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SALT LAKE CITY—In what has become an annual event, protesters again gathered to express their disdain for Exmormonism by picketing the annual conference held at the Embassy Suites in downtown Salt Lake City. Organizers of the demonstration asked those who “stood for all that is moral, decent and appropriate” to please attend the protest. At least half a dozen people heeded the call.
“What people don’t realize is that they are serving coffee in there,” said Lehi Woodruff, 1st Counselor in the Sugar House 445th Ward Elders Quorum. “It’s disgusting, and it brings a blight on our city.”
Conference attendees were observed scurrying past the protesters in an effort to slip into the hotel unaccosted, but many were not able to avoid a confrontation.
 “It was awful,” said Carmen Dalling of Lake Oswego, Oregon. “When I tried to get through the door, a man thrust a woman’s thong at me and screamed that my underwear wasn’t doing me any good. It was ghastly. I don’t know why anyone even makes a thong in a size 38.”
Besides carrying both men’s boxers and women’s thongs on poles, protesters also handed out Books of Mormon and printed excerpts from “The Miracle of Forgiveness.”
“We don’t know if God would ever accept them back into the fold, but our duty is simply to warn them,” said Barbara Eyring-Smith, principal organizer of the event. “Frankly, it’s very hard for us to be here, because these people seem on the outside like normal folks, but we know the blackness that lurks just beneath the surface, and we pray that Heavenly Father will keep us safe. I mean, if any of them were to blow up, Lord only knows what might happen to those of us in harm’s way. I hate to even think about it.”
While some conference attendees seemed amused, others were deeply disturbed. Said Michael Nesbitt of Ogden, “When I tried to open the door, one of them screamed at me that ‘Christians aren’t real Mormons’, and when I told him I wasn’t a Christian, he hit me with his sign, and then ran across the street.” Nesbitt was taken to the hospital with a nasty paper cut on his arm, where he was treated and released. “I’m not sure I will come back next year,” he confessed.
Protest organizers insist that they did not encourage their marchers to engage in acts of violence, “but when the Spirit moves you in an act of righteous indignation, who are we to cast judgment?” said Eyring-Smith. She was not happy about the citations her group received for disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace.
Conference organizers are quick to acknowledge that protesters are free to express their constitutional rights of free speech, but they have asked that future demonstrators please refrain from throwing green Jello on conference attendees.
Eyring-Smith said her group hopes to have legislation passed within the year that defines a “conference” as between “members of the Mormon faith,” and prohibiting those no longer of the faith to gather in a conference. “It is our aim to protect the sanctity of conference,” said Eyring-Smith. “Utahn’s will have a Proposition of their own to vote on come next November,” she promised.
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