In 2003, the president of the Summum church wrote to the mayor here with a proposal: the church wanted to erect a monument inscribed with the Seven Aphorisms in the city park, “similar in size and nature” to the one devoted to the Ten Commandments.

Summums believe Moses delivered the Seven Aphorisms around the same time he came out with the Ten Commandments. Here are the Seven Aphorisms:

* The Principle of Psychokinesis: Summum is mind, thought; the universe is a mental creation. * The Principle of Correspondence: As above, so below; as below, so above. * The Principle of Vibration: Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates. * The Principle of Opposition: Everything is dual; everything has an opposing point; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes bond; all truths are but partial truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled. * The Principle of Rhythm: Everything flows out and in; everything has its season; all things rise and fall; the pendulum swing expresses itself in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates. * The Principle of Cause and Effect: Every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is just a name for Law not recognized; there are many fields of causation, but nothing escapes the Law of Destiny. * The Principle of Gender: Everything has its masculine and feminine principles; Gender manifests on all levels

That's crazy talk, of course. How do I know? God told me so, via inscriptions on some golden plates that only I can translate. The town is arguing against the monument to Summumism thusly:

A town accepting a Sept. 11 memorial would also have to display a donated tribute to Al Qaeda, the briefs said. “Accepting a Statue of Liberty,” the city’s brief said, should not “compel a government to accept a Statue of Tyranny.”

Classy to connect the weird vibrational religion to terrorism. Speaking of Mormon classiness: Mormons keep posthumously baptizing victims of the Holocaust, even though they were supposed to have stopped doing that shit 13 years ago.

Equality Utah has called his bluff:

I take LDS Church leaders at their word that they are not anti-gay and that they sincerely understand that gay and transgender individuals and their families are in need of certain legal protections and basic benefits. I appreciate their statements that they do not oppose legal protections for gay people like those already enacted in California law that do not conflict with their genuinely held beliefs about marriage. This is our chance to come together and work to enact basic legal protections for gay Utahns. I am hopeful that the LDS Church will accept our invitation to heal our communities by bringing its considerable social and political influence to bear in support of laws that prevent discrimination and provide for the legitimate needs of all Utahns and their families.

More here.

Kyler Powell, 21, was raised as a non-denominational Christian in Boise, Idaho. But at the age of 16, after his parents divorced, he voluntarily converted to Mormonism and got baptized. “The Mormon Church’s stance on abstinence, dating, and the clothes you wear resonate with my personal morals,” says Powell.

But as a gay man, having lived in Seattle for three years, he’s protesting the actions of his own moral institution. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints led the charge to pass California's Proposition 8, which stripped nearly 20,000 same-sex couples of their marriage recognition last week. “I was kind of outraged with Prop 8, which inspired me to start a protest,” Powell says.

A rally will begin in Volunteer Park at noon on Saturday as part of a national day of action. Dave mentioned it here. (The national protest site, Jointheimpact.com, has been overwhelmed with traffic, Powell says, so another sister web site was launched to handle the overflow.) Marchers in Seattle will leave Volunteer Park at about 1 p.m. and hoof it down to Westlake Park for another rally. Powell is trying to recruit local elected officials, including state Rep. Jamie Pedersen and Congressman Jim McDermott, to speak at the event. (We're told that another event, previously scheduled at city hall, has been combined with this march and rally.)

Mormons turning on the LDS church for supporting Prop 8 isn’t just a local phenomenon. MormonsForMarriage.com makes the case for gays getting married, these Mormons say that Prop 8 is contrary to scripture,” and this high priest risks excommunication for opposing Prop 8.

But the church’s local leadership is in denial about its role in passing the measure—even after yesterday's protest outside a Mormon chapel in the University District.

“The Catholic Church was also involved in it, so I don't know how they can single out the LDS church,” says Thomas Olson, president of the Mormon’s Seattle North Stake.

However, national church leaders sent this memo to members of the church this summer, stating, “We ask that you do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman.” Members of the church contributed an estimated $22 million to the campaign, making up two-thirds of the money for the pro-Prop-8 campaign. Seattle-area donors contributed huge sums.

“I'm not sure what [the protest] accomplishes, based on they are targeting our places of worship based on a vote taken in the State of California,” says Olson. “We certainly don't condone bigotry or targeting gays or lesbians,” he says. “I guess people would say … that we have done that, but that is not out intent.”

When repeatedly pressed for an example of the harm that same-sex marriages would cause Mormons, Olson couldn’t name one. Instead, he cited the church’s own morality. “It gets back to this basic view about God's intent for his children,” he says. “I don't know I can give you any more clarity without sitting down and talking to you about this.” (I declined)

Powell’s commitment to the LDS, meanwhile, is waning. “After putting in so much time and effort [to the church], it is hard to accept them because they are saying that—for what I have been born with—they would excommunicate me, ” He says the church doesn’t know he’s gay (well, they might know now), so he hasn’t been excommunicated.

“I honestly am ready to write my resignation letter to the church,” Powell says.

A youth minister here was arrested yesterday by Rutherford County authorities who allege that he has committed several offenses involving some type of sexual exploitation of minors.

Daniel J. Lowhorn, 29, of W. Whitehall Road, Cookeville, a youth minister at Midway Baptist Church on Old Kentucky Road, is charged with 14 counts of sexual exploitation-related offenses, according to Rutherford County Sheriff's Detective Mickey McCullough.

More about Lowhorn from the Upper Cumberland Daily News:

Daniel Lowhorn, 29, is a Cookeville native well known for his musical and leadership skills and for his commitment to his faith.

In addition to his work as the part-time Youth Pastor for Midway Baptist Church, he has been instrumental in collaborating with other leaders to create Christian worship events for youth throughout the region. As owner of LTD “Learning to Walk” productions, Lowhorn provides clients with web design and video production services.

Friends and youth have reacted in disbelief. “It is not true. It cannot be. I just won’t believe that.” Said one friend of over 10 years.

Lowhorn is faced with two counts of solicitation of a minor, two counts of especially aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor and 10 counts of solicitation of a minor to observe sexual conduct, according to Detective Mickey McCullough.

Connecticut:

David Esarey, 30, of Newtown, the youth minister at Stepney Baptist Church in Monroe, was charged Wednesday with employing a minor in an obscene performance, third-degree child pornography, and risk of injury to a minor....

Police said the girl later told them she initially went to see Esarey for counseling about the meaning of God and that Esarey was trying to help her understand life. The girl and Esarey began talking about oral sex and sexual intercourse, although they didn't touch except for the occasional hug, police said. Later e-mail exchanges between the girl and the minister contained sexually explicit images, police said.

Esarey was confronted by police and admitted he had counseled the girl privately, but he denied e-mailing her any photos. He claimed there were a number of male teens interested in having sex with the 15-year-old, and told police they could have used the church computer and his cell phone to send her e-mails.

Strong opposition to the candidacy of Barack Obama in Arkansas may have helped conservatives pass a measure blocking the adoption of children by unmarried couples.

The measure, which voters overwhelmingly approved Tuesday and which prevents unmarried cohabitating couples from adopting or fostering children, won strong support from conservatives, exit polls found. The ban affects all unmarried couples but was written with the intent of preventing gay couples from raising children in Arkansas.

Unlike most states, Arkansas shifted to the right politically in this election. Senator John McCain won the state by 20 points compared with President Bush’s nine-point victory in 2004.

“I think white Arkansas Democrats felt cross-pressured in this race,” said Jay Barth, a political science professor at Hendrix College, in Conway, Ark. “They didn’t want to vote for what they viewed as Bush’s third term, but they also couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Barack Obama.

“One response was just to bow out of voting, and their absence probably helped this proposal succeed.”

Before the election polls showed Arkansas anti-gay adoption law failing—by nearly 12 points. Bill Clinton urged a "no" vote, as did the state's current governor, as did the state's major newspapers, and its adoption agencies. But evangelicals fired up the bigots in the pews and bigoted Democratic voters stayed home and the ban passed. Good work, bigots. Arkansas has about four thousand children in state care right now, kids who need foster parents and adoptive parents yesterday.

* I don't say this to place blame! African American and Latino voters only helped to pass Prop 8! But it's ultimately the gays who are to blame for Prop 8! It was something we did! Or didn't do! Either way, we're to blame for Prop 8! Totes our fault! And no one is talking about this except for that awful Dan Savage! Thank you for playing Slog!

Israeli police have had to restore order at one of Christianity's holiest sites after a mass brawl broke out between monks in Jerusalem's Old City.

Fighting erupted between Greek Orthodox and Armenian monks at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Christ's crucifixion.

Two monks from each side were detained as dozens of worshippers traded kicks and punches at the shrine, said police.

Trouble flared as Armenians prepared to mark the annual Feast of the Cross.

Shall we say it again? Yes, let's say it again:Gott ist tot:

...And we have killed Him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

"Most churchgoers waved while driving or walking by," writes Chris, who attended this morning's protest with his wife and daughter. "I hoped for more dialog with churchgoers, but most of them just walked by and said hello. We tried not to get in the way of normal church operations, staying on the sidewalk and not blocking church traffic. We chanted protest slogans ('2-4-6-8, Churches shouldn't legislate!' 'All families matter!'), and many people driving by were supportive and honked their horns.

"One female churchgoer thanked us profusely for what we were doing before walking in. The other I talked to was a young male concerned that we were making such a strong show of 'hate' against the church. He said that he was strongly against prop 8. I asked him what kind of internal dialogs were going on in the church about gay rights. He said that church officials preach that homosexuality is wrong. When pressed, he wouldn't comment about the contradiction between his beliefs and those of church officials."

Four out of every five dollars raised for the "Yes on Prop 8" campaign in California was raised by the Mormon church. The Mormon church is, as I said before on Slog, the villain in this piece.

Utah is the new Coors.

Utah's growing tourism industry and the star-studded Sundance Film Festival are being targeted for a boycott by bloggers, gay rights activists and others seeking to punish the Mormon church for its aggressive promotion of California's ban on gay marriage.

It could be a heavy price to pay. Tourism brings in $6 billion a year to Utah, with world-class skiing, the spectacular red rock country and the film festival founded by Robert Redford among the state's popular tourist draws.

"At a fundamental level, the Utah Mormons crossed the line on this one," said gay rights activist John Aravosis, an influential Washington, D.C-based blogger. "They just took marriage away from 20,000 couples and made their children bastards. You don't do that and get away with it."

Salt Lake City is the world headquarters for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints....

[Aravosis is] calling for skiers to choose any state but Utah and for Hollywood actors and directors to pull out of the Sundance Film Festival. Other bloggers and readers have responded to his call.

"There's a movement afoot and large donors are involved who are very interested in organizing a campaign, because I do not believe in frivolous boycotts," said Aravosis, who has helped organize boycotts against Dr. Laura's television show, Microsoft and Ford over gay rights issues. "The main focus is going to be going after the Utah brand. At this point, honestly, we're going to destroy the Utah brand. It is a hate state."

The Mormon church put up four out of every five dollars spent to ban same-sex marriage in California. More than 18,000 legally married couples in California were forcibly divorced on Tuesday thanks to the members of a church founded by a polygamist and a pedophile with more than a dozen wives. Since all Mormons-in-good-standing must tithe 10% of their earnings to their church, some part of any dollar you spend in a Mormon-owned business—and they're almost all Mormon-owned businesses in Utah—flows toward an anti-gay church that wages anti-gay political campaigns. Ski Colorado, Washington state, and British Columbia. Don't ski Utah.

Honest to God: My boyfriend and I were talking about taking a trip to Utah this winter to go snowboarding. We've heard great things about the resorts there, and our kid wants to go, and we've never been. But you know what? We've never been to Whistler either. Or Bear Mountain in California. Or to any of the resorts in Colorado. So fuck you, Utah—we're going to big, blue Colorado.

Oh, and the leaders of the Mormon church—which financed all the bigoted distortions of the "Yes on 8" campaign (gay people recruit children! they're going to teach gay sex in schools!)—are out there calling on people to treat each the with "civility, with respect and with love." Uh-huh.

Sorry, douchebags, but you can't throw a punch like that and scream "play nice!" or "you can't be mean to us—we're a church!" You wanna play politics with peoples' lives? Fine. But they game's on now and remember: you started it.

Utah is the new Coors. Pass it on.

Despite all the blood sweat and tears that the gay community has put in to defeating Prop 8, it looks like the cause of marriage equality in this country has been dealt another blow. Another defeat. Another example of the commingling of church and state and the "tyranny of the majority" that our founding fathers fought against. Blah, blah, blah.

I think there are many gay and lesbian citizens who, like me, are enraged by the campaign in support of prop 8. As you know a large chunk of the funding came from the Mormon Church. Instead of just bottling our rage, let's all get on planes and trains, and in automobiles, and go to Utah. The plan would be for gay and lesbians to visit Utah en masse to make the point that if religious folk are going to encroach on our lives, we will encroach on theirs.

I'm envisioning hoards of drag queens tastefully posing in front of statues of Joseph Smith. Chirping bottoms singing "We are Family" and dancing on that well manicured lawn in front of the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. Above all, I'm seeing gay couples everywhere HOLDING HANDS in front of the very people who financed this attack on us. I think we need people wearing pink triangles and leather daddies to get the point across, not preppy HRC pencil pushers.

Yes, yes. I know that not ALL Mormons were for Prop 8. And I know that not ALL the money for Prop 8 came from the Mormon Church. However, this excursion is not about protest or even changing minds. It's about preserving the collective mental health of the gay community through catharsis. I can't think of a better "FUCK YOU!!" than to litter Salt Lake City with santorum-laced condoms.

Your thoughts?

Stephen G.

It sounds like a hell of a lot more fun than Gay Days at Disneyland or gay cruise, SG, and if someone out there wants to organize "Gay Days in Salt Lake City" and get it off the ground, I'll help promote through the column and I'll attend.

The United Nations said Tuesday that a Somali stoned to death by Islamist militants after she had been accused of adultery was a 13-year-old girl who had been raped while visiting her grandmother.

In the first such public killing by the militants in about two years, she was placed in a hole and stoned to death on Oct. 28 in a rebel-held port city, Kismayu, in front of a crowd, after local leaders said she was guilty under Shariah, the legal code of Islam based on the Koran.

Have you in your travels witnessed any backlash against the Mormon church as a result of this campaign? I fully support anti-Mormon bigotry now. I know there are pro-gay Mormons, but they've gotta start speaking truth to power here. I wish there were a way to turn this into a public relations disaster for the Church of LDS. The waste of money alone is infuriating.

Considering that no black person could be a priest (and all baptized LDS men are priests) until June 6th 1978, that might encourage a more level-headed church to keep their heads in the sand about civil rights battles. Especially considering that it took the potential loss of their tax-exempt status for their God to offer the new "revelation."

There are some decent Mormons out there—I've heard from a few, via email, some of whom donated to the "No On Prop 8" campaign. (You can read a very moving letter from a pro-gay practicing Mormon here.) The most prominent? Steve Young.

The signs on the front lawn of former 49er quarterback Steve Young's Peninsula home say "No on Prop. 8," which normally wouldn't be much of a story in the Bay Area, a gay-friendly region which is the center of opposition to the effort to ban same-sex marriage in the state.

But Young isn't only a Hall of Fame quarterback. He's also the great-great-great grandson of Brigham Young, the second president of the Mormon church. The church has pushed hard and publicly for Prop. 8 and Mormons have pumped millions into the campaign.

Considering that the Mormon Church has excommunicated people out for publishing beefcake calendars, Young and his wife's opposition to Prop 8 is no trifling gesture. Still, the hateful "Yes On Prop 8" campaign—underwritten by the Mormon Church—makes we wanna kick in a few stained-glass windows. (Do Mormon Churches have stained-glass windows?) For sure the next Mormon "elder" who shows up on my porch is going to limp back to Utah with a few dozen new assholes.

A Green County man was sentenced Friday to 10 years in federal prison for using a computer to entice a Madison County girl to engage in sexual activity. Timothy Scott Richerson, 40, of Greensburg, admitted in July in U.S. District Court that he met the victim, a 14-year-old girl, on a MySpace page where he represented himself as a16-year-old male...

In September of 2007, Richerson—a former youth minister at Freedom Baptist Church in Campbellsville—traveled from his home to the victim’s residence, according to a press release from the U.S. District Attorney’s Office.

Richerson then picked up the victim and drove her to a nearby location where they kissed. Six days later, he again made the trip to Madison County. “They went on a motorcycle ride together and when they were alone together, the defendant digitally penetrated the 14-year-old female and she rubbed his penis,” the plea agreement states.

Gay journalist Rex Wockner deserves the Purple Heart for attending a large "Yes on Prop 8" rally held at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium this weekend. (Although it wasn't anywhere near as large as backers claimed.) You can read Wockner's thoughts and check out his photos at his blog. But here's the takeaway:

Lots of words came into my head during my hours there: Cultlike. Brainwashing. Frenzied. Frightening. Depressing. But, interestingly, there wasn't really any hate on display. They seemed to just want to "save" marriage. And, as for the homosexuals, they love us, they pray for us, they want us to be set free from sin and demons....

Instead of explaining what it is that gays are going to do that will harm marriage, they talk about schools indoctrinating children and about churches losing their freedom-of-religion rights. Neither of these fears is reality-based, according to the state superintendent of public instruction, constitutional-law experts, and, well, according to just about everyone except the folks pushing Prop 8, which, if voters pass it Nov. 4, will amend California's constitution to re-ban same-sex marriage, negating the California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage.

It's called "bearing false witness," and it's a sin—one of the biggies, right there in the Ten Commandments and everything. Unlike, you know, biblical condemnations of homosexuality.

Speaking of cultlike: What the hell is going on in this picture? Why is everyone on their knees, foreheads pressed to the ground? Did a bad case of Islam break out at the Christers' anti-gay rally or what?

More—including dead cats and his wife's wedding ring—over at Der Spiegel.