LDS

  Utah County has agreed to free up 128 beds for Salt Lake County inmates, a decision that state, Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County officials hope will help address issues of lawlessness in downtown Salt Lake's Rio Grande area. The ACLU of Utah warns Utah lawmakers that blocking their constituents on social media is a violation of constituents' First Amendment rights. And an LDS general authority is excommunicated from The Church. 

Although the dating app Tinder was initially met with concern from LDS officials, a growing number of Mormon couples have met through the app, prompting the creation of more dating apps tailored to the church’s young single adults.

Campus Pride is an educational organization for LGBT students and college campus groups. In the past, the organization released a "shame list" of 57 colleges. According to Campus Pride, the colleges all discriminate against LGBT youth through Title IX exemptions. This year’s list includes 102 religious colleges. Campus Pride claims all colleges discriminate against LGBT youth in policies, programs and practices.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a study in 2012 which explored the rise of the so called “nones.” These are those who, when they come across a question about their religious preferences on a survey, check the box labeled “none.” The results of the study are pretty staggering, indicating that one in five American adults fall into this category.

Along with the quizzes about which states you’ve visited and which Disney character is your spirit animal, another online survey has been spreading like wildfire across Facebook pages in Utah—the Mormon Gender Issues Survey.

Unlike other online quizzes, the gender issues survey has the backing of researchers from universities across the nation, who plan to publish the survey findings.

General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is scheduled to take place this weekend. Ordain Women announced Sept. 17 that, as with the two previous conferences, they will attempt to attend the male-only general priesthood session, but will use a different tactic to obtain entrance.

They plan to attend the broadcast of the Saturday session at local meeting houses instead of trying to get in to the live session in Salt Lake City.

How do men and women shape history? Do human values have a role in the writing of history? At a time when the so-called New Mormon history appears to be running its course, it may be time to rethink our approaches.  So says Ronald W. Walker, professional historian and BYU Professor of History, Emeritus.   Walker, who is giving the Twentieth Annual Arrington Mormon History Lecture at the Logan LDS Tabernacle at 7:00 p.m. tonight says that the Utah War, an event with an intriguing cast of characters including Mormon leader Brigham Young, is a good topic for testing these suppositions. The title of Walker’s talk is “Heroes and Hero Worship: Brigham Young and the Utah War.” He addresses such questions as: Did Mormons support the war? What were constitutional theories behind Mormon resistance to the Utah Expedition? And when and why should men and women fight a war? 

Two members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were recently notified that they potentially faced disciplinary councils which could result in excommunication from the church for apostasy. Kate Kelly is a human rights lawyer who founded Ordain Women, a group seeking access to the LDS church’s all-male priesthood. 

A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was among the first in the world to use online forums to discuss Mormon culture and doctrine has learned in recent days that he faces a disciplinary council for his ongoing discussions about doubts he and many of his supporters share about the faith.

John Dehlin is the founder of the popular blog and podcast Mormon Stories. He spoke with Utah Public Radio on Friday about being notified by church leaders that he faced a pending disciplinary action - the outcome of which could ultimately lead to his dismissal from the LDS faith and ostracize him from his community.

Listen to our full interview with Dehlin here:

Read the full transcript below:

A new study confirms what many Utahns speculate—there are a lot of married people in the state.

Find The Best, a website that researches and interprets data on various topics, used marriage statistics from the U.S. Census' American Community Survey to calculate a state-by-state proportion of wedded to non-wedded individuals. With 57 percent of its adult population hitched, Utah came out on top.

Are you interested in learning your genealogy and researching your family's history? Have you already traced your lineage back hundreds of years? Or are you just beginning? 

A group of neuroscientists at the University of Utah are attempting to discover how religious and spiritual experiences affect social lives and brain activity, beginning with the LDS community.

Researcher Jared Nielsen is working on the Religious Brain Project. He said this is one of the first efforts to study a religious population and how the brain processes their spiritual experiences.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has never taken a stance when it comes to the environment, until now. Earlier this week, the LDS Church launched a webpage on its Newsroom website called “Environmental Stewardship and Conservation.”

In 1913 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints became the first organization in the nation to establish boy scout troops. Tuesday night Utah’s largest religious denomination held a celebration honoring the partnership between the LDS Church and a service program that has touched the lives of millions of boys.

The LDS Church marked the centennial with a stage spectacular where members of the Boys Scouts of America repelled from the rafters of the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City. Rope courses and fire outlook stations were constructed to accommodate the cast.