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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 landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north,Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.
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. First elected by the Utah State Legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1902, he served as a Republican senator from 1903 to 1933. From his time in the Senate, 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.
Larry J. Echo Hawk is an American attorney, legal scholar, and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, Echo Hawk served under U.S. President Barack Obama as the United States Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs from 2009 to 2012. He previously served as the Attorney General of Idaho from 1991 to 1995, the first Native American elected to the position, and spent two terms in the Idaho House of Representatives. In 2012, he was called as a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As of 2022, Echo Hawk is the last Democrat to have served as Attorney General of Idaho.
The Salt Lake Tribune is a newspaper published in the city of Salt Lake City, Utah. The Tribune is owned by The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc., a non-profit corporation. The newspaper's motto is "Utah's Independent Voice Since 1871."
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, and transgender (LGBT) 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. 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 LGBT people and the rest of the population, and the rights of transgender youth are restricted.
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.
Bruce Clark Hafen is an American attorney, academic and religious leader. He has been a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1996.
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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