Are Mormons allowed to sell/serve alcohol/tobacco/caffeine to others? Utah has a state monopoly on liquor sales are Mormons allowed (by the church) to work in the stores? Isn’t the Liquor Control Board made up of Mormons?
It’s left as a matter of personal conscience. Most Mormons I’ve known have been willing to serve products they wouldn’t personally consume. The best example of this is the Marriott family, who between their hotels, restaurant chains and airline foodservice businesses must serve millions of gallons of coffee, tea and booze a year.
In Utah itself, there probably are some Mormons on the board, and Utah’s liquor laws are certainly odd (the 3.2% beer law is annoying), but the real population center of Utah, Salt Lake Valley, is no longer predominantly Mormon.
I’m not familiar with the 3.2% beer law. Are you saying that beer in Utah can only be 3.2% abv by law? Why do the mormons care, if they’re not drinking it anyway? The bastards!
Thanks for your answer, OneCentStamp. You know, I had a friend in high school who said he used to be a god on a planet of his own. Who knew he was an unwitting Mormon? 
It’s 3.2% ABW, which is 4% ABV, which is…still a pretty damned weak beer. The funny thing is that all the mega-breweries, everything from BudMillerCoors to Corona and Heineken, make special 3.2% beer for Utah, so apparently someone is drinking enough to make it worth it. And Utah has a thriving microbrewery scene that cranks out award-winning beers despite the limitation.
Apparently he was an exalted Mormon in a former life and is now reincarnated? Wow, those are some seriously crossed wires, speaking theologically. 
The Marriotts don’t really control their hotel business any more, though. But quite a few Mormons work in casinos in Vegas–Vegas is heavily LDS once you leave the Strip–and while some have serious problems with that, others don’t.
Myself, I don’t have a problem serving alcohol or whatever to others, but I don’t have it at home, and there’s no point asking me to bring a bottle to a party as I’m utterly clueless anyway. Ditto coffee; you’d probably wind up with awful, horrible coffee, but I’ll make it for you. (And I would have a problem supporting gambling businesses.)
I formally apologize to this thread.
OCS, great thread.
Unfortunately, I’ve been so busy lately with moving apartments and a pregnant wife that I haven’t been on the boards much so I missed until today. You’ve done a good job explaining things.
TP
Thanks, man. I was wondering when you or Monty might drop by. You two were actually my inspiration for starting it; after reading, and joining, a couple of fairly deep discussions you two have had concerning Mormonism, I thought some of our SDMB friends might benefit from an “LDS for Dummies” thread.
Zombie ex-Mormon thread, arise!
Wow, this seven year old thread is like a time capsule of a transitional phase in my life.
I formally resigned from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in 2010. In the wake of their increasing involvement in politics with which I disagreed vehemently, I couldn’t in good conscience continue to belong to their organization, even passively.
As a relatively new participant to this board, I didn’t see this excellent thread the first time around, so thank you for resurrecting it (so to speak). Fascinating religion and your explanations were of great interest to me. Thank you very much! My late wife was raised LDS but didn’t really want to talk about it much after she left the church. The concept of becoming Creators of your own planets sounds quite SF to me. I am sure that the idea has been pursued by authors in the past. I know that the original BSG was based upon LDS concepts in part.
I missed it the first time around, too. Thanks for sharing all that information with us, and with the rest of the internet as well I guess.