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Winston Wilkinson (born 1944) is a Republican politician. He served as head of the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Michael Leavitt. He is an African American and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).
Wilkinson was raised in Cedar Heights, Maryland, an African-American community. He joined the United States Navy after graduating from high school. He later attended Morgan State University, where he met and married his wife, Gloria. He then went to Howard University Law School. Wilkinson was raised as a Methodist. [1] He later became a Muslim. In the early 1970s he became involved with Republican activities in Maryland. He was introduced to the LDS Church by V. Dallas Merrell, who would later be a member of the Second Quorum of the Seventy, at a Republican meeting in 1981. Wilkinson and his wife joined the LDS Church in 1981. [2]
During the 1980s Wilkinson served as special assistant to Secretary of Education Terrel Bell and then as deputy secretary in the Office of Civil Rights in the George H. W. Bush administration. He ran a cleaning company in the mid-1990s and then moved to Utah where he worked in the human resource department of the LDS Church. He was later elected to the Salt Lake County Council where he served for one term. In 2002 he made an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican nomination for the Utah Second congressional district.
He later led the HHS Office of Civil Rights during the George W. Bush administration. During his tenure, the office was criticized for lax enforcement of new patient privacy laws. Under his direction the office launched a website to disseminate information about the privacy law. [3]
After leaving the HHS position, Wilkinson ran again for the Salt Lake County Council. He was in a primary against Richard Snelgrove, who later won the seat. [4]
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, and Nevada to its west. In comparison to all the U.S. states and territories, Utah, with a population of just over three million, is the 13th largest by area, the 30th most populous, and the 11th least densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two regions: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which includes the state capital, Salt Lake City, and is home to roughly two-thirds of the population; and Washington County in the southwest, which has somewhat more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.
Dallin Harris Oaks is an American religious leader and former jurist and academic who since 2018 has been the first counselor in the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was called as a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1984. Currently, he is the second most senior apostle by years of service and is the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Michael Okerlund Leavitt is an American Republican Party politician who served as the 14th governor of Utah from 1993 to 2003, and in the George W. Bush administration as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 2003 to 2005 and as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) from 2005 to 2009.
Reed Smoot was an American politician, businessman, and apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A Republican who was first elected to the U.S. Senate by the Utah State Legislature in 1902, he served from 1903 to 1933. Smoot is primarily remembered as the co-sponsor of the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, which increased almost 900 American import duties. Criticized at the time as having "intensified nationalism all over the world" by Thomas Lamont of J.P. Morgan & Co., Smoot–Hawley is widely regarded as one of the catalysts for the worsening Great Depression.
Thomas Spencer Monson was an American religious leader, author, and the 16th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As president, he was considered by adherents of the religion to be a prophet, seer, and revelator. Monson's early career was as a manager at the Deseret News, a Utah newspaper owned by the LDS Church. He spent most of his life engaged in various church leadership positions and public service.
Robert Foster Bennett was an American politician and businessman who served as a United States Senator from Utah from 1993 to 2011. A member of the Republican Party, Bennett held chairmanships and senior positions on various key Senate committees, including the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee; Appropriations Committee; Rules and Administration Committee; Energy and Natural Resources Committee; and Joint Economic Committee.
During the history of the Latter Day Saint movement, the relationship between Black people and Mormonism has included enslavement, exclusion and inclusion, and official and unofficial discrimination. Black people have been involved with the Latter Day Saint movement since its inception in the 1830s. Their experiences have varied widely, depending on the denomination within Mormonism and the time of their involvement. From the mid-1800s to 1978, Mormonism's largest denomination – the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – barred Black women and men from participating in the ordinances of its temples necessary for the highest level of salvation, prevented most men of Black African descent from being ordained into the church's lay, all-male priesthood, supported racial segregation in its communities and schools, taught that righteous Black people would be made white after death, and opposed interracial marriage. The temple and priesthood racial restrictions were lifted by church leaders in 1978. In 2013, the church disavowed its previous teachings on race for the first time.
Ross Carl "Rocky" Anderson is an American attorney, writer, activist, and civil and human rights advocate. He served two terms as the 33rd Mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah from 2000 to 2008.
Jon Meade Huntsman Jr. is an American businessman, diplomat, and politician who served as the 16th governor of Utah from 2005 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the ambassador of the United States to Russia from 2017 to 2019, ambassador to China from 2009 to 2011, and ambassador to Singapore from 1992 to 1993.
The rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in the U.S. state of Utah have significantly evolved in the 21st century. Protective laws have become increasingly enacted since 2014, despite the state's reputation as socially conservative and highly religious. Utah's anti-sodomy law was invalidated in 2003 by Lawrence v. Texas, and fully repealed by the state legislature in 2019. Same-sex marriage has been legal since the state's ban was ruled unconstitutional by federal courts in 2014. In addition, statewide anti-discrimination laws now cover sexual orientation and gender identity in employment and housing, and the use of conversion therapy on minors is prohibited. In spite of this, there are still a few differences between the treatment of LGBTQ people and the rest of the population, and the rights of transgender youth are restricted.
Edwin Bennion "Ted" Cannon was an American attorney who served as a member of the Utah State Senate from 1951 until 1954 as a member of the Republican Party.
Charles Winston Dahlquist II is an American attorney and youth leader. He was the 20th Young Men General President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2004 to 2009, and was the 10th National Commissioner of the Boy Scouts of America from 2016 to 2018.
Marlin Keith Jensen is an American attorney who has been a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1989. He served as the official Church Historian and Recorder of the church from 2005 to 2012. He was the 19th man to hold that calling since it was established in 1830. Jensen was made an emeritus general authority in the October 2012 general conference.
The Church Educational System (CES) Honor Code is a set of standards by which students and faculty attending a school owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are required to live. The most widely known university that is part of the Church Educational System (CES) that has adopted the honor code is Brigham Young University (BYU), located in Provo, Utah. The standards are largely derived from codes of conduct of the LDS Church, and were not put into written form until the 1940s. Since then, they have undergone several changes. The CES Honor Code also applies for students attending BYU's sister schools Brigham Young University–Idaho, Brigham Young University–Hawaii, and LDS Business College.
Polygamy is the practice of having more than one spouse at the same time. Specifically, polygyny is the practice of one man taking more than one wife while polyandry is the practice of one woman taking more than one husband. Polygamy is a common marriage pattern in some parts of the world. In North America, polygamy has not been a culturally normative or legally recognized institution since the continent's colonization by Europeans.
Lance Bradley Wickman is an American lawyer and former religious leader who served as general counsel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from January 1996 until October 2023. Wickman has been an LDS Church general authority since 1994 and was given emeritus status in 2010.
Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, privately taught and practiced polygamy. After Smith's death in 1844, the church he established splintered into several competing groups. Disagreement over Smith's doctrine of "plural marriage" has been among the primary reasons for multiple church schisms.
Reed Amussen Benson was an American academic and professor of religion at Brigham Young University who was the national director of public relations for the John Birch Society. During his career, Benson was noted for his political conservatism and advocacy of homeschooling.
Vernon Bradford Romney was an American lawyer who served as the attorney general of Utah from 1969 to 1977, and the Republican candidate for Governor of Utah in 1976. He was a member of the Romney family and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been involved with many pieces of legislation relating to LGBT people and their rights. These include playing an important role in defeating same-sex marriage legalization in Hawaii, Alaska, Nebraska, Nevada, California, and Utah. The topic of same-sex marriage has been one of the church's foremost public concerns since 1993. Leaders have stated that it will become involved in political matters if it perceives that there is a moral issue at stake and wields considerable influence on a national level. Over a dozen members of the US congress had membership in the church in the early 2000s. About 80% of Utah state lawmakers identied as Mormon at that time as well. The church's political involvement around LGBT rights has long been a source of controversy both within and outside the church. It's also been a significant cause of disagreement and disaffection by members.
Black people and the Latter Day Saint movement | |
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