Culture Wars and the Covenant: Should Latter-day Saints Stand Up or Stay Out?

Paul Mero discusses his book, Defeated, and talks of the need to leave Babylon and focus on our homes. Does this mean leaving the culture wars alone? Does fighting the culture war diminish our ability to build Zion? Where do you stand on this?

 Raw Transcript

threats and so in my book when I talk about uh recommending that our
church get out of the culture wars get out of politics I also say but you're you're in
the fight if it's an existential threat so if somebody's trying to take away our
religious freedom and I mean truly I mean at the core your individual
religious conscience the stuff that is pure not our ability to go to a building
and worship on Sunday but I mean but I mean all related things having to do
with our culture with church culture again thank Nephite Lamemonite
uh then there's a fight then then I'm all in then I come out of retirement and
that's where I'm usually focused honestly is actually in that church culture that's what concerns me okay
well but you also mentioned you also mentioned uh and I think it's conflated
that the again about culture like the the kids at church on
their phones mhm okay uh you know to me
that's a that's a parent who's going to discover real quick that that shouldn't
happen so is that getting involved with the culture war though if you're if you're beingcoming aware of the studies
the emotional distress especially with young girls that's happening and then saying "Hey I've got a at least I'm
aware and I can make a decision that this is a bad idea to give my 12-year-old a smartphone." Hey
um we grew up with no smartphones right and so when they were
introduced um uh as as as parents of budding teenage
six children yes uh we just said no phones now I didn't I didn't need it
takes everything I have to not swear you know so I again but you know um I didn't
need a study Mhm to tell me don't give a 10-year-old
a phone i just didn't need a study for that but I think some do right i think
they look around and you let's say you're ward and you've got the other parents are giving their kids phones and there's pressure for your kid to have a
phone because of that or if they're at school the pressure for you to give that i I think that if that's okay maybe
you've got you've got more common sense but I think a lot of people don't talking about I think right that's the
culture you're wanting to address is is what about the outward world that is
affecting my family yes that is my that is my concern right okay yes and so I've
tried to paint a picture that that uh reduces that
exposure and uh you can't reduce it all together hey look when my I told you
when my boys homeschooled boys went to play public high school basketball
um guess what they came home with a girlfriend it's like oh my gosh you just
killed your game by the way you know because that girl is going to take it over and uh so I'm what I'm saying is so
we deal with it right we just we just deal with it to me that's not the
culture war that's good parenting or bad parenting i think that I think there's
there's should be more of a focus on that than whatever the Supreme Court
rules on same-sex marriage or abortion or anything yeah okay uh now let you you
brought up the church a little bit where do you see things right now with the church you you've got another section in
the book that is the handshake between the church and Babylon i mean you've had I remember the ERRA fight i remember my
my mom was a school teacher and uh going against most of her fellow
teachers she wasn't out in front of the the school with the signs she was down on the freeway corner of the off-ramp
with the others with uh with with a lot of other Latter-day Saint women that
were also having signs fighting on the other side to kill it because they were told to by the president of our church
yes that said the ERRA is evil uh at the time um uh of ERRA I was in Virginia
virginia was the last state that that was the line in the sand for you know
you have to have so many states to be able to bring it all to a vote and
uh I I remember it's the first time I ever saw a prophet of God president
Kimell was at an area conference and out outside the gates of this big arena that
all Latter-day Saints in the DC area filled were uh these feminists
apostates some Latterday Saint most not sonia Johnson was one of them and uh and
I believe she's from your backyard but uh but you know there she what three
months later she was excommunicated okay so so in those
cases I I I'm saying church don't do that mhm that
that we're citizens we know how to vote and uh we know how to talk to a
legislator um but we don't we don't have to take time
away from our family to do all of that you know i mean to be a But you do
believe in voting on it well yeah because you're going to have to at some point you're going to vote on
transgender stuff you know i mean we're all going to be facing these things and we're all supposed to be good citizens
and I believe in that uh and so that's when you want to be informed because
there's going to be some stupid initiative that's on the ballot that's you know 80 pages long you have no idea
what's in it except some summary that another political guy wrote and you know
Yes so you need to be informed when that kind of thing happens but that's your
citizenship that's not culture that's just you that's you and your family and
your values and what you believe and I'm not trying to parse this i I really No
no i No i I think it is good to parse actually i I think it's you're So So looking at the go back to the RA again
you know that was something that would affect the law it would affect policy um
and could but doesn't demand a cultural change within your
home or within the church right it right it it's it's not
something that incurs there's not an incursion all the way into your home if you don't want it to be what it did is
give more opportunity and and it would cause a cultural shift quicker if if it
was passed culturally in the United States but again I think if you parse it out you say "Okay well that is the
culture let them do what they want to that degree." As long as there is not as you say an existential threat if the
ERRA included something that fought against religious freedoms or the way that you lived in your home Yeah or the
way you structured your marriage Yeah then Yes right that's an incursion an existential threat to very precious
things to us right is that is that fair to say do you agree with that yeah I do i I agree with that and I and I'd add to
it because back in 1978 when I joined the church
uh and when the ERRA was hair on fire Yeah out in Virginia
um homeschooling was illegal
we did not have an escape hatch now we broke the
law i fought that sally and I we fought that because it was it was a home issue
for you it was it was a family home issue it was it was strategic
disengagement we're saying here's all this crazy and by the
way we didn't do it because of the ERRA we did it because of just being trying to be good parents and the way we
thought at the time um but if we if we didn't
have if we didn't have a way out if we couldn't
disengage and our kids had to continue to go to public
school then they were going to face all sorts of evil if the ERRA had
passed you know the things that we're dealing with with men playing women's sports
that would have happened 50 years ago um if RRA would have passed and our
children would have been exposed to that so yeah I'm all in favor of of laws that
allow that I consider in that case existential uh meaning it's the threat of all
threats to my family if I can't say no to
Babylon then that is an existential moment in my life and I need to go do
something about that okay uh
so we come now you mentioned the chapter on the handshake between the church and
in Babylon mhm and and and the point of that chapter I think blends into what
we're talking about and the point of that chapter you know was to say
um the church is the church is in a partnership with
Babylon through taxexempt status there's only certain
things Babylon will let the church do if if the church wanted if for
instance if the church uh wanted to um uh champion individual religious
conscience that specific religious freedom
um the IRS and the rest of Babylon deep state
however you want to refer to it would not let the church do that they would
push back and say "You know what you're you're entering an arena of
politics because we don't allow that right now we don't allow individual
religious conscience right now it doesn't exist." Um and so if the church were to engage
that Babylon would say "You're entering the world of politics and now your tax
exempt status is threatened." What let me let me follow up on that a little bit what What do you
think about the tax exempt issue i I I think at some point it's like the universities with
with a funding yeah are we going to have to break with that
i I I don't I the the the tentacles of the government around the church because of the tax exempt status just seems to
me like it's going to be leveraged not by us by them yeah oh yeah
uh to to a point where we're not going to want to comply well it it is leverage
and you're right it's going to it's going to get to a point something's going to happen
uh something's going to happen and the church is going to have to make a
decision uh I'm recommending in my book that the church prepare for that day
right now and and get its business in order to live without taxexempt status
and then once they have their business in order go ahead and voluntarily pull
out there there's nothing the church can't do
um without taxexempt status you know that that it currently does i I mean you
know we still send missionaries out that's got nothing to do with taxexempt status um meeting in a building and
worshiping God has nothing to do with taxexempt status you know heaven forbid
I know for sure that that uh you know all the programs of the church have
nothing to do with tax exempt status uh so the church can still do everything
and I'm saying that that they are limited by tax exempt status and the
natural question would be all right you give me an example of how the church is limited
uh because of their tax exempt status well I just did and it's the biggest
thing I can think of and that is exercising your individual religious
right of conscience what do you mean Paul what I mean and and I'm going to
use probably the most third rail example in the church to explain it mhm the
Reynolds decision that outlawed plural marriage or polygamy as as Babylon would
call it uh in that decision the Supreme Court threw the baby out with the
bathwater so they they not only said you can't you can't do plural marriage but
more importantly you can't decide you don't have the right just to
decide your religion and what you can do and can't do they threw that out now
that's been ongoing over hundred and something years it's been an ongoing legal fight inside the Supreme Court
it's gone back and forth uh under strict scrutiny or uh what's the other term uh
general uh uh application something like that you know there are different
standards on how you're going to judge individual cases like the cake baker the the the florist or the web designer or
whatever and um uh so that debate still kind of goes back and forth but the
reality is is um you can't have more than one
wife i don't want more than one wife i don't want my church to tell me to do
that so I'm happy with what how that decision went back in 1860 whatever 70
whatever um but it impinges on my individual
religious conscience and and why I can say that is because when we broke the
law in Virginia and pulled our children out of school to homeschool them and
we're in legal fights with this with the Commonwealth of Virginia the attorney general is like on us
um that is a moment that to us was an existential moment for our
family and they said they said "Well if
you're if there's a religious exemption if you're like the Amish but there's not
a religious exemption for an individual who wakes up one day and says "Oh I want
to homeschool my kids." Uh so I had to argue we had to
argue that right that right of individual religious
conscience i argued we argued that
parents have the right to control the upbringing and education of their
children and as Latter-day Saints we
uh it's not a right but we have access to revelation and we argued there's our
revelation right there we don't want anybody else uh educating our children
and we feel by revelation that we're supposed to homeschool these kids and
the AG said "That's ridiculous you know who do you think you are what do you mean
revelation you know in other words like we're weird right we're we're not Babylon we we're outcasts we're
outsiders we're we're odd we're a peculiar people
um and uh the only way we won that was I worked for a congressman at the time and
uh he stepped in and and he said "Here put your response on my letter head." M
and I never heard from the AG again interesting interesting uh well you know the RFMA is
a lot like that right where it's it's you're looking at there there's no individual
protection with the RFMA right because the RFMA went out and said "Okay well if you're an institution
if you're an organization uh you're protected as as a church the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints is protected uh you do not have to have uh gay marriage in your temples
you don't have to allow at your institutions like BYU you don't have to allow same-sex affection on the campuses
um you can make your own choices on that but when it comes to an individual there are zero rights in the
RFMA whatsoever there's nothing so the church members themselves Exactly don't
get anything out of that exactly and I and I try to spend a couple chapters on that idea alone
that like um in 2015 to this day uh
Utons celebrate what was called the Utah compromise and that's when gay rights
were were given on employment and housing and the church led the fight in
favor of that yes yes and uh and so they they celebrate that yeah guess who
doesn't have a right to be exempted from that
law us the church as an institution got itself exempted from
that law but Paul Mero is not exempted from that law that's a real conflict for someone
who's a member of the church right because you're like "Okay I want my church to be protected i want them to
have this additional you know uh uh uh protection that is wrapped around the
institution because I don't want them to have to do these things but what about me yeah well first of all there was
never a threat to the church at all so when some of our church leaders argue
well we supported the respect for same-sex marriage act um because we
wanted to make sure we were protecting religious freedom as we are supporting
same-sex marriage do you think it's just an olive branch then uh no uh no no no
no i think it it was more than that i
I think it was a a huge blunder a huge mistake so in other words the church in
so in in endorsing same-sex marriage which our church did on the Respect for
Marriage Act and endorsing same-sex marriage the argument is well we're
going to do that if we have these religious freedoms protected like no
homosexuals getting married in the temple okay first of all that's not even a threat that's not a threat well not
today at least hey look if it ever is then it's all over right if the sanctity
of the temple is violated it's all over everything's over
you're at the end of the Book of Mormon at that point I believe i don't think it's like five
years away when something like that's going to happen i think it's it's whenever the crazy uh explodes then
stuff like that might be you know threatening it's an existential threat
mhm um so so the church we didn't gain
anything and and yes like the Utah compromise like
respect for marriage act the institutional church was quote unquote protected in
their religious freedoms so on the Utah compromise over employment and
housing that you're not going to see homosexuals you know with with badges on on Temple
Square working for the church knowingly openly you know wearing a pride pin or
whatever that's not going to happen but if I own a but if I own a forplex
apartment and uh and I want my
tenants to have certain values I'm not allowed to enforce that at all uh now
the world Babylon would say "Well why would you discriminate against somebody who's gay anyway?" You know well maybe I
would maybe I wouldn't i don't know i don't know maybe if it's a if if it's a
a gay couple you know white picket fence that that looks like all the rest of us
look and versus some some gay guy who
they now call themselves queer who comes in with pink hair and and earrings all
over the place and uh plants a flag outside his apartment door you know
flying it uh and my kids are walking around like who's that guy and what's that right you know uh then I probably
would say no on employment it's the same thing you know uh the church is enforced
under these laws the state law the compromise and then respect for marriage the church is enforced to hire
homosexuals but if I have a business say I have a bank I run a bank and uh and I
of a guy who's been there 15 years he's great great guy and one day he comes in
uh in a dress lipstick makeup and a wig and he's a front
teller i don't have any recourse whatsoever none none i mean maybe
somebody could argue that well you know you have a dress code or something like that but even today that's nonsense
right i mean that's how bad things have gotten but so if that person comes in dressed like that then as an individual
business owner I'm not protected when did you start to go down
this road because you were very much on the other end of the spectrum for most of your career right where you are very I mean you are
the dog in the fight that the other the congressman would put you out there as the dog in the fight right and you'd go
get it done uh that is that that's a big extreme
change for you right what at what point did you start to look at things differently yeah
I think 2014 um 2014 was a personal watershed
uh time for me and our family um I was after 14 years I was fired as
the head of Southerntherland Institute which at the time really was the most
influential conservative voice in Utah outside of whatever conservative voices
were left on Temple Square
um and I got fired from that uh but also
it was the moment in April and I wish I could remember the date but it was an
April date probably two weeks after general conference that President Oaks
then Elder Oaks gave a talk at um uh UVU
what does that stand for utah Valley University utah Valley University sorry and uh at UVU
um myself and a mutual friend of ours were invited specifically to come listen
to this talk where uh then Elder Oaks said uh no more
contention no more contending uh we're going to not just stop like President
Nelson is saying when he says no more contention he means stop contending
what then Elder Oaks said was a step beyond that we're not
only not contending we're going to accommodate gay rights and the
homosexual community that those two things combined I think
in 2014 is what got me to start thinking
um it's time I mean it's really over if if Don H
Oaks is saying accommodate the
gays I think it's over I think it's over Now you know I
still I still had to make a living and I didn't know anything else but I switched
I switched up my whole um um my whole uh
uh menu of what I worked on politically over to poverty issues where I knew I
could have an impact as a conservative on poverty issues and specifically intergenerational poverty and and I did
um and and so I think during those years after 2014 moving into
um probably 2018 that's when I that's when my
mindset switched it's it's the war is over and and and and you're right when
you say you know I was involved for such a long time you know i mean you might
call me uh Sally would call me a workaholic but you know that's the equivalent of being like a drug addict
right how do you stop how do you after 40 years of fighting a culture how how
do I stop that that's ingrained in me you know that's that's what I was famous
for infamous for when I would go to church that's what I was known for those kinds of social environments it was me
that was my world that's how I thought and um and it's not easy to
stop an addiction if you will and um and
I understand I understand why we're having this conversation i understand
what you're saying i understand why the church right now would never get rid of
taxexempt status i understand right now why the church would never
canonize the family proclamation you know I understand
um why uh why they stay involved in all sorts of things um
politically and by the way it's it's not as pronounced with President Nelson as
it was with prior uh presidents of the church but it's
still there especially in Utah you know the the lobbyists the church lobbyists
the home teachers all they have to do is go in and whisper in a legislator's ear
an LDS legislator's ear don't do that and that piece of But if the message is
do not contend why do they have that what's the point of having lobbyists for the church if they're not going to
contend because they want to protect things they think they're protecting things and um
it could be the perimeter around Temple Square uh when Rocky Anderson was mayor
of Salt Lake City uh he allowed he allowed a strip club right around the
corner from Temple Square you know it could be things like that mhm um those
aren't existential threats but it's certainly uh if you're working on Temple Square or
if you're one of the brethren in the short building the administration building and you look out and there's
hookers you know walking up and down the street yeah that would bug you and you'd want to do something about it
um so that that's why they do stuff uh liquor laws is another example medical
marijuana is another example but wait a minute i mean I mean I know people that were very involved with the medical
marijuana uh that was something that the church completely flipped on by the way but it it uh when did it flip and why
well they were against it until there was there was a certain group in Utah that came in and said "Hey we're going
to have we're going to go forward with this we're going to get the majority are you going to go along with us or not
essentially I think it was a little further down the road and they saw the writing on the wall and at that point in
that point uh you know the church is pretty wise about these kinds of things
you know for instance so they oppose it and then they end up kind of quietly
endorsing it you don't see a parade or anything you don't see what we saw with
the Utah compromise you know hugging and kissing and stuff um but you know it's
kind of like the tobacco companies you know the tobacco companies were faced with an existential threat you're either
you're either going to abide by government regulation or you're not
going to be in business anymore and what did they do they welcomed government regulation why because now their
business goes on forever it's the same thing with the church you know why in
fact you know why why feed a dead horse right if
medical marijuana becomes the state law um why would you say anything more about
it it is right it just is at that point uh because it's not an existential
threat to the church it could be a problem for us individuals but you know
it's not an existential threat yeah all right Paul well I appreciate your time
again on this i'm not yet to where you're at i still have to think all of this through i still feel like uh and
it's not like I'm someone that kind of goes out as the tip of the spear on on specific party or candidate or right you
know that's just not me i don't do that kind of thing i want to look at the effects of things the issues get down deep into the foundational truths on
these things and the social implications but I I just I don't know i should
say you know but you're on the show with with Greg i know but I should say I'm
not talking about Greg Madson giving up his podcast i'm not saying don't talk
about things i I mean what you talk about is interesting and it has impact
on individual lives i know it does um so I'm not talking about you know how
you make a living yeah you're you're talking about going out and living in Babylon or where you mentally
emotionally out there yeah i'm talking about the the wrong idea about Captain
Moroni that he was this hard charging warrior who would have preferred to kill
Lamemonites than go home and I'm saying that wasn't Moroni at all
moroni would rather go home than kill Lamemonites and that that along with Jesus Christ's
example itself you know uh don't fight these
wars don't fight these wars but mostly Greg because they're all over you know
there's not there's nothing left to salvage because the big ideas were lost
the big ideas were lost 2530 years ago in the United States of America yeah
okay all right Paul well appreciate that i would give another example is is Christ with the in the temple that was
an existential threat right when he's t tossing the tables and talking about the
den of thieves there's an existential threat to the temple there um I think he took that personally yeah yeah all right
the book defeated by Paul T merrill so you can go out and find that on Amazon
and other places uh Paul appreciate it again you're a good friend appreciate your words and and I always take
everything in and try and understand it and listen to your experience so I I know you do and I know that this will
sink in at some point and you'll go "Oh man that is right." Now you're going to see comments like "Oh my gosh there he
goes again he's he's so arrogant." You know but Well that's kind of beside the
point whether you are or not i know but you know I I don't want people to hate
me okay all right Paul well I like you so appreciate your time thank you