I work for a company that helps our soldiers kill their boys and girls.

we have a coffee machine and teapot in our home, along with some tea. my non-lds family visits frequently and they use them while here, which doesn’t bother me. they’ve also asked to bring alcohol in, which we’ve permitted, but i’m pretty sure that won’t last much longer, as our kids are getting older and more aware.

we are from casino central (”indian country”) and patronize those shops and restaurants (killer buffets!). heck, we even play bingo there! the way i figure, it’s a couple of hours of entertainment, we can meet new people and hang out with our friends, we get free (non-alcoholic) drinks, and it’s cheap. i would never play the slots or tables, but bingo? eh.

guess i’m irreverent, but i think my family and non-lds background requires me to be a little less stringent, though i have no problems drawing lines for them.

Likewise coffee is not evil, it is simply something we don’t drink. I wouldn’t be bothered at all if an establishment associated with the Church served it or wine for that matter.

I worked at a major bookstore chain in HS too, for a quite a while, and part of my job was to pull last months magazines and strip the covers to return to the publisher. This got a little uncomfortable when I had to pull the cover off the porn mags. Even worse than that though, was selling the porn mags (especially to the regulars) to creepy old men (They’ve never heard of a subscription?). And finding the torn open porn mags in the bathroom stalls. Ick. That was my worst job, by far. I was suprised how much of working at a book store is dealing with porn (oh and finding the 12 year old boys reading the kama sutra books in a dark corner. Ick.)

The only job i had a dilemma with was when I worked as a recruiter for the oil and gas industry. On one hand, I was matching up engineers and designers with much needed jobs. Thats a good thing. On the other hand, I was enabling large definitly NOT enviro-friendly companies to continue to build refineries and oil platforms that were destroying the beautiful gulf of mexico. Not to mention these were companies that were profiting off a war I activly protested against. The only reason I stayed is because I knew it would be temporary - as soon as my husband finished the project he was working on we’d be out of there anyway, and it was the first job I could find when we got to the city (and we were really really desperate) - so, I just cringed and cashed my paychecks for a few months.

Alot of members feel that my husbands job crosses the line - he designs video games. Of course, our ideas on media and entertainment are different than most peoples’, and its not an issue for us. Just for some members of the some of the wards we have lived in

I have to say, I don’t really understand the issues people have with starbucks, there isn’t anything ‘wrong’ with coffee. We have just agreed to abstain from it. Of course, I guess Starbucks (and the coffee industry in general) does tend to grossly exploit the areas where they get their coffee, so there is one reason to avoid them.

Wow - that got long. Sorry.

The way I look at is this, you shouldn’t promote sin, but it is ok to sell to business who do things you oppose. Thus You shouldn’t discriminate against providing CPA services to casinos, or grains to breweries, but you shouldn’t actively promote sinful behavior. This line is admittedly gray in some areas, but for my line of work works alright.

During a temple interview it was suggested to me that I shouldn’t be in that kind of business showing those kinds of movies. The individual said he’d never be associated with anything like that and suggested I shouldn’t be either. (It was shortly after that we got out of the theater business…for a while)

Our present theater is closed on Sunday, eventhough all the others in Provo/Orem are open. We do not show “R” rated movies, the others do. We are not very profitable and will most likely close at the end of our current lease.

For our bridal store, we are closed on Sunday at our main store our store in the mall is open mall hours on Sunday, because of the lease. We refuse to sell dresses we consider tooooo “sexy”, low cut front or back, see thru etc.

I owned a resturant where we did not sell beer/wine/etc. but did sell coffee.

For me, I don’t know that I have a hard fast rule about line drawing. Each situation stands on it’s own, if it’s too close to “the line” or makes me feel uncomfortable then I won’t do the business.

Oh, and we pray a lot too!

I did some work as a speechwriter, mostly for progressive non-profit organizations. A minister from a very large protestant church who also ran a homeless shelter approached me and asked if I was interested in writing his sermons for him. His rationale was that he was not very good at writing a punchy sermon, and that he wanted to focus on raising money and awareness for his ministry to homeless. He assured me that he was paying me out of his salary, not church funds. I made my religious affiliations clear, and he outlined the doctrine of his sermons — very general, feel-good Christianity.

I did this for about six months. I enjoyed it…it was an interesting exercise. He would give me a topic (usually a NT verse), some of his thoughts on the topic, and often an anecdote he wanted to include. I would flesh out a 20 minute sermon, which he would check over and send back if necessary (which it was twice, both to adjust the tone to keep it fitting for his congregation). I heard him give three of the twenty or so sermons I wrote for him. He had a great style: I always thought of it as Thomas Monson meets MLK. I only stopped because I became too busy with other projects.

I never felt bad about doing this, although sometimes I wondered if he should. The only time I saw a clear moral problem was a sermon I was writing about the role of Christ in our everyday lives, and I was going to plagarize 2 Nephi 25:26. I decided it would be wrong to use the BofM to strengthen the religious position of another church without making the source clear. I did use the phrase ‘for God will not be mocked’ assuming it was Biblical, and I was amused when I realized where I had heard that particular phrase.

For things that aren’t inherently wrong, I don’t see anything immoral about being involved in others partaking of such activities. For me, that includes drinking alcohol or coffee in moderation, and if I owned a restaurant I wouldn’t have a problem with serving wine, for example. (I’d differentiate between that and owning a bar where the focus is on drinking.)

But we don’t allow alcohol in our home; I might feel differently if we didn’t have kids. We do let guests bring their own coffee or tea if they wish.

I would have a hard time getting involved in tobacco, though, and porn. I don’t judge those who do, but I couldn’t be a CPA in a tobacco company. Where the gray area comes in is where those are a small part of the business. The same people that install cable that lets me see BYU-TV also install cable that lets other see vile porn. I wouldn’t have a moral problem installing cable, but I can see why some people might.

I once knew of a supermarket owner who was Seventh-day Adventist. Not only did he sell no alcohol nor tobacco in his store, he also kept it closed on Saturdays. And he made money at it — but the reason he had this luxury is because the town was small and his supermarket was the only one. Although I wouldn’t have done what he did, I admire his willingness to stand by his beliefs.

It would be difficult to be a purist. I make my living as a writer/editor whose work is paid for by advertising, and not all the advertisers are selling moral services. But the writing I do makes the world a better place (I hope!), and I have to leave it at that.

One more minor point, for whatever it’s worth: It is now possible to get coffee, the caffeinated kind, at the Church-owned Polynesian Cultural Center. But it’s available only on request.

When I was 19 and extremely Molly Mormon, I worked as a purchasing agent at the Flamingo Hilton. Unless I needed to go to another part of the property to get a signature, I was never exposed to actual gaming. I worked in the office and it felt like a normal job. (Although the employee cafeteria was an interesting place, to say the least.) Whenever I’d have to prepare requisitions for pasties or itsy bitsy costumes for the cocktail waitresses or alcohol, I’d feel as though I was contributing to something evil. (Of course, at that stage of my life I felt evil if I stooped to saying “damn,” so it’s all relative.) I eventually quit because it bothered me, but I was 19, not supporting a family, and had the luxury of making a pretty stress-free, strings-free decision.

My brother wanted to open a restaurant, but his wife objected to selling liquor so they didn’t. That doesn’t make sense to ME personally, but I’m not drawing their line. I only have to draw my own lines of what feels moral or not - the problem is, when you are talking about money, it’s easy to let that line get shadier and shadier.