“There is a great deal of quarrelling in the houses, and contending for power and authority; and the second wife is against the first wife, perhaps, in some instances.”

May 25, 2009 10:51 PM

Every child believes he's special. But when you are number ten of twenty, with three "sister- mothers" - two of whom are full- blooded sisters-and a grandfather whom thousands of people believe speaks directly to God, it can be hard to figure out what "special" really means. All told, I have roughly sixty-five aunts and uncles on my dad's side and twenty- two on my mom's-with probably thousands of cousins. In families as large as mine, even keeping track of your own siblings-let alone cousins and aunts and uncles-is difficult.... My family had what our church called "royal blood." We were direct descendants of our prophet through my father's line. My mother, too, is the child of a prophet,... When I was little, my family was favored, in the church's elite. I was assured that there was a place for me in the highest realms of heaven... I would one day become a god, ruling over my own spinning world.

Brent Jeffs, the grandson of Rulon Jeffs (and nephew of Warren Jeffs), explains growing up a Lost Boy in the FLDS, in an audio interview on NPR.
posted by orthogonality (39 comments total)

Yeah, yeah. Co-written by Me-fi's own blah blah blah blah blah.

Jeez, if that woman farts it'll get a front page post around here.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:07 AM on May 26 [1 favorite]

Actually, I'm just joking. And you've got to be doing something right when you get your new book on Hannity and NPR on the same day.

Uncle Blaine says he didn't do it.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:15 AM on May 26

As for Me-fi's own, I am extremely happy that her work gets FPP's. Light is so good at sanitizing darkness, and Maia shines it into some seriously dark corners.
posted by Goofyy at 12:16 AM on May 26 [1 favorite]

Oprah has done more than one wide eyed tours of bigamist compounds and all the residents did their best to make out like it was nothing more than homely country life where the men just happened to have more than one wife.

I don't even think it twigged to her that the male:female ratio in these compounds is so out of whack that the likely explanations are banishment/abandonment of males and the trafficking of females.
posted by PenDevil at 2:19 AM on May 26 [3 favorites]

I know I should feel bad for the author of the book, but, even though he was forced out of the only home he had ever known and ostracized by his family, at least he got out. If only some of the little girls could have gotten out, before being forced into serial rape by a much older cousin--what these sick people call marriage.

I guess sooner or later fumerase deficiency may finally end it all, but by then there will have been several generations of the pain and suffering of lost girls and boys and their severely disabled brothers and sisters.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:57 AM on May 26

I heard that interview over the weekend, it was good. I didn't realize Maias was his co-author. I exchanged emails with her on a post about addiction, and she seems very smart and has a healthy skepticism; I definitely want to check out this book.
posted by TedW at 5:04 AM on May 26

Thanks all!

Hydro, Brent was raped repeatedly by Warren when he was just five-- so I don't think you'd want to say he suffered less than the girls. Regarding fumarase deficiency, Brent's mom's family had, I think it was 4 children die of it-- she had to take care of the disabled children when she was just a child herself. Fortunately, his dad doesn't appear to have had the gene, so it wasn't in Brent's family. But Brent's mom's fortitude in the face of all of that was amazing to me.

Regarding Blaine, the weird thing about his claims of not having been in the church when Brent got abused is that multiple witnesses say he *was* there decades later to get publicly excommunicated. Warren's own writing and preaching talk about this excommunication and Elissa Wall witnessed it. So it's kind of weird for him to say that he left the church in the 80's when he was clearly in it in the 00's to get kicked out.
posted by Maias at 5:30 AM on May 26

If only some of the little girls could have gotten out, before being forced into serial rape

I've read the book and I really didn't get the sense that the young girls are being forced into serial rape -- unless you consider a consensual marriage when someone is below the legal marriage age to be a rape.

As I understand it, the way that it works is (or at least, this is how it was in the Rulon era, pre Warren), the young women decide when it's time for them to marry, and they'll then go along and see the Prophet and let him know that they think it's time for them. The Prophet will then ask them if they've had any kind of a revelation as to who it is that the Lord might be picking out for them, and then the young woman will say, 'Oh yes, I think little Donnie Osmond came to me in a dream and told me that he'd be my spiritual guide in the afterlife'.

Unless the Prophet thinks little Donnie is a terrible bet, say, because he's been known to appear in public without wearing the magic underwear while singing Puppy Love, then the Prophet was likely to go along with it.

Brent's mom describes this process with regard to her own marriage. Unfortunately, things go kind of askew when her younger sister then decides that she fancies herself a husband as well -- and given that sis's hubby seems to be kind of a good man... a good provider and kind of hot... perhaps he'd make a very good husband for her as well?

Although the men don't have to acquiesce to these proposals, I think it's regarded as pretty bad form to be turning them down. Personally, I thought the best part of the book was the intimate details of what it's like to be involved in a polygamous marriage in Modern 20th/21st century America. It's definitely not about the sex, as most of the man's time seems to be spent managing the expectations and resolving the conflicts between the women. Apparently, in the early days, they might have kept their different wives in different houses, but in Brent's day, there were three women and twenty kids all under the same roof, and it seems to have been a real struggle for everyone concerned.

Normally, this is the kind of exploitative emotional memoir that I'd advise giving a wide berth, but Maia's intellectual curiosity means that she spends a lot of time probing her co-author and his family about the hows, the whys and the wherefores, and so what you get is a really interesting look at the workings of a modern polygamous family a la Big Love.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:39 AM on May 26

Brent was raped repeatedly by Warren when he was just five-- so I don't think you'd want to say he suffered less than the girls.

Obviously he suffered a lot, but I don't think the idea that he suffered less than the girls should be so casually dismissed; all else being equal, he wasn't at risk of pregnancy.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 5:47 AM on May 26

Apparently, in the early days, they might have kept their different wives in different houses, but in Brent's day, there were three women and twenty kids all under the same roof, and it seems to have been a real struggle for everyone concerned.

How the man of the house can afford to build such super-sized dwellings! The answer: He can't. He doesn't pay for them, you do.

religion be damned (pun intended). polygamy is as much about some guy getting his ego (and ego center) stroked & fraud as it is about any kind of 'consensual marriage.'
posted by msconduct at 5:54 AM on May 26

All told, I have roughly sixty-five aunts and uncles on my dad's side and twenty- two on my mom's-with probably thousands of cousins.

And it's no wonder that the largest genealogy sites are run by the Mormons.
posted by thanotopsis at 6:36 AM on May 26

thanotopsis, Mormons are told that to be good practitioners of the religion, they have to baptize by proxy all their ancestors to give them a chance to reach heaven as part of their celestial family. They do all kinds of genealogical research to ensure they've covered everyone; these records all become public/mostly public (behind a pay wall at times) for others to take advantage of.

(Note that my converted-to-Mormon cousins have assured my you-people-are-weird aunt that while they do have to TRY to baptize everyone in the afterlife, it is up to the dead baptizee to reject it. So there you go.)
posted by olinerd at 6:42 AM on May 26

Looking forward to reading this; I heard him on NPR and he was great. See also Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, which argues (only half persuasively) that FLDS is not too far from some of the original LDS founding doctrines.
posted by Nelson at 6:42 AM on May 26

polygamy is as much about some guy getting his ego (and ego center) stroked

One of the things that Brent says, that struck me as being very funny, is 'This was not the Playboy Mansion.'
posted by PeterMcDermott at 6:46 AM on May 26

undoubtedly it is NOT the playboy mansion. you've got women in all manner of pregnant and post pregnancy physique that would not (i assume) be considered of the same titillation factor as a playboy centerfold. their jobs, after all, are not to be sexy, but to bear children.
posted by msconduct at 6:53 AM on May 26

Suffering is not really quantifiable.
posted by hermitosis at 6:54 AM on May 26 [8 favorites]

The funny thing is if you called it "open marriage" instead of "polygamy" it would be applauded as progressive here.
posted by Hovercraft Eel at 6:56 AM on May 26 [2 favorites]

I'm sure you're exactly right, Hovercraft Eel. How astute.
posted by odinsdream at 7:01 AM on May 26

Except that "open marriage" typically implies that both the men and women are involved with multiple partners. Polygamy does not give women the same option. And the modern "open marriage" movement involves consulting adults, which this instance of polygamy does not. So no. I don't think it'd be applauded.
posted by olinerd at 7:22 AM on May 26 [6 favorites]

The funny thing is if you called it "open marriage" instead of "polygamy" it would be applauded as progressive here.

Of course, because there's no difference at all between a situation where a couple of adults decide that monogamy doesn't work for them, and institutionalized, sanctified rape that views women as nothing but walking uteri to be impregnated as quickly and as often as physically possible.

Pity they didn't use the right words so we could all nod appreciatively.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:22 AM on May 26 [11 favorites]

How the man of the house can afford to build such super-sized dwellings! The answer: He can't. He doesn't pay for them, you do.

I would need to see this fleshed out before accepting it as fact, it seems fishy the way it's presented in this article. At least in PA, this isn't the way welfare works, you can't have a working father not supporting his children while mom collects welfare at the same time. In PA when a single mother applies for cash benefits she has to supply social security numbers for the fathers of all her children so child support orders can be put in place that the state can eventually recoup the cost of raising the children from. For example, I had a client who got locked up for robbing a bank and while she was doing her time her kids went to live with her mother. While the grandmother was caring for the kids, she applied for cash benefits. The state required her to provide social security numbers for the parents, and as a result the state lodged a child support order against my client that accrued while she was in jail. She came out of jail owing more than $20,000 to the state, which basically prevented her from entering the workforce lest she have her wages docked at such a crippling rate that she would have remained homeless. This is also partially why it's so hard for the state to recoup money from absent fathers whose primary income is from the black market; unless there's a social security number attached to the earnings, there's no way for the government to know there's income that can be garnished.

But these guys are making legit incomes, so believe me, there's NO WAY the state is just shelling out cash benefits for 26 kids per father without docking the living shit out of his wages. I'm suspicious of this "welfare is building polygamist mansions" angle.
posted by The Straightener at 7:24 AM on May 26 [2 favorites]

Wow, Hovercraft Eel, you blew my mind! I never realized before how many similarities there are between marriages in which both partners, though discussion and deliberation, opt to set rules under which they can participate in consenting sexual and/or emotional relationships with others, and marriages based on religious indoctrination which force men to be terrified lackeys to the authorities (lest they get denied wives or kicked out entirely) and women (girls, in some cases) to be little more than subservient baby-machines. They're exactly the same!
posted by arcticwoman at 7:26 AM on May 26 [6 favorites]

I know you're new, Hovercraft Eel, but take a look through the site. MetaFilter, as a whole, comes off as fairly anti-(polygamy, polyamory, open marriage). It is something that might as well be in the top ten of the "MetaFilter does not do these well" list.

Others have already pointed out the difference between arrangements negotiated by adults in full possession of the notions of equality and equivalency and, well, an institution dedicated to jettisoning excess boys like so much trash on the slightest pretext to maintain an inflated ratio of grown men to barely pubescent girls ready to be impregnated to perpetuate the organization, so I will leave that aside.

Your conservative grump is aimed at a MetaFilter more liberal than that which exists in reality.
posted by adipocere at 7:54 AM on May 26

I've read the book and I really didn't get the sense that the young girls are being forced into serial rape -- unless you consider a consensual marriage when someone is below the legal marriage age to be a rape.

The marriages are not all consensual, and you can have rape even within a marriage.

From this article: '"On my wedding night, I was raped," another escapee from polygamy, Pam Black, said to Kauffman. She had 13 babies but, she says, "knew nothing about sexuality or intimacy, friendship."'

Warren Jeffs was convicted because he participated in forcing a 14-year old girl to marry against her will - she did not consent to the marriage, or to the sex.

But even if she had, there are serious questions about whether people below a certain age have the mental faculty to truly consent. In Canada, for example, any sexual contact with a person under 12 is considered to be an assault or rape, even if the person was "willing", because it is believed that those under 12 really do not understand enough about sex to have consent in an informed and understanding manner. Most societies also have age minimums for marriage, because we don't believe that children or young teenagers can truly consent to the committment of marriage.

The funny thing is if you called it "open marriage" instead of "polygamy" it would be applauded as progressive here.
posted by Hovercraft Eel at 9:56 AM on May 26 [+] [!]

Open marriages take place between consenting adults, as do legitimate polygamouos marriages. I fully support polygamy as practiced between informed and consenting adults. Some Black Muslims in the US, for example, practice polygamy, but it doesn't make the news. Why? Because they practice polygamy among consenting adults.

The whole polygamy issue could be solved once and for all - it's not a freedom of religion issue, nor a freedom of marriage issue. It's a child abuse issue. Any parent who allows their children to be married before age 16 or without consent before age 18 is an abusive parent, and ought to have all of their children removed because they cannot be trusted to protect them.
posted by jb at 7:57 AM on May 26 [2 favorites]

PeterMcDermott: Uncle Blaine says he didn't do it.

Maias: Regarding Blaine, the weird thing about his claims of not having been in the church when Brent got abused is that multiple witnesses say he *was* there decades later to get publicly excommunicated. Warren's own writing and preaching talk about this excommunication and Elissa Wall witnessed it. So it's kind of weird for him to say that he left the church in the 80's when he was clearly in it in the 00's to get kicked out.

This is not to say that he's correct (I don't put much past his word)—but you're confused about Blaine's story, which is this:

[from PeterMcDermott's link]: Blaine said he disassociated from the FLDS church in 1981 and was not around in 1988, when Brent says the abuse occurred.

At that time, Blaine said he was living in Elko, Nev., and did not attend the Sunday services held at his father’s home. He rejoined the church in 1992, living first in St. George and then in the twin towns. In January 2004, Blaine was among the men excommunicated by his brother Warren.

He has not spoken to Warren since then and has not rejoined the church.

He's saying he left the church in 1981 and rejoined in 1992—and therefore wasn't there in 1988, but was there in '04 to get excommunicated. (He may, of course, be lying.)
posted by koeselitz at 8:43 AM on May 26

Oprah has done more than one wide eyed tours of bigamist compounds and all the residents did their best to make out like it was nothing more than homely country life where the men just happened to have more than one wife.

I don't even think it twigged to her that the male:female ratio in these compounds is so out of whack that the likely explanations are banishment/abandonment of males and the trafficking of females.

/derail

Oprah is also giving Jenny McCarthy her own show and frequently gives the anti-vaxxers like McCarthy a platform on her show without allowing the other side a chance to rebut.

Oprah would give Hitler a chance to deny away the holocaust if she could. She's worse than Jerry Springer.

/end derail
posted by cjets at 9:08 AM on May 26 [3 favorites]

I know you're new, Hovercraft Eel

He's not new, he's just an old troll under a new name.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 9:11 AM on May 26 [2 favorites]

Terry Gross (Fresh Air, WHYY) interviews Brent Jeffs for 40 minutes-- one of the best interviews she's ever done, in my opinion.

Brent says, during the course of that interview, that one of the first things Warren Jeffs did upon ascendancy to the office of Prophet was to order everyone in the cult to kill all their dogs.

Tell me, does Warren Jeffs have absolutely prototypical Fragile X face, or what?
posted by jamjam at 9:25 AM on May 26 [1 favorite]

I know you're new, Hovercraft Eel, but take a look through the site. MetaFilter, as a whole, comes off as fairly anti-(polygamy, polyamory, open marriage). It is something that might as well be in the top ten of the "MetaFilter does not do these well" list.

I disagree that we're anti-polygamy, anti-polyamory, or anti-open marriage. What most of us have a problem with are the abuses that tend to be so rampant within polygamist communities: the rapes, incest, forced marriages, expulsion of young men, abuse of social assistance, etc. And I don't recall any examples of MeFites taking a stand against polyamory or open marriage on principle. Again, it would be a matter of people discussing the specific problems that tend to stem from such arrangements.
posted by orange swan at 9:29 AM on May 26 [2 favorites]

As I understand it, the way that it works is (or at least, this is how it was in the Rulon era, pre Warren), the young women decide when it's time for them to marry, and they'll then go along and see the Prophet and let him know that they think it's time for them. The Prophet will then ask them if they've had any kind of a revelation as to who it is that the Lord might be picking out for them, and then the young woman will say, 'Oh yes, I think little Donnie Osmond came to me in a dream and told me that he'd be my spiritual guide in the afterlife'.


In this memoir, a woman who left FLDS describes being married against her will to a man (an older boy, really) who was cruel to her even before the marriage, and raped her repeatedly during it.
posted by not that girl at 9:50 AM on May 26

From this article: '"On my wedding night, I was raped," another escapee from polygamy, Pam Black, said to Kauffman. She had 13 babies but, she says, "knew nothing about sexuality or intimacy, friendship."'

Sure. I'm not saying that this never happens, or that plural marriage is a good thing, or even that forcibly marrying kids off to old men at 13 is a good idea.

All I'm really saying is that some of these accounts and interpretations are pretty fiercely contested by many of the women who are part of that faith/cult/call-it-what-you-will.

FDLS clearly has a fucked up culture -- but then I feel the same way about more orthodox Christian fundamentalist culture as well.

One of the very interesting things about Big Love is how well it seems to reflect the emotional complexities of the participants in this culture. Although that's fiction, I'd be willing to bet that the picture that's painted on that show is much closer to the experience of participants -- even the majority of lapsed/expelled participants -- than the picture of participant as solely victim/abuser that's being painted here.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:59 AM on May 26

unless you consider a consensual marriage when someone is below the legal marriage age to be a rape.

I just...I don't...I am at a loss.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:20 AM on May 26 [5 favorites]

Peter, I can see what you're trying to put across, that some women do choose this life--so do many cult members. What distinguishes a wacky religion of choice from a cult is that, over time, cult members lose more and more power to make choices, especially the choice to leave.

Much like an abusive marriage in many ways; they often start off fine, with love and hope, but then things begin to spiral downward. During that spiral, abused partners will often, repeatedly, turn off the warnings of their own minds and of others about the situation, believe the abuser who tells them he/she loves them and didn't mean to hurt them, and in the case of a cult, adds a lot of religion guilt and fear about what would happen if they said no or walked away.

In that context, the context that these people live in, choice becomes harder and harder to access; your only real choice is stay or leave--you have been robbed of any power to change the situation as it is.
posted by emjaybee at 12:25 PM on May 26 [3 favorites]

For The Straightener, on FLDS benefits fraud:

There's no doubt that benefits fraud has happened in the FLDS community, though the public may have an exaggerated ideas about how pervasive it is.

In my experience (which is about a decade out of date at this point, admittedly), paternity tends to get established in one of four ways: (1) Through presumption, because the child is born to legally married parents; (2) Voluntarily, with non-married parents; (3) On the petition of the mother, as a precondition to getting a child support order; (4) On the petition of the father, as a precondition to getting visitation or other paternal rights.

With the children of non-legal wives in the FLDS context, none of those four things happen. If things are going smoothly with the family, neither parent has an interest in legally establishing paternity. The mother is not going to challenge the father's parental rights, and has no interest in having a governmental entity establish a support obligation. This places a multivalent, polygamous family in an excellent position to commit benefits fraud if they've a mind to. A distillation of Tom Zoellner's influential 1998 article about the practice, "Polygamy on the Dole," can be read here. (The original article, if your interested in it, can be accessed through the Salt Lake City Tribune's online archives, for $2.95.)

Paternity can, of course, be established by the government on its own motion, and sometimes that happens. In 2004, a support order was entered against a Kingston patriarch as part of a dependency and neglect action against both parents. Successful criminal prosecutions for non-support also happen, as in the 2001 case against Tom Green.

Though well-documents cases of benefits fraud in the FLDS context are easy to find, the question of how widespread it is remains open. According to at least one recent article, the numbers of TANF and medicare recipients in predominantly FLDS towns are very similar to those of comparable, non-FLDS towns in rural Utah, and do not, prima facie, indicate the presence of a pattern of abuse. Furthermore, an investigation of welfare fraud in the Bountiful, B.C. enclave did not result in criminal charges.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 2:28 PM on May 26

Oprah has done more than one wide eyed tours of bigamist compounds… I don't even think it twigged to her that the male:female ratio in these compounds is so out of whack

I don't think Oprah is a very thoughtful person. She seems to frequently completely miss out on important, salient details that would, if she had clued in, flip her opinion 180°. It is exceedingly unfortunate that she has the ability to influence the thinking of so many of our citizens, because she's really doing us no favours whatsoever by being so daft.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:50 PM on May 26

unless you consider a consensual marriage when someone is below the legal marriage age to be a rape.

Children can not consent. Consent requires one to be fully informed and of the legal age to consent. Underage marriage fails on both counts.
posted by five fresh fish at 5:52 PM on May 26

I've read the book and I really didn't get the sense that the young girls are being forced into serial rape -- unless you consider a consensual marriage when someone is below the legal marriage age to be a rape.

You know, we only get about one or two comments a year that defend or support child rape. Bravo.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 6:02 PM on May 26 [2 favorites]

Optimus Chyme: You know, we only get about one or two comments a year that defend or support child rape. Bravo.

Ehh—it's a hell of a lot more than that, unfortunately.
posted by koeselitz at 7:37 PM on May 26

I've read about half of Lost Boy now. It's interesting. One thing I'd never considered in a polygamous relationship is just how much competition there is in the family for status. He writes a lot about how complicated family politics are. With 10-20 kids in a family no one gets much attention, and with 3+ wives the wives are constantly jockeying for status with the patriarch. Any romantic notions I had about polyamorous families just got much more complicated.
posted by Nelson at 9:22 AM on May 27