Utah Makes Welfare So Hard to Get, Some Feel They Must Join the LDS Church to Get Aid
Utah’s safety net for the poor is so intertwined with the LDS Church that individual bishops often decide who receives assistance. Some deny help unless a person goes to services or gets baptized.
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Religious people try to do good
... And you took that personally.
Utah’s safety net for the poor is so intertwined with the LDS Church that individual bishops often decide who receives assistance. Some deny help unless a person goes to services or gets baptized.
Soinds like coercion
Bellamy, desperate for help, had tried applying for cash assistance from the state of Utah. But she’d been denied for not being low-income enough
So she tried a different avenue that was not the state.
That different avenue might be coercive and have strict demands on who can receive money and for what, but it's not tax payer money.
Utah doesn’t do more for those in need in part because a contingent of its lawmakers, the overwhelming majority of whom are Latter-day Saints themselves, assume the church is handling the poverty issue; they also are loath to raise taxes to do the state’s share, a review of Utah’s legislative history demonstrates.
"I made it so you can't get help from them, only from me, and now I'm helping you, contingent on you doing what I tell you to. Aren't I so nice and kind?"
This was not religious people trying to do good, this was religious people abusing legislative power to force people into their sphere of influence.
