State kidnapers

Watching the disaster unfolding in Texas as the state kidnaps over 400 children and holds them hostage to some alleged phone call from an alleged 16-year-old wife of an alleged 50-year-old man--a polygamous wife, no less--is watching a whole culture come into sharp focus. Both of the polygamist group and the state showing how much power it can wield against the helpless.

As a 17-year-old in the mid-1960s I walked away from the Mormon church and I've never had cause to regret it. I can deny my early religious training but don't deny I come from a Mormon family that dates itself back to 1847 with the pioneers who arrived in Salt Lake Valley. I also live in a place where polygamists were once common. When I moved into my home in 1975 we had at least four polygamous families within a stone's throw. All but one family has left, and that family keeps itself pretty well hidden. Occasionally I see them in a local grocery store. They are the same style of polygamist you're seeing on the nightly news, women in old-fashioned long dresses with puffy hair, no makeup and tennis shoes. I don't know how many polygamists of other groups are still in the area. They don't dress that way, and blend in with the rest of the residents. One family, the infamous Kingston clan, allows their women to dress in tight clothes and show--gasp!--cleavage. They still marry off their young women to older guys, though.

This is where the FLDS, who had lived quietly for decades in the Utah-Arizona twin border towns of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona started to come unraveled. Their prophet, Warren Jeffs, who is now serving time after being a federal fugitive, started doing what cult leaders with ultimate power do: he used his power and ruled with the iron fist of the autocrat. At one point a few years ago a few dozen teenage boys were expelled from the towns, and drifted to Salt Lake City, where they became known as the Lost Boys. They aren't to be confused with the other Lost Boys, Africans who came here after warfare destroyed their countries and families, but some of the trauma was the same. The FLDS Lost Boys were expelled because they had become a threat to the older men who desired younger wives. Warren Jeffs assigned wives to men, and if there were boys around to distract the girls, then they couldn't be completely subservient. Off went the boys into the spiritual wilderness. Jeffs began to seal his own doom with acts like those.

Jeffs doesn't look so powerful after being arrested in Nevada:

A branch of his organization, the Fundamentalist Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, built a compound in Texas. They told the Texans it was a hunting compound. When the townsfolk, bible belt Christian evangelicals that they are, found out it was a Mormon fundamentalist cult group, I'm sure all hell (you'll excuse the expression) broke loose, leading up to the recent events. My wife and I really feel for the women and children in this mess. We feel bad for young women forced into marriage with older men, becoming mothers before they're 16, but we also feel the state overreacted, and is abusing its power. But then we are talking about Texas, the state that twice elected George W. Bush governor.

In my own past there are polygamists. On the top of this page is my great-great grandfather, Nathaniel Henry, who had three wives. His son, Harry, was not a polygamist, but was father to my grandmother, who idol-worshiped her own polygamous grandfather, even though she was a mainstream Mormon. After 1890 the Latter-day Saints disavowed polygamy. It was then that the splinter groups started to spring up, those who wouldn't give up on polygamy. All my young life I was told that yes, we had a polygamist heritage but no, those folks didn't exist any more. Ah, the lies we're told when we're young…

Actually, mainstream Mormons, as much as they try to distance themselves from groups like the FLDS, do believe in polygamy. They believe it will still exist in heaven. I don't think that modern mainstream Mormon wives are all that fond of the idea.

Right now we watch and wait to see how big a hole Texas is digging for itself with its actions against women and children. Texas, being a big place, can dig itself a really big hole