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Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Warmest Stories podcast. I'm your host Sean Dillin. It is December 19th, 2017.

We are very excited today to put together an epic All Star panel of really cool people.

And the topic that we're going to be discussing today is the LDS Church's response is so far to the petition asking that bishops and other LDS Church leaders cease to interview young LDS children and adolescents around issues of worthiness and purity and matters of sexuality.

So in response to the amazing initiative, the bishops and young started where we have close to a thousand signatures will be checking with Sam on that in just a second.

The LDS Church did finally issue a formal statement through KUTV News responding to Sam's initiative up until that point.

I should just note to warmest stories listeners if you haven't checked it out. We've interviewed about 12 different people chronicling their unfortunate experiences with warm and bishops and mission presidents and state presidents around matters of worthiness and sexuality.

If you haven't listened to those interviews, they're powerful and they're harrowing and I really suggest you go back and check those out when you have time.

But in response to Sam's movement, we've had the LDS Church give a response to KUTV News. We're going to discuss that.

And then recently the Deseret News on December 15th published in editorial giving their opinion about Mormon Bishop interviews saying that they're not invitations for abuse.

And so we want to discuss those responses. And so I've invited four, actually I invited five wonderful panelists, Brenda Roberts, who is an attorney from Atlanta had something come up in court and she wasn't able to join us.

And so I'm going to ask for other wonderful panelists before we launch into this interview, I just have a couple really super quick announcements.

We have announced the 2018 calendar for Mormon stories, retreats and workshops will be going to say George in February, Phoenix and March, Salt Lake City in June, Houston and July, Idaho Falls in August.

And so Hannah's cruise in October, these workshops and retreats have helped a lot of people and we hope that those of you who need support in your transition around raising kids, healthy marriages, health, the relationships, communicating with believing family and friends, mental health, you know, just support in your religious transition dealing with your words and bishops, et cetera.

And so we'll check out these events because they're created to help you. They don't really act as profit centers for the open stories foundation because the costs pretty much just cover the revenue just covers the expense of these events.

But we do them because they help people. So please do check out these events, you can go to Mormon Stories.org slash events for more details. We also want to thank everyone who has donated to the open stories foundation over the past year.

It's been really nice to see people care. If any of you want to continue supporting the open stories foundation or any of the podcasts, now's a great time to show your end of your support.

You can and you can go to the open stories foundation.org or Mormon stories.org or any of our podcasts to give those end of your contributions that keep us going.

Okay, without any further ado, I'm going to introduce our wonderful panelists. And I think I want to begin by inviting Sam Young back to Mormon stories for the third time.

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