborhood, please think of the aftermath. I mean, in all these cities, Cody especially, oh my goodness, people are moving because it's so divisive on both sides. You know, when our friends in Heber were trying to get signatures for their dark skies thing, they just said, look, this was overturned on a commission, county commission level. Let's just put it on the ballot. Let's let people vote. They had a very small window to get signatures. They would set up outside a local business, a little booth that says, hey, you want to learn more about dark skies? Usually within a couple hours, the owner would come out and say, I know I told you that you could be here, but now I'm starting to realize it's bad for business. I've had people tell me that I shouldn't have you there. And these are LDS members saying, I'm not going to go to your business anymore if you let— it's, it's, you know, it's opposition, it's persecution. And Mormons are hardwired to look for that if they're stirred up to it. I don't think they would if they weren't, I feel, being manipulated. So I'm upset for the members. I'm upset for the residents. I'm upset that the church doesn't get to build a temple. If they were to adhere to the codes or work with the town, they could start building right now. It's a win-win-win-win. But instead, we're in these just awful situations. I really do see it as a cauldron just being stirred, and these people are collateral damage. And I don't know that these towns can even recover. How could you look at your neighbor in the same way when they're calling you the adversary and they're in Lone Mountain, they are the residents that we deal with, honking, fireworks thrown at their house, signs slashed, you know. And again, these are people like my relative that say the temple has to be built at any cost. Nothing is beyond the pale to do to get the temple built. It's a mindset. So I don't know, Lannon, how would you, how would you sum it up? We'll just keep watching, I guess, is what it is. But no one is against temple. No one is against the church. No one is against the residents. Can't we all just get along? Should we say that? What do you think, Landon?

I think, you know, there's enough to go around on both sides. Both sides get heated and passionate. Of course, it's a cauldron. Yeah, but it's the cauldron. But the church leadership has the ability to calm this down by saying, okay, we've heard what you said, but we just saw in, in Fairview, they gave them a continuance and they laid it out. They said, come back with plans that— and they told them how high the roof needed to be and they told them how high the steeple could be. And they said, come back, give us something like that. Show us that you're willing to work with us, that you want to be good neighbors. Unfortunately, the next day we heard that the church had hired the finest real estate lawyer in the Dallas area to represent them., in this. So rather than changing the design and, you know, they've got 2 months to do it, it sounds like they're going to come in with the lawyers and, and just push it through.

Push it through.

Like in Toby. Yeah. Well, you, Rebecca, you mentioned earlier Proposition 8. Mm-hmm. And I had a lot of family in California at the time, and I remember the fallout after Proposition 8.

Yeah, it was huge.

And I thought after Proposition 8 that the church had learned a valuable lesson, because a lot of the bridge building that, uh, has happened since Proposition 8, I don't think would have happened if the church hadn't been slapped so hard by the backlash. And a lot of that— I mean, that's when, when the Mormons Mormon and Gay website was created. That's when the church finally conceded that people don't choose to be gay and that sufficient righteousness won't end people being gay. And we started to build these bridges. And then came the November 2015 policy 7 years later that undid a lot of that. But so, so the church, I think the church is very capable of, of learning the lessons from from, from an explosive situation and, and reacting to backlash and doing so positively. I just wish it didn't require that kind of backlash to do that. So, so I don't think this is over. It may end up being over in Fairview. I know, Ian, you say that you're sure the temple is going to be built. I am hopeful that this, as this continues, uh, I, I, these are not, these are not stupid people who, who are the leaders of this church. Whether you accept that they're inspired people or not, they are not stupid. They are bright enough to recognize that, you know, this kind of pushback has led to change before. I am hopeful it will lead to change again. And if it doesn't, eventually it will, because this kind of backlash, this kind of adversarial us versus them can't continue indefinitely if we want the church to grow and we want the church to be able to have the kind of reputation necessary to be the proselyting church it wants to be. So that's my summation. Do you have one, Ian?

100%. Yeah, mine is pretty short. I appeal to the church to, uh, to Rebecca's point, is to, uh, you know, to be reasonable, uh, to be fair, to follow due process, to be Christlike. You know, the church claims to be the mouthpiece of Jesus Christ. That's his claim. The only true and living church upon the face of the earth. Um, it's not behaving like that. It's behaving like a corporation, a multi-billion dollar corporation, which In my opinion, it is mostly, but where's the kindness? Where's the listening? Where's the collaboration? Where's the respect for the process, respect for the law? And the last comment I would make, point I would make rather, would be, you know, if you're gonna write the 12 Articles of Faith, rather, live it, practice it. That's my final point.

And it's a good point. So Rebecca Lannon, can't thank you enough for being here. You are ever the voices of reason and you are very thoughtful observers of the, of the scene here and have provided us, I think, with some great insight that we're very grateful for. Well, we hope you'll come back at some point. We would love to.

There are so many topics, even in just kind of our little pre-show talking about stuff for like, That would be a good episode. Yeah, I think we came up with 2 or 3 just in our little prior conversation to starting rolling tape. So I know you guys are always super fun to talk to.

I'd love to do a podcast about the temple if we can at some point. But Landon, Rebecca, it's been a real honor and a privilege to have you on, and we're grateful for your experience with Princess Sophie and keeping this topic right front and center because it's really important.

And for the rest of you listening, Thank you all for your time, and we'll look forward to seeing you next time on Inside Out. Thank you, Ian, Rebecca, and Landon.

Thank you, Jim Bennett. Thank you.