337: Utah Democratic Party Chair Jim Dabakis

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2012

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The grandson of Greek immigrants, Jim Dabakis moved to Utah when he was 17 to attend school at Brigham Young University. After college, Jim worked for 13 years as a Radio and TV talk-show host. He became known as the"Voice of Utah Democrats" as he defended the Party’s values against the continual onslaught of the Ronald Reagan-era Republicans. Jim also began his own company in the art dealership world, and has worked primarily with Russia for the past 20 years. During that time he also founded the Jim Dabakis Educational Foundation which has helped bright students from all over the world continue their education in the United States. He is also one of the original founders of both Equality Utah and The Utah Pride Center. Never one to stay uninvolved, before becoming Chair, he had been active in helping many of our Elected Democrats in this state achieve office. This is his Mormon story.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The 2011 Circling the Wagon's Conference was a production of Mormon Stories
0:04.9	podcast and the Open Stories Foundation. For additional Circling the Wagon's
0:09.6	audio and video and for additional content regarding LGBT issues within
0:14.4	Mormonism, please check out gaymormonstories.org. Also, please know that the
0:20.1	video for this conference is available at youtube.com slash Mormon Stories.
0:24.9	And thank you for listening.
0:38.9	Hello and welcome to this potluck post potluck interview. My name is John DeLynn with
0:45.6	Mormon Stories podcast. I'm very honored that you'd all be here today to talk and
0:49.8	to meet and to learn about Jim DeBockus. How many of you know who Jim DeBockus is?
0:54.1	Raise your hand. How do you have never heard of this guy? I'm wondering why we're
0:57.1	interviewing him. Okay. The truth is that most of our listening audience are
1:03.0	going to be like the latter of you. I had not heard of Jim DeBockus until a
1:06.8	few months ago in Carolyn Pearson emailed me and said you need to meet this
1:10.2	guy. I don't think he had yet ascended to the chairmanship of the Utah
1:16.2	Democratic Party at that time, but since he has, as I understand it, the first
1:20.7	open the LGBT chairman of the Utah Democratic Party or probably a very party in
1:25.6	Utah. I don't know how distinguished that is, but it seems really distinguished to
1:32.0	me. Also, some of you may know that in Salt Lake City they pass some very pro-
1:41.5	LGBT or anti-discriminatory legislation to support our LGBT citizens in
1:47.8	Salt Lake, and that couldn't have been done in Utah without the support of the
1:52.9	LDS Church. And there are a group of several men I've heard it described as the
1:57.1	Gang of Five. I don't know what that means or who the other four might be, but Jim
	...

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