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A SMALL TENT: Lawmaker Says No Room for Demos in LDS
BY GREG BURTON
reprinted from THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, Friday, October 27, 2000

                   In a small-town newspaper that devotes scads of room to the Snow Princess Pageant,
               a Republican lawmaker accepted with relish an
               election-year opportunity to assail Mormon Democrats.
                   "The issue is whether faithful members can in good conscience support the official tenets
               and substantiated agenda of the [Democratic] party,"
               Bill Wright, a Utah House member and Mormon running for the Senate, wrote in
               a recent column in The Payson Chronicle. "The answer, of course, is NO."
                   "The Republican platform itself is as sound and representative in Utah
               as an LDS family home evening manual."
                   Wright's religious rhetoric drew sharp criticism from some Mormon
               residents in Utah County, many of whom complained that Wright's political
               vision didn't square with the Mormon church's efforts to bridge the divide
               between Democratic and Republican members.
                   In 1998, Elder Marlin K. Jensen, a member of the First Quorum of the
               Seventy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, discounted the
               idea that it is impossible to be a good Mormon and a Democrat. More
               recently, church President Gordon B. Hinckley told the National Press Club
               that "good Mormons can be Democrats."
                   In response, Wright wrote in a June column: "While the LDS Church
               officially allows its members to support the Democratic Party and carry a
               [LDS] Temple recommend, that alone does not suggest Church endorsement of
               Democratic ideals. Quite the contrary."
                   In later columns, Wright linked Utah Democrats to socialism. He called
               Democrats everywhere pro-homosexual and suggested Mormon Democrats who don't
               have the courage to change parties are in league with the "moral evil" of
               abortion.
                   Wright's opinions were one half of a point-counterpoint feature that the
               Chronicle sponsors. He told The Salt Lake Tribune this week that his
               doctrinal remarks were in response to Democrats who were writing Chronicle
               columns heralding Jensen and Hinckley's comments.
                   "They were telling everybody they should be Democrats -- they were the
               ones touting the Church," Wright said. "I probably should have responded
               directly to what they said, instead of adding what I did."
                   Chronicle publisher Michael Olson said the feature allows party
               loyalists on both sides of the aisle to ruminate on utility deregulation,
               education policies and politics in general.
                   When the missives began to resemble sermons, Wright stopped penning the
               column, but community criticism continues.
                   "This has been really offensive to a lot of people," said Jed Mitchell,
               a Mormon and former Republican who switched parties to run as a Democrat
               against Wright for the state Senate seat covering southern Utah County.
                   "I am not left-wing," said Mitchell, vice president of the Bank of
               American Fork.
                   Chronicle readers also chimed in. "Apparently the prophet's [Hinckley's]
               word on this issue was not good enough for Bill Wright, who took himself as
               some higher authority," wrote Eric Peterson in the Oct. 18 issue.
                   Peterson also pointed out that Wright has accepted political donations
               from beer wholesalers and tobacco companies even though smoking and drinking
               are contrary to LDS Church health codes.
                   Olson, who edits and owns the paper and works full-time as an English
               teacher at Spanish Fork High School, welcomed the discourse.
                   "Sometimes it may be good to let people see what [public officials] have
               to say and judge for themselves."

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