Source: The Mormon Church Just Sued Its Loudest Critic
Channel: Alyssa Grenfell
Published: April 24, 2026 | Archived: April 25, 2026
Video: The Mormon Church Just Sued Its Loudest Critic
Channel: Alyssa Grenfell
Published: April 24, 2026
Duration: 1:09:44
Views: 87,728
Category: People & Blogs
Video ID: cvwrCtk-He4
Description
The Mormon Church is suing John Dehlin and Mormon Stories. Mormon Stories podcast has been around for over 20 years, but last Friday, the church announced they were moving forward with a lawsuit against John Dehlin and his podcast. In this interview, John explains why he believes the lawsuit is about much more than trademarks, including the church’s abandoned use of the word “Mormon,” its massive legal resources, and the chilling effect this could have on critics. John responds to the church’s public statement, shares what happened in mediation, and explains why he believes this case matters for anyone who cares about religious criticism, free speech, and transparency. Links to support John’s legal defense fund are below if you have the means to support!
*Support John Dehlin’s legal fund: https://www.mormonstories.org/legal/
The views expressed here are our own, based on our best recollection at the time of recording, and are not intended as definitive factual claims or as representing anyone else’s views. Mormon Stories is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This interview was recorded on Tuesday, April 21st, 2026 at 11 AM CDT.
~~~~~~~~ A few resources I mention in the video: *Watch my Patreon video about ExMormon AI influencers: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mormon-church-156448410?utm\_medium=clipboard\_copy&utm\_source=copyLink&utm\_campaign=postshare\_creator&utm\_content=join\_link *Support John Dehlin’s legal fund: https://www.mormonstories.org/legal/ *The Mormon church’s public statement about the lawsuit: https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/getting-it-right-clarifying-trademark-branding-concerns *Salt Lake Tribune coverage of the lawsuit: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2026/04/19/lds-church-sues-mormon-stories/ *Mormon Stories YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mormonstories *Mormon Stories on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mormon-stories-podcast/id312094772 *Mormon Stories Lawsuit Statements: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12yHbpdPp2MeOYiUnO4AgHwgv-9ea68mXa9pPei4HRGc/edit?tab=t.0 *My video on Joseph Smith burning down a newspaper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BJqFHEyW4s&t=268s
~~~~~~~~~~ Where to find me: *Patreon (ad free & bonus content): https://patreon.com/alyssadgrenfell?utm\_medium=unknown&utm\_source=join\_link&utm\_campaign=creatorshare\_creator&utm\_content=copyLink *Read my book, How to Leave the Mormon Church: https://amzn.to/4na4rpo *TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@alyssadgrenfell?lang=en *Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alyssadgrenfell/?hl=en *Email me: alyssadgrenfell@gmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~ Support my channel: *Patreon (ad free & bonus content): https://patreon.com/alyssadgrenfell?utm\_medium=unknown&utm\_source=join\_link&utm\_campaign=creatorshare\_creator&utm\_content=copyLink
Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)
0:00 I'm here today with John Dylan, who is the host of a podcast called Mormon Stories. And if you're not familiar with Mormon Stories, uh when I first left the church, I listened to hours and hours of this podcast. And it's been running for over 20 years, and it's helped hundreds of thousands of people. And the reason John is on this week is so that we can discuss the fact that this week the Mormon church announced that they were suing him. And we're going to get into everything surrounding the lawsuit, John's reaction to it in today's video.
0:29 So, John, thank you so much for joining on the channel. My pleasure, Alyssa. Uh, I'm a super fan and you do great work, so this is a real honor. I'm sure it's been a chaotic and a emotional week. And so, thanks for taking a second to come over here to to discuss what's been going on here at the beginning. Do you want to just give us some basic context for the lawsuit? So, like you said, I've been doing Mormon Stories podcast for 21 years.
0:54 Never once has the church ever expressed concern about the name uh you know usage of the of the word Mormon or how we use our images and our thumbnails or you know our branding or anything like that. Recently the church is in steep decline in the United States. For the first time in I think a long long time the the LDS church is actually shrinking in net membership you know versus growing slightly and there's a new prophet who I call lovingly uh the prophet sir and litigator Don H. jokes who once was a judge and an attorney himself. And I think the church is losing so many members, this is just my opinion, that it looks at people like you, Alyssa, and people like me as targets for um interventions because they don't know how else to stop the hemorrhaging. And so that this is all my opinion. I could be wrong. I don't know their motives for sure. What I do know for sure is that in November of last year, I received a letter uh from uh I think it's called
2:08 intellectual reserve. It's the church's intellectual property arm of the corporation of the president of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And they basically expressed concerns with some aspects of my podcast for the first time in 21 years. They didn't like that one of our logos was blue because they have used blue on some of their logos. They didn't like that one of our banners, I think, had a Christrista symbol in it, even though the Christrist itself is not a Mormon thing and Christ isn't a Mormon thing.
2:39 They didn't like that we used some light rays and some of our branding. They didn't like that we um used some of their copyrighted images uh for our thumbnails, even though we felt like we were using them under kind of fair use. Anyway, they expressed those concerns in an email and I was like, "Fine, I I don't care. Like, none of that's important to me really, you know, I'll just I'll just make the changes." So, I changed my blue logo to orange, you know, I I I erased out the Christristice. I erased out the rays in our banner. And, uh, the one or two instances of copyright violation that they flagged for me, I fixed. And I upload I uploaded the thumbnail with the new version of the photo. And I'm like, "Hey, are we good?" And they're like, "Nope, we need to go to mediation with attorneys." And I was like, "Wait a minute. I just did everything you asked." And they said, "Nope, we got to take this to attorneys."
3:35 And I should interject here quickly that if you go on the church's law law firm website, they have over 200 attorneys. So, this is not like some guy in the back room typing this up. This is like a a literal army of lawyers representing an organization estimated to be between 200 and 300 billion with a B dollars. So I be shaking in my boots personally. Yeah. Well, it's not even that the church has an army of lawyers, which it does. Twothirds of its first presidency, the so the top two of three leaders of the church are attorneys, and it's the it's the most frequent profession in the quorum of the twelve apostles. Even the chief historians of the church are actually attorneys for like the past three or four uh sequential church historians. So it is a church of lawyers. It is a church of litigation.
4:26 It feels like it's starting to become more the church of Scientology than the Mormon church that I grew up in. So anyway, I went through some mediation. We could talk about that. Their uh requests were, I believe, outrageous and unreasonable. We went ahead and made every change that we possibly could to accommodate them, but we weren't willing to make some of the more outrageous changes that they requested under the threat of a of a lawsuit already written up, you know, and so uh we the mediation ended. We declined to sign their threat letter.
5:03 And then last Friday at the end of day, we were notified that the church filed a lawsuit against us. And um yeah, it's a it's an organization worth between three and 500 billion dollars. And we have two employees in our nonprofit and a couple independent contractors. So it's yeah, it's it's uh it is kind of terrifying, but also little David Goliath vibes going on, too. I feel like I have so many questions. I know we've texted about this a little bit, but before I ask you my delusion of questions, uh, do you have a place where people can donate to your legal defense fund?
5:41 I do. Thank you. Um, yeah, the link is mormonstories.org/legal. We're a nonprofit, so the donations are all taxdeductible. We're transparent in our finances. If we end up generating more revenue than we end up spending on on legal fees and attorneys fees, I'm happy to refund the excess to donors. We just would love to get our um our legal expenses covered. The attorneys tell us that even if the attorneys work pro bono, this is going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend ourselves and it could range into the two or three million range for an average trademark and copyright case like this. So, um it it could get quite expensive.
6:26 Wow. Yeah. So, if you want to donate to John, if you want to uh support him in his legal efforts against the church, I will include the link below just so that it's super straightforward so you can find where to donate. But to jump back into everything that's been going on, I feel like for me, my first gut and emotional reaction to hearing all of this was that the church has tried to abandon using the word Mormon since 2018. Uh they've removed it from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They've taken down websites. The former prophet, President Nelson, referred to it as a major victory for Satan to use the term.
7:04 I've had people tell me that saying Mormon is a slur for Mormons. It's a a way that's like bigoted towards Mormon and Mormons. And so, the fact that now they are saying that you can't use the word Mormon while simultaneously rejecting it for themselves is the most striking irony of this entire thing. And so I'm just curious what your initial emotional reaction to this or what what your reaction has been knowing that you've had this word for 20 plus years and this name, but also knowing that the church has basically said they don't want anything to do with the word Mormon.
7:41 Yeah, that's a great question. So, I picked Mormon because I when I lost my Mormon faith back when I was working at Microsoft around 2001, I still decided I wanted to stay uh active in the church kind of like a secular Jew can still attend a synagogue. And so I chose the Mor named Mormon intentionally because I planned to do a podcast that would would interview believing Mormons, jack Mormons, uh non-believing Mormons, inactive Mormons, ex- Mormons, even members of other restoration branches like the Reorganized Church or Community of Christ, polygamists, fundamentalists.
8:18 So I literally intentionally chose the term Mormon from the beginning to allow the podcast to cover a a really broad umbrella of types of people. And that's in fact what I've done to this day. Every year I interview believing Mormons, you know, fundamentalist Mormons, Mormons that attend but don't believe all the way to Orthodox apologists. So that's why I picked the term Mormon. And again, the first 10 years I ran the podcast, people should realize I was a faithful, attending, participating Mormon for, you know, eight to nine of those 10 years. And so the biggest allegation the church makes is that I chose the name and the branding to deceive people into listening to the podcast. And that's literally impossible if I picked it 21 years ago as a faithful attending Mormon. But what got interesting was the church has done several things to destroy its reputation. So obviously Joseph Smith starting the church as as sort of a predator wasn't great for the church. Brigham Young, you know,
9:24 becoming a a polygamist. And then, you know, the LDS church becoming known for its polygamist ancestry wasn't great. All the ways the church has uh, you know, been racist and sexist and homophobic hasn't been great. And, you know, it fought the Equal Rights Amendment, that wasn't great. It fought the Civil Rights Movement, which wasn't great. Like, the church has earned its bad reputation, but it really started shooting itself in the foot around the LGBT issues. So, Prop 8 in California in 2008, the church literally fought to take away same-sex marriage from, you know, same-sex married couples in California. Then it it did the horrendous November 2015 policy where it basically made same-sex marriage worse than in terms of how it punished people. Um, and then it took it back four years later. You know, there's so much that the church has done, including punishing people that defend children and that
10:22 defend ethical mental health principles and just by sending sometimes annoying missionaries out worldwide to knock on people's doors. So, for all those reasons, the church's reputation took a real nose dive, especially with the internet. So by the early 201s, the the church did a a set of surveys after the I'm a Mormon campaign came and went in response to the Book of Mormon musical. The church did a bunch of like marketing research, customer ser, you know, customer research surveys and realized that Mormons were like less popular than Muslims and Scientologists and Jehovah's Witnesses in some polls.
11:03 They they were like right down there with atheists in terms of popular opinion. So they realized the brand was damaged. And part of the reason the brand was damaged was because Mormon podcasters, Mormon YouTubers, you know, the Mormon internet and the ex Mormon internet was so successful in terms of search engine optimization. The church spent billions trying to fight Mormons and ex Mormons on the internet and they realized they were going to lose. You know, Russell Nelson may have had this be in his bonnet uh for a long long time, but this was also uh sort of a concession that we had sort of won the Mormon internet. And so their distancing from the word Mormon wasn't just theological, it was an SEO play, it was a marketing play and a business play. So yeah, when when the church and Russell Nelson abandoned the the trademark and the brand and the naming, I I really didn't think a lot about it because I thought, "Yeah, we are destroying you.
12:04 It is a toxic name for you and we love it. So this feels like amicable divorce." I just never thought in a million years they would come back to to fight for it again and to attack us for using a name that they literally abandoned and denounced as a major victory for Satan. So, it's I don't know if you know that history. You probably do, but I just thought I'd share it. Now, before we continue, just a quick reminder to like this video, subscribe to my channel, drop a comment if you want to support John, or if you've ever listened to Mormon stories and want to share the impact that it's had on you. I do have a separate Patreon video this week. Um, it was very odd. As I was like scrolling through uh the the depths of YouTube, I came across my very first ever AI ex Mormon influencer, which I don't know why I never thought I'd see this day, but here we are. Uh, and so in my Patreon video, I basically watched an example. I watched a few clips of this
13:04 ex Mormon AI channel and reacted to it and just shared my hot takes on how uh AI influencers and AI video is taking over places like YouTube and Tik Tok. So, if you want to check that out, that is on Patreon. It's already posted and linked below. No, I mean I think it's I think even the fact that Mormon has never meant just mainstream Mormon, there's so many different sects that have come from Joseph Smith's original movement. And so the idea that they should even have this copyright and trademark over the term is surprising given that the word is you would think in the simply in the public domain. No one could could own the word.
13:47 Yeah. The Catholic Church doesn't own the word Catholic. that, you know, and no specific Jewish branch owns the term Jew. Nobody owns Christian. The church should especially because there's hundreds of schism schismatic churches offshooting from Joseph Smith and because the church abandoned the name to begin with. Uh yeah, the Mormon church, the LDS church does not own the the label or the identity Mormon for sure.
14:12 Yeah. Which is I I definitely think why I mean I've had I use the word Mormon freely. I also say ex Mormon. I've always just referred to the church as Mormon or LDS, but usually Mormon is the most common term people use for it. And so to have so many people angry in my comments sections over these last few years, like please stop using the word Mormon, please refer to us by the correct name, and then to see now the church turn around and use its army of lawyers to try to keep you from using the word that they said they didn't want for the last many years. It is kind of a headscratcher. And it looks very uh un it doesn't even look like it's like led by any sort of intervention but from God or some divinity. If this is God, it seems quite illogical. It seems more driven by the death of the previous prophet and the new appointed prophet who he has his own ideas. And so he's just implementing some new idea that he's held all all these years. It doesn't feel inspired to me.
15:14 Wait, that the church's decisions? You don't think the church's decisions are inspired? Is that what I just heard you say that? Yep. Shocking news from Melissa Grenfell. Now, if you were a if you were a Hollywood writer and you made up this script, it people would go, "That's not believable. It's not realistic." Not at all. And then now to see all of these, which I'm sure we'll get into, how many of the pro- Mormon content creators have come out and mocked you, mocked the law, like basically said like, "Of course the church deserves to do this. when for the last few years they've only been putting Mormon in quotes because they know they're not supposed to use it, but it's very difficult to get views off of the term LDS. It's just ironic to see them now.
16:00 Obviously, they're always going to take the church aside, but to now see see them say, "Well, we get the word Mormon, even though we hate the word Mormon." Uh it just points to the the general hive mind of this group where it's about following and it's not really about logic. Yeah. And to be, you know, fair and precise, and let me just do a disclaimer that everything I say today is my opinion. My memory isn't perfect, so I may forget some stuff. You have to kind of do all that legal throat clearing so you don't, you know, open yourself up to some sort of liability.
16:30 So, I'll give that disclaimer that I am doing my best to use my best memory. This is my opinion. I could be wrong, blah, blah, blah. I I do mean that. Do you think this change with the lawsuit and them coming back for the word Mormon, do you think that that has, as you already kind of hinted at it, do you think that's because of the new prophet of the church? I mean, yeah, I I it it it can't be an accident that the church becomes more latigious when it has a lawyer as as the prophet sir and revelator. Again, I I'd be speculating. I don't know for sure, but it just it just makes sense to me that the church becomes more latigious when it has a a former judge and an attorney as its prophets here in Revelator. Yeah.
17:18 Yeah. Well, and you mentioned that in mediation, you did take a lot of steps to answer the church's questions and answer the church's complaints or concerns. As you said, you changed the color of the logo. You added disclaimers on your pages. Why do you think that despite all of that, it still wasn't enough? So, just to go just to try and be as fair as I can be, the way the church is positioning their uh allegations against me publicly is that they're they're not saying it's about the word Mormon. What they're saying is is it's about a combination of the usage of the word Mormon plus the color of our logo plus the usage of light rays and a Christristus plus the use of copyrighted materials. And then you add all that together plus the lack of any disclaimers. The church is alleging that it's an intentional composite of factors designed to intentionally deceive people to think that my podcast is owned and
18:24 operated and sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So, they're being careful with the lawsuit and what they say publicly to to make it way more than just not liking the fact that he used the word Mormon. what they're not saying is what they were saying and doing behind the scenes, which I think the real story, you know, is is there. And I can get into that if you want.
18:47 Yeah. I mean, I've seen comments online of people saying like, "I listen to Mormon stories because I thought it was a pro Mormon podcast, which is hard to believe, at least since 2018 for me, because they literally said the word Mormon is a victory for Satan." That was said in general conference from the mouth of the prophet. I'm not sure how after him proclaiming that you could accidentally mistake Mormon stories for being pro Mormon. Uh because if you're following the news, it's a major victory for Satan. So it is hard for me to understand why people are saying that if only because if you are a believing member and you do follow the prophet, you should as soon as you see the word Mormon at this point, you should question whether or not it's uh anti- Mormon propaganda because they came out against the word. I'll say that it's it's hard for me to believe that people are buying that Mormon stories is
19:44 affiliated or associated with the church hookline and sinker when there are obvious signs that it is not. I'll just add that as my personal opinion. Yeah. And I'll add I'll add my my take on that. So, just to give a little bit of history, around 2013, the the church I think they hired Bane or McKenzie, some management consulting firm to like identify the church's top enemies. And I'm guessing that it was a consultant because I used to be a management consultant. But they created a bubble chart of like who are the biggest threats of the church. And I was a named threat in 2013. You know, John Dyn Mormon stories. I'm on a bubble chart. It's on the internet. And you can see that in 2013 internally the church identified me as an enemy and as a threat. And as as I understand it, church leaders went around and trained stake leaderships all over the country and world that you know I was an apostate. And then of course in 2015 they excommunicated me. And when they excommunicated me they issued a press
20:48 release which they often don't do. And in the press release, they basically said, uh, you know, I'm an apostate and I'm bad and that's why I was excommunicated. Start with that. Start that I'm an internationally known apostate labeled by the church internally and externally as one of their top enemies. And then you add to that the fact that in our branding, my face is front and center. If you go to Facebook on the banner, it's my face. If you in my name, if you go to YouTube in the banner, it's my face and it's my name. It's Dr. John Dyn and it's got the word Mormon in it. Like, if the word Mormon is a major victory for Satan, and then my face is the most prominent feature in our branding, which it always has been as far as I know, then how in my mind is it even possible that anybody is going to be confused? But it but it gets funnier and even more compelling if you simply just scroll through a set of episodes. You know, pick any 20 to 30 episodes in sequence. And I'm just going
21:54 to I'm going to I'm going to note people to check out exhibit four from the church's lawsuit against me. And I'm just going to read, I don't know, 10 of the thumbnails that the church provides at its own evidence that we were supporting brand confusion. Now, listen, do me a favor, okay? Put on your believing, faithful Mormon cap, okay? And and listen, make faces as a as a faithful believing BYU Zubie Mormon when you when you read these thumbnails, okay? Okay. The Kirtland Bank scandal. Anti- Mormon. Joy after Mormonism.
22:34 Anti- Mormon. Polygamy or adultery with Joseph Smith's face. Okay. Anti Mormon. You know, I I don't have the thumbnails in my mind, but I'm just trying to give people a picture. Young Why young women are leaving the Mormon church. Same. Anti- Mormon. Mormon apostle washed my feet in top secret ritual. I would never, as a believing Mormon, I would never have seen any of that and have assumed that this was affiliated, not just that it's pro Mormon, I additionally would not have thought it was affiliated with the Mormon church, that it was produced by the LDS church.
23:13 And then every episode I say it's me, I say it's the Open Stories Foundation, and you know, all our websites said that we're for a 501c3 nonprofit. So I in my mind even if for a redesign my graphic designer chose the color blue there was never a point in my mind where anybody was ever getting confused. And and also interestingly, all these faithful Mormons that think they're doing the church a favor by saying, "Hey, you know, I I was fooled into, you know, watching an episode of Mormon stories, but in one minute I could tell that it was an anti- Mormon website and I turned it off." Yeah, that's what I was going to note, too, is in the comments of people saying that they were duped, they are quick to note that they were duped for about 30 seconds. So, it's not like they're like, "I watched this for a year and then I found out." It's that they click through and spend 15 seconds hearing some
24:11 criticism and immediately know that it is not church content. Yeah. So, I don't know. I I just have to believe the church sincerely believes that people are being confused. And there might be a couple people in the world that have been confused about, you know, whether it was faithful or not faithful content, but I just don't know how anybody would ever believe that the podcast was run by and sponsored by the church, which is the only thing that would be actual trademark confusion.
24:42 Right. Yeah. And I think too, one of the thing that really stood out to me from their formal statement that they released this week is that, and I'm going to read from it. It says the primary issue is ongoing confusion about whether Mormon stories is affiliated with the church. To address that, the church proposed a simple solution. A brief disclaimer that the podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Uh it says this is a common and straightforward way to help audiences understand the source of content. That step was not adopted. I wanted to ask you, do you agree with that statement that it was not adopted?
25:18 Yeah, there's two super problematic parts to that statement. The first is the church giving the impression that all they did was ask us to include a disclaimer. That's not true. And I've got the documents to prove it. Like, you know, we have the settlement agreement that they sent us. And it asked all sorts of outrageous things. in their communications premediation, they said, "Our target is your usage of the word Mormon in your name and in all your social media handles and in your URL."
25:52 So, they started by saying, "We want you to take the word Mormon out of your name and all your social media handles, even though you've built up 21 years of SEO and brand recognition. Now, 21 years later, we want you to change all that." So, we told them, "We're not going to do mediation." But to act like they didn't start asking for that, I've got the documents to show it. Then once they knew we weren't budging on that, what they wanted us to do was change our name. So instead of it being Mormon Stories, they're like, "How about you call it Ex Mormon Stories with Dr. John Delin?" And it wasn't just that they wanted us to change the name. They were requiring that the logo contained all those words in the logo. So instead of it being a clean like Mormon stories, they were saying it needed to say ex Mormon stories with Dr. John Delin, they even went so far as to specify that the font for all those words needed to be the same size. So we couldn't have John Delin smaller or X or post smaller. It
26:56 all those words had to be there. So they basically, I felt, wanted us to corrupt our brand, make ourselves seem unsafe and untrustworthy. But worse, they wanted us to inaccurately portray what we're about. Because I interview faithful Mormons, believing Mormons, attending Mormons all the time on Mormon stories. So it wouldn't even be accurate uh to call ourselves ex Mormon stories or post Mormon stories because we interview active believing and/or faithful Mormons all the time. Uh they wanted us to promise we would never file any trademarks to protect our own intellectual property. I can tell you why that's a problem. They wanted us to renounce any rights to our own name in in in terms of trademark or or you know whatever. And again, this is my memory of the document. If I'm speaking off technically, I don't know legal ease and I I could be getting a thing wrong here or there. They actually get this Alyssa.
27:50 They wanted me to promise that I would never create any other project on the internet that included the word Mormon. So if I wanted to like start a Mormon news podcast, for example, I had to sign away my rights to ever be able to do that ever on the internet. Wow. And I mean, so what you're saying is that the church did not propose a quote simple solution. It was incredibly burdensome and it was abusive. In my opinion, it felt abusive because they they had the mediator come with a printed out lawsuit that that at first they wouldn't even show us and they would say, "Look, this is going to be filed. It's going to cost you millions of dollars. So, agree to all these, at our words, unreasonable terms or we're going to sue you. That's going to end up costing you millions of dollars and that's even if you win." So, it just felt abusive, but also um they were asking for things a judge would never grant. So, it was ridiculous that
28:48 there's one other thing that's really important. They did ask us to put disclaimers, and I'll talk about what we did do in just a second, but they didn't just ask us to put disclaimers like in our descriptions. They literally wanted me to start every podcast from now until I stop doing the podcast. begin the episode by saying this podcast is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They wanted me to audibly begin every podcast by saying that. And I believe in mediation, they even asked that that be repeated like every 15 to 20 minutes. And that if I if if we ever like forgot or didn't include it, we would be in violation of the agreement. And I'm just like, no judge is ever going to require that. I feel like as a content creator myself, I can definitively say that if you have to start every video with a statement like that, it is a killer. It will kill you on the algorithm because people want to
29:50 click into content and hear hear interesting things immediately. They do not want to hear some legally disclaimer. And even in financial podcasts that I've listened to, they do a disclaimer, but they do it like 10 minutes into the episode. They at least can begin with a hook. You're supposed to begin a video with a hook and then, you know, you build the momentum. And I'm sure I assume that they know that that has a two-pronged effect.
30:14 Obviously, you're putting in the disclaimer, but then the other side effect is that people leave the video because they're bored. It's going to impact your ability to gain people's interest and gain people's curiosity from the get-go. Can you imagine McDonald's having a commercial by starting out by saying, "We're not we're not Burger King." Like, it's requiring you to advertise some other entity. And it's also beginning your brand by saying what you're not.
30:44 And you know if they had come to us in year one or two maybe but 20 year 21 years in they want to tell us that we need to start doing this. Yeah. Even gambling like if I think of like gambling brands or like other like disreputable like liquor brands or stuff that's in the moral and legal gray area even those disclaimers are always at the end. Yeah. Uh it feels like almost every brand that has to include disclaimers they include drink responsibly at the end of the ad. For even them, the burden is not to put it at the beginning.
31:16 And I was willing to consider something at the end, honestly. But they had so many other poison pills in their settlement agreement. I would have been more willing to accommodate if they hadn't brought lawyers in. If this was just me working with intellectual reserve, I would have said, "All right, let's be reasonable." But with a gun in my head and all these unreasonable demands in the settlement agreement, I was willing to be a lot less reasonable or or at least a lot less flexible to unreasonable demands. So when they say in their statement all they did was ask us to include a disclaimer in my opinion that's an outright lie and it's a damaging lie because already just saying that or giving that impression has caused thousands and thousands of of believing Mormons to say, "See, I knew it. John Delin is trying to deceive people. He's Satan himself." I even had one person write, "John's a cockroach that needs to be smashed." because they're angered by the perception the church created that I wasn't willing to
32:13 make any accommodations and that their accommodation was just so simple, right? It was just so simple. Just include a simple disclaimer when that wasn't what they asked for. But the other thing that was outrageous was I did include disclaimers. If you go to Facebook, YouTube, uh my blog, Spotify, Apple Podcast, every single one during mediation, I pasted in their disclaimer to the description of every one of my channels as a sign of good faith without signing anything. And so that's the second part of what I think is I almost potentially slanderous misrepresentation is they're saying I was unwilling to adopt the disclaimer when I actually did adopt their disclaimer. And that's just like outright lies in my opinion and smearing in my opinion.
33:05 Yeah. I mean I've I've watched some of the reactions to it. I watched something on Latter Daily News. I watch Jasmine's video and they both go out of their way to say like, well, even for us pro and faithful LDS content creators, we include disclaimers. They show things such as putting something within the description, the notes of the of the episode. They did an example of a verbal description. And they were like, well, see, is that so hard? But not one faithful LDS content creator that I'm aware of begins every single video with a verbal disclaimer in the first 30 seconds, repeating it every 15 to 20 minutes. Right.
33:42 Yes. It's frustrating to see them act like, "Oh, it's so easy. I'd like to see them do what the church has asked you to do." Can you imagine, by the way, knowing that I do long form, can you imagine some BYU student is talking about being raped by their Mormon bishop and it's like, "Oh, sorry. I got to stop you. We're 15 minutes in. I got to add the disclaimer again because the church asked me to." Like, they knew it was a poison pill. That's why I I question whether this mediation was done in in good faith.
34:14 Yeah. Um, I it it feels to me like they engaged in mediation just so that they could be able to say that they tried mediation and to smear me that I was unreasonable. Now, that's just my opinion. I don't know that that's true, but that's how it felt to me. Yeah. A shocking thing that you shared with me from all of this is that some of these LDS, pro LDS content creators seem to know about the lawsuit against you before you did. And not only that they knew about the lawsuit, but that they had recorded videos edited and ready to post before you knew anything about the lawsuit.
34:53 Yeah. Like I'm literally in California with my wife. We're visiting some friends. I start getting bombarded with like church statements and then videos of of you know, church apologists and I can't even find the lawsuit. So I read the church's statement. I see Jasmine and her things on Instagram and on on YouTube and then I like go to the Federal Registry and I type in Open Stories Foundation or John Delin or Mormon Stories. Nothing comes up. The only way I was able to find the actual lawsuit to read it was by pausing Jasmine's YouTube video and then like copying the case number off her video and then pasting that into the Federal Registry to find the case. As far as I know, no one on my end was notified that the case had been filed until like 8 or 900 p.m. that night.
35:46 It's very intimidating. I think the effect of it is to to have a chilling effect. I know that in the church's notice, uh, they answered the question, is the church trying to silence criticism? The answer was no. People are free to express support for or criticism of the church and its teachings. This case does not concern the content of the podcast. Do you agree with what the church has written in the statement when it says that? I I can't know the church's intentions.
36:14 So that's that's what I will say from a legal perspective. But no, what seemed to me through the mediation I mean think about it for a second. So the lawsuit complains about uh the the usage of the Christristus in one of our banners or a couple of our banners. Well, I blotted that out month, you know, a month or two or three ago immediately when they told me. Okay. Well, they mentioned that we used some of their copyrighted images in our thumbnails. We feel it was fair use, but it doesn't matter. I went ahead during mediation and had my graphic designer go three years back and update all the thumbnails that used any copyrighted images that we could identify because they wouldn't give us a list of all the ones we violated. So, we just had to guess. You know, we used light rays that they didn't like. Even though we had light rays in our logo, as I understand it, before they ever trademarked light rays in their branding.
37:06 Mormons, this just in. Mormons now own the sun. Yeah. But regardless, we we blurred out the light rays in our branding. So, like they didn't like blue at our logo. We changed our logo. So, what's their lawsuit about if we literally have changed every reasonable thing that they've asked? And weirdly, they didn't literally come out and say, "Take the word Mormon out of your name." So, I don't know what we haven't changed. If you go look at all their complaints in the lawsuit, we've already fixed most, if not all, before they ever sued us without even signing a mediation agreement. So, you have to ask yourself, what's it about? And then, I guess the second thing could be damages. And there was a document that I saw at some point that literally said, "Unfair competition." I'm like, "Unfair competition? I'm a dude with two employees and a couple contractors like you working out of a basement.
38:01 They're hundreds of billions of dollar organization. How in the world is this unfair competition? But that's they're going to claim damages. Like the church makes like 10 billion dollars a year or more. 20 $30 billion a year now. I don't even know how much the money How is this? Did I hurt their pocketbook? Did I hurt their revenue? Did I hurt their income? Like I'm just trying to figure out what the damages are that that they can say I caused that they can prove that I caused. So what's the if if if it's not about really hurting the church financially and if it's not about all the trademark and copyright things that we resolved before they even filed as far as I understand it then what's it about? I do think the church doesn't care what people's opinions are if they're quiet. Right? So, I think in theory they believe that this isn't about my opinions um if I'm quiet about it. But what I know the church uh cares
38:58 about is when not only people are publicly critical, but they're publicly critical with the critical mass of listeners. In other words, it's less about the message and more about the message plus impact and effectiveness. And uh you know until you came along, Alyssa Grunfella, you know, doubled any reach that we have ever had, which I'm happy about, by the way. We were the you know, the biggest uh the 800 lb gorilla.
39:27 Now we're a 400 lb gorilla and you're the 800 lb gorilla. Forgive me if you want to use a different metaphor, but either way, you know, I I I'm a tad less than 800 lb, but I am big and scary. I guess I'm just No, I think the church really is disturbed by the impact that you and I are making. And some call it lawfare, but what it feels like is the church is using its power, its money, its wealth, and its influence to bankrupt or silence or um inconvenience or handicap its critics. And it'll do it in lots of different ways. Like, you know, Scientology calls it fair gaming. They could do it through legal stuff. They could do it through spies. They could do it through defamation. They could do it through apologists. They could even hire private investigators to tamper with your personal life. I've had all that stuff uh done to me. I don't know how much of it the church was behind, but I I think it's about the church using its money, power, and influence to and damage our impact and effectiveness.
40:32 And that's my opinion. I don't know for sure that that's why they're doing it. That's just how it feels. And hopefully I'm covered legally when I say that because it's also true. Yeah, I do think that the impact of moments like this, even if the church says, "No, we are not trying to silence criticism." An obvious outcropping of suing a critic is going to be that people become more afraid to speak out and it is going to make people feel like, uh, it's not worth losing millions of dollars to put my name on the line and my face on the line to talk about this. I'd rather just walk away. And so I do think even if they say they're not trying to silence criticism, this is an obvious intended effect or maybe if not intended, I'll say this is an obvious effect of suing a critic is going to be that people become more afraid.
41:24 Yeah. In fact, interestingly, I'm we're super lucky that we were able to find a law firm that would sponsor us proono because if we had to fight this th this is lit, you know, we went to a couple law firms before, you know, uh we found our current law firm. We shopped this, you know, lawsuit around to see what it was going to cost us. And several law firms told us that they would represent us, but that it would cost maybe 2 to3 million. We don't have $2 to3 million.
41:57 Our annual revenue is a fraction of that. And so, we literally would have probably had to fold Mormon stories just immediately based on this lawsuit alone. Fortunately, we were able to get a law firm to represent us proono, and that's going to give us a chance of not being bankrupted. But even then, there is a I guess an outside chance theoretically that we could be bankrupted by the church. Now, we feel like our case is strong. We don't feel like their uh claims have merit, but it is totally just fortunate chance that a law firm stepped forward to represent us or we we might not be in business today. Oh, and and just to be clear, even if the law firm is able to continue proono throughout the um extent of the case, we are still told it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, whether it's expert witnesses, whether it's surveys that have to be conducted, filing fees, legal fees, transcription fees, postage, I don't even know all the legal expenses, but we are told it's going to cost us hundreds of thousands
42:59 of dollars. So to the extent to which people are willing and able to go to mormontories.org/legal and donate, I can promise that 100% of those donations are taxdeductible. It'll be anonymous as far as I know your donations and I'll give a 100% of that money towards the legal costs and if there's any money left over, I'm happy to redistribute it to donors if they want it. Um but I don't think there's any chance the donations are going to match the costs even if we're represented proono. Yeah, and that's I think that's a good point because even if they're representing you pro bono, there are so many other aspects of a law, you know, it's not just the lawyer's time, it's all these other fees that are obviously going to crop up. And so, if you want to donate to John and his legal defense fund, I'll, like I said, drop that link below if you would like to help out. I think uh a question I had which is a question I've been seeing pop up all around under the comments of these things is uh why would the church move forward with a lawsuit
44:00 against you but obviously we have secret lives of Mormon wise we have the Book of Mormon musical why do you think that those institutions using the word Mormon and even for the Book of Mormon musical using the actual Book of Mormon using the depictions of missionaries why is it that they are free from these lawsuits it seems while you are obviously getting the attention of the church.
44:23 My opinion is there are a couple reasons right off the top. They're wealthy. They have deep pockets to hire the best law firms. And it would be a public relations disaster for the church to go after internationally, you know, popular entertainment shows or programs. I I don't know for sure, but that's maybe part of it. I also think part of it is, you know, th those are forms of entertainment. And I think the church is trying to claim that it owns the word Mormon as it's associated with educational things. And even though we do entertainment, we do education, just, you know, people interest stuff and news, they're I think they're trying to claim that because we're educational, that's something that they have more control over than entertainment. But I I don't know for sure, but it certainly seems ridiculous. You know, they should go after the Mormon History Association.
45:17 Uh they should go after Mormon Land podcast by the Sully Tribune. But huh, they have it. I wonder why. At least I maybe I don't know they have. Right. I Yeah, that's true. Maybe they have and we just don't know about it. But it does seem like obviously if they had sued them, we would know because it would be more in the public domain. But and that's why I feel like you can get into with this conversation about the light rays and the disclaimers and the the logo and everything, but it does end up feeling like since you were you were excommunicated, you were on this list of targets of like here's why people are leaving the church, it does end up feeling quite targeted to you and the content of the podcast, the podcast itself, which feels like it's about more than a copyright violation to me. Yeah, absolutely. I agree.
46:08 And I think even though obviously the church has released this statement about its choice to move forward with the lawsuit over copyright and uh its trademarks and everything, I think that if we discuss and look back on the history of the demonization around detractors, that can also tell us a lot about how the church has approached these situations in the past. Obviously, Joseph Smith, when someone printed a newspaper article, an addition of a newspaper that he didn't like, he had that newspaper burned to the ground, which then basically led to a chain of events that ended up getting him killed.
46:45 And even John, you texted me a screenshot the other day of, and it was also on Reddit, somebody made an AI image of me and you standing in hell next to Netanyahu and Epstein. and we're obviously meant to be on the same level of evil as those two people. I would love for you to give your opinion as someone who's been in this space for over 20 years and studied so much history about the the church's history of demonizing detractors.
47:15 Yeah. Well, thank you. There are a couple things to to know about the Mormon church that's just factual. Number one is the Mormon church has a long history of of lying to the public. A couple of the most obvious examples were when Joseph Smith had over 30 wives, he told the world that that he was not a polygamist. In 1890, when the Mormon church, you know, was forced by the federal government to stop its practice of polygamy, it signed what's called the manifesto where it promised the world it was never going to ever practice polygamy again. And then it went on to practice it for another 15 or 20 years secretly and denied it. You know, and when the church fought the Equal Rights Amendment, it it said it didn't hate women or find them inferior.
47:59 And when the church fought the Civil Rights Movement, they they made sure they said they don't hate black people. They just want to keep them separate. You know, when the church was supporting conversion therapy and and LGBT Mormons were dying, the church says, "We don't hate gay people. We love them." So, like anytime the church tries to tell you something publicly that they're not thinking or doing, that's almost the shest sign that it is what they're thinking or doing. So, you have to know that that the church just lies publicly sometimes. And then the other thing that you have to know about the church is the church has a long history of smearing the people that tell the truth. So, you know, a couple examples. Oliver Calry was one of the scribes to the Book of Mormon. He was one of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon. And in 1837ish, when he found out Joseph Smith was in an adulterous affair. So, this is before Joseph Smith was a polygamist, he was caught in an affair with a teenage servant in his home, unfortunately,
49:02 named Fanny. Oliver Cry accused Joseph of adultery, which which was factually true. And Joseph excommunicated Oliver Calry and said he was an apostate, that he was faithless, that he was a bad person. And then when you get into the Naboo time period, it's even worse. Joseph proposition Nancy Rigdon, who was the daughter of one of the other members of the First Presidency and also one of the three witnesses of the Book of Mormon, Sydney Rigdon. He propositions teenager Nancy Rigdon to be his polygamous wife. She declines him, speaks publicly that he factually propositioned her for polygamy and in the press he andor his people called her a and that is factual. And Joseph andor his people did it multiple times. They did it with Fon Brody when she wrote her biography of Joseph Smith that now is viewed as one of the best biographies ever written. at the time she was slandered when Sam Young advocated uh to
50:02 protect children from sexual abuse in the church. He was slandered when Natasha Haler tried to you know improve the church's mental health practices. She was slandered. So the church has a history of slandering its truth tellers. Joseph Smith set the pace. Joseph Smith set the example. And once your founding leader sets that example, how can subsequent leaders and prophets not uh follow the pages in in the founders's playbook? So this is just what the church historically does. And I I do think as much as I don't like to be negative and critical, honestly, I think the church needs to be called out on it because they're doing it again with me in my opinion.
50:47 Yeah. I I know for a fact how much so many of these content creators or just the church itself, they would be very excited if either of us became drug addicts, they want us to fail so hard because it would be proof that we're living in sin. And so any level of abundance or happiness we seem to be experiencing is kind of proof that this idea that ex Mormons fall into uh homelessness and addiction is obviously not true. that there is a lot of abundance and happiness outside of the church. More abundance and happiness in my opinion than in the church. But I think seeing people root for my failure so hard over the last few years has been so damning in my mind because it just shows how conditional this love, the love of Christ is very conditional upon you following the rules including never opening your mouth to say something that disagrees with official teachings of the church.
51:45 Yeah. Yeah. And the counter that I have to that, you know, the church's long history of smearing its dissenters and its critics is there will never, as as far as I know, there will never be an ex Mormon or an apostate or a critic that matches Joseph Smith's predation. This guy Yeah. married teenage girls as young as 14, motheraughter pairs, sister pairs, over 10 women who were already married to other men, his own foster daughters.
52:18 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Foster children. He staged fake marriages to fool his wife. Whatever virtues Joseph Smith may have had, he was a sexual predator and a sexual predator on scale. Then when you add to that the fact that he claimed that only Jesus in the history of humankind was more righteous or did more for the cause of of God than Joseph Smith. You you realize that even Alyssa, if you got divorced, even if you or I got divorced or had affairs, even if you or I were were broke the law or or did abuse somebody, we would never match Joseph Smith's sexual predation and we would never have claimed that we were doing those things hopefully under God's command. And that's where the power really lies. I I often say the one thing that should be illegal around religion is claiming that you know what God wants other people to do. Because as soon as you can convince other people that you are God's voice for them, you've got unlimited power to get them to give you
53:30 your wife even though you're married to them. to give you your 14-year-old daughter uh even though she thinks that old guy's gross that her dad's giving you know her too. And so that will be my response if you or I or anyone else ever gets taken down with some sort of scandal. None of us ever will match the predation of Joseph Smith nor the fraud and none of us ever claimed to be God's most righteous mouthpiece to ever live on earth other than Jesus Christ. I think Joseph Smith even sometimes felt like he matched or exceeded Jesus in righteousness. Honestly, I think seeing the mental gymnastics trying to prove Joseph Smith was a good person, even just that he proved that he was a good person, much less that he was a prophet and how much justification has to go into trying to depict him as a good person despite all of the horrible polygamy. and then trying also so hard to defame us or smear us or make detractors look like horrible people.
54:30 It's like it's clear that the motive here is not finding goodness or logic. It's that it's very biased reasoning. The bias is towards proving what I already think is true in my head. And it's easier for me to try to have confirmation bias and manipulate things and have my mental gymnastics to try to tell myself Joseph Smith was a good person rather than looking at this with an objective sense of truth.
54:55 Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've gotten into the case. We've gotten into the history of the church's efforts against detractors. I would love to end the interview just discussing what you see happening next. So the lawsuit's been filed and we will, you know, need to file a response within 30 to 60 days. At that point begins the discovery process where they get to ask us for any documents or evidence that they are seeking to help prove their case and we get to ask them for any documents or evidence that we think are important to disprove their case or to prove ours. That happens. There's also a phase of expert discovery, I believe, where, you know, they're going to hire expert witnesses to prove their case.
55:44 We're going to hire expert witnesses to prove or disprove their case and and prove ours. And then, you know, eventually they'll, if it goes to jury, it'll be jury selection. If it's not a jury, it'll just go to trial. There'll be a big long trial and then there'll be some type of verdict. Just that will take two or three years probably. Wow. Even after there's a verdict, it won't end there. If we win, they'll appeal. If they win, we'll appeal. And so, it'll have to go through the appellet process through intermediate federal courts and then potentially all the way up to the Supreme Court. So, I mean, this is going to be a 2, three, four, fiveyear process. It's going to cost the church tens of millions of dollars, I'm guessing, to to to run this case.
56:29 Hopefully, it won't cost us that much. I feel very confident we are on very solid legal ground. I I don't want to be overconfident, but every lawyer I've ever talked to say they don't really have a case of much merit that will be of much consequence. So that's that's a you know a high level overview of my understanding of how things will proceed. Now, at any point, they could offer to settle. Um, and so that would just look a lot like mediation where we go back to some sort of mediator and see if we can come up with terms to avoid embarrassment or risk or cost. And so, that's always a possibility. There's also a possibility we could quit or, you know, fold as well. It's hard to imagine that being likely, but that, you know, most cases settle out of court. So I think 98% of cases settle out of court. So if you had to bet money, I guess you could bet that this will settle. I don't think it will be us that cries uncle.
57:29 I think you should uh you should counter sue that they have to start every general conference saying that general conference is not affiliated with Mormon stories, nor is it endorsed by Mormon stories, and we are representing our own opinions. And they should have to say it every 15 minutes. Every every general conference talk has to begin with that disclaimer. There was a point in mediation where my friend Clint got so angry at what they were asking where Clint added to the mediator the requirement that he's like if if you're going to ask us to take Mormon out of our name, we're going to ask you to give 10% of your annual income to charity.
58:06 I mean this idea that like John Dylan is being so unreasonable for not accommodating this one small step. It's like okay well what if we asked you to do the same thing. No interesting. So maybe it's not that small. Maybe it is cumbersome and difficult and costly. Elizabeth, if it's okay, there's one last thing I I want to say. Is that all right? Yes. Yeah. So, you know, the the church and its critics who have been maligning andor smearing uh me in my opinion, what they want to say is that the my motive and I should say our motive because Margie, my wife, is my partner in all of this. we co-host together. She is the other full-time employee in our nonprofit. And you know, our board is also part of the Wii and our staff is part of the Wii.
58:51 So, like there's a lot of Wii. But when I say we, I should have been saying it all along, but my wife Margie is a huge part of what we do. And when the church critics have tried to mislead and or smear me in my opinion, what they've wanted to do was to state our intention. And what they want to frame as our intention is that our intention is to deceive people to come to Mormon stories so they can be fooled into listening so that then uh we can you know cause them to lose their faith. And I just want to end by being very explicit about what I believe our intentions not only are but what they've always been for 21 years. I think our intentions have been consistent and I think they're credible and I think they're consistent not only with what I've said for 20 years, 21 years, but what I've done and what we've done for 21 years. Here are the three motives and you can check these with our actions. The first motive in action is what I call informed consent or
59:54 transparency. What caused me to lose my faith and to leave the church was learning that the church had hid its problematic history and its problematic truth claims from me as a sixth generation lifetime Mormon for 30 plus years. I felt shocked. I felt sick. I felt like a parent had lied to me for my entire life. And it destroyed my happiness for several years. I fell in deep depression. And it was at the root.
1:00:26 I felt like the church had hid information from me and lied to me knowingly and intentionally. So goal number one for Mormon stories, me, Margie, and the Open Source Foundation has always been to inform members and never members about the truth around the church's history and its truth claims and the harm that it causes people. And I think we've done that. I think we've done that more fairly than anyone other than, you know, you and maybe other people. You know, you could make an argument that other people are more fair. I think we're among the top in the world at trying to be fair and balanced in how we cover problems, but also good things about the church. So, informed cassette and financial transparency has been goal number one. I feel like we've done that for 21 years. The second is to support Mormons and other people in faith crisis. As you know, Alyssa, and and your viewers and listeners will know, losing your faith in a high demand religion and specifically in Mormonism is devastating, can lead to depression,
1:01:26 anxiety, divorce, destruction of families, even suicidality and suicide completion. I've had LGBT Mormons that were suicidal over their being LGBT say that losing their Mormon faith was way harder than being a gay Mormon. And that says a lot. Our second goal with Mormon Stories, the Open Stories Foundation has always been to support Mormons and people of other high demand religions in their navigation of faith crisis. Never once, I believe, you will ever find an instance, privately or publicly, in 10,000 hours of programming and in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of comments and emails, have I ever told someone they should leave the church? In fact, I'm sure I could provide you with hundreds, if not thousands of emails or comments where I've recommended that people stay in the church if it's healthy for them to do so. So, to claim that my intent is to lead people out of the church, it's not
1:02:20 only defamatory and misleading, it's just it's not supported by any evidence that I think anybody could come up with. But we do want to support people in the difficulties of a transition. And I don't give a flying f if they stay in the church or leave it. I literally don't. If somebody wants to stay Mormon and they know what they want to know and need to know, I literally say, "Good for you. Bless you." I I hope it's wonderful for you. And I'm sure it is for a lot of people. And then the final motivation for Mormon stories in the open stories foundation me and Margie is to improve the lived experience of Mormons because like it or not if there's less child abuse I think we all can agree ex Mormons and Mormons and everyone in between never Mormons that that's a good thing. If there's less divorce in the in in unnecessary divorce in Mormonism, how is that not a good thing? If there's less suicide, less LGBT depression and suicide, less deceit, less misinformation, less ecclesiastical
1:03:20 abuse, how is that not a better world for everyone, ex Mormons and Mormons alike? Those are my motives. Never to fool anyone, never to deceive anyone, and I believe they're consistent with what faithful Mormons should want. The church taught me that truth matters. The church taught me that we should help the marginalized and the poor. The church told me that we should improve uh the church. And I think Jesus would back all of that as well. So, I just had to end with that. You want to guess what my motives are? You want to speculate?
1:03:55 line up what I just told you about my motives with the past 21 years of 10,000 hours of programming and tell me if I haven't been consistent all along before you make up fabricated defamatory accusations about what my and our motives uh you know you think they are. Well, I I appreciate that statement and I think I can speak anecdotally from my own experience when I was questioning the church and wondering what I should do and trying to make a decision for my life and I listen to Mormon stories. I have no recollection of ever feeling like the purpose of the podcast was to argently convince me to leave or even to softly convince me to leave. I always felt like I was drawn to Mormon Stories podcast because it was giving me information I couldn't find anywhere else and it was helping me make an informed decision about my membership in the church. I mean, like I said at the top of this video, I listened to so many hours of that podcast. And I know my
1:04:52 husband Jackson also listened to so many hours of the podcast. And even when I have made my own videos about the experience of black members of the church or black ex-members or Polynesian ex-members or all of these groups who have been systematically marginalized by the Mormon church, if I look for personal witnesses and testimonies of people who have experienced that, I know where I can find them, which is from Mormon stories because you have done such a good job of interviewing all of these people from all these different walks of life that have have made it so There is a depth of history that you can point to that wouldn't exist otherwise.
1:05:31 If we didn't have voices like you or mine, then the only thing you could find on the internet would be the faithful version of events from the church's own mouth. And so I I want to thank you for all the work you and Margie have done over the years and Mormon stories because not only did it personally impact me, but I also know that you've elevated the stories of people who the church has tried to silence. Well, thanks Alyssa and we're going to fight this until the very end and we feel hopeful that we're going to emerge victorious. But I just want to say I can't tell you how good it feels to know someone like you, Alyssa Gruntfell, is out there doing what I've tried to do in so many ways better than I more effectively, more humorously, more creatively, more intelligently than I was ever able to do it. So, if they're able to shut me down, and we're going to do our best to keep that from happening.
1:06:25 I just can't tell you how excited I am to know that you're still there. Haley R's still there. You know, Zelf on the Shelf is still there. Mormonism Live, Radio Free Mormon, Nemo the Mormon. I could go on at Rebecca Bibliotecha and Mormonish. I just can't uh tell you, Alyssa, how excited I am for your success, your effectiveness, your talent, and your commitment. And I hope they don't come after you like they ca have come after me. Let that be my final my final blessing to you.
1:06:55 Well, knock on wood for that. But I will say too, I mean, we didn't even talk about the Striand effect, which is that often when they do choose to do things like this, it it's going to I mean, the Salt Lake Tribune already wrote about it. It's going to spiral from there. So, I'm already getting comments and emails from believers saying, you know, I I was on I was on a thin edge with the church and now I'm resigning. or I'm getting, you know, I'm a believing member and I'd never heard of Mormon Stories podcast, but now I'm loving your podcast because the church uh has chosen to sue you and that's how I learned about you and thank you for what you do. So, there's going to be a whole new generation of Mormon Stories listeners and Alyssa Grunfeld viewers and listeners thanks to the church's lawsuit. And that's their own that's their own self self harm.
1:07:40 Honestly, that's on them. This may very well end up being another example of them shooting themselves in the foot, which they've done countless times. And another point to what I was saying about them not being inspired or led by God, but by some geriatric men in their 90s. And so I appreciate your support. John has always been a huge support. He actually wrote the forward to my book long before I had any sort of a following. And so I feel like you've always been very supportive to me and to so many of the other ex Mormon, post Mormon content creators online. And so thank you for everything you've done for the community.
1:08:16 Thanks, Alyssa. Uh and and thanks to all your viewers and listeners. And you know, the final thing I'll say again is if there are any attorneys out there that really know copyright or trademark law and they want to volunteer their uh expertise, we are accepting volunteer attorneys. You can email me at mormontories@gmail.com and I'll put you on to our lead attorney because they're vetting a volunteer proono legal team.
1:08:42 If you see hateful, violent, or defamatory comments made by believing Mormons or the church or apologists, video them, screenshot them, email them to me at mormontories@gmail.com. We're going to collect them to be able to show how much harm we believe the church's disinformation campaign is causing me and the Open Stories Foundation. And then again, if you're able to donate to financially support us, go to mormonstories.org/legal and uh your donations are taxdeductible and 100% of those donations I commit going to our legal expenses.
1:09:15 Like I said, that link is below. I also donated to the fund. So, if you want to support John in his fight, go over to that link. That's the the best way to support. or just simply watching even watching old, you know, past Mormon stories episodes, watching current Mormon stories episodes. That's another big way to support. Thank you, John, for coming on the channel. I really appreciate it. And as always, I will see you all soon.
1:09:39 Keep it up, Alyssa. Thank you. Take care.
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