They’re Shocked
Feb 24th, 2006 at 7:18 am by Susie
I was reading this review of “Big Love,” the new HBO series about a polygamous family in Salt Lake City. The Mormon church leaders are a tad upset about it and point out they banned the practice a long time ago.
Well, that’s a little disengenous. Because Joseph Smith, their Prophet, did teach this was God’s will, and the church finally ruled against it only under extreme political pressure. Many practicing Mormons are still hard pressed to explain why their church accepts Smith’s teaching on everything else - but not this. So the most extreme (some would say “devout”) Mormons note the contradiction and often go off the grid to practice polygamy.
Since they tend to cluster in states controlled by Mormon politicians, there’s a kind of “nudge nudge wink wink” official blindness to the practice. But no one says a word until there’s a problem too big to sweep under the media rug - i.e. the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart.
If the Supremes can approve hoasca tea for pursuit of faith purposes, why not polygamy?
Mormons, Fundamentalists, Catholics:
All crazy people. Recently DNA tests found no Jewish background in Native Americans, disproving Mormon belief that they were descendants of Israelites.
They don’t even go off the grid. I had two co-workers in SLC who were bigamists (one was working on polygamy, and tried to get me to hire his new woman). Everyone in the office knew about it, but didn’t talk about it. But we expected them to keep it quiet, kind of like many businesses treat gays. It was a big shock, one day, when we called the house of one of the guys, got kids. Then called the (supposed separate) office, and also got kids. Both sets of kids said Daddy wasn’t home.
hooo boy. i read a book, a true story about some crazy mormon who murdered his sister in law and her baby….i cant recall the title….anyway in the book and (others) its pretty obvious that this polygamy nonsense is just an excuse for creepy old men to marry very young girls….you ask me, its pedophilia.
I read that book, too. It’s called “Under the Banner of Heaven” and it made me look at Utah in a whole new way. Fascinating book.
The Woodruff Manifesto that originally abandoned polygamy, named for LDS Church prez Wilford Woodruff, came out in 1890, so that Utah could become a state, which it did in 1896. But there was a hedge; it said polygamy was banned in the US. So church leaders sent members to Mexico and Canada to join polygamous colonies and get married. It took more political pressure and two more manifestos, in 1900 and 1914, before the church officially renounced the practice everywhere. But as someone noted above, it’s winked at to this day. There is a colony in the south end of the Salt Lake valley, pockets of polygs all over the state. The most notorious of course is down’ta Hilldale and Colorado City, on the UT-AZ border, home of the FLDS church, much in the news lately. Their “prophet,” Warren Jeffs, is currently on the lam for marrying young girls to older men. They’ve also started up a colony in Texas.
R. Dale, “Behind the Zion Curtain”
“obviously the holy practice will commence again after the Second Coming”
And what is the growth rate of the Mormon church? Greater than 50% per decade.
“The Mormon Conspiracy is a very comprehensive volume dealing with issues that most others, who have written about the Mormon Church, have left untouched, namely the political ambitions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and how they have become successful in this goal unnoticed by the majority of Americans.”
Books: A lot like bricks.
I saw the tv ad, and all three wives look like hollywood babes. in real life a lot of the polygamous wives look like unmadeup teenagers who should be in school, or like church ladies.
i think the tv show is going to just be another male fantasy trip, and the fundy mormons will love it.
I’d just read this LA Times article when I came across your blog. It definitely looks like male fantasy central (the wives are Chloe Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and Ginnifer Goodwin). I’d imagine that the LDS folks would probably be pretty nervous about the show, even if the actors claim to be “playing it straight” so to speak.
I’m a Mormon and I don’t know anyone in the Great State of Utah, and I know a lot of people, that practices polygamy. Come on-your prejudices are showing. The left is as bad as the right, it just depends on who you are talking about.
Look, it’s a known fact that there are some hard-core fundamentalist Mormon compounds in Utah and other states. We don’t hear about them until there’s a scandal.
Maybe you just don’t get around - or maybe the people who practice it are very discreet - for obvious reasons. I met some polygamous Nation of Islam couples here in Philadelphia many years ago, but they didn’t advertise it to the general public.
When I comes to religion we’re all idiots and prejudice. But some religions are asking for a poke.
TV Reads…
Two interesting, but unrelated articles on television that I wanted to mention: first an LA Times article on the new HBO show, Big Love (IMDB), which focuses on a polygamous Mormon family, with one husband (Bill Paxton) married to three……
Ia–I know a lot of LDS too, including some relatives back West. And like you, to the best of my knowledge and belief,I don’t know any who practice polygamy.
However, it’s not like they don’t exist. Most people don’t usually advertise stuff they do that’s legally dicey.
More not imaging things. A sad story. Polygamy in the news: Birth defect is plaguing children in FLDS towns: Fumarase Deficiency afflicts 20, is linked to marriages of close kin
I worked on an anthropologist’s sympathetic doctoral dissertation on orthodox Mormon polygamists in Arizona. Reading between the lines, the communities essentially toss out most adolescent boys, who don’t have a high school education and go to the big city on their own (and who knows what becomes of them, but I figure it isn’t anything good), and marry off the adolescent girls to men old enough to be their grandfathers, who are typically not well-to-do. In this study, a lot of the married men worked in auto parts stores. I don’t know why–the major industry in the area? a group member is a company employment manager? Many of the women who were not the “legal” wives and their children were on welfare. The study was done before the TANF went into law, with its 5-year lifetime limits on receiving welfare, so I don’t know how they’re making ends meet now, but there’s enough indignant taxpayer in me to harumph that men who want harems and dozens of children should pay for them. There’s quite a bit of divorce, which surprised me, but it makes sense because you have to get along with the other wives as well as the husband. Some sets of wives are all friendly and happy as sisters (and some are sisters), and some are at each others’ throats.
Disclosure: I have a Mormon uncle who defiantly drinks Coke. My parents, who visit, say they approve of the way the Mormon churchpeople there help each other out.