The Security Apparatus Is Unbelievably Stupid and Bigoted

The state of Utah is notorious for shirking its ethical responsibility to provide a social safety net, instead directing people who should be eligible for assistance to the bigoted LDS church.  As ProPublica's Eli Hagar explained to NPR, people are forced to affirm that a thoroughly racist text that defames indigenous Americans as wicked and cursed is divine truth or face being homeless or going hungry.  He even explains the role of "bishop roulette" in this unprofessional and thoroughly patriarchal system.

HAGER: So in my ProPublica story, I highlighted the story of Danielle Bellamy. She's somebody who is not Mormon herself. And she's going through some serious health problems that have left her in the hospital for weeks at a time, and she's worried about being able to still afford her rent where she and her two daughters live. She tried applying for cash assistance from the state, but they denied her. And she was explicitly instructed by state caseworkers, she says, to go to the church instead. And she went to her local bishop for help. And that's when she was asked to read out loud from the Book of Mormon, watch Mormon videos and set a date to get baptized all in order to get help that she desperately needed to avoid becoming homeless.

KELLY: And, again, she's being asked to do all this. She's not Mormon, you said. Did she get any help?

HAGER: She did get some help from the church, but in her most recent attempt to get help, she was denied because she refused to get baptized as part of a faith that she is not part of.

KELLY: One big issue this raises is that, unlike the government, churches are often allowed to discriminate based on religion. Did your reporting indicate that that is happening in Utah?

HAGER: Correct. They are allowed to constitutionally. To be clear, the LDS church provides a tremendous amount of help to poor people and homeless people across Utah, across the country and really across the world. But there's a term in Utah called bishop roulette, which essentially means depending on the bishop where you happen to live, he might - it's always a man. He might be very generous with aid. Many are. But others might discriminate against, say, single mothers, you know, for having had sex out of wedlock or against LGBTQ people or simply against non-members of the church.