Senator Reid, you and I have a similar background. We both have done our dance with Mormonism. I was third generation and you are first. About the time you were getting involved in statewide and national politics beginning in Nevada, I was ending my struggle against my church by persuading them into abandoning Black priesthood denial.
While I am ten years older than you, having recently turned 80, I have spent roughly the past 30 years as a resident and voter of Nevada. Most of my earlier years were spent in Oregon and Washington State following a childhood in Ogden, Utah.
Like you I earned a Juris Doctor degree the hard way (Northwestern School of Law now Lewis and Clarke Law School class of ˜70) and while not having a dedicated purpose of using the degree as a tool to make money, like you I used it for a credential to make some changes in a world I saw imperfect.
In my case the first effort with my credential was to attack the Mormon Church leadership for its historically incorrect posture in denying equal rights to Black male members of the church. After two years they caved in ostensibly to bring the image of the church into focus with the civil rights issues of the sixties and seventies. However there was an attendant sinister motive which far surpassed the simple compliance with civil/religious rights. I have detailed that in my biography Under the Mormon tree.
I gave up two years of my life for that mission and while I had already fulfilled a two year mission for the church, the second mission was in direct obedience to the namesake of the church. My public reward was excommunication and social ostricization from all that I had held dear until that point. Yet I was right and the church was wrong. To this day they still maintain I did wrong and they did right, yet two years later when they did right I was still wrong in spite of their sudden reversal to rightness.
You have operated under the banner of the Democratic Party since you became a politician. You of course know that runs counter to the official position of the church. Yet you have survived these years and have recently been quoted as differing on the issue of Proposition 8, a Constitutional Amendment safe guarding traditional marriage and the political efforts of DOM (Defense of Marriage) largely supported and funded by the LDS Church. That is a boldness that has been picked up by the media. It is time to watch your back!
In Salt Lake City, for many years the Tanners, Jerold (Jerold recently passed) and Sandra have operated under the banner of the Salt Lake City Messenger in apparent opposition to the church. Many of us have wondered how they were able to openly operate when countless thousands of others have been destroyed for doing the same. It is likely that the church placed a value on them as loyal opposition in much the same way that they can persuade Democrats to act in a way to nullify opposition to the Mormon Centrist Republican position. Any discussion of political neutrality on the part of Church leaders is pure smoke as you must know.
An example of that was an incidence (one of many) of the Salt lake City Police Department operating as an adjunct agency of the Mormon Leaders. The history goes back into the 1850's territorial days when SLCPD hired madams from San Francisco to occupy a specially built whore house in Salt Lake City where cops could peek through bedroom walls so that Federal Officials "intruding upon Brigham's domain could be set up, arrested, convicted and returned disgraced to Washington D.C. If you are not aware of that, you have not learned the real history of the church.
A somewhat current case in point from internet records of a past political representative of Mormon Utah who failed to go along with the church leadership:
Allan Turner Howe (1927-2000) " of Utah. Born in Utah, 1927. Democrat. U.S. Representative from Utah 2nd District, 1975-77; defeated, 1976. Arrested in Salt Lake City, Utah, 1976, for soliciting a policewoman posing as a prostitute. Died December 14, 2000. Burial location unknown. See also: congressional biography.
Allan Howe, fell into a carefully crafted plot to discredit him and it succeeded! So disgraced was he that his grave site appears to be secret. But for the Grace of God, I too would have ended up disgraced by the efforts of the same SLCPD undercover female police decoy acting on behalf of the Mormon Church. More particularly Ezra Taft Benson, former Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower who not only used his position to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment for all Americans but also to destroy the life of Alan Turner Howe and the failed attempt on my person.
That experience (chapter thirty two) as are all of my experiences for the first fifty years of my life chronicled in Under the Mormon Tree available at Amazon.com and
https://www.createspace.com/Customer/EStore.do?id=3394801 .
But more to the point of this public communication:
You and I have not met yet we are in/from the same small state. For years after being forced out of the Mormon Church, I rebelled against the Republican Party and registered as an Independent but last year I changed registration to Democrat. I supported the notion of change in America. After nine months I am disappointed because the same old political crap goes on.
Not realizing it the party of Lincoln has rewritten a part of his Gettysburg address. The closing phrase has been re-written thus: "That this nation of the corporations, by the Corporations and for the Corporations shall not perish from the earth.
Benito Mussolini is responsible for defining a government controlled by corporations as a Fascist Government. The Nazis and Benito were bed partners. All that was produced by those regimes was crime and human rights abuses. As Corporations increase their grasp on members of the Congress we too are in early stages of the disease of fascism.
Standing juxtaposed to the notion of man created corporations being the supreme entity on earth is the Christian idea of elevating humankind above and beyond the profit motive and hence of more worth to the earth and society than any entity crafted by man to escape the moral charge given to society by Christ to "love one another
As I see it, you can not be a dedicated Democrat but rather a shill for the Republican Party either that or you are too weak to hold the position you have been elevated to under the Peter Principle. If is the latter you should step aside. If the former you do a disservice to all of America's little people who are raped of their faith in the party.
When a man or a woman accepts or is elevated to a position of leadership they automatically assume a recognizable mantle of office. The mantle descends upon them and is actually seen. It is not an air of self aggrandizement or pomp but rather an actual noticeable position of leadership, a "Mantle if you will.
From my perspective you have not been so elevated and I suggest that if you wish to continue that position beyond the next Senatorial election that you must immediately assume that Mantle of Office and begin to work for the nation with disregard to any special interests starting with the Mormon Church and it's corporate presence in the world as well as all other corporate lobbyists who merchandise the health and welfare of the citizens of not only the United States, but the world at large.
Be prepared to do battle against the real enemies of man. Guard yourself against unwarranted assault from the enemies of the people. Observe the discredit that came against BYU professor Dr. Steven Jones of 9-11 investigative fame when he attempted to pursue the prophecy of Joseph Smith, Jr. of being one of the elders of the church who would rise up to save the Constitution. Like it or not you too have been placed in that position and you need to think only in terms of others within the framework of the body of Christ If you follow this you cannot fail.
I am reminded of the quotation from Shakespeare, "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. This was placed in the middle of my Patriarchal Blessing given me by a Mormon Patriarch at age 16. I followed that direction and fell out with the misinformed men placed by man in perpetual leadership of the Mormon Church.
I urge you to spend the rest of your life in the same manner. Give back any emollients from any unearned source and follow your conscience straight to redemption.
That redemption will include your taking a positive position to ensure that a public health care option is made available to America's little people.
