Who Should Own This Word?

I started a light-hearted blog entry on a celestial sex topic, but my mind kept going back to Thursday when the LDS church issued another statement with regard to the term “fundamentalist Mormon,” and other uses of the word “Mormon” as associated with outside groups. As I applaud and support the church’s efforts to distance themselves from these sects, I do not believe they can claim ownership of such a broad word and in fact the U.S patent and trademark office agrees with me as they denied their request for a trademark(except when it’s used for the church’s educational services ). As I’ve mentioned in past blogs, I’ve spent the past three years researching the FLDS church as part of a book and for several decades these “peculiar people” have proudly identified themselves as “fundamentalist Mormons” since they quite literally follow the teachings of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon to the extreme. So where did the controversial “FM” term come from? Well one source reports that in the 1940’s LDS Apostle Mark E. Petersen (why is there always a middle initial?) coined the phrase the mainstream church is now trying to do away with.

The other element I find fascinating is that I can recall a letter being read from the pulpit in February of 2001 where we were all asked to refer to ourselves at “Latter-Day Saints,” and not “Mormons.” Overnight the “M” word disappeared from our Utah lexicon replaced by “LDS” at every turn. Then on March 6th of the same year while I was working for the church, I received a press release that said we were only to refer to the church by its full name or “The Church of Jesus Christ,” and “the church” on second and shorter references. Again, the word “Mormon” was only said in hushed tones between friendly co-workers, but in the outside world nothing changed and the world went on using "Mormon" as it always had- to describe any follower of Joseph Smith.

So those of you reading this from the plush carpeted top floors of 50 N. South Temple in Salt Lake City, please continue to do your best to distance us from the “renegade sects” festering on the Utah/Arizona border, Texas, Canada, Mexico, Colorado and a few Southern states, but just know the word “Mormon” is something you can’t reclaim after you’ve spent years telling us we should throw it away.

Clearing The Way For the Rest Of Us

If you haven’t already read it, the LDS church has written a letter to be read to wards in California on June 29th concerning an “anti-gay marriage” amendment. I’m just thinking the church may want to ask themselves how this letter got posted on http://www.wikileaks.org/ over a week before it was supposed to be read…

Anyway, it asks members to support the passing of a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as being between, “a man and a woman” by donating their, “means and time.” Now these times, they are a changin’ and I fully expect that in my lifetime, regardless of any church coalition's best efforts, I will witness marriage legalized in many forms- homosexual, polygamy, and polyandry. Personally, I hope gay marriage gets the green light because that means polyandry is just that much closer to being okay and a few more husbands is exactly what I need. First of all, I’m thinking four husbands is the right number for me- a smart one, a good looking one, a bad boy, and one that knows how to do hair. Can you imagine how rich we’d be if all of my husband’s had jobs? Plus, I’d be unbelievably powerful in the house because with women, there’s only so much sex to go around. The good news for them is that they could split up my “honey do” list and it would make sense to dedicate one bathroom in the house to always having the seat up. They’d never be lonely for someone to play video games with and the Elder’s Quorum would no longer have to come over to help move heavy furniture. Yes, I hope “those gays” as my mother-in-law says, get to be married because it clears the way for those of us with bigger marital ambitions. Maybe if I had four husbands, one of them would finally be able to take out the trash.