Ever since the first Mormon temple was built more than 150 years ago, they have been the subject of... 
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"Well, we feel enormous respect for other faiths," said Cook. "And we are just completely respectful of those who suffered during the Holocaust. We just have to make that perfectly clear. And we just see this very differently. We see that in a loving outreach to all the world that we are doing this process of by proxy being baptized for them."
The tour included the ordinance rooms where members make covenants with God to lead worthy lives, and are given the keys that will allow them to enter heaven. This apparently includes secret handshakes, although the apostles didn't care to discuss that.
"We don't get into the details of that," said Ballard.
Cook explained why secrecy is crucial.
"You're going through a process that, if taken out of context, can seem unusual or different, but if you're in the whole, context doesn't seem that way at all," he said.
The apostles prefer to describe the temple as "sacred" rather than "secret." And they point out that, while the 129 temples are members-only, their 18,000 churches and chapels are open to anyone at all.
In fact, the church has 53,000 missionaries out around the world trying to recruit converts to what Mormons believe is the one true Christian church, a church that began in the early 1800s in upstate New York when a teenaged Joseph Smith said he was visited by God and Jesus.
In their early years, the Mormons were violently persecuted.
And it is precisely because of that painful past that critics charge the Mormons with hypocrisy for urging its members, in a letter read from the pulpit in every church in California, to give their money and time to defeat gay marriage in California.
"We were for marriage between a man and a woman because that is the issue that will protect the future of this country and this civilization," said Cook. "It's for the protection of the 5,000-year history of marriage being between a man and a woman."
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