One of my goals in life is to "Keep Utah Red." That should help “Keep America Red.”

 

Some political pundits predict that Utah will turn blue within 10 years. I hope to avoid that catastrophe.

 

After a little historical study I finally realized that the LDS Church headquarters is a major source of pressure towards the blue side of politics in Utah (and in the nation and in the world). That puts a huge personal policy gap between church leaders and many church members, although the church leaders are careful to never make that contrast clear, and most church members seem unaware of it. What I really want to do is to make it clear to those people who are anxious about maintaining their political freedom, especially Trump supporters, that perhaps the biggest political influence pushing us leftward in Utah is the Church HQ itself. It is not a smear to tell the truth about someone or something. Once people come to understand that probably the biggest impediment to keeping Utah red is the church itself, then people can free themselves of any political misapprehensions and act accordingly. If church leaders make bad management policy choices, that doesn't mean that the members need to make the same mistakes.

 

In the beginning, church leaders such as Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were anxiously engaged in maintaining the political freedom of the church members, just like Captain Moroni in the Book of Mormon. (Remember that it was mostly the early Protestant churches that drove the American Revolution).  But 200 years after the founding of the church, everything is backwards on that issue. Now the church has apparently concluded that it cannot do anything to support freedom anywhere in the world, certainly not in the United States, or it will not be as welcome as it would like to be in the other 200 countries of the world. It seems to believe that it must be as politically bland as possible, everywhere in the world. But that lack of social involvement by the church allows America to falter on freedom issues, and, ultimately, if it falls into tyranny, the whole world will fall into tyranny.

 

This puts a huge personal policy wedge between the interests of the freedom-loving members and the world-popularity-seeking church leaders. Many of those like myself, who support freedom, and therefore support Donald J. Trump, must become political realists and recognize that offering absolute fealty and obedience to the LDS church headquarters teachings and examples on every issue, including political matters, means gradually losing our political freedom. I'm not sure exactly how that conflict will finally be resolved, but certainly, at this point, when we have a senile would-be dictator for a US president, apparently controlled by Marxist ideologues, who is seeking for absolute control at every level of society, we cannot be fooling ourselves about where the political influences come from that affect our lives so much.

 

LDS HQ is politically blue on all freedoms: guns, vaccines, abortion, immigration, healthcare, welfare, etc

 

Bumper sticker examples:

LDS HQ hurts freedom

LDS HQ is anti-freedom, anti-Trump

LDS HQ accepts abortion as OK, etc.

 

For a more full account of the doctrinal, ideological, and practical problems with today's LDS church, see Kent W. Huff, Is The Church As True As The Gospel? A Constitutional Approach, available on Amazon.com.