Mormonish Podcast

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3 weeks ago | [YT] | 10

Mormonish Podcast

Exciting Announcement!

Set Sail on the Post-Mormon Celebration Cruise! Hosted by: Radio Free Mormon, Rebecca Bibliotheca, and Bill Reel!

(September 13-20 2026, to the Mexican Riviera, leaving out of LA.)

A joyful voyage honoring the courage it takes to question, deconstruct and begin again. Join fellow travelers for laughter, connection and renewal as we celebrate life beyond Mormonism and the freedom of charting your own course.

Link for more information:
kheskethtravel.com/post-mormon-celebration-cruise/

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 13

Mormonish Podcast

3 months ago | [YT] | 68

Mormonish Podcast

A few days left to get your tickets! (A tax deductible donation!)

Join The Mormon Newscast for a LIVE Show – August 4nd, 2025!

Hang out with RFM, Bill, & Rebecca in person for a Live Showing of the Mormon Newscast in Salt Lake City! Featuring warm-up comedy by Ganesh Sherian! Grab your spot by July 31st!

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4 months ago | [YT] | 36

Mormonish Podcast

📅 Join Us For The Mormon Newscast Live Show – August 4nd, 2025

RFM, Bill, & Rebecca are gathering in person for a Live Showing of the Mormon Newscast in Salt Lake City! Grab your spot before tickets run out:

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4 months ago | [YT] | 40

Mormonish Podcast

6 months ago | [YT] | 42

Mormonish Podcast

6 months ago | [YT] | 107

Mormonish Podcast

If anyone would like to read the transcript of Fairview Mayor Henry Lessner's speech at the Fairview Town Council meeting on Tuesday, April 29th as he casts his vote for the LDS temple, here it is!

Transcript of Fairview Mayor Henry Lessner’s Remarks During the Vote on the LDS Temple Application Which Passed 5 to 2 During the Town Council Meeting (April 29, 2025)

And what's been happening over the past 15 months, the LDS church is asking the town of Fairview for a variance in our town zoning ordinance to build a massive structure in a residential area of our town. That's key the way this has been approached by them is they've been telling us what to do the town's zoning ordinances that have been in place for decades and the LDS church was fully aware of these ordinances.

I’m especially upset about those who are [LDS] leaders in our community and surrounding communities. They knew what this was going to do to our community. I’m just, I don't know how I'm going to get over that. I am really angry at you people, just a couple of you. You knew what was going to happen.

The town has multiple religious buildings in place. All of them went through the same process that the temple is going through. One of those religious buildings is the LDS meeting house on the adjacent property where the temple is supposed to be located. I was on the council when the LDS meeting house was approved and the only concern had to do with lighting the meeting house. It has done a great job in complying with the town's dark skies ordinance and I thank you for that.

But my point in that is to what Ricardo said, this is not about the LDS church, this is about a really big building in an area where it's not supposed to be. The issue with the temple is that the initial version of it was grossly out of scale for the residential part of our town. The zoning in this part of town allows for a maximum building heights as we all know 35 ft. The proposed temple was going to be 65 ft. high 43,000 square feet with a spire one up to 174 ft.

And I took all the folks that came from Salt Lake City and other attorneys, press people and we stood at the stairs down here and looked up at this building and I said "This is what the problem is, what they were proposing is twice as big as this building, just the building." Inexcusable.

Since the original proposal, thank you we downsized the building, which we said was our main concern, so I appreciate that and they're about 30,000 square feet now. It's still a really big building but we're willing to accept that.

The issue is the tower still goes up to 120 ft. And just for completeness in all this, is the town offered to help LDS organization to find a location, a suitable location in the commercial side of our town. They were building in the residential we explained that. We took tours so people could see what the difference was. We would have helped them find a place on this side of town where they could have built as big a building as they wanted to up to nine stories.

This project got off to a really bad start in the introductory meetings and people need to take this home with

you, when you go back to Salt Lake City. The church threatened the town with a lawsuit if it didn't approve the LDS, what they wanted to build, they told our residents if they did not like the massive structure they could move and an LDS person would pay a premium for their property so that they could be closer to the temple. I mean, that is, talk about neighborly. That happened, we have recordings of it.

Along with this process the only interactions that the town has had with LDS, the LDS church, has been through their attorneys. They're very polite, they're very professional, but somebody in Salt Lake City decided upon this location and the design of the temple. Why does this church hide behind their attorneys. Why couldn't someone meet with me, or someone else to go through, we could have negotiated this in a better way and we might have got something much better for both of us.

It is mind boggling, I’ve been doing negotiations all my life I’ve never come up to a point where I can only talk to the attorneys. Attorneys can be in the room but we've never met with anybody. I want to know who decides these things and I know, yeah, it's God, but somebody, some group in Salt Lake City decides. It's not like you said.

So our or zoning ordinances, they've been in place since the 70s. Again I go back to people who knew what you were getting into when you came here. We have seven other churches beside the LDS meeting house here. All of them, again, went through this process. Nobody had any problems.

We've had dark sky ordinances for decades. Again, the folks who live here know this. So instead of complying, we are now threatened, intimidated; the council, the town, our residents, because you're the world's wealthiest religious organization. You've got unlimited resources against our little town and yeah, it's been posed as David and Goliath in the press and it couldn't be a better analogy than there is.

I’ve lived in Fairview for 35 years and we've, as several people have said over here on the green shirt side, we've been through different things like this on that property, by the way.

And one of the things I look back on my tenure as being an elected official, I wish we would have gone with some of those single story office buildings that were approved over there. It would have been a lot better.

Anyway, I've never seen anything bring our 11,000 people together like this like opposition to this tall building.

In the correspondence I see and I get all sorts of stuff from your people and I see your official stuff as well. People send it to me and you were aware the issues were neighborliness, you know we weren't being neighborly.

I would reverse that. You all have not been neighborly. You've come into our town, ask for a zoning variance that far exceeds anything that should have been built on that piece of property. Threaten to sue us if we don't agree and therefore here we are where we are tonight.

None of us up here like what's going on. We don't like the way it's being handled. I go back to when we started this conversation tonight. Why can't Yorba Linda be in Fairview? It still makes no sense to me other than you just don't want to, which is not a good thing.

So, I do a thing in church, and coincidentally, this was done on this past Sunday. Some of you know this.

“The church is not a building. The church is not a steeple. The church is not a resting place. The church is the people.”

So when we look at big buildings in places where they don't or shouldn't be, I ask you to think about that. It's the people.

The issue is zoning and I want to make this real important to everybody in the room. This is not about us versus LDS folks in the room. As you probably noticed, I know many of the LDS folks that are here tonight. They are good people. They're my friends. I’ve known some of them like Miss Manovich is still here. I've known them for decades at least anyway.

So we made very reasonable things that came through planning and zoning. I thought they were very reasonable. You know we were going to give you the same height as the meeting house had and you know, tonight we've also said we'd go up to 70 feet to be like Yorba Linda.

But the threat of the lawsuit, the financial loss to our town is potentially huge. And I think what Ken put, when I think that was really conservative. We're talking millions of dollars here. This could be and totally dominate what our staff does.

Anyway, needless to say I'm not happy with this, but I am voting for the 120 foot thing, so we passed that five to two so congratulations you guys can start your temple.

Now if you want to change your mind you know we're always willing to listen. I know that's probably not [Mayor gets interrupted by someone asking for a copy of the ordinance]

We're done here, okay. So anyway, so, that passes 5 to two and we're going to go on to other [business.]

7 months ago | [YT] | 142

Mormonish Podcast

Fairview, TX Town Council voted to APPROVE the church’s application with the following conditions:


-Lighting must meet city code and be off from 11 pm to 5 am
(lighting stops at 78 feet of the spire)



-Walls not to exceed 45 ft



-Height not to exceed 120 ft

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7 months ago | [YT] | 39

Mormonish Podcast

LDS missionaries wait in line to pay respects to global faith leader, Pope Francis!

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8 months ago | [YT] | 47