History of Fundamentalist Mormon Movements: Part 3

The Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints continued to grow at Short Creek, AZ and on the 26^th of July 1953 the Arizona governor sent law enforcement into the community to suppress the polygamist there. What the American public saw were images of husbands and fathers being led away in handcuffs for no apparent reason. "Sure, bigamy, polygamy, plural marriage, whatever you want to call it is illegal, but who have they really hurt?" Was what the average American seemed to ask. This "Short Creek raid" turned into a political relations nightmare for the Arizona government. The effect of the raid was a hands off policy for Short Creek (or Colorado City, AZ as its' name was changed to) and its' cross border twin town of Hilldale, Utah for the next half century.

All of this brings us to the question of what is the problem with polygamy? This is particularly brought out by the HBO series, "Big Love" which depicts both an independent, fundamentalist Mormon, plural marriage family (the Hendrickson's) and a sect which seems to be clearly modeled on the FLDS (the "Juniper Creek compound"). While the show occasionally skirts around the edges of some of the shadier aspects of polygamy, it rarely confronts them head on and, much like the public perception of the 1953 "Short Creek raid," it leaves the viewer with the impression that there is no real problem.

The biggest problem with polygamy is the enforced "marriages" (and I use the term "marriage" loosely) of young girls, down to thirteen years old in my research, to adult men. In these "marriages" the girls are often given little or no choice in the matter.

The rational behind this is simple and dates back to the earliest days of plural marriage in Mormonism. During the time of Joseph Smith Jr., Mormon missionaries were often instructed to especially seek young women as there was a shortage of marriageable ladies in Nauvoo, Illinois (where the Mormons were then based). One simply has to do the math to reach an understanding here. If one believes that Doctrines & Covenants 132 COMANDS a man to practice plural marriage, and a man is a devout Mormon, then that is a commandment from God and MUST be obeyed. Further, it came to be accepted that the more wives you had, the greater your chances of becoming exalted. This sparked something similar to "the arms race," of modern geo-politics, except it was a "wife race." In the mid to late 1800's, Mormon men were being encouraged to, indirectly if not directly, marry more and more "wives."

In the tightly enclosed, and controlled, rigid, fundamentalist communities today (and I am not speaking of the more open, individual families and smaller groups here), such as the FLDS which has been oft in the news recently, this competition for wives is still going on. Women are a scarce commodity. Males are surplus and young males are often forced out of the group. All females are then treated as prized property. In the next article will go in depth into the problems with polygamy in modern extreme Mormon fundamentalist groups.