Rep. Mary Bentley’s bill to teach creationism in school and her anti-LGBTQ bigotry.
The article details passage on consecutive days of the bill to prohibit transition medical services for minors and her creationism bill.
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Passing these two bills might be simply coincidence, but the genesis of the creationism bill is telling. Rep. Mary Bentley preached a creationist sermon on the House floor (see below) urging her colleagues to pass the anti-trans youth bill on March 10. The very next day, March 11, she sponsored and proposed her new bill to put creationism in public schools. The former seems to have sparked the latter. A day later, March 12, Bentley recounted and posted her anti-trans creationism speech in a Facebook post.
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For the second part of our Mark Hofmann coverage, we take a closer look at one aspect of Hofmann’s strange story: his dealings with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
When Hofmann “found” what became known as the Salamander Letter in 1984, it sent shockwaves through the LDS church. The letter, which was supposedly written by early church figure Martin Harris, talked of church founder Joseph Smith, Jr. getting the golden plates from a white, talking salamander. As researcher and critic of Mormon history Sandra Tanner said in the Netflix docuseries
Murder Among the Mormons, “Instead of God and angels, it was now it’s salamanders and magic.” We’ll look at how this letter and Hofmann’s many other forged Mormon documents affected the LDS church and community this Friday at noon.