For generations of rural religious polygamists like those Warren S. Jeffs once led, this was the big town and the citadel of sin all in one.
St. George, founded on the southern route to California in wagon train days, was the place to buy groceries or spend an occasional night out. But it was also the local fortress of mainstream Mormonism, which is vehement in its opposition to polygamy.
The polygamists, in turn, looked down on Mormons as apostates who lost their way more than 100 years ago by denouncing polygamy, and thus the teachings of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, in a political compromise to achieve statehood for Utah.
Now Mr. Jeffs is being tried on felony charges that he was an accomplice to rape in arranging polygamous marriages between under-age girls and older men, and the jury is being drawn from a pool of St. George residents.
The trial is expected to throw a sharp light on polygamy and on the culture of Mr. Jeffs’s group in particular, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is estimated to number about 10,000 people throughout the West. Jury selection began Friday, and Mr. Jeffs, 51, could face life in prison if convicted.
The old and bitter history of intra-Mormon relations hangs over everything here. But many people said the divisions were not what they once had been. Even as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Mormon Church is known, has cracked down on polygamy in recent years, an intermingling of cultures has begun to bubble up here, opening hearts and minds in greater understanding, if not quite tolerance.
Economics, not religion, is driving the change.
How can the leaders of all Christian denominations not rise up in wrath? What is the purpose of thunder if it is not to warn of the storm to come? This dire seed is falling on fertile ground in the US, and we all know it. Kendall, will you not charge Schori to answer the straightforward question: Do you or do you not favor polyamory? Will TEC favor homosexual marriage on the grounds of equality and then refuse to extend this same equality to polygamy? I would still like to know what the hell my own archbishop is doing besides going to meetings and chatting.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is a war on and it is to the death. What will it take for us to act as if we know and understand? Furious in Maine
As we abandon heterosexual marriage as the accepted structure and standard for sexual activity between individuals, we open the door to all sorts of combinations and permutations for sexuality.
These other-than-heterosexual marriage relationships are obvious and require little imagination.
So, in a few years, will a parish be welcoming a who is married and who also has established a common-law bond with another woman or man? How do we acknowledge this hypothetical priest who has two publically acknowledged sexual partners?
What do we teach our children about monogamous heterosexual marriage?
“Now Mr. Jeffs is being tried on felony charges that he was an accomplice to rape in arranging polygamous marriages between under-age girls and older men….”
Not a problem for a real Prophet!
Mormon friends of ours from Salt Lake City retired to St. George a few years ago. We visited them on a vacation trip to Lake Powell. Showing off their new kitchen cabinets, they told us that the “polygs” had built them quite reasonably, and suggested that we go through Colorado City on our way because we’d be in for a strange sight. They told us that they build multiple large houses and never quite finish them, thus avoiding property taxes. Wife #1 is the legal wife and the rest are “unwed mothers” who collect welfare!
We did drive through the town and saw not a soul on the streets, but we did see the unfinished houses.
Here’s the money quote from the article:
[blockquote] “I’m liberal in that respect,†Ms. Clark said. “If it’s legal in some states for people of the same sex to get married, why is it not legal to marry more than one wife?†[/blockquote]
“If it’s legal in some states for people of the same sex to get married, why is it not legal to marry more than one wife?â€
#5, that is, indeed, the money quote. Would anyone care to tackle this one and try to answer?
In light of Lawrence v Texas there is no principled reason not to allow it.
The Old Testament at times seems to “wink” at mutiple spouses. But the New Testament certainly condemns polygamy in any form for those who claim the Lord Jesus as their personal saviour. As I recall St Paul was quite outspoken on this subject.
#6 and #7. You see the upcoming trouble clearly enough, but the issue is not the redefinition of marriage, but its extirpation. Once you take down the net, tennis ceases to exist; it hasn’t simply been redefined. We know things for what they are because of the obstacles put in the way of their existence. That is, the way or manner of overcoming such obstacles determines the identity of the protagonist. In tennis, we overcome the baselines, the net, the inherent difficulty of hitting a ball with a racquet, all these. This is what skill means, what mastery is for.At the present moment in America, even if marriage is restricted to one man and one woman, there are precious few obstacles to overcome, and we should therefore not be surprised if marriage is increasingly unimportant and meaningless. After all, what is a prenuptual agreement except an agreement to let the net down? If there are no obstacles, there can be no identity. The passage at stake here is in fact arguing that no obstacles are now permitted, so it follows marriage will lose what identity it has left.
I can’t think when I have have seen a social landscape as bleak and forbidding as the present geography of marriage. It is like looking at the water in an alkali desert. LM