Everybody Wang Chung wrote:This is very interesting. I know Kay personally and can vouch that she is a GREAT litigator and has an outstanding reputation in the legal community here in Utah. I wonder why she has decided to pursue this class action?
The biggest hurdle by far for her, will be trying to get the class certified. It's very difficult to get a court to certify a class action. There are several steps that must be complied with before the court will even consider certifying a class action.
However, if she is able to get it certified as a class action, she would be free to advertise on the radio/tv/internet/print in an attempt to reach as many members of the proposed class action as possible.
Can you imagine if this gets certified and watching commercials on TV that state, "Have you ever been defrauded or harmed by the LDS Church? If so, you may have legal rights and could be entitled to money. Please contact the office of Kay Burningham."
This will be very interesting to see if this gets certified. I imagine several hundred thousand people would join the class action.
Class certification will not be the first hurdle, nor will it be the biggest one.
toon wrote:If by interesting, you mean frivolous, then I agree.
On what basis do you castigate this lawsuit as frivolous? Your testimony?
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov
To be quite honest, when I glanced at this article I did not realize Kay Burningham was the attorney doing this. I have since talked to her on the phone and confirmed some details about this. She didn't go to the press on this but since it is now public, it would be nice to give it some more publicity. The LDS Church is very powerful and influential in squashing certain things before they can get any traction.
From what I can tell the case is well constructed by focusing on the specific history of the LDS church that the church has misrepresented and not on beliefs or 'truth' claims. It is the history specific to Mormonism and not churches in general. I know I myself would never have joined the church if I knew the real way things happened historically speaking and not the extremely sugar-coated version told by the church in my youth.
Comments made by church-employed historians regarding the essays seem to provide evidence that the church did misrepresent their history for many, many years and only started to become somewhat more honest about the history when the real historical issues, and the associated challenges to believing in the LDS church, came available to the masses by former Mormons.
"The Church is authoritarian, tribal, provincial, and founded on a loosely biblical racist frontier sex cult."--Juggler Vain "The lds church is the Amway of religions. Even with all the soap they sell, they still manage to come away smelling dirty."--Some Schmo
Mormon Think wrote:To be quite honest, when I glanced at this article I did not realize Kay Burningham was the attorney doing this. I have since talked to her on the phone and confirmed some details about this. She didn't go to the press on this but since it is now public, it would be nice to give it some more publicity. The LDS Church is very powerful and influential in squashing certain things before they can get any traction.
From what I can tell the case is well constructed by focusing on the specific history of the LDS church that the church has misrepresented and not on beliefs or 'truth' claims. It is the history specific to Mormonism and not churches in general. I know I myself would never have joined the church if I knew the real way things happened historically speaking and not the extremely sugar-coated version told by the church in my youth.
Comments made by church-employed historians regarding the essays seem to provide evidence that the church did misrepresent their history for many, many years and only started to become somewhat more honest about the history when the real historical issues, and the associated challenges to believing in the LDS church, came available to the masses by former Mormons.
Bill
Yes, my husband specifically asked the missionaries who baptised him if polygamy started with Joseph Smith. They insisted that it started with Brigham Young. This was crucial to him at the time, in 1990 France with very little access to church history sources. To him, it made the difference, he was able to then consider polygamy, now abandoned, as a blip after the founding instead of as what it was, foundational.
