Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Amy Werbel, Professor of the History of Art, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)

In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, his administration has made many attempts to suppress speech it disfavors – at universities, on the airwaves, in public school classrooms, in museums, at protests and even in lawyer’s offices.

If past is prologue, these efforts may backfire.

In 2018, I published my book “Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock.”

A devout evangelical Christian, Comstock hoped to use the powers of the government to impose moral standards on American expression in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. To that end, he and like-minded donors established the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which successfully lobbied for the creation of the first federal anti-obscenity laws with enforcement provisions.

Later appointed inspector for the Post Office Department, Comstock fought to abolish whatever he deemed blasphemous and sinful: birth control, abortion aids and information about sexual health, along with certain art, books and newspapers. Federal and state laws gave him the power to order law enforcement to seize these materials and have prosecutors bring criminal indictments.

I analyzed thousands of these censorship cases to assess their legal and cultural outcomes.

I found that, over time, Comstock’s censorship regime did lead to a rise in self-censorship, confiscations and prosecutions. However, it also inspired greater support for free speech and due process.

More popular – and more profitable

One effect of Comstock’s censorship campaigns: The materials and speech he disfavored often made headlines, putting them on the public’s radar as a kind of “forbidden fruit.”

For example, prosecutions targeting artwork featuring nude subjects led to both sensational media coverage and a boom in the popularity of nudes on everything from soap advertisements and cigar boxes to photographs and sculptures.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs of racy forms of entertainment – promoters of belly dancing, publishers of erotic postcards and producers of “living pictures,” which were exhibitions of seminude actors posing as classical statuary – all benefited from Comstock’s complaints. If Comstock wanted it shut down, the public often assumed that it was fun and trendy.

In 1891, Comstock became irate when a young female author proposed paying him to attack her book and “seize a few copies” to “get the newspapers to notice it.” And in October 1906, Comstock threatened to shut down an exhibition of models performing athletic exercises wearing form-fitting union suits. Twenty thousand people showed up to Madison Square Garden for the exhibition – far more than the venue could hold at the time.

The Trump administration’s recent efforts to get comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air have similarly backfired.

Kimmel had generated controversy for comments he made on his late-night talk show in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. ABC, which is owned by The Walt Disney Co., initially acquiesced to pressure from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr and announced the show’s “indefinite” suspension. But many viewers, angered over the company’s capitulation, canceled their subscriptions of Disney streaming services. This led to a 3.3% drop in Disney’s share price, which spurred legal actions by shareholders of the publicly traded company.

ABC soon lifted the suspension. Kimmel returned, drawing 6.26 million live viewers – more than four times his normal audience – while over 26 million viewers watched Kimmel’s return monologue on social media. Since then, all network affiliates have resumed airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

‘Comstockery’ and hypocrisy

In the U.S., disfavored political speech and obscenity are different in important ways. The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment provides broad protections for political expression, whereas speech deemed to be obscene is illegal.

Despite this fundamental difference, social and cultural forces can make it difficult to clearly discern protected and unprotected speech.

In Comstock’s case, the public was happy to see truly explicit pornography removed from circulation. But their own definition of what was “obscene” – and, therefore, criminally liable – was much narrower.

In 1905, Comstock attempted to shut down a theatrical performance of George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” because the plot included prostitution. The aging censor was widely ridiculed and became a “laughing stock,” according to The New York Times. Shaw went on to coin the term “Comstockery,” which caught on as a shorthand for overreaching censoriousness.

In a similar manner, when Attorney General Pam Bondi recently threatened Americans that the Department of Justice “will absolutely … go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” swift backlash ensued.

Numerous Supreme Court rulings have held that hate speech is constitutionally protected. However, those in power can threaten opponents with punishment even when their speech clearly does not fall within one of the rare exceptions to the First Amendment protection for political speech.

Doing so carries risks.

The old saying “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” also applies to censors: The public holds them to higher standards, lest they be exposed as hypocrites.

For critics of the Trump administration, it was jarring to see officials outraged about “hate speech,” only to hear the president announce, at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”

In Comstock’s case, defendants and their attorneys routinely noted that Comstock had seen more illicit materials than any man in the U.S. Criticizing Comstock in 1882, Unitarian minister Octavius Brooks Frothingham quoted Shakespeare: “Who is so virtuous as to be allowed to forbid the distribution of cakes and ale?”

In other words, if you’re going to try to enforce moral standards, you better make sure you’re beyond reproach.

Free speech makes for strange bedfellows

Comstock’s censorship campaign, though self-defeating in the long run, nonetheless caused enormous suffering, just as many people today are suffering from calls to fire and harass those whose viewpoints are legal, but disliked by the Trump administration.

Comstock prosecuted women’s rights advocate Ida Craddock for circulating literature that advocated for female sexual pleasure. After Craddock was convicted in 1902, she died by suicide. She left behind a “letter to the public,” in which she accused Comstock of violating her rights to freedom of religion and speech.

During Craddock’s trial, the jury hadn’t been permitted to see her writings; they were deemed “too harmful.” Incensed by these violations of the First and Fourth amendments, defense attorneys rallied together and were joined by a new coalition in the support of Americans’ constitutional rights. Lincoln Steffens of the nascent Free Speech League wrote, in response to Craddock’s suicide, that “those who believe in the general principle of free speech must make their point by supporting it for some extreme cause. Advocating free speech only for a popular or uncontroversial position would not convey the breadth of the principle.”

Then, as now, the cause of free expression can bring together disparate political factions.

In the wake of the Kimmel saga, many conservative Republicans came out to support the same civil liberties also advocated by liberal Hollywood actors. Two-thirds of Americans in a September 2025 YouGov poll said that it was “unacceptable for government to pressure broadcasters to remove shows it disagrees with.”

My conclusion from studying the 43-year career of America’s most prolific censor?

Government officials may think a campaign of suppression and fear will silence their opponents, but these threats could end up being the biggest impediment to their effort to remake American culture.

Amy Werbel receives funding from the State University of New York.

– ref. Censorship campaigns can have a way of backfiring – look no further than the fate of America’s most prolific censor – https://theconversation.com/censorship-campaigns-can-have-a-way-of-backfiring-look-no-further-than-the-fate-of-americas-most-prolific-censor-266117

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Laura Gail Miller, Ed.D. Candidate in Educational Organizational Learning and Leadership, Seattle University

Texas A&M University announced the resignation of its president, Mark A. Welsh III, on Sept. 18, 2025, following a controversial decision earlier in the month to fire a professor over a classroom exchange with a student about gender identity.

The university – a public school in College Station, Texas – fired Melissa McCoul, a children’s literature professor, on Sept. 9. McCoul’s dismissal happened after a student secretly filmed video as the professor taught a class and discussed a children’s book that includes the image of a purple “gender unicorn,” a cartoon image that is sometimes used to teach about gender identity.

The student questioned whether it was “legal” to be teaching about gender identity, given President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order – which is not legally binding – that said there are only two genders, male and female.

The video went viral, triggering backlash from Republican lawmakers who called for McCoul to be fired and praised the fact that the school also demoted the College of Arts and Science’s dean and revoked administrative duties from a department head.

Texas A&M officials have said that McCoul was fired because her course content was not consistent with the published course description. McCoul is appealing her firing and is considering legal action against the school.

Academic freedom advocates have condemned McCoul’s firing and say it raises questions about whether professors should be fired for addressing politically charged topics.

As a history educator researching curriculum design, civics education and generational dynamics, I study how classroom discussions often mirror larger cultural and political conflicts.

The Texas A&M case is far from unprecedented. The Cold War offers an example of another politically contentious time in American history when people questioned if and how politics should influence what gets taught in the classroom – and tried to restrict what teachers say.

Educators under suspicion in the McCarthy era

During the Cold War – a period of geopolitical tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that came after World War II and lasted until 1991 – fears of communist infiltration spread widely across American society, including the country’s schools.

One particularly contentious period was in the late 1940s and 1950s, during what is often referred to as the McCarthy era. The era is named after Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a Republican who led the charge on accusing government employees and others – often without evidence – of being communists.

Beginning in the late 1940s, local school boards, state legislatures and Congress launched investigations into teachers and professors across the country accused of harboring communist sympathies. This often led to the teachers being blacklisted and fired.

More than 20 states passed loyalty oath laws requiring public employees, including educators, to swear that they were not members of the Communist Party or affiliated groups.

In California, for example, the 1950 Levering Act mandated a loyalty oath for all state employees, including professors at public universities. Some employees refused to sign the oath, and 31 University of California professors were fired.

And in New York, the Feinberg Law, approved in 1949, authorized school districts to fire teachers who were members of “subversive organizations.” More than 250 educators were fired or forced to resign under the Feinberg Law and related anti-subversion policies between 1948 and 1953.

These laws had a chilling impact on academic life and learning.

Faculty, including those who were not under investigation, and students alike avoided discussing controversial topics, such as labor organizing and civil rights, in the classroom.

This pervasive climate of censorship also made it challenging for educators to fully engage students in critical, meaningful learning.

The Supreme Court steps in

By the mid-1950s, questions about the constitutionality of these laws – and the extent of professors’ academic freedom and First Amendment right to freedom of speech – reached the Supreme Court.

In one such case, 1957’s Sweezy v. New Hampshire, Louis C. Weyman, the New Hampshire attorney general, questioned Paul Sweezy, a Marxist economist, about the content of a university lecture he delivered at the University of New Hampshire.

Weyman wanted to determine whether Sweezy had advocated for Marxism or said that socialism was inevitable in the country. Sweezy refused to answer Weyman’s questions, citing his constitutional rights. The Supreme Court ruled in Sweezy’s favor, emphasizing the importance of academic freedom and the constitutional limits on state interference in university teaching.

The Supreme Court also considered another case, Keyishian v. Board of Regents, in 1967. With the Cold War still ongoing, this case challenged New York’s Feinberg Law, which required educators to disavow membership in communist organizations.

In striking down the law, the court declared that academic freedom is “a special concern of the First Amendment.” The ruling emphasized that vague or broad restrictions on what teachers can say or believe create an unconstitutional, “chilling effect” on the classroom.

While these cases did not remove all political pressures on what teachers could discuss in class, they set significant constitutional limits on state efforts to regulate classroom speech, particularly at public institutions.

Recurring tensions from now and then

There are several important differences between the McCarthy era and current times.

For starters, conservative concern centered primarily on the spread of communism during the McCarthy era. Today, debates often involve conservative critiques of how topics such as gender identity, race and other cultural issues — sometimes grouped under the term “woke” — are addressed in schools and society.

Second, in the 1950s and ‘60s, external pressures on academic freedom often came in the form of legal mandates.

Today, the political landscape in academia is more complex and fast-paced, with pressures emanating from both the public and federal government.

Viral outrage, administrative investigations and threats to cut state or federal funding to schools can all contribute to an intensifying climate of fear of retribution that constrains educators’ ability to teach freely.

Despite these differences, the underlying dynamic between the two time periods is similar – in both cases, political polarization intensifies public scrutiny of educators.

Like loyalty oaths in the 1950s, today’s political controversies create a climate in which many teachers feel pressure to avoid contentious topics altogether. Even when no laws are passed, the possibility of complaints, investigations or firings can shape classroom choices.

Just as Sweezy and Keyishian defined the boundaries of state power in the 1950s and ‘60s, potential legal challenges like the appeal from the fired Texas A&M professor may eventually lead to court rulings that clarify how people’s First Amendment protections apply in today’s disputes over curriculum and teaching.

Whether these foundational protections will endure under the Supreme Court’s current and future makeup remains an open question.

Laura Gail Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. McCarthyism’s shadow looms over controversial firing of Texas professor who taught about gender identity – https://theconversation.com/mccarthyisms-shadow-looms-over-controversial-firing-of-texas-professor-who-taught-about-gender-identity-265554

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Neil Marsh, Professor of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, University of Michigan

You might best know chromium as a bright, shiny metal used in bathroom and kitchen fittings. But is it also essential for your health?

In a form known as trivalent chromium, this metal is included in multivitamin pills and sold as a dietary supplement that companies claim can improve athletic performance and help regulate blood sugar.

I’m a biochemistry professor with a long-standing interest in how metals function in biology. Although health agencies in the United States and other countries recommend chromium as a dietary requirement, eight decades of research have resulted in slim evidence that people derive any significant health benefits from this mineral.

Why, then, did chromium come to be considered essential for human health?

What is an essential trace element?

To stay healthy, people need what are called essential trace elements in their diet. These include metals such as iron, zinc, manganese, cobalt and copper. As the word “trace” implies, you need only tiny amounts of these metals for optimal function.

For most of these trace elements, decades of research have shown they are genuinely essential for health. Iron, for example, is essential for carrying oxygen in your blood, and many proteins – complex molecules that carry out all of the functions necessary for life – require iron to function properly. A deficiency of iron leads to anemia, a condition that results in fatigue, weakness, headaches and brittle nails, among other symptoms. Iron supplements can help reverse these symptoms.

Importantly, biochemists have pinpointed exactly how iron helps proteins perform essential chemical reactions, not just for humans but all living organisms. Researchers know not only that iron is essential but also why it is essential.

Little evidence for chromium’s benefits

However, the same cannot be said for chromium.

Chromium deficiency – having little to no chromium in your body – is extremely rare, and researchers have not identified any clearly defined disease caused by low chromium levels.

Like all food, essential metals must be absorbed by your digestive system. However, the gut absorbs only about 1% of ingested chromium. Other essential metals are absorbed more efficiently – for example, the average person absorbs around 25% of certain forms of ingested iron.

Importantly, despite many studies, scientists have yet to find any protein that requires chromium to carry out its biological function. In fact, only one protein is known to bind chromium, and this protein most likely helps your kidneys remove chromium from your blood. While some studies in people suggest chromium might be involved to some degree in regulating blood glucose levels, research on whether adding extra chromium to your body through supplements can substantially improve your body’s ability to break down and use sugar has been inconclusive.

Thus, based on biochemistry, there is currently no evidence that humans, or other animals, actually require chromium for any particular function.

Flawed research in rats

So how did chromium come to be considered an essential trace metal?

The idea that chromium might be essential for health stems from studies in the 1950s, a time when nutritionists knew very little about what trace metals are required to maintain good health.

One influential study involved feeding lab rats a diet that induced symptoms of Type 2 diabetes. Supplementing their diet with chromium seemed to cure the rats of Type 2 diabetes, and medical researchers were enticed by the suggestion that chromium might provide a treatment for this disease. Today’s widespread claims that chromium is important for regulating blood sugar can be traced to these experiments.

Unfortunately, these early experiments were very flawed by today’s standards. They lacked the statistical analyses needed to show that their results were not due to random chance. Furthermore, they lacked important controls, including measuring how much chromium was in the rats’ diet to start with.

Later studies that were more rigorously designed provided ambiguous results. While some found that rats fed chromium supplements controlled their blood sugar slightly better than rats raised on a chromium-free diet, others found no significant differences. But what was clear was that rats raised on diets that excluded chromium were perfectly healthy.

Experiments on people are much harder to control for than experiments on rats, and there are few well-designed clinical trials investigating the effects of chromium on patients with diabetes. Just as with the rat studies, the results are ambiguous. If there is an effect, it is very small.

Recommendations based on averages

Why, then, is there a recommended dietary intake for chromium despite its lack of documented health benefits?

The idea that chromium is needed for health persists due in large part to a 2001 report from the National Institute of Medicine’s Panel on Micronutrients. This panel of distinguished nutritional researchers and clinicians was formed to evaluate available research on human nutrition and set “adequate intake” levels of vitamins and minerals. Their recommendations form the basis of the recommended daily intake labels found on food and vitamin packaging and the National Institutes of Health guidelines for clinicians.

Despite acknowledging the lack of research demonstrating clear-cut health benefits for chromium, the panel still recommended adults get about 30 micrograms per day of chromium in their diet. This recommendation was not based on science but rather on previous estimates of how much chromium adult Americans already ingest each day. Notably, much of this chromium is leached from stainless steel cookware and food processing equipment, rather than coming from our food.

So, while there may not be confirmed health risks from taking chromium supplements, there’s probably no benefit either.

Neil Marsh receives funding from the NIH and NSF.

– ref. Why chromium is considered an essential nutrient, despite having no proven health benefits – https://theconversation.com/why-chromium-is-considered-an-essential-nutrient-despite-having-no-proven-health-benefits-252867

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Konden Smith Hansen, Senior Lecturer of Religious Studies, University of Arizona

Russell M. Nelson, a former heart surgeon and longtime church leader, was 93 years old when he became president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2018. But anyone who assumed that his tenure would be uneventful, due to his advanced years, was quickly proved wrong. Visiting South America that year, he told members to buckle up: “Eat your vitamin pills. Get your rest. It’s going to be exciting.”

Nelson, who died on Sept. 27, 2025, at age 101, proved a consequential reformer: an energetic leader who streamlined bureaucracy, took steps toward gender equity and ended the church’s century-long relationship with the Boy Scouts, while reaffirming its opposition to LGBTQ+ relationships and identities.

He steered the church unapologetically through storms of public scrutiny, including accusations that the church had concealed the value of its investments. For the faithful, Nelson represented God’s mouthpiece on Earth. The church considers each president to be a “prophet, seer, and revelator.”

Yet one of his initiatives made an impact that rippled far beyond the church. In 2018, he surprised observers by declaring the use of the word “Mormon” a “major victory for Satan,” insisting on the use of the church’s full name. Individuals were to be recognized by their institutional affiliation, as “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

The name of the church was given by God, and shortening it erases “all that Jesus Christ did for us,” Nelson argued. Yet adherents have long self-identified as Mormons, so the rebrand felt like a novelty to some members.

As a university lecturer teaching courses on American religion and Mormonism, I was one of many who wrestled with this change in terminology – and saw the challenges it created for my students and colleagues. For almost two centuries, the word “Mormon” has framed how Americans think about and discuss this faith.

Birth of a church

The name Mormon comes from the title of the Book of Mormon, a religious text unique to the faith. Founder Joseph Smith, who organized the church in 1830, believed he had been instructed by God to restore Jesus’ true church. He claimed that an angel had led him to uncover and translate ancient gold plates that detailed the religious history of an ancient civilization in the Americas, founded by Israelites who fled Jerusalem.

Early critics mockingly attached the word Mormon to the movement, but Smith insisted that in the book’s original language, the word meant “literally, ‘more good.’” By the time Smith was killed by a mob in Illinois in 1844, his followers had embraced the word.

After Smith’s death, Mormons split into different factions, with the largest group traveling by foot and wagon to the far American West. Yet, the group’s evolving practices continued to spark controversy. Polygamy and the church’s political and economic influence contributed to decades of animosity between Mormons and the rest of the nation.

The United States began seizing church property and imprisoning polygamist leaders, coercing church president Wilford Woodruff to end official support for polygamy in 1890.

A new debut

Three years later, at the Chicago World’s Fair, the church rebranded Mormonism, presenting Mormon pioneers as an embodiment of the values of the American frontier.

Woodruff, then 86 years old, spoke of himself as Utah’s oldest living pioneer and of Mormons as a people who built the American West. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed at the fair, reintroducing Mormons to the wider public as a sophisticated and artistic people. The crowd shouted, “Three cheers for the Mormons!” The Chicago Herald wrote, “Mormons and gentiles came together as friends.”

Despite this, many Americans still distrusted Mormons. In 1903, high-ranking church official Reed Smoot was elected to the U.S. Senate, which provoked national outcry and led to Senate hearings that lasted until 1907. The hearings substantiated charges that the practice of polygamy persisted but exonerated Smoot as an individual. As Smoot argued, Mormons were independent of the institutional church and thus trustworthy Americans. He convinced his fellow senators that if the church’s teachings came into conflict with his conscience or oath of office, then, as a Mormon, he would uphold the latter.

Following Smoot’s lead, the church embraced the trappings of American patriotism and doubled down against plural marriage. These moves won the Latter-day Saints powerful political allies, including Theodore Roosevelt, who disliked the institutional church but viewed Mormons themselves as intensely moral and patriotic.

‘Meet the Mormons’

Ab Jenkins, a race car driver whose records made him an international celebrity in the 1930s, capitalized on this new image of Mormon individuality and wholesomeness. The “Mormon Boy” credited his clean, church-approved lifestyle for his success. On his car, the Mormon Meteor, Jenkins rejected alcohol and cigarette endorsements and instead brandished a sign that read, “Yes, I’m a Mormon.”

For several decades, other Mormon celebrities like family band The Osmonds and golfer Johnny Miller continued to shape positive public views of Mormons – hitting a high-water mark in 1977, when Gallup found that only 18% of Americans held unfavorable views.

Church efforts to influence social issues, however, such as its decades-long opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, eventually took a toll. By 1991, public opinion of Mormons had fallen dramatically, with 37% of Americans viewing them unfavorably – and leaders decided that another rebrand was in order.

The previous year, senior leader Gordon B. Hinckley had admonished members to make the word Mormon “shine with added luster.” When he became president in 1995, Hinckley worked to reframe how the public saw Mormons, arguing on the “60 Minutes” TV show that Mormons were “not a weird people.”

The Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 pushed Mormonism into the national spotlight, and that same year, the church launched its major website, Mormon.org, with stories and headlines liberally using the term “Mormon.” A media campaign followed a decade later, featuring prominent members declaring, “I’m a Mormon.” Ordinary members were then encouraged to upload their own “I’m a Mormon” profiles to this website and share them on their own social media accounts.

Mitt Romney’s Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential election and the popularity of the satirical “Book of Mormon” musical pushed Mormons again into the national spotlight. In 2014, the church produced a documentary titled “Meet the Mormons,” shown in theaters across the U.S., which apostle Jefferey R. Holland explained was to “show people what we’re really like.”

In 2017, a Pew Research Center survey’s “feeling thermometer” found public opinion of Mormons to have risen to the “somewhat warmer” rating of 54, a 6-point increase from 2014.

‘More good’?

That said, the church’s relationship to the word Mormon has always been complex. As far back as 1990, Nelson was already warning fellow Latter-day Saints that Mormon was “not an appropriate alternative” for the church’s full name. During the 2002 Olympics, the church advised media that the nickname was acceptable for individuals but not to refer to the institution itself.

Overall, I would argue the church has used the word Mormon to improve public opinion for more than a century. Part of this branding downplayed popular fears about the church and its influence – allowing outsiders to develop favorable views toward Mormons, even if they disliked the institution itself.

In March 2023, a Pew Research poll reported a low point in public opinion of Mormons, falling for the first time below every other measured group. A quarter of Americans held “unfavorable views of Mormons,” while only 15% held “favorable” ones.

A month later, Nelson pleaded with members to be peacemakers, lamenting that “many people seem to believe that it is completely acceptable to condemn, malign and vilify anyone who does not agree with them.” Nationally, intense polarization and violence have continued since then – including a horrific attack in Michigan on a Latter-day Saints church building on Sept. 28, 2025, just one day after Nelson’s death.

“Mormon” has been an important term in engaging those outside the faith, particularly in countering negative perceptions. Whether or not the word disappears, what may matter more for Nelson’s legacy is whether people outside the church associate it with “more good” – both institutionally and individually.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Sept. 5, 2024.

Konden Smith Hansen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Russell M. Nelson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, pushed it away from ‘Mormon’ – a word that has courted controversy for 200 years – https://theconversation.com/russell-m-nelson-president-of-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints-pushed-it-away-from-mormon-a-word-that-has-courted-controversy-for-200-years-266229