Polygamists: Q&A

Reuters

Polygamy, once hidden in the shadows of Utah and Arizona, is breaking into the open as fundamentalist Mormons push to decriminalize it on religious grounds. Reuters gathered together polygamists for roundtable discussions in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Centennial Park, Arizona. In Salt Lake City, two participants, Vicki and Valerie, are sisters in a polygamous marriage with a man who has three wives and 21 children in a Salt Lake City suburb. To protect the identity of their husband, they declined to release their last names. Anne Wilde, 71, is a 71-year-old widow who was part of a family of plural wives for 33 years. In Centennial Park, Arizona, Ephraim Hammon, 36, his wife Leah, 21, and wife SherylLynne, 32, and his mother, Marlyne Hammon, spoke to Reuters in their home. The Salt Lake City, Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon church, introduced polygamy before the Civil War but banned it in 1890. Excommunicated by mainstream Mormons, polygamists see themselves as purists of the faith as it was practiced by founder Joseph Smith, whom historians say took more than two dozen wives. The following are excerpts from the discussion: REUTERS: How do you feel about the mainstream Mormon church, which excommunicates polygamists and is a vocal opponent against plural marriage? ANNE WILDE : Most of us, if we were members, have been excommunicated, certainly if they are found out they are. I think there are some that live it very, very quietly, and people don't know; but not too many anymore. The church has chosen right now to reject plural marriage. I think they've done this is to be more friendly with the world. Its not just that the church is against it. But the members, some of them are very narrow and intolerant. If they know that there is a polygamist family living next door to them, they may not let their kids play with them and their business may be ostracized if they know that it is public. So we still have to protect the guys, the breadwinners, so they don't have negative effects with their jobs. They could lose their jobs or if they own their own business they could lose customers. For a lot of people in this area, polygamy is just a no no. Even though they may have ancestors who lived it. We ought to as consenting adults, which is the key, have that choice to live that lifestyle. We live it because of strong religious convictions. A lot of other people live it as a secular law or a cultural practice. If we don't have a spiritual connection there with God then we are on dangerous ground . REUTERS: Is "Big Love," the HBO's series about a fictional polygamous family, accurate? VALERIE: Parts of it are. Its just like any TV. All of it is going to have a little bit of reality in it. And a lot of it is made up things. There's a lot of it where I look at it and think that never happened. That's not the way I feel or I wouldn't portray it that way. REUTERS: What about the structure of a first wife who is at the top of the hierarchy of wives, followed by a second wife, third wife, etc. Does that power structure exist? VALERIE: Not in our family. VICKI: I think in some families it does. In some families they do have somebody who would be more of the leader. Its individually based, family to family. ANNE WILDE : If there is a designated first wife it could bring more jealousy and resentment from the other wives if one wife has that seniority. But I know a family where it works fine. They come right out and admit that she is the first wife. REUTERS: The conventional family can be big enough for many people. How big a challenge is it to oversee family of your size where you have 20 kids? VICKI: Its a challenge but its also part of the reason we keep on doing it, because that's our joy too. That's our family and we just have more of them to love. VALERIE: We can have a family party with just our family and its big enough. The challenges are just the same. When you go to make plans, say a family vacation, its making sure somebody is taking care of all the details and getting us all on the road to go. REUTERS: A family vacation must be very hard with more than 20 children. Tell us a little about the work that goes into one? VALERIE. We do one once a year. People usually think were a school. We go for a week. REUTERS: Do you socialize mostly with other polygamist families? VALERIE: Yes and no. It just happens that a lot of people that we associate with do live the lifestyle. Some just believe in it but don't live it. REUTERS: Like some fundamentalist Mormons, do you believe that the opening of the LDS priesthood to blacks was a serious mistake? ANNE WILDE : When we get asked that questions which we frequently do we don't go into our religious beliefs regarding that. We can make some similarities with the civil rights issue. We feel like they're entitled to their equal civil rights just like the gays, and the polygamists and so forth. In fact, alternative families are the majority now in the United States. This could include polygamists, or same-sex marriages or single parents or all different kinds other than the mother, dad and kids. They are in the minority now. REUTERS: What steps are you taking to try and decriminalize polygamy? VALERIE: There are so many similarities with the civil rights movement. Its hard for me to see how anyone can justify allowing gay and lesbian marriage and not allow plural marriage if its between consenting adults. Its kind of weird to have that as a parallel, but it can be. We also realize it would be hard to legalize it, but to decriminalize it is what we would like to do. ANNE WILDE : Legalizing it would mean you would get a legal marriage license for each one of your wives. Were not asking for that either. One legal marriage is plenty. The most important thing for us is to have God sanction that marriage and so by having someone with priesthood authority perform that, That's the important thing. Decriminalizing is a long-term goal. We realize it may not happen in our lifetimes. Just like gay marriage. How long have they been out there pushing for that? Years and years. Well, we are just kind of getting started. So we realize it may take decades for people to understand it. VALERIE: It may just fall into that category if gay marriage is legalized. ANNE WILDE : Just like Lawrence v Texas (landmark 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down the criminal prohibition of homosexual sodomy in Texas and held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was protected by the U.S. Constitution). That decision was a slippery slope that included gays and polygamist and whoever else. VALERIE: The idea that what were doing is against the law when basically much of society is doing the same thing but not calling it polygamy just doesn't make sense. REUTERS: Do you expect your children to also adhere to plural marriage? VALERIE: Well if anyone ever asks them, they usually say its something that they pray about and think about but they haven't decided yet, and that's completely okay with us. They're not forced one way or another. Its a big decision, one that you would not want to take lightly. REUTERS: Do you run into much in the way of prejudice in your daily lives? VALERIE: Definitely. My husband is a professional and he has company parties, meetings with clients and sometimes wives are involved, and he can't just take all of us. He has to pick one that is the wife that people see. ANNE WILDE : That was the way it our family too. My husband and I did a lot of things because of the books we have written and everything like that so I was kind of the more public wife. VALERIE: That's why we like to associate with people of our same belief because it makes it easy that way. REUTERS: What role does the husband play in the family? VALERIE: He's got a lot of responsibility. ANNE WILDE : And a lot of the success depends on the husband, too. If he is pretty fair with his family, with his wives, just like a mother with her kids. If he favors one, that's not right. He also cannot treat each wife equally. If he gets a dress for one, that doesn't mean he has to get a dress for all of them. But he tries to treat them fairly. So he might get shoes for one and a dress for another, so that they have their needs met. VALERIE: I would say that there is a high amount of trust in our family, so you have to have a high amount of trust in your husband to know that in his heart he was being fair whether it came across that way or it didn't. The thing that I see with men that live this way is that their family is everything to them, so That's got to be their first priority. They don't have a lot of toys or the distractions that so many people have because they have nothing else to do. There are so many places that need his attention that that is his priority. REUTERS: How do you feel personally about your status as someone or a group that is engaging in an illegal practice? ANNE WILDE : I hope that we don't look like criminals to you. But on the books were felons, or we could be if we were charged. So to live with that stigma when we feel like we are very upright moral people, who obey the laws in all other areas. So it just doesn't seem right to have a law on the books that they are not enforcing to begin with, and then for us to have that stigma. VICKI: They automatically think we're bad because if were willing to break that law, then we must be willing to break other laws. In Centennial Park, a polygamist community of 1,500 people on Arizona's border with Utah. REUTERS: What do you see as the biggest misconceptions about polygamists? EPHRAIM HAMMON: One of the misconceptions I see is that we are forced into this situation, especially the women -- that they are forced into marrying older men and into plurality and all of that. I can't speak for everybody, but from my experience I have never seen that. Another misconception is that the women are slaves to men. LEAH HAMMON: Another misconception is that they are ignorant. The women in this society are educated. We encourage education. REUTERS: Do rivalries emerge between the women in polygamous families? EPHRAIM HAMMON: You can get that in any society. You can get that in the workplace. REUTERS: Do you feel your colleagues at work or people outside of your community accept your beliefs? LEAH HAMMON: I work outside of the community in St. George, (Utah). I'm on a one-on-one work basis with people who don't believe the way I do. They know my beliefs and it doesn't bother them. Mostly because they know that I believe in governing myself and making my choices. But it doesn't bother them. They won't bat an eyelash. EPHRAIM HAMMON: Before I was married, I could go into a restaurant and sit at a whole table full of girls, and I have done this before, and I didn't feel a bit bad about it, and I knew that the people who saw me thought I was married to every one of them. But after I was married to more than one woman, it kind of made me a little bit nervous. MARLYNE HAMMON: The sentiment of the people around here has turned in the last several years. One lady went to a store in St George and she came out of the store and was getting into her car and there was a group of boys there and they were taunting her. That's happened in several instances. Its not really pleasant. SHERYLLYNNE HAMMON: It really doesn't matter if we're here together, they still point you out and accuse you -- even if it's just me they stare at you and stereotype you as a polygamist. But our children go to the public school so they get a lot of interaction from other surrounding communities that aren't necessarily polygamous, so they actually get a wide variety of dealings with other children from other communities. There's a curiosity factor. They ask a lot of questions. REUTERS: How do you feel about the mainstream Mormon church? EPHRAIM HAMMON: We obviously believe somewhat differently. I have no problem with the LDS Church. Obviously there is some degree of conflict over plural marriage. I don't believe that God sits there and tells everybody they have to believe the same way. REUTERS: The attorneys general in Arizona and Utah have said they don't intend to prosecute polygamists unless they commit another crime. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff says Utah doesn't have the resources to arrest every polygamist and put thousands of children into foster homes. EPHRAIM HAMMON: If they had all the money and they had all the resources I don't know if they would take that stance. They might be willing to go after the people, especially if there was compelling interest in the community, which sometimes there is it goes up and down. Over last 100 years there are several different instances where the government has tried to step in and put our people in jail and have done so. To some degree they have learned by experience that it's not really a good choice because it cost them a lot. In the long run, to some degree, public opinion sways and it goes back and forth. LEAH HAMMON: Its happened before so why wouldn't it happen again. MARLYNE HAMMON: No matter how much persecution the people have endured because of their belief, history has born out that it will survive. Plural marriage will go on in spite of all the efforts of the law. It will go on because its a deeply held religious belief. EPHRAIM HAMMON: It takes a long time. You look at the work that Martin Luther Kind did in relation with African Americans. As much as America has opened up and tried to embrace that movement, we still deal with those stereotypes. Every once and in a while some white cop goes and beats up on a black guy and a whole city comes apart.

today.reuters.com Originally published June 12, 2007

Back

For more information email: