Guess who's going to the Twin Falls Temple open house?

Not Bart, the Man who Must Be Stopped. No, not by a long shot.

I took reader rrp's advice and adopted a nom de guerre for this operation. I also used an associated Mailinator address. (As an aside, this is the first I've come into contact with Mailinator. What a handy tool!)

So, I had to decide what name to use. Then I remembered: I already had a religious nom de guerre... more of a nom de religion. My popin' name: Urban Justice.


That's right. On 8/8/08, Urban Justice is going to bring his own brand of religious awesomeness to the Twin Falls, Idaho temple. He's takin' it to the streets of small-town Idaho.

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Temple conundrum

I have a Mormania!-related conundrum. It's about a temple.

For those that don't know, gentiles (non-Mormons) can't go inside LDS temples. They're too special. Hell, there's Mormons that can't go inside either. You have to pass an interview, get a special card, etc. They make it into a big deal.

However, there is a catch. Once a temple has finished being constructed, it has an "open house" lasting several weeks. Anyone can take a guided tour of the place at that point. Given my interest in all things Mormon, this would be something I'm very much interested in.

I just got notice that the new temple in Twin Falls, Idaho has scheduled its open house dates for July 11 - August 16. Yes, I get an e-mail when this sort of thing happens. Do me the courtesy of not acting surprised. Anyone can go, but you need tickets in advance. Fortunately the church has a handy little system set up where you can pick your time online and print out your tickets.

To be completely honest, it seems like getting to Twin Falls would be more trouble than it's worth. I'd have to fly to Boise, drive two mountainous hours to Twin Falls... a beating. There will be other opportunities in the next year or so for me to take a temple tour if I so desire. Two are currently under construction in the greater Salt Lake City area, and one is being built in Vancouver, BC. Both are places I'd like to go, while Idaho is not currently on my list. So I'm not seriously contemplating going to this.

As I mentioned, however, I have a bit of a conundrum. It seems like having a ticket to a temple open house would be a nice item for a Mormania! scrapbook. I can sign up online, print them out, and then go back later and cancel my reservation. However, this would involve giving them my contact information. Sure, it's just name and e-mail, but then I would be in the system, if you will.

It may surprise you, but so far I have managed to avoid alerting the church authorities of my name, town, e-mail address, etc. Even the e-mail that I get letting me know when open houses are taking place is from a 3rd party "enthusiast" site, not the LDS church. (It's a pretty interesting site, by the way - lots of info about history, architecture, etc.)

So, what to do? Do I acquire a bit of memorabilia, and place myself in jeopardy of being contacted at a future date by missionaries, etc.? You might argue that's going to happen eventually anyway. Or, do I wait until a tour comes up that I might consider going on?

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Pulling back the veil... a little

Reader Ram recently directed me to Wikileaks, the site where stuff gets leaked. I knew it was something special when I saw a story about the Wikimedia Foundation board censoring Wikinews. Now that's hard-hitting.

What Ram thought I would really be interested in is the posting of Book 1 of the Church Handbook of Instructions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Link to the story (with its own download link) is here.

This book is generally unavailable to church members without the need-to-know (tends to be reserved to bishops, stake presidents, and the like) and is definitely not available to gentiles at large. The Mormons are unleashing some lawyers on Wikileaks, claiming copyright infringement. Wikileaks' answer: you are talking to Wikileaks.

So, what's all the hubbub about? What's in this "secret" book? Let's pull back the veil (at least a little) on the legendary secrecy of the Mormon leadership!

Actually, I've hyped it up way too much. This is 198 pages of boring. Really, it's an administrative handbook. The page on Wikileaks that I linked to lists some interesting passages, but are you terribly surprised that Mormons wouldn't give temple recommends to post-op transsexuals? I'm more surprised that they will, in fact, agree to baptize them. That's more liberal than I thought the LDS church would be.

Here's another scandalous item: if a baby is born in a family where one parent is a member of the church and one isn't, the bishop will obtain verbal permission from both parents before the child is blessed. When the child turns 8, the bishop will visit with the parents to propose that the child be baptized.

Again, it seems to be more polite than anything. Compare that with Catholics - not that I know much, but from what I understand, when you have a Catholic and a non-Catholic who are having kids, the Catholics consider themselves to have dibs on the kids, no questions asked. You baptize it quick, no muss, no fuss.

Try this: 'Members who have mental disabilities... need not be baptized, regardless of their age. They are "saved in the celestial kingdom of heaven"'. Not to rag on the Catholics again, and at the risk of exposing my vast ignorance yet again, but based on the South Park episode where the kids were concerned that Timmy couldn't get into heaven because he couldn't understand Confession... well, I'll leave the comparison to you.

There are interesting bits here and there, but, again, mostly it's administrative stuff. What paperwork to fill out and when, what you should do in a given situation, etc.

Looks like Wikileaks also has some Scientology documents. Now that should be interesting.

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