68-70_Olaiz_Polygamy.qxp 9/29/2006 9:35 AM Page 68 SUNSTONE NEWS AND COMMENTARY traditional marriage” petition bluntly accuses the apostle of practicing “celestial polygamy.”6 As historian Martha Sonntag Bradley explains, despite the abolition of the WARREN JEFFS AND THE practice, we “are left with the same unan- swered doctrinal questions as were Church members a hundred years ago.”7 So the ques- MORMON ART OF FORGETTING tion must be asked: When members of the media mix up Mormons with polygamy, are we upset because we perceive them to be dis- By Hugo Olaiz torting our religion, or because they are throwing a spotlight on an aspect of our reli- gion we desperately want to forget? When we bristle at the possibility that the public will confuse the LDS with the FLDS, does our concern arise from our being aware, at some level, of the many genuine similarities be- tween the LDS of the 1880s and the FLDS of today? ONSIDER, for example, the rhetoric of war that Warren Jeffs used in a C speech to FLDS members captured on tape before he went on the lam: “Our HTTP://WWW.GEORGEQCANNON.COM/ prophet and the Celestial Law, the principle of revelation, are under attack,” Jeffs de- E WAS ONE of the best known not just forgetting that past: We become out- clared. “There is a combined effort in the leaders of polygamy in America and raged when someone dares to remind us of state of Utah and the state of Arizona to come a wanted man. His picture was it. against our prophet and our people, trying to H 8 posted everywhere, with a substantial reward In a section on the Church’s website, stop the work of God.” How far is Jeffs’s offered. When he was apprehended by fed- www.lds.org, titled “Comments on the News,” rhetoric from that of ardent polygamist and eral agents in Nevada and returned to Utah LDS officials recently published a litany of LDS president John Taylor, who once stated to be jailed, the arrest set off a media frenzy, protests against the media for sins ranging that “the people of the rest of this country are with stories appearing in the national media, from calling Warren Jeffs a Mormon and our enemies”? “We must not yield to them,” in addition to the Deseret News and the Salt using the expression “Mormon Polygamist,” Taylor urged. “When they enact tyrannical Lake Tribune. The news of his arrest came as a to airing a show on polygamy from Salt Lake laws, forbidding us the free exercise of our shock to his followers. He himself main- City with Temple Square in the background.3 religion, we cannot submit.”9 tained that he was the victim of religious per- Are such protestations legitimate or a public Or consider how the Saints were galva- secution. relations ruse, part of the “we’re-not-weird” nized around their belief in the approaching I am speaking of George Q. Cannon, who campaign? end of the world. What fear could 19th-cen- in February 1886 was arrested in Humboldt Long after having abandoned polygamy, tury “cohabs” have of the federal government Wells, Nevada, en route to Mexico.1 If you do we wish we could forget it. Polygamy led when their beloved prophet John Taylor had not remember this episode from the LDS Joseph Smith to lie, Brigham Young to defy prophesied that the nation would “fall and past, you are far from alone. “Mormons study the government, John Taylor to become a crumble until it is no more”?10 Jump to the the art of forgetting what they have seen and fugitive. Yet, ironically, most Latter-day Saints present: In 1999, when FLDS leaders pre- heard,” U.S. district attorney P. T. Van Zile would likely agree that despite the temporary dicted impending apocalypse, a Hildale wrote sarcastically in 1887. “It often happens discontinuation of its practice, the Principle family cavalierly amassed $47,612 in credit that a Mormon . goes upon the witness hasn’t really been abolished—that polygamy card debts.11 More recently, when Warren stand, and testifies that he cannot remember will be restored during Christ’s Millennial Jeffs reportedly announced that the world having performed a marriage ceremony that reign.4 would end on 6 April 2005, an army of fol- took place within a week past.”2 After all, a form of polygamy is still prac- lowers worked night and day in Eldorado, Just as our noble pioneer forebears had ticed today by LDS men who, after divorcing Texas, to finish an FLDS temple just in time trouble remembering the polygamous mar- their first wives or becoming widowers, have for the momentous event.12 riages that could land them in jail, so we a second wife sealed to them.5 For this Or consider how both conflicts quickly 21st-century Mormons cultivate the art of reason, a recent campaign protesting Elder became national obsessions—the one sensa- forgetting our polygamous past. And we are Russell M. Nelson’s support of a “defense of tionalized in anti-polygamy novels, the other in cable news, talk shows, and blogs.13 In the HUGO OLAIZ is SUNSTONE news editor and has published in Dialogue: A Journal of 19th century, national discourse bent toward Mormon Thought as well as other venues. fantastic claims about rape, incest, and ge- netic abnormalities. But in an ironic twist, current media stories about polygamy sug- PAGE 68 SEPTEMBER 2006 68-70_Olaiz_Polygamy.qxp 9/29/2006 9:35 AM Page 69 SUNSTONE gest there may have been grounds for those stay out of jail. “The people say that you and “Principle Voices,” as they call themselves, nineteenth-century fears. Themes of sexual Cannon and [Joseph F.] Smith have run away seek to educate the public and to dispel and domestic abuse may seem more imag- and left the masses to go to the penitentiary myths through their own publications, in in- ined than real when we read them in Mormon or humiliate themselves before the courts,” a terviews with the media, and on their web- Wives and other 1850s anti-polygamy frustrated Mormon complained to John site.21 In the 19th century, prominent novels—but not today, when polygamists are Taylor, who was then in hiding. “You will women such as Ann Eliza Young and Sarah indicted for rape and in- M. Pratt wrote passionate cest. Predictions by scien- condemnations of poly- tists of the 1860s that gamy. Their work is polygamy would result in echoed in the contempo- genetic abnormalities may rary denunciations of not have been realized in Andrea Moore-Emmett the days of Brigham and Rachel Strong.22 Young,14 but last Feb- Not only in the court ruary, both the Deseret of public opinion, but News and the Salt Lake also in the courts of law, a Tribune reported that per- woman’s testimony is as haps as many as twenty important for making a FLDS children suffer se- case against polygamist vere mental retardation men today as it was in the because of a rare genetic 1880s. One of the turning disorder blamed on in- points of the landmark breeding.15 case Reynolds v. the United Or consider how, in States occurred when both cases, the moral and Amelia Jane Schofield legal campaigns against Reynolds, uncoached, tes- deviant sexual behavior tified that she had been (bigamy in the 19th cen- married to George tury, sex abuse in the 21st) Reynolds by the man who led men to disappear from HTTP://WWW.GEORGEQCANNON.COM/ only moments earlier had their communities and told the court he could turned religious leaders WHEN MEMBERS OF THE MEDIA MIX UP MORMONS not recall performing the into wanted fugitives. with polygamy, are we upset because we perceive ceremony.23 Recent legal “Those who did not them to be distorting our religion, or because they testimony by Mary Ann submit to arrest had to be Kingston, LuAnn King- constantly on the move,” are throwing a spotlight on an aspect of ston, Ruth Stubbs,24 and wrote Richard S. Van our religion we desperately want to forget? others suggests that cases Wagoner in his descrip- built against polygamist tion of the Raid that drove men continue to rely the LDS Church’s First Presidency and force men to go to the pen when you will not heavily on the testimony of wives who, either Quorum of the Twelve into hiding.16 go yourselves.”18 willingly or under pressure, are more forth- Women and children were left to This uncomfortable part of our past (who coming and less forgetful than their hus- provide for themselves as best they wants to remember our prophet as a fugitive bands. could. Secret codes were employed on the lam?) made a dramatic “return of the in letters and messages, and chil- repressed” when Warren Jeffs’s brother Seth UST like their pioneer forebears—who dren were taught to be evasive was captured with $140,000 in cash and a are also our pioneer forbears—mem- under questioning so as not to give donation jar labeled “Pennies for the JJ bers of the FLDS Church retreated to away the details of polygamous re- Prophet.” When Warren himself was appre- remote deserts so they could worship lationships.17 hended, riding in a luxurious Cadillac SUV, he God according to the dictates of their own The same could have been written of the sit- had with him more than $67,000 in cash.19 conscience. Like our great-grandparents, uation currently faced by FLDS families.