[FACT comments: FACT is a founding member of WikiLeaks and FACT coordinator CJ Hinke serves on WL's executive. What can we say? No Vaseline...we just don't bend over so easily.]
Mormons, Scientologists face uphill battle against Wikileaks
By Nate Anderson
Ars Technica: May 14, 2008
Can Mormon women wear pants when visiting a temple? Can men wear cummerbunds during a marriage ceremony? Are vasectomies an appropriate birth control option? The answers to these (no, no, and not really) and similar questions about Mormon practice and leadership might not seem to be especially secret, but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints isn’t pleased about secret church documents hitting the Internet. In this case, the cause of the displeasure is the confidential Church Handbook of Instructions, published by Wikileaks on April 16. The church is currently trying to get the information pulled down using copyright infringement notices, but Wikileaks doesn’t respond to such requests. The church has turned instead to targeting other sites that host or link the handbook…Wikileaks was defiant, saying that “we have come to the conclusion that Scientology is not only an abusive cult, but that it aids and abets a general climate of Western media self-censorship. If the west [sic] can not defend its cultural values of free speech and press freedoms against a criminal cult like Scientology, it can hardly lecture China and other state abusers of these same values.”..We might soon learn whether religious power can succeed where Swiss bankers have failed.
