We believed in Plural Marriage, and despite our best efforts, and the fact that my Dad had only one wife, the secret would slowly leak out. We were the odd ones, sectioned out, teased and name called by our peers, sniffed at by the adults, and in most cases blatantly talked about and snubbed.  This was true at the corner store, at the gas station, and for me, in school by my teachers, whom at first I was enamored with, but then as the coolness turned cold, I learned not to trust.

            It was not this treatment though that kept us quiet and secluded into our own home.  It was the threat of being found out for our beliefs. We had to watch every reference made in public and around our LDS relatives.  We could not let on to our religious leanings. My grandfather had been put into jail for the practice of Plural Marriage, arrested in the 1944 raid.  This a man I knew as a good and honest man, and if they could put Grandpa Dave into prison I wondered how would my Dad possibly be protected?  In fact when he was 12 years old he and his younger siblings were taken into court and called on to testify against their Dad. How would I ever, ever be able to do such a thing as that?

            I remember full well coming out of a “cottage meeting”, we dared not meet formally in a church, I was holding my father’s hand as we came down the gravel drive, when we spotted the men in black suits standing behind the parked cars taking down the license plate numbers in their little spiral notebooks. I don’t know for sure if they were FBI, or just spies for the Mormon Church.  I do know my father’s hand tightened as he stopped right in his tracks and I could feel the worry travel through him and into me. I knew at that point I would never talk, never share with my friends, my cousins, and associates who we were and how we believed.  No one was going to steal my Dad from me, no one. I would protect him the best I could and silence was that way.

            Well, that was the early sixties, and this is a new millennium, right?  Not so much. Fear still exists. With dealings such as the 2008 raid in EldoradoTexasthe specter becomes real, giving fear flesh and bone.

 Living with the shroud of being underground, secretive and not forthcoming cheats a person out of fullness, out of legitimacy and slants their life in unreasonable ways.  I don’t want this for my children or my grandchildren. I don’t want fear of raids, of separation, imprisonment haunting their lives. So, if I want change I must bring about that change…each generation is entitled to build their own institutions, and I am able to build upon the steps of those that have moved before me, aiming for a stronger foundation for the exercising of our rights for those that are our future.

~Written by A Woman’s Place~

• Here’s an interesting archive from the July 10, 1978 Vol. 10 No. 2 edition of People Magazine.

A Feminist Studies Mormon Polygamy And, Remarkably, Finds That It Liberated the Wives

By Linda Witt

The overwhelming majority of Canadians do not want to live in a polygamous household and, from an economic perspective, that observation is a bit of a mystery.

For a country like Canada, in which wealth is very unequally distributed,economic theory predicts that wealthy men should have more of everything, including wives. This doesn’t suggest that wives are property. It suggests that if income matters then women who are maximizing their welfare, and the welfare of their children, should prefer to be the second, third, fourth wife of a very wealthy man to being the only wife of a poor man. Yet, despite high levels of inequality, the industrialized nations of the world all have adopted monogamy as the dominant marriage institution.
The explanation for why monogamy is preferred has to do with the way in which personal wealth is generated in industrialized nations.
In industrialized nations wealth is generated by those who are highly skilled. There is an economic argument for having only one spouse in an economy where wealth is a function of education – better educated men want to have better educated children and the best way to do that is for those children to have a well educated mother. Educated women have more bargaining power in the household and are better equipped to negotiate an arrangement where they are the only wife. Less educated women marry less educated men, but those men can only afford one wife anyway, and so monogamy pervades.
In Canada we don’t have monogamy because the laws enforce this marital arrangement, we have these laws because historically this has been the arrangement that the majority has preferred.
So the question is, if monogamy is the best arrangement for those who can afford additional spouses, why does this institution need to be enshrined in the law? In the economic sense a policy is not optimal if someone can be made better off without making others worse off. If this is the criterion, then it has to be that criminalization of polygamy not be an optimal policy. If we allow everyone to act in their own best interests when making marriage choices, and assume that parents act in the best interest of their children, then surely those who chose to live in a polygamous household are better off than they would be in a monogamous household. They have to be because that is the arrangement they have chosen.
You can’t make someone better off by forcing them to choose an alternative form of marriage that they do not prefer.
You may be worried that someone is being made worse off – the poor guys who can’t find a wife because some men are taking more than their share. But, there will never be so much polygamy in Canada that it will add to the pool of men who will never marry.
Anyhow, the fact that so many women prefer to remain single than to be married to man who they don’t desire as a husband is a much bigger contributor to bachelorhood than polygamy ever will be.

Link to article

I don’t know if there is something in the water, or what the reason is, but the mountains certainly seem to attract a great variety of philosophical extremes in the people there.

I met so many different people, with so many different philosophies, and that certainly included many different beliefs about marriage. I met some people who believed that marriage was no business of the government, and they followed an aboriginal custom of the Paux (spelling?). It is a simple custom: The two in love would decide if they wanted to marry and would make their covenants to each other and announce their marriage at a community function, or to their families.

A woman that I worked with had two husbands. The marriage seemed to work for them and they were normal people. They had a unique arrangement, one husband worked in a mine and was on a two week in – two week out schedule for work. During the two weeks that he was home, the other husband moved out to a different house, then during the two weeks that he was in the mine, the other husband moved in to the wife’s house. It was an interesting arrangement.

There were lots of free love spirits (the spirit of the 60′s is still strong in the mountains) who did not believe in any formal type of marriage, just a whole lot of free love. These people reminded me most of the “monogamous” families from my childhood. They would speak of freedom to do as they wanted, and that no one should interfere with them, but in the next breath put down another’s point of view. Blatantly hypocritical, but still there were a few nice people among them.

Then came the time that I met a mormon polygamous family. I was prepared for the worse. Surely they would immediately strive to kidnap me, then brain wash me, and then turn me into one of their drones, stealing my individuality and turning me into a monster. I waited. And waited. And they did not kidnap me. I watched them closely. Surely they were just biding their time and trying to gain my confidence and then they would pounce. But no matter how long I waited, they did not molest me. The monogamists that raised me were wrong!

I waited patiently to see all the classical signs of abuse, but never saw any. I could not believe it. I was told by my “monogamous” parents and “monogamous” church that these polygamists were devils, demons disguised as people. But where were the abused children? Where were the cigarette burns on their hands? Why could they sit down without wincing in pain from being whipped? I did not believe that they were acting normal. Perhaps they were just faking everything while I was around. Of course I don’t know how they could have healed the bruises and black eyes instantly. Perhaps because it was all a lie. Perhaps my monogamous family, and monogamous churches were wrong.

Well, if I could not find the signs of abuse in the children, surely it would show among the women. Those chattel who were traded back and forth between men. There was no way that they could hide the abuse and the mental damage that the media swore up and down was being committed. After all, according to the “monogamous” media, each polygamous man had a grand elevated gold plated throne in his house that he sat in, while his harem of women mulled about his feet, fulfilling his every whim. And if one of his wives batted an eyelash, then according to the stories that the “monogamous” told, the man would have his wife stripped naked and beat, then sold or traded to another man, only to start the entire proceedure all over again.

Being raised in a red-neck society, I was certainly familiar with the sight of abused women, and I was looking. But the problem was that not all polygamous families were actually polygamous. They believed in the doctrine, but not all of them practiced that principle. There were many families with perhaps two wives, sometimes three, but that was it. There were stories of men who had many more wives than that, but I have not met them in person. So maybe they are the ones with the throne rooms??? Anyway, there were many different types of women and they each had their own personalities, just like in “monogamous” society. There were many different body shapes and sizes, and different hair styles, different makeup, different shoes, and all the sorts of things that women like. The women even had straight teeth and fillings, and some even wore glasses. Now I could not figure out how they were so oppressed and never allowed to have anything, if they were free to go to the dentist and the optometrist. Another “monogamous” lie.

On the internet, I searched and found different blogs, and message boards, and chat rooms that polygamous families inhabited, and I joined some of them. Which is ironic in itself, since the “monogamous” media likes to point out how the mormon polygamous women are not allowed to watch TV, use the internet, have cell phones, etc. I can only ask, how are they on the internet if they are not allowed to use the internet? How do they know what happened on a TV show if they are not allowed to watch TV? How do we talk on the phone in the car, if they are not allowed to have cell phones?

The cell phone one is quite ironic. During the raid in Texas, where the government invaded a mormon polygamous community, and abducted hundreds of children at gun point, even the cops believed the media that polygamists were so oppressed that they did not understand cell phones and computers. They believed it so much that they did not think to thoroughly search their victims for and take away the cell phones of the teenage girls (whom they think are oppressed and uneducated and not allowed to use cell phones). And it was from those teenagers that we now have pictures of the inside of their prisons. The girls took the pictures with their cell phones and emailed them to the outside. They sent text messages to people on the outside, telling us what was happening to them. (Which pictures also helped fight against the lies that the government people were telling the media, concerning the treatment of the abducted children.) It is amazing how well, the girls knew how to use a cell phone, and take pictures, and text messages, since the “monogamous” media has been brain washing the american public into believing that the women in polygamy were oppressed and were forbidden to use technology.

There are unhappy women though. There are women in polygamous marriages who are just not happy with their situation and want out. And some get out. There are women in monogamous marriages who are just not happy with their situation and want out. And some get out. There are some women in polygamous marriages who perhaps should not be there. Just like there are some women in monogamous marriages who perhaps should not be there. There may even be women in polygamous marriages who are mean, spiteful, jealous, covetous, and even self serving, just like the women in monogamous marriages. And when they don’t get their way, they throw their temper tantrum, divorce their husbands, and then try to hurt them where ever they can do the most damage. Not much different from monogamous society. In fact, exactly the same.

If I can just digress for a moment. If there is any abuse, whether it is in a polygamous family, a monogamous family, or even a “monogamous” family, then help should be offered. No one, no matter what the marital situation, or religious situation, should have to live with abuse.

Yet, much to my surprize, I could not find the abuse that I was brainwashed into believing was there. I was raised in a very low class neighbourhood, and I saw the psychological damage that occured from abuse, but I have never seen that damage among the polygamists. Now I do not want to downplay anyone’s suffering. There are good and bad in all cultures, and I will not say that there have not been cases of abuse among polygamous cultures, but I do stand by my conviction that there is not the level of abuse present that the “monogamous” cultures claim there is among the polygamous.

The polygamous women are the same as any other women. They have the same freedoms as any one. They can come and go, drive cars, have careers, and get educations, and run for political office if they want. They do not spend all their time dressed in harem gowns and dancing in circles in front of their husbands. By now, you can imagine that I was losing faith in my “monogamous” upbringing and the elitist mentality of the churches that I had belonged to.

Surely the men would be no different than those I had grown up with. My own dad was abusive and lazy and indolent, as well as an alcoholic and smoker. He would womanize and spend his time and money in taverns, leaving his children with very little to eat. But at least he was a “monogamist”, and not as evil as a polygamist.

If you can imagine how much an honourable “monogamous” man has to work to provide for one wife and a few children, you can imagine how much a polygamous man has to work to provide for two or three wives and a dozen children. If you can imagine struggling to deal with the emotional needs of one wife, then try to imagine caring for the emotional needs of two. To find the time to have quality time with each of your children is often a challenge in the “monogamous” world, now do I really have to continue this sentence? Anyone who thinks polygamous men are in it for the sex, or to be waited on hand and foot, has absolutely no idea that the earth revolves around the sun.

In fact, another disturbing fact is that there are men in polygamous marriages that are being abused by their wives. It happens just like in the monogamous side of society. Some women are controlling, and abusive, always manipulating to get their way above all others. Just imagine dealing with the temper tantrums, fits, and manipulations of just one wife, then multiply it. It is quite obvious, as you can imagine, the level of abuse that one man has to live with when both his wives join forces and abuse him without mercy. Picking on him so much that he has absolutely no freedom or choice in his life. He becomes nothing more than a slave. If he leaves, he is ostracized and loses his family, and loses his salvation. No matter what, abuse is wrong, whether it happens to a woman, or to a man.

This is another long post, and I need to take a break, so to wind it down, I would just like to say that certainly there may be some situations in polygamous lifestyles that may not be for everyone, but that is why the good Lord gave us our freedom to choose our own paths. The scriptures tell us of the war in heaven and how satan tried to take away our freedom to choose. The question seems to be, which side will I be on? The side that allows for free choice, or the side that seeks to take freedom away by every means possible, including politically? I may not agree with everything that the polygamists, or even the “monogamists” do, but I will stand up for the freedom of all.
Posted by JRNorth at 11:34 AM

The polygamy reference case has already made a valuable contribution: It has focused the debate on the question of harm. Apologists for the current law are now having to try to show that polygamy, in and of itself, always and necessarily hurts people. I don’t believe they’re succeeding, but I do see this as a promising first step toward creating a rational and effective legal strategy for dealing with abuse in polygamous communities.

Modern law — and modern secular ethics, which defaults to some version of the Golden Rule — is heavily influenced by the principle articulated by philosopher John Stuart Mill: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

That’s not to say there aren’t Canadian laws that have little to do with protecting individuals from harm; the polygamy law is one of them. But the modern proponents of the law know they have to work harm in somewhere, or the law risks being struck down, because courts these days tend to be very reluctant to tell consenting adults what they can do in their own bedrooms.

So the proponents argue the law is necessary to prevent associated harms.

Crown counsel Craig Jones tried to cover all the philosophical bases he could, and made a fine mess in the process, saying the law must be upheld to confirm the government’s right to “impose some fundamental codes of moral behaviour for the protection of the vulnerable and to promote and advance our highest aspirations of equality and social justice.” The “protection of the vulnerable” bit is in there to make John Stuart Mill happy.

The harms to be prevented include forced marriage, rape of young girls, expulsion of young men, and unequal family dynamics.

Forced marriage and rape are already illegal.

I’ve read the argument that we need the polygamy law because the police and Crown aren’t enforcing other, sounder laws at their disposal that prevent forced marriage, or child abuse.

It’s true that it can be difficult for victims to testify against abusers who are in authority over them.

That’s true outside of polygamous contexts as well, and it’s something the justice system must work to overcome, without requiring the clumsy workaround of an extra law that allows the state to keep one small but irksome peephole into the nation’s bedrooms.

If some jerk who lives in a polygamous commune, or some other fundamentalist society, has only one wife, and she’s 13, and he hits and rapes her and tells her to shut up and keep sweet — well, all of that is illegal and should be prosecuted, even though the 13-year-old might be brainwashed and terrified. But you tell me how a polygamy law can help that girl.

Many laws, the polygamy law included, sometimes require the co-operation of victims. It’s worth noting that the polygamy law is rarely enforced and has not prevented any of the harms we’re all talking about.

The polygamy law manages to be both overreaching in principle (criminalizing consensual behaviour) and inadequate in practice (it hasn’t stopped the abuse it supposedly targets).

As for unequal family arrangements, that’s a more difficult question.

If we make polygamy illegal because, most of the time, polygamous unions involve patriarchal gender roles, are we also going to make patriarchal gender roles illegal in monogamous unions? If so, we’re going to have to build a lot more prisons.

The relevant question, for the law, is not the number of people in the relationship, but whether they’re adults who have freely consented. If the women in relationships of any number are being compelled or detained — well, again, there are laws against that, and they ought to be enforced. And it’s going to take hard work to get those women to come forward and seek help, polygamy law or no polygamy law.

If we Canadians decide to uphold the polygamy law — by, for example, telling our representatives to use Section 33 of the Charter — we’ll be guilty of shrugging off the harm principle when it seems inconvenient.

Which principles, then, will form the basis of our law? In the absence of secular liberalism, which culture or religion gets to impose its sexual morality on the rest of us?

That’s why it’s important to strike down this law, and replace it with a sound legal strategy to enforce existing laws, to put abusers behind bars without incidentally criminalizing consensual sexual behaviour.

This case tests our willingness to tolerate needless exceptions to the principle that the government can only compel our behaviour when that behaviour affects other people.

At the core, this case isn’t about freedom of religion, or freedom of association. It’s about freedom, full stop.

Kate Heartfield is a member of the Citizen’s editorial board.

Link to article

The URL link (true story) referenced in the piece, is the basis for the satire on the abuse suffered from a “monogamous” society. When the mind set of people begins to finally realize that a lifestyle choice doesn’t commit abuse, or a crime and that people do, we may begin to see more tolerance for lifestyle choice. After all, it takes a live person to pull the trigger of a gun, so should we punish guns or the people who misuse them?

Click here for the story.

~Submitted by HJD

I very much believe that Sociobiologist E.O. Wilson’s statement is true. Pure knowledge is the only way we can erode the barriers of superstition. Laws should not be enacted based on biased fiction.

Born and raised in Hildale, Utah, I strive today to raise my children by the same values and ideals that I grew up with. I have worked outside my community for over 25 years and for the last 20 years have worked mainly in the medical field; my experience is in med/surg, long term geriatric, rehabilitation, home health, and Hospice. I very much value the friendships and associations I have developed over time.
I grew up in what you would call today an unconventional family. I am #12 of 19 children. My dad was a philosopher, and educator, a friend, and many times a super Mom. I am the first born of his second wife. I know alto-well the fear tactics and bullying our government placed on my culture. I lived my whole childhood fearing what might happen to my Dad if they found out I was his pleural child. I remember running to the back closet to hide when the doorbell rang. No one outside my family or culture could know that he was my Dad!
In the 1953 raid, he was sent to jail for 2 years for defending his friends right to live their religion. He only had one wife at the time. He had been dealt an unjust hand by our government. After this my family went through some serious economic hardships. To meet the family’s needs, my mother’s went to work, often outside the community. My dad, a school teacher, became Mom and Dad since his schedule best met ours. In a concerted, semi-organized fashion we learned how to stir up a meal in a minute, eat, wash the dishes, put them back in the cupboard, sweep the floor, pass my Dads inspection and race to school on time. My dad strongly believed in the work hard, play hard philosophy. Our summers were full of household chores, gardening and improvement projects. We lived off of our garden in the summer and also in the winter due to our joined efforts of canning what we harvested in the fall. Government assistance or hands outs were never an option! After the work was done, we would spend leisure time swimming in local pools, playing sports, reading, or simply engrossed in stories of the good old days.
In spite of the way government had treated him and his family during and after the raid, my father was a champion of freedom. He loved God, family, the constitution, and all that America stands for. When he died suddenly of a hear attack, all of our lives stopped spinning for a while and it took some time to regain traction. We knew he loved all the children, but secretly we each knew we were his favorite. Two years later my mom remarried a gentleman who became known as Grandpa Joe. Joe filled some pretty big shoes and restored some needed balance to our lives. 15 years later he also died, this time traumatically in a car accident; once again leaving a very big hole.
Grandpa Joe also was a great philosopher and lover of freedom! I remember one conversation with him that has never left me. We were having a lively debate on religion and Christian theology. Grandpa Joe loved to cook and often served his new and exciting recipes with thought provoking conversations. He said, “This is the way I see it. We are all standing outside the Pearly Gates waiting for Jesus to come claim his rightful church. The Catholics, Methodist, Jehovah Witness, Baptists, Lutherans’, the Presbyterians’, the Mormons’, and yes even the Fundamentalists are there. We are all arguing over who is more worthy to be claimed by Jesus. Finally Jesus comes through the pearly gates and as he looks into our eyes, he says, “All I have ever asked of any of you is to love one another”.
I love what I do and the people I work with. However, I cannot tell you how many times professionals have blundered through conversations with and around me. Many, being unaware of where I am from, make offhanded and biased remarks about the polygamists. The following are actual statements by (so called) professionals, over the years.

“I hear you don’t want to go out there without your guns or your bodyguard, you may never come back”,
“I hear they keep their women locked up and only let them out if their husband is with them.”,
“They all live off of the government.”,
“I’m tired of my taxes paying for their children’s education”.
“Why don’t they lock up all the polygamous, they should not be allowed on the streets”,
“If I had my way, they would all be rounded up on cattle cars and carried off”,

Just like me, these professionals are expected to check their biases at the door. And just like me, these professionals have had multiple Cultural diversity and Sensitivity training classes. Cultural diversity training is meant to apply to all people, all cultures!
Many times, however, it appears to us that polygamists are one of the last groups that it is okay to target and malign. Why? Does it have anything to do perhaps, with the unique wording of Utah’s bigamy law that leaves us in an unprotected status and in many minds denies us the right to be a religion, denies us the right to be a culture?
It is open season on families that are considered felons. Where are the checks and balances and best practices when it comes to providing services for these families? So many times in plural family cases unless service providers are deeply committed to the best practices that have been established over time and with experience, these best practices are disregarded and biases and assumptions take over.
The anti-polygamy laws have caused thousands of men, women and children over the last 130 years to lie and hide in order to protect their families. This is what I call abuse. So let us talk about real abuse!!
After the Reynolds Act in 1879 and the Edmunds Act in 1882 at least 12,000 polygamists and their wives were disenfranchised. It became a crime to cohabit with more than one woman. They were denied jury duty, the right to vote or hold office, to own property. Women were imprisoned if they would not testify against their husband. Some of these were women were imprisoned with their babies less than six months old. Plural children were declared illegitimate. Women Suffrage in the Utah Territory was abolished and self defense options for these people were eliminated. During this time, there were around 2500 criminal cases in the Utah territory. This legislation, with the stroke of a pen, turned thousands of law abiding citizens into criminals. This was the beginning of the polygamous witch hunts that continue on today.
In 2003, in the pivotal decision Lawrence vs. Texas, the Supreme Court tells government to get their nose out the bedroom of consenting adults. We celebrate this, and now are we getting down to the real tough talk? Is Lawrence vs. Texas just about gays, or is it about all of us? Supreme Court, Justice Scalia in his dissent in Lawrence vs. Texas feared that if we gave gays’ this protection it starts a slippery slope to polygamous rights. With all due respect to Justice Scalia, my rights are not at the bottom of some slippery slope, they are right next to his at the top of the hill.
Chief Justice Durham could see some of the discrimination toward polygamists. In her 2006 dissent during the Rodney Holm case in Utah, she states, “While cohabitation of unmarried couples is commonplace in society today, including those who may be legally married to another, criminal penalties are imposed on those who do so for religious reasons.”
Also in Justice Durham’s dissent she quoted Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in saying this, “The state cannot single out one identifiable class of citizens for punishment that does not apply to everyone else, with moral disapproval as the only asserted state interest for the law. This runs contrary to the values of the Constitution and the Equal Protection Clause, under any standard of review.”
I have waited my whole life for statements like this to come out of the courts. I should not be surprised that they are now coming from women!
The barriers in dealing with families in the plural lifestyle are the consequences of state-created, archaic laws and the subsequent isolation; closed societies, families being marginalized, families sequestered and driven to the edges, families living on the fringes of society.
Why have we had to live like this? I have yet to hear an intelligent answer! It defies good reason. As other minorities have gained their freedoms over the last century, we have endured stepped up targeted legislation, selective prosecution, and increased hatred.
Our children are feeling as frustrated as the adults on the subject. My 10 year old daughter, was learning about the symbols of American freedom. She came home one night and watched a particularly salacious story about polygamists. Later, I walked into a conversation she was having with a friend. Seeing me she said, “Why do they treat people this way….Why don’t they just listen to the children?” I said, “What would you say to them, if you could?” She said, “I would ask them if they have ever taken American history and if they even know what the American eagle stands for”.
We talk about Americas free democracy, and all having unalienable rights. But I and many before me have known a different America; one that picks and chooses who it persecutes. We can talk about women’s rights, but in America today, I am still denied the protection of my choice. It is past time to rid ourselves of these barbaric and antiquated anti-polygamy laws. We are overdue for decriminalizing polygamy.
Now more than ever, my concern is for those of us who choose to stay and fight for our family’s right to exist. Even though we are working to heal from past history, today’s climate of discriminatory laws, task forces, and increased hostility have created continued barriers.
We have promises from professionals and people in public offices, but their word is only good for as long as they hold that position. Turnover is high. Every replacement leaves us vulnerable once again. What government offers us is short term at best. Those who try to provide equal, unbiased service to us find it necessary to turn a blind eye to the anti-polygamy laws. I have been told this by social workers themselves.
Laws that apparently aren’t economically practical to enforce, we feel are kept on the books to intimidate and bully us.
When we open up and invite you into our lives we are exposing everything we hold dear and are risking our livelihoods with no credible promise for our safety in return.
We invite you to visit out community, our schools, our homes, as an ongoing attempt to reassure you that we are about family; that we deeply care for those we are responsible for. To remind you once again that the things you care about, we care about.
You want safe schools and clean streets; we want safe schools and clean streets. You want your children to be well educated; we want our children to be well educated. You want your families to live in a free, safe, and open society; we want our families to live in a free, safe and open society. We are not so unlike you.
We are confident that eventually we will secure our rights, that bad laws will be overturned, that one day our neighbors and fellow Americans will see past the stereotypes. We have this confidence because this is the American way, to work past painful mistakes, to reach for a world where each of us can bask in the light of the unalienable freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Like Martin Luther King, I too have a dream that one day my children will be judged for the content of their character!
Pure knowledge is the only way to erode barriers and bring equality to us all.

~ Submitted by R. W. Dockstader

The Safety Net Committee brings together government agencies, nonprofit organizations and interested individuals who are working to open up communication, break down barriers and coordinate efforts to give people associated with the practice of polygamy equal access to justice, safety and services.

We (Centennial Park Action Committee) have taken Safety Net at its word, and our intentions being here are to assist to this end. But the events of this last week have left us with some concerns as well as the need to clarify some things.

1. The Attorney General is appreciated in his assurances offered to plural families to not prosecute adult, consensual bigamy. But apparently, the laws that exist making the practice of plural marriage a third degree felony in Utah make him neither able to make that guarantee statewide, nor to ensure the same protections once he leaves office. This creates a volatile and precarious situation for 30,000 plus Utah families that, as the unpopular minority religion in Utah, have been asked to open up their families and lifestyle, to eliminate the curtain of secrecy, and to work with agencies to better understand our cultures. We are puzzled and alarmed with the investigation into the Brown family. Are there boundaries to this “opening up” and elimination of secrecy that we should know about? Or should we, too, be concerned and apprehensive that you know our names and faces?

2. CPAC has been sincere in our actions and motivations to participate in Safety Net. We want to reiterate that we are interested in candid discussions that explore the barriers that plural families face in accessing services. We want our families to be able to participate in the safeguards that the law provides, yet plural families often find themselves at polar ends with the very institutions created to provide support services. We are sometimes disheartened when the conversations are not pertinent to this crucial endeavor.

3. While we find it important that our families respond to and acknowledge the rule of law, laws against plural marriage place us at odds with our religious conscience. We feel that the liberties offered in the First Amendment protect this right of conscience and the practice of the sacraments of our faith. These unjust laws leave us no alternative but to live in civil disobedience while we work to get the laws changed. We take heart in the lives and examples of the Amish, the Martin Luther King’s, the Rosa Park’s, and the Gandhi’s who have shown us the power of patience, the authority of right, and the sword of peace.

4. We would like to discuss solutions to the pressing issue of unconstitutional regulation and penalties of our family structures and religious practices. We are sincere in our petition to service providers and state agencies not to make decision about us, without us. We pledge our efforts to effect change to the current climate in Utah that leaves plural families disenfranchised within their own state, at odds with the offices charged with their protection and the agencies whose foundations are service for all of Utah’s families.
www.cpaction.org or www.merrywives.org

Glenn Beck’s 8/28 Restoring Honor Keynote Speech

One of the time honored traditions in Centennial Park is our community dances. Dances have proven to be not only safe and clean entertainment, but a load of fun for the young and the old alike. They are a great time for parents and children to associate with other parents and their children, in the true spirit of home entertainment. There are often other entertainments like skits and various contests; some as crazy as building a tower out of only balloons and straws. (see photo).  A dance is a great opportunity to have wholesome fun, while learning a lot of social grace, and hopefully a little bit of ballroom dancing. Our dances are one more thing that brings our community together. As for me, I just keep trying not to step on toes.

          ~ Centennial Park Youth