Click here to read the full article…

Click here to see the comments…

Click here to read his ideas….

We can only hope. (Click here to goto Slate and the rest of the article)

Click here for the rest of the story….

Click “here” for Time Magazine’s take:

Polygamist Elizabeth Joseph writes that if polygamy didn’t exist, “the modern American career woman would have invented it. Because, despite its reputation, polygamy is the one lifestyle that offers an independent woman a real chance to ‘have it all’”. Elizabeth, who worked as a journalist, relied on her co-wives to help her with child care and meal preparation. She called it a “free-market approach to marriage” that allowed her to pick the best man available, regardless of his marital status.  Click here to continue reading…

“How many teeth does your baby have?” she asked.

“Five,” I answered.

She then proceeded to tell me the number of teeth all the babies/toddlers in her family had and even the number of teeth of some of the children of her married siblings.

All of this came from a SIX-YEAR-OLD.

Not only did I find it absolutely adorable that she was so observant and cared so much about her siblings, I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at all the people I hear talk about how unloved polygamous children are.  We always hear from the naysayers how children in plural homes are “just another number.” 

Children are taught to be observant and caring by the examples of the adults in their lives. If a six-year-old knows that level of detail about the children in her family, just think about how much her parents know and care about the children in the household.

            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~