Must one be mormon to be happy in SLC?

[MrAnderson]

Originally Posted by Steve Poulos

By the way, Mom was Mormon (non practicing) Dad was Greek orthodox, first wife catholic, second wife Babptist and I'm confused.

I can see why!

[Belgian]

We were pretty concerned about moving to such a religious state but we've lived here for about 7-8 months now and we love it! Like many people said before, people are very nice here and no one has pushed their belief on us yet. I know most of our immediate neighbors are LDS and they might/will ask you if you're LDS when you meet them for the first time but even after we told them we're not they have been extremely nice and helpful. We have an LDS bishop right across the street and we asked if one of his (many) daughters could watch our animals when we went on a trip this summer and that was no problem whatsoever.

There are also a lot of non-LDS in the community and it's easy to bond with them because you already have the non-LDS in common.

The thing that bothers me the most is the church sticking its nose into politics. Separation of church and state is virtually non-existent here and it bothers me greatly that they get to NOT pay taxes while they seemingly have a veto vote on any decisions the state legislature makes.

[Katzpur]

Originally Posted by Belgian

We were pretty concerned about moving to such a religious state but we've lived here for about 7-8 months now and we love it! Like many people said before, people are very nice here and no one has pushed their belief on us yet. I know most of our immediate neighbors are LDS and they might/will ask you if you're LDS when you meet them for the first time but even after we told them we're not they have been extremely nice and helpful. We have an LDS bishop right across the street and we asked if one of his (many) daughters could watch our animals when we went on a trip this summer and that was no problem whatsoever.

There are also a lot of non-LDS in the community and it's easy to bond with them because you already have the non-LDS in common.

I'm glad your experience so far has been a positive one!

The thing that bothers me the most is the church sticking its nose into politics. Separation of church and state is virtually non-existent here and it bothers me greatly that they get to NOT pay taxes while they seemingly have a veto vote on any decisions the state legislature makes.

Actually, the "Church" itself has no veto vote or any such thing. It's just that such a high percentage of the legislature is LDS and they tend to vote very conservatively. The Church never endorses a specific candidate or even a specific party, but it does (unfortunately, in my opinion) get involved in political issues that it perceives as having revelance to the moral fabric of society (such as same-sex marriage). As a Mormon, I really do wish the Church would not get involved in such matters. I'd go so far as to say that I am very much opposed to its involvement. But I do think it's important for people to understand that there is literally no such thing as the Church being actually able to veto a bill the legislature passed or putting into law something the legislature voted down.