General News

LDS Parents of Gays Challenge Church Pamphlets In a press conference scheduled to coincide with the LDS Church's General Conference, three LDS couples, including former LDS Bishop David Hardy and his wife, questioned the LDS Church's continuing use of four pamphlets that they said were hurtful to the parents of homosexuals and their children. All three couples have children that struggled with homosexuality, and the struggle led the Hardy's son to attempt suicide.

Group of Mormon Women Complain in Boston Globe A group of Mormon women have published a declaration on the status of women in the LDS Church in response to a recent interview of LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley in the Boston Globe. The document [Available on the web at: http://www.geocities.com/mormonfeminist/bostonglobe.html ], which appeared in the Globe on Saturday, October 7th, says that Mormon women are complaining and that they don't have a voice in LDS Church governance.

Local News

Two Men Plead Guilty in LDS Chapel Burglaries Two 19-year-old men plead guilty Friday to burglarizing 17 churches in Beaverton and Tigurd, Oregon last July. The Burglaries included six LDS Chapels burglarized July 8-10 as reported on Mormon News [See Beaverton, Oregon LDS Chapels Vandalized .

New Theater to Open at Washington DC Visitors Center The LDS Church's Washington DC Visitor's Center will debut its new theater on Saturday with a concert by the Southern Virginia College Chamber Choir. The theater, which has been under construction since its groundbreaking last Fall, will help the Visitors Center attract visitors year-round.

New York Stake Marches in NYC's Columbus Day Parade For the third year in a row members of the New York, New York Stake, along with missionaries serving in there, marched in New York City's Columbus Day Parade. This year the stake earned the 20th spot and appeared in the television coverage of the parade.

Sports

LDS Church Against Changing Alcohol Laws for Olympics The LDS Church released a statement yesterday urging lawmakers to keep Utah's stringent alcohol laws intact, in spite of the coming 2002 Olympic Games. The laws have been a source of contention for the Olympics, with the Salt Lake Organizing Committee seeking to work within the current laws and Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson asking the legislature to loosen the laws.

Gardner Returns to Hero's Welcome in Afton Olympic Gold Medalist Rulon Gardner returned to his home town yesterday to a hero's welcome and a parade. Gardner drove a tractor from his family's farm down main street, then walked through a crowd of children and eventually was carried by his former coaches and teammates along the rest of the parade route. Nearly 5,000 people from Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming, three times the town's population, lined the parade route to welcome Gardner home.

Politics

LDS Church Active in Two Anti-Gay-Marriage Efforts, Oregon Anti-Gay Ed Measure Ignored After more than 30 US states have passed measures designed to keep homosexuals from getting the right to marry, the LDS Church is actively working in two states, Nevada and Nebraska, to pass two additional measures on the November ballot. But a measure on Oregon's ballot that would control what is taught about homosexuality in publis schools hasn't attracted Church efforts.

Leader's Statement May Be New Threat To LDS in Russia Less than a week after the US State Department criticized attacks on religious minorities in Russia, Russia's Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo suggested that police and religious leaders should combine to oppose sects which "aim to undermine statehood in Russia." The remarks are the clearest statements to date suggesting that the dominant Russian Orthodox Church has a special relationship with the state and against court-imposed limitations on government controls over religions.

People

Mormon Explosives Chemist Melvin Cook Dies LDS inventor and scientist Melvin A. Cook died Thursday at LDS Hospital from complications from surgery at age 89. Cook was a former professor of metallurgy at the University of Utah who invented so-called "slurry explosives," a safe, waterproof explosive widely used in mining. Cook was the father of U.S. Representative (R-Utah) Merrill A. Cook.

An LDS Stake President on Judging
LDS Stake President Barry L. Griggs contributed a sermon to the Biloxi, Mississippi Sun Herald yesterday, teaching his community about the difficulty of judging others. In his essay, Griggs suggested that everyone judges others, in spite of the Bible's admonition to "Judge not, that ye be not judged," and suggests an attitude that can help.