Peggy Brown, Dale Brown, and the Cody Wyoming Temple

My remarks at the 2023 FAIR LDS conference (“Understanding History Backwards”) are now available via YouTube.

I am so surprised that Yevgeny Prigozhin appears to have died in the catastrophic crash of a private jet.  (One of its wings apparently fell off in mid-flight, at about 26,000 feet.)  Could anybody possibly have seen this coming?  (Out of the clear blue sky, as it were.)  But I’m reassured by the fact that a Russian government investigative committee has been tasked with determining the cause of the crash.

And my confidence in Vladimir Putin as a defender of Christian civilization and its values — a faith that I still see occasionally expressed online — remains strong and unshaken.

And, speaking of Christian leaders, one Peggy Brown has been posting helpful commentary over on the Facebook page for the “Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods” group in opposition to the building of the Cody Wyoming Temple — and, for that matter, against the building of temples in general.

Mrs. Brown has marshaled a number of cogent arguments against the temple that Cody’s Planning and Zoning Commission will, no doubt, find very useful in its consideration of the matter.  Did you know, for example, that Latter-day Saints regard Jesus as the brother of Lucifer and that we worship Satan?  I’ll bet you didn’t!  And were you aware of the Mountain Meadows Massacre?  (“John D. Lee took a bullet for Brigham Young.”  See my recent Meridian Magazine article “Searching Out the Truth about the Mountain Meadows Massacre.”)  Such actions are apparently typical of the Mormon “cult,” which is really a corporation masquerading as a church.  Others have joined in to complain about how the Latter-day Saint temples in Pocatello and Idaho Falls and Twin Falls — the latter with its “phallic” spire (spires being an architectural feature apparently unknown in prior religious architecture) — dominate their towns and blot out the wondrous natural beauty that was once so visible in those unfortunate areas, which are now blighted by the visible presence of Mormons.

Some have demanded that the question of whether Latter-day Saints should be allowed to build a temple on a plot of land that the Church owns (because it was donated to the Church) should be put up for public vote even if it meets zoning rules.  That’s certainly a novel approach to private property rights.  I wonder if they intend to make their demand apply across the board, for all buildings (including all homes) or only in the case of a proposed Latter-day Saint temple.

The proprietors of the “Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods” group, who have apparently blocked me from posting on it, wisely want to frame the dispute there as being entirely about the height of the temple spire (on which compromise is, I think, certainly possible), the brightness of its lighting (on which a compromise has already been offered), its vast size (which, at under 10,000 square feet, may well be smaller than some of the homes that will surround it and which will make it perhaps the second smallest temple that we’ve ever built), and its sheer location.

But a subset of the participants at “Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods” are disinclined to follow the preferences of the owners of the site when commenting there.  Some do think that it would be better sited elsewhere in Cody (perhaps in an area zoned for commercial and industrial activity), but some want it located somewhere amidst the sagebrush outside of the city, some think it should be built in another town altogether, where there is a higher percentage of Latter-day Saints, and some, quite candidly, oppose its being built at all, anywhere.

One commenter on the “Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods” site has repeatedly proposed that, since Latter-day Saints favor and support pedophilia, a matching shrine to Jeffrey Epstein should be built adjacent to it.  On this matter, though, Jennifer Roach’s presentation earlier this month at the 2023 FAIR LDS conference, “Shedding Light on the Complexities: Understanding Abuse within the LDS Church,” is an absolutely necessary foundation for any informed discussion on the topic.  And I’m not exaggerating even slightly.  It’s scheduled to go up publicly on YouTube publicly next Wednesday, but, in the meanwhile, it can be watched now in the FAIR LDS bookstore after free registration.  Moreover, a good source of material on the subject of “Abuse and the Church,” largely put together by Sister Roach, is already available on the FAIR website.)

I was just a tad curious about Peggy Brown and her husband, Dale Brown, and I was not surprised to find that they are visible online well beyond the “Preserve Our Cody Neighborhoods” Facebook page.  Here are a few examples that should give readers an idea of their approach and their attitudes.  I spent only a few quick minutes looking for them; I expect that considerably more material is available:

• “Moses Lake Temple Media Fun: Dale and Peggy Brown visit the new Mormon temple in Moses Lake, Washington.”
• “LDS (Mormon)Temple Outreach – Ministry Videos”
• “School bus driver causing controversy by using pickup to deliver religious messages”
• “Peggy and Dale Brown plan legal action against Prosser SD”
• “apologiamixer”  (Feel free to look around this one.  It’s instructive.)
• “Mormania”
• “Islam, Mohammed & the Quran”

I’ve posted on four prior occasions here about the controversy that has been swirling around the proposed Cody Wyoming Temple.  (See, in chronological order, “A small tempest about a small temple in Cody,” “In the world after the Fall,” “Once More, on the Conflict in Cody.” and “An Update on the Continuing Crisis in Cody, Wyoming.”

A pro-temple and pro-Latter-day Saint Facebook page focused on the Cody Wyoming Temple is available here.

Posted from Newport Beach, California