How will Salt Lake handle street preachers?

With 10 days until the start of the 174th Semiannual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City is still considering what to do with street preachers and others who plan to exercise their First Amendment rights during the event.

For this past LDS conference in April, the city announced more than two weeks in advance that it planned to squeeze the preachers and others into set protest zones.

This time around, the Salt Lake City Police Department is still considering what they will do. Meanwhile, city attorneys are waiting to take a look at the police plan to see if it's constitutionally kosher.

"We are close but still are waiting on the police to give us an answer on what they want to do," assistant city attorney Boyd Ferguson said.

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 and as they 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.

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E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com