Utah Agonizes Over Scandal

With statehood in the balance in 1861, Brigham Young stood before his embattled Mormon followers and spoke candidly of bribing federal officials “to grease the wheels” of justice, as defined by the rough-and-ready pioneer leader.

Young justified catering to the corruption of the age in its own tainted coinage as necessary to serve a higher cause--protecting the faith’s polygamists while gaining support for statehood.

That rationale resonates down the decades as the city Young founded on the edge of the Great Basin agonizes in the throes of the Olympic bribery scandal.

“There is something in Mormonism that we’re willing to make compromises politically to achieve what we want to do, and I can see Mormons doing that,” says Elbert Peck, editor and publisher of Sunstone, an independent Mormon periodical. “I mean, we were willing to pay bribes to get statehood.”

As investigations by the FBI as well as city, national and international Olympic committees try to determine if the 2002 Winter Games were bought and sold, Beehive State residents are painfully aware their longed-for debut on the global stage has taken a doozy of a pratfall.

“This type of behavior is not according to the standards of this community,” Gov. Mike Leavitt tried to assure a national television audience this past week. “We revolt at being even associated with it.”

His sentiments about the still-unfolding scandal are shared by many of Utah’s more than 2 million inhabitants, 70 percent of whom--like Leavitt--are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Robert Garff, chairman of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee and a longtime local church leader, says he feels angry “because our reputation is damaged” and sad “that every dream we all had of bringing the world to our doorstep and being gracious hosts now is at risk, and those dreams have been popped.”

For an image-conscious religion of 10 million members that has 58,000 missionaries knocking on doors in 123 countries and territories, the seamy headlines are a painful reminder that most everybody outside the Intermountain West sees Salt Lake City and the Mormon heartland as one and the same.

“The way public opinion and image work, it’s not what happened so much as what people think happened,” says Jan Shipps, the noted historian of Mormonism. “And the identity of Salt Lake City with the Latter-day Saints and the church means that this is something, for better or worse, the church will have to overcome.”

Publicly, the faith’s hierarchy and the city’s Olympic boosters have kept a distance over the years, with neither wanting the 2002 Winter Games to be perceived as the Mormon Olympics. Some see that as a charade, since most of the boosters are influential Mormons.

“It’s no secret the church has viewed this thing as a proselytizing opportunity and opportunity to show that Mormons aren’t as weird as people think,” says longtime Olympics critic Stephen Pace.

Church President Gordon B. Hinckley, architect of the church’s massive public relations network, has labored to burnish the faith’s image as a world religion far removed from its peculiar and polygamous roots.

Basking in the enormous success of the church’s media-friendly 150th anniversary re-enactment of the Mormon trek to Utah, Hinckley sat for a 1997 interview with Shipps, who asked about the games.

Hinckley said the church hierarchy was divided about Salt Lake’s effort to play host to the Olympics. He declined to disclose his own opinion, but said once the bid was won, the church felt “honored.”

“Salt Lake City will be on the map for those few days across the world,” he told Shipps. “This is the headquarters of the church and it is going to be a great thing. And it is a great opportunity for us and we must seize that opportunity.”

The scandal broke 10 days after the church’s governing First Presidency told members the church supported Utah’s efforts for a successful Olympics and called attention to the need for volunteers.

As the scandal escalated, a one-paragraph statement said the affair should be addressed by the local and international Olympic organizations and the “various investigative bodies.”

“It goes without saying that the church would hope and expect that high moral and ethical standards would be applied in any aspect of the Salt Lake Olympics.”

Former Salt Lake City Mayor Ted Wilson, a political scientist and Mormon, sees his fellow adherents as “still a strange people,” with two elements underlying the collective psyche.

“One is a sort of holier-than-thou. We believe that we are kind of a righteous, holy people,” he said.

The other, he said, comes from the Mormons’ refugee pioneer heritage. After all, it’s been only a century since the bitter battles with the federal government over polygamy, which the church abandoned in 1890, and statehood, which came six years later.

“There’s a sense of a need for international validation or national validation, and I think that’s at risk right now,” Wilson said.

“If we fail now because of this big faux pas, I think Utahns are going to be very upset and really hurting.”