Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Arrival of the Scripted Marriage Comment

As on display at T&S here. This virus seems to start at Focus on the Family here. Blog comments are for visiting humans to express their own thoughts, not for comment bots, ad spam, or viral marketing campaigns, whether commercial or political.

MSM Meets the FLDS

I confess — for me, the most interesting reading in the Bloggernacle this week has been the steady stream of mainstream media articles popping up in my FLDS News sidebar, as the MSM struggles both to get the facts (no small feat) and to figure out the story (which, honestly, will take years). In coming years there will be a stream of books on this whole bizarre episode, and if Krakauer doesn't write a sequel to Under the Banner of Heaven called Under the Texan Sun he will have missed a fine opportunity.

Anyway, here are a few links to ponder:

The End of a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day in Texas

At least if you're an FLDS kid (named Alexander or not). The judge in Texas has issued a ruling giving CPS everything it wanted — basically temporary custody of every FLDS kid in the county and DNA samples from both FLDS children and adults. See Sect's Children to Stay in State Custody for Now at the NY Times. And: Polygamous-sect children ordered to stay in Texas custody at AP. Here's the paragraph from the AP story summarizing the judge's ruling:

State District Judge Barbara Walther heard 21 hours of testimony over two days before ruling that the children would be kept in custody while the state continues to investigate allegations of abuse stemming from the teachings of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Friday Media Links to FLDS

Media liveblogging: Live from the courthouse, Day 2. With court hearings resuming in Eldorado, Texas at 9:30 a.m. this morning, it's the big story of the day — except, of course, for the visit to America of the leader of that billion-member cult whose priests have committed actual abuse against thousands of actual children [as opposed to hypothetical abuse of hypothetical children, the FLDS scenario]. It's obvious the Catholicism of the parents indoctrinated them to place excessive trust in Catholic priests, which set their kids up to become sexual victims. So, following Texas CPS reasoning [see this story], Catholic children should be removed from Catholic homes. Right?

Here are links to Friday's media stories:

Media Links to the FLDS Story

Update #3: Here's a running update of Thursday's court proceedings from San Angelo, Texas, and reports from a media liveblogger. In addition, I put two newsfeeds with FLDS stories in the far sidebar (from Google News and from Topix) so y'all can follow the breaking news.

Notable mainstream media stories, most recent at the top:

• Children of the Cult by Rod Dreher, asking some tough questions.
• "Polygamist sect hearing in Texas descends into farce" at AP. Unless Texas has been holding your kid for two weeks, then it's a tragedy.
• "Texas custody hearings under way" at the BBC.
• "When the Polygamists Came to Town" at Time.
• "Chaotic Hearing in Polygamist Case" at NY Times.

FLDS, Remember the F

Working together, Texas and the FLDS have managed to create a major news event that makes everyone look bad. And the worst part is that the mainstream media can't get enough of the story, which has been getting almost daily coverage in places like the little Yahoo newsbox and my local newspaper. The RLDS changed their name ... could the FLDS maybe do the same? I'd like to suggest "We Are Not The Mormon Church" as an option. How about the "Sorry We Moved to Texas Church." Or maybe the "If We All Become Baptists, Will You Give Us Our Children Back Church." There are endless possibilities.

A Quick Verdict

The jury has returned its verdicts in the Warren Jeffs case in which he was accused of being an accomplice to rape for instigating a monogamous FLDS marriage of a 14-year-old girl to a 19-year-old man, and the media and blogs are awash in coverage:

• The Salt Lake Tribune: "Jeffs guilty on both counts"
• The Deseret News: "Jury finds Jeffs guilty"
• Messenger and Advocate: "I am very, very surprised ...'
• Freespace: "God's favorite serial rapist ..."
• Freespace, remembering his libertarian values: ... a lot of troubling questions ..."

Polygamy Challenge Dismissed by 10th Circuit

As reported in today's SL Trib, the 10th Circuit dismissed for lack of standing a challenge by three individuals (husband, first wife, and second-wife-to-be) who were denied a marriage license by the Salt Lake County Clerk's Office for the proposed second marriage. Sounds like a rejected script for a Big Love episode. For legal news junkies, here's a link to the court's opinion, which appears in the short post describing the case over at Religion Clause.

Universal Normalcy

Check out the new decor at Get Religion by reading "Perfectly Pedestrian Polygamists." The post reviews media coverage of a college basketball player's polygamous family. Interesting story, of course, but GR's focus is on how the media covers religion stories, and the point of the post is that, in the newspapers, everyone is normal. The more unconventional the relationship, the more "normal" the media will describe it. The GR post calls this "advocacy reporting." Interesting term. The media falls all over themselves this political season citing surveys and quoting conservative Christians that depict patriotic, monogamous Mormons as wacky pseudo-polygamous cultists. But when a real polygamist shows up in a story ... they're "normal."

Help me with some synonyms for "advocacy reporting." Biased reporting? Shallow reporting? Worthless reporting? I don't even bother to subscribe to a newspaper anymore. They just seem like a waste of paper to me.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

[Update: The polygamy site is back up again. You can't keep a good site down.] Under the tagline "quick divorce," the SL Trib ran a story about a short-lived website on polygamy that was ever-so-briefly set up under the BYU domain, at polygamy.byu.edu. Evidently the precipitating event in the site's demise was an eight-word link to the site posted at By Common Consent's sideblog. Sheesh, imagine what would have happened had BCC run a whole post on it! The site's proprietor, a BYU employee at the Marriott School, has removed the site (but it looked something like this). Hey, everyone makes mistakes. Even so, if I were him I think I'd take a few days of sick leave. And maybe a vacation. Somewhere remote. Australia maybe.

Big Love's Evil Twin

From the SL Trib: Warren Jeffs' preliminary hearing continues in a St. George courtroom, as a witness whose name is being withheld testified about entering an arranged marriage at the tender age of fourteen. She testified that Jeffs officiated at the service, which, according to the article, was held in a motel in lovely Caliente, Nevada. The article includes links to several other SL Trib stories, including one giving details from the witness about her allegedly unhappy marriage, and another reviewing Jeffs' teaching and counsel to his flock on the subject of marriage: that women should be "submissive and obedient," and that men should "'persuade through love' and act with kindness, not force."

No story on this at DN online that I could find. Their top headline was a review of The Work and the Glory III.

Framing the Jeffs case

Erik Luna, a law professor at the U, posted a short analysis of the legal issues in the upcoming Warren Jeffs case, The Polygamy Case That Isn't (hat tip: Positive Liberty). He suggests the case will turn on the straightforward facts of whether the FLDS teenager who married an FLDS man with Jeffs' strong encouragement did, in fact, refuse or attempt to refuse the sexual advances of her FLDS husband but was improperly persuaded or pressured to submit by Jeffs (who was thus aiding and abetting a rape).

Despite declaring that the case is not about polygamy, Luna can't resist talking about it anyway in the final section. He is surprisingly ambivalent ("Is it really anyone else's business when consenting adults want to form a domestic union?"), even suggesting that Article III in the Utah Constitution (forever prohibiting plural marriages) may be open to a constitutional challenge. Bottom line: we're all going to hear an awful lot about polygamy before this case is over.

A Story of Interest

No sooner did I remark (in my prior post) that the media hadn't commented on the Statement on Homosexuality than the SL Trib's Peggy Fletcher Stack posts a story on it. She notes the Statement was "quietly posted two weeks ago" at LDS.org rather than via the more usual avenues of communicating doctrine or policy: at Conference, by a letter to local leaders, or in a press release. The Statement is described as "controversial," and the comments by Elders Oaks and Wickman as "complex and personal."

LDS Statement on Homosexuality

The mainstream media still hasn't put out a story on the recent Statement on Homosexuality (the "Statement") posted at LDS.org, although there have been several posts already in the Bloggernacle (here, here, and here). In this post I will try to offer a description and some analysis of the Statement.

Teens Defend Polygamy at Utah Rally

That is the headline (word for word) on this AP story. It made the little headline box on the Yahoo main page (my primary gateway for news these days), so it's getting plenty of airplay.

Teenage polygamy activists ... kinda creepy. Pictured teen carrying sign that says, "I love all my Moms." I wonder if he has heard of the lost boys? The article makes them sound like regular Utah teenagers: "Dressed in flip-flops and blue jeans, bangs drooping over their eyes, the teens at Saturday's rally talked on cell phones and played rock music, singing lyrics written to defend their family life." Lyrics written to defend their family life? These are not normal teenagers.

Gideon the Polygamist

Sometimes you latch onto a concept or idea, and suddenly it starts popping up everywhere. So there I was, enduring to the end of an uninspiring lesson on Judges, when look what pops up in the short bio of Gideon, heroic Israelite patriot and judge from the tribe of Manasseh:

[Gideon] went back home to live. He had seventy sons of his own, for he had many wives. His concubine, who lived in Shechem, also bore him a son, whom he named Abimilech. Gideon son of Joash died at a good old age and was buried in the tomb of his father Joash. (Judges 8:29-32, NIV)

Wives, a concubine, and living to a good old age. How patriarchal.

Messing With Texas

You've got to hand it to these FLDS folks: when they set their mind to it, they can do some nice construction work. And out in the middle of nowhere Texas, no less. The LA Times just ran a story giving the latest, entitled Dispatch from Eldorado, Texas (from the Topix feed). The surprise is that they're actually getting along pretty well with the locals. They don't say much to the Texans, but, reading between the lines, the story makes it clear the FLDS are actually getting along fairly nicely.

Utah Court Affirms Bigamy Conviction

As if on cue for this week's theme of polygamy, the Utah State Supreme Court delivered a polygamy opinion this week, State v. Holm, 2006 UT 31, filed May 16. (Hat tip: this interesting post at Right Coast.) The Court affirmed the bigamy conviction of an FLDS adherent from Hildale, Utah. Anyone interested in LDS history will find the three opinions (there was a concurrence and a dissenting opinion) interesting reading. Should Reynolds ever be taken up by the US Supreme Court, this Utah case will provide a starting point for their analysis.

Big Covenant

Before there was Big Love, there was Solemn Covenant (U. of Illinois Press, 1992). I think it's time to pull it off my bookshelf (where it has been sitting for a year) and actually read it. As a warm up (and for this week's online essay) go read Truth and Mistruth in Mormon History, an essay by Carmon Hardy, the author of Solemn Covenant. This one is well worth your time. Here's the first paragraph:

It was while doing research in preparation for a book on polygamy, especially post-Manifesto polygamy, that I encountered extensive resorts to purposeful mistruth by Mormon leaders and others. I will suggest that such practices have serious implications beyond the particular instances involving their employment. This was certainly the case, I believe, when dishonesty was used to defend polygamy.

Under the Banner of Liberty

I got an email from a friend a couple of weeks ago with a link to this interesting post at Positive Liberty by an accomplished libertarian blogger, decrying (in no uncertain terms) present-day polygamy of the sort practiced by the FLDS Church but defending consensual adult polygamy, which he rather generously likened to the sort practiced by the 19th-century LDS Church. This rather unusual constellation of positions is due in part to the author's recent reading of Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. I like Krakauer and have posted on him before (Responding to Krakauer; Krakauer Walks the Walk; The Land That Time Forgot; and, from the old blog, a post on Into Thin Air). Here I'll just comment on the post at Positive Liberty.

Polygamy: The View From England

From RNB, a repost of a nice Guardian article on the seamy side of modern polygamy, entitled Hellfire and sexual coercion: the darkside of American polygamist sects. It's good therapy for Mormons who still harbor the idea that there can be a blessed side to modern polygamy. Sorry — it's all pretty seamy. English journalists write with more wit and irony than most US journalists can muster, so you'll encounter some choice quotes. The article ends with reference to an escapee: "But the first item on her to-do list is 'Get out of Utah.'" Ouch!

Something New in Texas

From RNB, Town Springing Up on Compound reveals that the 1500 acre FLDS ranch located about 45 miles south of San Angelo, Texas, is now the site of a compound, surrounded by 8-foot high fences, inside which a small town is presently springing to life. Dimes to donuts that Under the Banner of Heaven is a bestseller these days in nearby towns. But Texas isn't like sympathetic Utah. I'll bet, in a few months, when some teenage FLDS runaway spills her guts to the local sheriff, he and a dozen cousins march right on in there with a small arsenel and, uh, welcome the polygamists to the neighborhood.

More Polygamy Theory

This is the week for academics to weigh in on polygamy, it seems (earlier post here). The Right Coast has a short utilitarian analysis of polygamy versus monogamy. Summary: Under polygamy (and assuming more wives mean greater utility) some men are better off and some are considerably worse off, namely those who are pushed out of the marriage market. Some women are better off (under the "half a good man is better than all of a bum" theory) and some are worse off (those women who now have to share a good man).

Economists and Polygamy

There's an interesting post at the economics blog Marginal Revolution entitled What's Wrong With Polygamy? It includes a link to this paper in which three economists develop a model of the marriage market. The paper "examines why developed countries are monogamous while rich men throughout history have tended to produce polygyny (multiple wives)." When it comes to the evolution of social norms, I much prefer anthropologists, who are obsessed with cultural details and take them seriously, to economists, who ignore them. Thus we read, for example: "A key assumption of the model is that high quality men and women are more efficient in producing higher quality children, which generates a comparative advantage for high quality parents in raising higher quality children." That's culture to an economist: people are high-quality or low-quality.

A House Divided

There's an interesting Albert Mohler editorial over at Crosswalk, entitled The Church That Cannot Make Up Its Mind, discussing a recent report by a committee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) on the charged issue of homosexuality and marriage. Look for this issue to blow up at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in August 2005 when the report is formally presented to the assembly. Mainline denominations are split down the middle on this issue with little ground for long-term compromise, and "face the very real prospect of schism over issues of sexuality." SSM is a wedge issue, but it also signals a "far deeper divide in these churches over basic issues of doctrine, biblical authority, confession, and ecclesiology." Nice to see other denominations struggle over doctrine for a change.

Ecclesiastical Polity

My choice for online essay of the week is from the most recent issue of Dialogue, Ecclesiastical Polity and the Challenge of Homosexuality: Two Cases of Divergence within the Mormon Tradition, by O Kendall White Jr. and Daryl White. The authors are visibly sympathetic to the RLDS move to the left and unhappy with the LDS move to the right over the last century, but that perspective is nothing new. The divergence they are writing about is actually in the eccesiastical polities or governance paradigms of the two denominations, not simply the SSA policies. The article is much more interesting than I expected from the title!

This Just In . . .

At LDS.org, a new First Presidency statement on same-gender marriage (I saw it first at A Soft Answer), which I post in full:

We of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reach out with understanding and respect for individuals who are attracted to those of the same gender. We realize there may be great loneliness in their lives but there must also be recognition of what is right before the Lord.

As a doctrinal principle, based on sacred scripture, we affirm that marriage between a man and a woman is essential to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children. The powers of procreation are to be exercised only between a man and a woman lawfully wedded as husband and wife.

Any other sexual relations, including those between persons of the same gender, undermine the divinely created institution of the family. The Church accordingly favors measures that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman and that do not confer legal status on any other sexual relationship.

Expect a lot of media and Bloggernacle chatter on this one!

Update: There's a T&S post with nice discussion in the commments.

More on Born That Way

There's no public debate on how heterosexuals "became that way," but homosexuality seems to require an explanation, with much of the debate now tied to public policy discussions. The present flap over Sen. Kerry's remarks about VP Cheney's daughter prompted this USA Today story which quoted Pres. Bush's "I don't know" reply at the most recent debate, then added a couple of opinions from experts in the field:

In Wednesday's debate, Bush had this response when asked whether homosexuality was a choice: "I don't know. I just don't know."

Research on the question is sparse. Most scientists agree that sexual orientation is most likely the result of an interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors, according to the American Psychological Association.

Psychologist J. Michael Bailey of Northwestern University in Illinois, who has done research on sexual orientation, says, "The evidence is not entirely persuasive for either side." Psychologist Gregory Herek of the University of California-Davis says, "There are genetic and social roots for all behavior."

So the medical profession or "science" seems to be saying, "We don't know either," thus agreeing with Pres. Bush's position. I was kind of surprised to see these quotes in the media. See also my prior posts linking to some LDS views on this interesting subject here and here.

Turley on Polygamy

Polygamy laws expose our own hypocrisy, proclaims an editorial headline from Monday's USA Today. The editorial is written by Jonathan Turley, a law prof at George Washington, who makes general comments about the Tom Green cert. petition now headed for the Supreme Court. While Turley states that he "personally detest[s] polygamy," he senses deep inconsistency in the present state of the law of marriage in light of Lawrence v. Texas and the Free Exercise Clause:

If the court agrees to take the case, it would be forced to confront a 126-year-old decision [Reynolds v. United States] allowing states to criminalize polygamy that few would find credible today, even as they reject the practice. And it could be forced to address glaring contradictions created in recent decisions of constitutional law.

For more discussion of the USA Today piece, see Albert Mohler's weblog editorial The Floodgates Open: USA Today Promotes Polygamy, which isn't quite an accurate description of Turley's view but does manage to catch the eye. Mohler sees the unfolding slippery-slope result to be a great argument against (surprise!) gay marriage and anything like unto it. It is certainly amusing to see a Southern Baptist spokesman quoting with favor a statement that Reynolds was "an undeniable violation of the Constitution's free exercise clause." I wonder if these commentators realize that the last thing on heaven or earth that the Utah Church wants is for polygamy to be legalized in the US?

LDS SSA Conference

Evergreen International, a support organization for Mormons dealing with same-sex attraction (SSA) issues, just held its annual conference in SLC, as reported in this article in the Deseret News. While not "officially" affiliated with the Church, it's pretty clear Evergreen has close ties to the Church: the conference was held in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in SLC, a GA speaker is listed on the conference agenda, and "ecclesiastical leaders" are given free admission to most sessions.

On the postive side, it's nice the Church bends over backwards to support an LDS organization that tries to understand SSA in terms other than sin and condemnation. While official LDS statements and pronouncements always qualify their "hate the sin" counsel with a "but love the sinner" clause, popular Mormon culture (i.e., Utah and the general membership of the Church) pretty much just takes "hate the sin" and runs with it. Perhaps more overt support for Evergreen, along with Ensign articles such as the recent piece by a gay Mormon, is an attempt by leaders to move the membership toward a more sophisticated understanding of this increasingly visible issue. See also the FAIR presentation that I blogged on a couple of weeks ago.

Interestingly, a close reading of the Deseret News article shows that dealing with other Mormons is at least as big a problem for these people as dealing with their SSA. For example, a middle-aged woman is quoted as saying, "In the Relief Society, I felt if they really knew what I was struggling with, they wouldn't want me around." The unacknowledged problem seems to be that many Mormons are covertly following a "hate the sin and hate the sinner" approach. Personally, I can't understand why anyone who figures out they are gay would possibly decide to stick around the LDS Church to be the village scapegoat when they can find sincere Christian support and understanding from any of several other denominations.

Born to be Wild . . . or Not

My short post two weeks ago entitled Sex and Spirituality got 26 comments, so I assume you'll all be interested in reading the full text of the talk it referred to (now posted at the FAIR website) entitled Born That Way? Facts and Fiction About Homosexuality. Here is a short quote giving the author's perspective:

There is a considerable body of ideologically inspired "scholarship" which leans toward the notion that homosexuality is so strongly compelled by biological factors that it is indelibly ingrained in a person's core identity, and is therefore not amenable to change. Many of these articles, though well-written, do not reflect good science. In fact, the social advocacy of the articles would suggest a greater reliance on politics than on the scientific method.

Question: Does this article accurately reflect the LDS view and/or the Proclamation? As the SSM debate continues to rage and the Utah marriage amendment comes to a vote, the Church will be under some pressure to clarify its doctrinal position on homosexuality.

Sex and Spirituality

"Whether an individual is religious or not, there seems to be a need for a spiritual connection when dealing with sexuality." So says a U of U med school psychologist at the recent FAIR conference, as reported in a story at BYU NewsNet. I am trying to think of survey questions that would provide support for this proposition: Do you feel a sudden need to pray during sex? Do you find your heterosexual urges strengthened when viewing religious art or singing hymns? The article is a bit sketchy--I suppose that's understandable for a BYU NewsNet article on sexuality. Even so, it still seems a little half-baked to me. But I'm sure it brightened up the FAIR conference.

Of course, there's a gay angle: the researcher works with men "distressed by unwanted homosexual attraction." Generally, if you wear scuffed-up shoes and ties that don't match, they leave you alone. For some of us that comes naturally, others have to make a real effort.

Latest Polygamy Case

The latest Utah polygamy case [SL Trib link] is by a trio not yet entered into polygamy, who argue that "the state of Utah should not be able to criminalize the maintenance of an intimate relationship." Well, there's prostitution, statutory rape, and incestuous unions, all of which are acceptably criminalized or "regulated" intimate relationships, so it's hard to affirm the general rule. The plaintiffs also argue that "the [state's] ban on plural marriage violates their constitutional rights to practice their religion and to free association." Reynolds redux, that won't fly.

But when they argue that "the law unfairly targets religious polygamy because people who create multiple common-law marriages through cohabitation are never prosecuted for bigamy," this highlights the potential to frame the state's prohibition on polygamy as contravening the Lukumi Babalu Aye principle that religious practices cannot be targeted while identical or similar secular practices are ignored. The state argued that polygamy laws are enforced across the board, regardless of the religious motivations or affiliations of the participants, and that the state has a right to define marriage legally and enforce marriage laws. This case might show how far Lawrence v. Texas can be made to stretch. The Deseret News story on the suit provides additional details (a better discussion, actually).

Church Supports Civil Unions

Sort of, maybe. Here's the statement, from a news release at LDS.org dated July 7, 2004:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints favors a constitutional amendment preserving marriage as the lawful union of a man and a woman.

This only looks like a national Prop 22 endorsement or ERA all over again. Reading between the lines a bit, the Church (meaning its senior leaders, of course) here reveals a primary interest in reserving legal and formal marriage for opposing pairs where such unions are lawful. This leaves the door open for achieving same-sex pairings by civil unions. It would preserve marriage as the lawful union of a man and a woman, wouldn't it? I'm sure we'd all be tickled to see Utah out in front on this one.

For earlier thoughts on civil unions, see my prior post here.

FLDS Polygamy Story

The Salt Lake Tribune featured several related stories in a special Living the Principle section on Sunday. The photo galleries are rather interesting: one of present-day Hildale and Colorado City (big, really big houses and plain-looking women in pioneerish dresses) and one of the 1953 Short Creek raid (makes the present day community look pretty modern by comparison).

The timeline given under the heading Origins of Polygamy is so misleading as to be dishonest. It says "1843: Smith discloses the principle of celestial marriage." No, he shared it with a few close associates, but didn't disclose it to the general public or to the vast majority of early Mormons. It notes Orson Pratt's 1852 General Conference discourse on polygamy without stating this was the first time the Church admitted publicly it sponsored and supported the practice. In says "1862: The first federal law is passed outlawing polygamy," suggesting it was legal before 1862 which is ridiculous. The statute merely restated what was universally understood as the applicable common law prohibition against polygamy under the common law of every state and federal common law as it had been understood since the 17th century. Finally, there is no mention of the practice of post-1890 polygamy as sponsored and practiced by many of the Church's highest leaders. What a hack job. The timeline is the most inaccurate piece of work I've ever seen in the Tribune. And I only read the first ten (out of about fifty) entries!