Salt Lake City has decided to keep its protest restrictions in place for next month's 174th Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The restrictions prohibit street preachers and protesters from roaming the sidewalks by forcing them into designated areas on sidewalks near the Conference Center. The plan is designed to keep the peace between conferencegoers and the street preachers who often decry LDS doctrine as not Biblical.
In some past instances, the disputes have turned physical when conferencegoers saw the street preachers mockingly display clothing held sacred by LDS faithful.
Assistant City Attorney Boyd Ferguson said he would review the plan with police today. General conference will be Oct. 2-3.
For April's conference, the city announced more than two weeks in advance that it planned to squeeze the preachers and others into set protest zones.
The American Civil Liberties Union received some complaints about last year's system, even though U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell denied an emergency request from the Worldwide Street Preachers Fellowship to void the protest zone plan.
Dozens of Christian street preachers descend on Salt Lake City for each LDS conference. The preachers have become controversial as their message has targeted LDS doctrine they believe is heretical.
The street preachers also have besmirched sacred LDS temple clothing.
While ACLU of Utah executive director Dani Eyer agreed the protest zone plan was constitutional, she said people often complain about the way such plans are implemented.
At times in April, based on observations by Deseret Morning News staffers, police didn't enforce the rules evenly.
For instance, press photographers, reporters and others were often allowed to sit on street medians and observe the situation. However, when street preachers set up shop on the same medians, they were kicked off.
In another case, some anti-street-preacher protesters wearing clown suits placed bunches of balloons in front of the street preachers' signs.
When asked if that blockage violated First Amendment protections against one person muffling another's message, two Salt Lake City patrol officers said it didn't.
Later, however, when police Lt. Tim Doubt arrived on scene and saw the balloons, he said it was a clear violation and forced the clowns to remove the balloons.
Eyer said the complaints she fielded were mostly from people with other messages who didn't like their message being mixed with the street preachers' message.
Meanwhile, Standing Together Ministries, led by director Greg Johnson, plans again to counter the street preachers by standing on the public sidewalks politely welcoming LDS members to conference.
"We're just simply calling it Mission of Loving Kindness 2," he said.
Johnson has filed a free speech permit with Salt Lake City and 15 evangelical churches are involved. He hopes to have 200 people near the conference center on Oct. 2 and 3.
While the churches don't agree with LDS doctrine, they are trying to show the LDS people love, Johnson said. He added that he was encouraged by a letter sent to his group from the late Elder Neal A. Maxwell on behalf of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve thanking Standing Together for their efforts.
"We just love our Mormon friends and neighbors, and even if we disagree, we just love ya," he said.
E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com