Utah’s safety net for the poor is so intertwined with the LDS Church that individual bishops often decide who receives assistance. Some deny help unless a person goes to services or gets baptized.
Agreed - working as intended, and it's not just LDS. I'm in FL and churches here have been opposing publicly funded safety nets for my whole life, in favor of voluntary, often church-led, donations.
They appear to have set it up that way on purpose.
A single mother of one here is eligible for $399 a month in state assistance, and only if she has a net income of $456 a month or less.
Utah doesn’t do more for those in need in part because a contingent of its lawmakers, the overwhelming majority of whom are Latter-day Saints themselves, assume the church is handling the poverty issue; they also are loath to raise taxes to do the state’s share, a review of Utah’s legislative history demonstrates.
There was a time in my life where I got one meal a day for a few cents from charities.
On the weekends we had to sit through a religious sermon before they let us eat, and I will never forget how it made me feel to sit there for a full hour listening to this smug arrogant man lording it over us and telling us how he was so powerful he could materialise his body on other planets but he chooses not to because he is more enlightened than we are.
Utah’s safety net for the poor is so intertwined with the LDS Church that individual bishops often decide who receives assistance. Some deny help unless a person goes to services or gets baptized.