David Cay Johnston, that's his name. He's the exmormon Reuters reporter. A hero walks among us my friends. Just saw him on MSNBC.

Do you have any link saying he is exmo?

Eight children and 5 grandchildren.

Hmmmm, might be a clue!

Cute but my question still stands.

BTW the Duggars are neither Mormon nor Exmormon.

One accurate factor here, two errors.

I am a convicted LDS heretic, tried in absentia at my own request in 1980. It is not easy to get tried for heresey.

I belonged for 14+ years starting in high school near Santa Cruz, Calif., where I fell in love with just about the smartest (and absolutely the sweetest) girl I knew and we had six children. She remains one of the faithful.

I was never a Reuters reporter. I was a columnist for 14 months ending last month.

Never confuse reporting and opining, even in reported opinion columns that break news, as mine did almost every week.

Posters here may want to read my last byline in the LATimes (reported for them 1976-88). In my review of the twin 1988 books on the SLC bombings and the church's effort to buy up and suppress what it thought were devastating documents from the early days of the church.

My review noted that the opening story of the BOM is a tale of God in search of a hitman.


David Cay Johnston
www.davidcayjohnston.com

Typo -- should be "heresy."

Here is the link to the 1988 piece.

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-12-18/books/bk-962_1_mormon-leaders-mormon-beliefs-lds-church

Wow, thanks so much for responding here personally. I've been coming to this site for a long time, and hope you will too.

Coincidentally, we live very close. In fact, I'll bet we're in the same ward, if we both went back, haha (no chance). I'm thinking of the building on Westfall Rd, which I've never been in.

I *have* been in a bookstore on Jefferson Rd. where I think you did a booksigning. So, small world.

Again, welcome.

At first I thought it said "hearsay." And I thought, hey, that's right. A lot of people do get excommunicated based on hearsay.

Mr. Johnston,

You first caught my attention on the Lawrence O'Donnell show when you started talking about your experiences with LDS. You said something about free agency. Since then, whenever you have a segment, I literally drop what I'm doing to watch. I can't express enough how important your work is to me and I can't believe you just posted here-- you *so* just gave me exmo street cred! You have our full support here, you're most definitely among friends.

P.S. I'm a bit star struck over Mr. O'Donnell since his segment on the 14 year old Pakistani girl, Malala. He --and you--truly have hearts of gold. Keep up the good fight my friends.

HEY

Sister Tissue Trotter and David Cay, I know Westfall Rd and Jefferson Rd, I am in the same area! Da holy land! ooops only kidding.

Seriously, do you all ever do ex-mo stuff in a group around here?

Hi family first!

Well, I'm not a sister - my handle "S. Tissue Trotter" is something I invented to poke fun at church spokesman Scott Trotter.

Only things I've ever done with exmos, I once went to a coffee hour in Chelmsford, Mass., and then last summer I went to Hill Cumorah Pageant preceded by a freethinkers' get-together in downtown Palmyra which included a showing of the BBC program.

If we got together, you'd find me pretty boring. But sure, let's meet. One way is to send your email address to Susan I/S, with permission to give it to me. Another, I don't know how to, is just to get a one-time-use email address from gmail or hotmail or somewhere, and post it in this thread.

Then maybe we could meet at a fast food joint and play Scrabble or something, and reminisce.

I'll email Susan I/S as I was going to email her with good news about my daughter. Don't be surprised if the whole family comes with me...we all left together.

Mr. Johnston is the best exmo guest on MSNBC ever. His appearances on topics other than Mormonism are equally impressive. I bet he'd be an AWESOME speaker at an Exmormon Conference.

To Mr. Johnston
You've been on Hardball a few times. Have you ever had a chance to speak to Chris Matthews about some of the negative aspects of Mormonism? He seems to hold Mormons in high regard, which seems a little naive. Just wondering...