Introduction and Dr. Bennion's Background

Guest [00:00:00] Mormon Stories Podcast takes a ton of work and depends solely upon listener support to keep this program alive. Please consider a donation today@mormonstories.org.

Host [00:00:18] Doctor Janet Bennion, thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories.

Guest 2 [00:00:22] It's good to be here

Host [00:00:25] for our listeners. Janet is a full professor of anthropology and the former chair of the Social Sciences Department at Linden State College. She has her PhD in anthropology from the University of Utah. She also has a master's in social anthropology from Portland State University. And we would be remiss to not mention that she is an Aggie, former Aggie or a current Aggie, which do you consider yourself?

Guest 2 [00:00:52] Always an Aggie. Once an Aggie, always an aggie.

Host [00:00:56] Yes. Now, Dr. Bennion is also the author of several books and chapters and articles. The three that I'll mention are Evaluating the Effects of Polygamy on Women and Children, which was published in 2008 by Edwin Mellon Press Desert Patriarchy, Gender Dynamics in the Chihuahua Valley, published by the University of Arizona Press in March 2004 and and Women of Principle Female Networking in Contemporary Mormon Polygamy, which isn't polygyny. Sorry, which is an Oxford University Press publication from 1998. So you are a specialist in modern polygamy, is that right?

Guest 2 [00:01:38] Yes, that's right. The National Geographic said, I don't know where they got this information, but they said about four years ago in one of their articles that I was the national anthropological specialist on contemporary Mormon fundamentalist polygyny. And what that means is, for those of you who don't know what polygyny is, it's a more specific term for what we call polygamy. Polygamy is the umbrella term, and you have polygyny, which is one man marrying several women, or polyandry, which is one woman marrying several men. And so we can, in this broadcast, we can just call it polygamy. It's easier. But they called me the National Expert, given my three ethnographies on the topic.

Host [00:02:27] Now, do you happen to know Ann Wild?

Guest 2 [00:02:30] Oh, yeah.

Host [00:02:32] We had Ann Wilde on Mormon Stories a few years back.

Guest 2 [00:02:34] So she's a good friend of mine, and she helps to edit some of the minor, I have to say, minor edits. She is a wealth of knowledge and she's quite a wonderful historian.

Host [00:02:50] Yeah. Well, that's great. Well, let's just jump into it then. Why don't we start just by you telling us really quickly just a tiny bit about your background to the extent that it helps us understand how you got into studying this stuff Excellent.

Guest 2 [00:03:05] Well, I started my anthropology studies later in life, as you said. See, from my vita, I was very interested in newspaper journalism, and that's what I was doing at USU in Logan. And I even wrote for the Herald, but I wasn't very good at it. I hated those damn deadlines. And so I decided to look at a human interest angle that was more calm and that I'd have more time studying people. And I was very drawn for. To anthropology for that. And my background is actually in polygyny. Polygamy. My great, great grandfather, John Bennion from Wales, came over with his brother, and he married three wives. And I come from one of those wives, the third, Esther Ann Birch. So John Bennion was one source of polygamy. And then I also come from Angus M. Cannon, who is famous for marrying six wives. And then also Ezra Taft Benson. That is the first Ezra Taft, not the former prophet that was in our contemporary times, but he married seven wives. And so there's three different strains of polygynous activity in my own family line and in the canon context. Most my direct ancestor was practicing after the first manifesto of 1890. And so I was very interested in finding out, first of all, as a Mormon, and second, as a feminist, why do women want to be involved in such activities which come from a very rigid patriarchal framework. So that was my beginning. It was relating to my family, trying to figure out how did that relate to the Mormon experience. And I also was dying to come up with an exclusive topic for my thesis, and no one else had covered it. There's nothing in the contemporary ethnography that you can find that was addressing these questions.

Host [00:05:14] Okay, so we've. Thank you for that. And I'm also a descendant of Ezra Taft Benson, so we share that in common. Ezra T. Benson, I guess, as they call him in the family. So I guess there are so many things we could talk about with limited time. But what I'm most interested in is a couple things. And let's start with the fact that you have actually lived among polygamous groups in Utah and Montana. Is that right?

Fieldwork Living Among Polygamous Communities

Guest 2 [00:05:43] Yes, I've had some interesting experiences, too, especially those first years.

Host [00:05:48] So let's talk about that. How do you. I mean, the perception is that they're very private, they're very secretive, that they don't like outsiders. So how do you approach polygamists and convince them to trust you? And then let's just talk about your experience of what it was like living with them and your daughters.

Guest 2 [00:06:08] I'd love to start with this time frame, which was excellent because it allowed for two people that I know of, a reporter from K. Oh, gosh, what was that radio station at the U. K Uer. Yes, Kueer. It's been a while since I've been back to Utah.

Host [00:06:26] No problem.

Guest 2 [00:06:27] They were able. The reporter was able to come in, and I was at the same time in 1989, during what I call a period of polygamous glasnost. It was time when, you know, the Allred prophet was interested in expanding his availability and openness to people. And they were still skeptical. But through that kind of open invitation, I was able to take my first daughter. I was pregnant at the time with my second. My first daughter was, what was she, 18 months. So I was still nursing her. And I had the polygamist look about me. I mean, I was long hair and long sleeved dresses, and it was actually the Portland, Oregon style. So it was convenient for research. Being pregnant really helped too. But I remember arriving in the Montana area at one of the coldest times. It was a record cold with 60 degree below weather, with wind chill, icy winds. And I stopped in at a motel and I said, okay, can you direct me to Pinesdale? Nobody had ever studied it before. An anthropologist by the name of Meryl Singer had attempted a few interviews, but he'd never lived with them before. And so I was really the first one to breach that barrier. And I explained that Owen Allred had given me a personal invitation. You know, this should carry a lot of weight, but this is the Northern Allred order, and they didn't always like to do what they were told from the Salt Lake City headquarters. You know, they enjoying their rebellion and having that Pinesdale ranch as a haven for what they could really accomplish as apart from the larger headquarters. And so they didn't honor that letter. And one of the leaders, Mr. Jessup, I'll just call him Mr. Jessup. He's still alive. I don't want to give out too many names. Mr. Jessup was directing me to his wife to see if I merited coming into the group. And she was in the hospital at the time having a hysterectomy after 14 children. And I, oh, no, what if she doesn't like me? And he said, basically, she's in charge. And that was the first point at which I realized, boy, this is not what I was told. Now, this is not the story of brainwashed women entering into polygamy. This is a very different story. And so I went over to the hospital and Mr. Jessup introduced me to his wife. And she was sitting there on the bed with her hospital gown on. And you know, and she said, give me your head. And she took my head in her hands and she did a phrenology test and she prayed. And after 10 to 15 minutes with heart racing, she said, you've passed. Whoa, you're okay. You know, she said that you can be trusted. And so I was delighted because I'd spent a lot of money and energy trying to, you know, arrange for this visit. My first entrance into the field as an anthropologist. And I was in my young 20s at the time with a baby on my hip. You know, I don't know whether the baby helped or not. I think I'm assuming Liza, my youngest, my. Excuse me, my eldest daughter, Liza did help, but this was a spiritual test as well, she told me. And so I was happy to have passed. And then she invited me into the group. She settled me into her co wife's house, and her co wife was sharing a duplex with her sister. And there were at least five children of her own, and then three extra because one of the co wives died. And so the second wife was taking in the extra children. And that's what happens in polygamy. One of the wives dies. And there were five wives married to this Mr. Jessup. And when she died, her children were adopted by the other women. And they had already considered these women to be their aunties or their other mothers. And so it was a rather graceful transition for them. But here I was with my baby and sharing this very cramped two bedroom duplex with seven children and one woman. And so I learned first off that there's overcrowding and that the life is extremely humble. During that winter we ate canned peaches and we ate hand grounded wheat. For the bread coming from the wheat, everything was just like it was in Vernon, Utah. It was no different from the way I was raised. On a farm with fresh milk and just living off the land without any central heating. I grew up with a coalition furnace in my house. The polygamous had unique combination of geothermal heating with water underneath the floorboards. The late 80s before it was a big thing in Mother Jones or other catalogs about living off the grid. This was early. And they also had wood heat. I noticed the families also didn't adhere to any kind of medical insurance and other kinds of. I mean, in the state taxes, as far as taxes, they had the lowest in the whole state of Montana. So they were living on a very bare minimum budget. In fact, it was $77 was this wife's budget. And I recorded that in my ethnography. So basically what I was finding is that women were very deeply involved in the working of this community. They arranged the schools, the homeschooling, and they arranged the budgeting. They also were very deeply involved in in house industries such as honey production. They even were mushroomers. They gathered mushrooms and sold them to larger society, you know, outside the community. They were also involved in Hamilton business. One was an accountant, others were involved in the high school teaching industry. So the women were economically, politically and religiously involved. And they also were the ones to schedule their husband's visits. So they had a sexual rotation that met their schedule. So this was a shock. And so my first book was really looking at the ironic ascendance of women to albeit informal but realistic powers of their own. And that they weren't the so called brainwashed individuals that you would find in much of the other group, such as the Kingstons or the flds.

Scope and Structure of Polygyny in America

Host [00:13:16] Let me ask you real quick.

Guest 2 [00:13:19] So

Host [00:13:22] there are stereotypes that maybe, or even impressions or assumptions that maybe polygamists would be less intelligent people, maybe backwards. Did you find that to be true? Kind of like country bumpkins.

Guest 2 [00:13:38] What I found was a great diversity in polygamy. And it's important for the listeners to realize that not all polygamists are the same. And I've evaluated flds, Kingston, lebaron, we lived with the lebarons in Mexico and the Allreds. And mostly my time has been living with the Allreds. And what I found there is great diversity. You have individuals who prototypically would follow what the media have described as a kind of old fashioned, somewhat backward people, but that's a fraction of the overall Allred repertoire. You also find some amazingly educated men and women. And the women are in the Allred group, some of the most forceful, outspoken women I've ever met. And I've been called overbearing and controlling. But these women were intense. You know, some of them would demand to be remarried to another man with greater stewardships, financial and spiritual stewardships. And so all they, they would do is they'd go to the Prophet and they would say, listen, my husband is dishonoring his priesthoods. And that's all she had to say. And then she had the right, based on the Brigham Young prerogative, to marry up. It's called hypergamy. And in the Allred group, there were significant numbers of women who were requesting the right to marry up because they weren't satisfied with One man or another. Yet in other cases, and I record this in my ethnography, there were some women who were abused. You know, there was one woman who she and her co wife would rarely see any money coming in. Their husband had other wives in Salt Lake. And so in the Montana area, they were isolated and they weren't treated with the greatest respect because they weren't in one of the pure blood families. And so they were basically on their own. And because of this, you know, they had economic hardship and one outlet for them was to apply for welfare. So there is to some extent some welfare shenanigans going on, but the women really need it. You know, I don't fault them. I call it creative financing. Because if they're not being cared for and they. These women were not trained in the regular education and job training path, and so they were vulnerable in that case, I would call that abuse.

Host [00:16:09] Right. So I guess I've heard enough about people's expression of polygamy to know that some feminists today view polygamy as potentially empowering to women. And it sounds like that's a theme that you derive from your studies as well, is that right? It can be empowering, sure, it can

Women's Experiences: Empowerment and Abuse

Guest 2 [00:16:32] be empowering for some women, but it can also be abusing, abusive. And my latest work really looks more thoroughly at the abuse side of the scenario.

Host [00:16:44] Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah, let's talk about that. I mean, would you say then it's a wash that it's compared to monogamy, that it's basically a wash in terms of its can be abusive, can be empowering to women.

Guest 2 [00:16:56] When I started out my first 10 years, I would say that it's not possible polygamy per se, that causes abusive conditions. But I've changed my tune a little bit. After analyzing some of the groups, I would say that the FLDS group is one that is potentially conducive to abuses. The Allred group has its share of abuse, but there are so many additional experiences that empower women that I would say that that one is awash. In other words, it's not polygamy per se in that particular group that gives rise to abuses. But when you look at the Kingstons and the FLDS groups and their many orders, there are countless reports by women and men of being ostracized, of being, you know, mostly the men are kicked out because there's a surplus of men and that provides undue competition with the elders for wives. So the young men are ostracized, but the women are often forced into these marriages that are not in their greatest benefit. Not all women are forced. In the FLDS group, some women are very grateful for the opportunity to marry what they would consider a man of great priesthoods. And their mothers trained them in how to marry young. And they have all kinds of homemaking skills and childcare skills. So many of these women are very capable at a young age entering into marriage and motherhood. However, is it their choice? And in the Allred group, there's a. Owen Allred established this idea that you have to be 18 and it has to be your choice to marry. So within some exceptions, you can find that the Allreds are incorporating a more progressive model than the FLDS or the Kingstons.

Host [00:18:46] Where are the Allreds and what's just a little bit about their history?

Guest 2 [00:18:50] Well, the Allreds were really part of a larger group, you know, that was started with Lawrence E. Willie and the Council of Friends, and this group then split up in a variety of directions

Host [00:19:04] back in the 30s and 40s. Is that right?

Guest 2 [00:19:06] Yes, exactly. And one direction was that the FLDS wanted to stay in Short Creek and to establish their own leaders. When the Allred group switched gears and started going to the Salt Lake region, they also wanted to establish a haven for individuals who might be prosecuted for practicing polygamy. And so they established the Montana Pinesdale Ranch for individuals who wanted to still maintain their polygynous families. But we be outside the Utah strict rules. Remember, after the Short Creek raid of 53, I believe it was, a lot of polygamists were running for the hills. And so that really established a lot of different orders for the Allred group. Their headquarters in the Bluffdale Draper region has always been maintained, but they have several different orders. One of them in Pinesdale, Montana, another out by Santaquin. They even have an order in Canada and in Mexico. But basically, they try to. All polygamists actually from the Mormon tradition try to maintain their communities and orders along the spine of the Rocky Mountain ridges, because that's where Zion is. And so they buy into that model of Zion being there where Brigham Young said it was going to be in Utah, Canada, all the way down to Mexico.

Host [00:20:39] So do the Allreds integrate into. Do they sort of maintain their family secrecy and integrate into traditional LDS wards, or do they have their own LDS services in their own chapels?

Guest 2 [00:20:51] Some of them are going to be like what you see on Big Love and maintain their secrecy where they parade themselves as regular orthodox Mormons, but most of them are living outside in their own communities. In Bluffdale and Santa Quinn in Pinesdale so that they can live fully the principle of parole marriage without being continually scrutinized by the mainstream. That isn't to say that they are like the flds, completely isolated. What they do is they dress much like you would see in mainstream society. They don't adopt the 19th century and Gibson wave that you'd see in the FLDS. And so they, they integrate in that way so that many of the women and the men can get jobs in, in mainstream society. But then they go home to their, their haven, the community of worship where everyone is practicing as a fundamentalist Mormon.

Host [00:21:57] Do they have chapels?

Guest 2 [00:21:59] Yes, they have chapels. And they are identical in nature to the Mormon chapels for the very reason that the Allred family owned construction builds most of the Intermountain West Mormon churches as well.

Host [00:22:16] The LDS Church allows the fundamentalists to build their chapel sometimes.

Guest 2 [00:22:21] Yeah, it's a company and they're very good construction workers. They've been constructing chapels for decades and they're extremely good at it.

Host [00:22:30] What do they put on their signs outside their chapels?

Guest 2 [00:22:34] It is for the Allred group. They call themselves the Apostolic United Brethren, the aub and they see themselves as a continuation of the true Joseph Smith Brigham Young method of life, which includes the United Order, which is communal economic system with the Bishop's storehouse, just like they had it in the early days of the Salt Lake City settlement. And they also have the plural marriage. And they adopt, like many, Brigham Young's concept of the Adam God theory. And not a lot of orthodox Mormons know about that. And I don't know if we have time to talk about it, but it's interesting.

Host [00:23:19] We talk about that with Ann Wild in our interview with her.

Guest 2 [00:23:22] You've got that information.

Host [00:23:24] Do the Allreds encourage their women to get an education?

Guest 2 [00:23:30] Yeah, they hope that they do. They're going to be heavily reliant on that education to help their families. In most polygamous families, you'll find that the women are contributing a large portion of, of the income. And they do it through a number of different ways. Some women are going to go out and get a formal education and get a job in the town. The others may forego the college education and homemaking arts, which are extremely important in this community. There's one example of a family that I lived with. If you don't mind indulging me, I'd like to tell you about this family. They're the ones that were using the geothermal heating and they lived on the bench of The Bitterroot Mountains in one of the coldest regions. But they lived virtually off the grid. One of the four wives that I lived with was an accountant. And so her money came in for emergency needs and, you know, to. To buy gas and, you know, so for those things that they required from the outside world. Another woman was. She had a daughter, BYU degree in child development. You'd be surprised how many men and women from the Y are in this group. And her task was not only to teach Montessori, but she was also the specialist in psychological and personality issues in the larger family. The third wife was a specialist in cooking and homemaking skills. She was a canner. She food processed. She taught me some things that even my mother didn't teach me. You know, in the Mormon condition, you learn everything. But these polygamists were really great at it. And then finally, the fourth wife was the nurse. She had a couple of classes in nursing. She wasn't an official rn, but those classes helped her then to be the medical officer for her family. And the husband was a scholar, he called himself, and he worked part time at an auto parts store, but only part time. I rarely saw him in town. I think that mostly he was focused on his writings, which didn't bring any income.

Host [00:25:46] And the kids are just integrated into the public schools or are they homeschooled?

Guest 2 [00:25:50] They're homeschooled using Montessori until the age of high school. And then they have the option of either homeschooling in high school in. In Pinesdale, or they go to Corvallis and join in. And the Corvallis community is very much aware of polygamy. When they see three or four students come in in ninth grade and they all have blonde hair and blue eyes and they're all ninth graders, they realize, well, this must be a family from Pinesdale.

Host [00:26:21] And do these kids ever become, you know, varsity folks, football captains or cheerleaders or student body presidents?

Guest 2 [00:26:28] There have been a couple of occasions that I've heard about where they were very much involved in scholastic and athletics. I'm just trying to remember one story I heard recently from an informant. He was gloating over his granddaughter. Was it his great granddaughter? Gee, time has flown. I think it was his great granddaughter who was ninth grade, varsity basketball, you know, something in the state. I don't know if you call it all star, but she really did well at the state competitions. So, yes, they're involved in those kinds of activities.

Host [00:27:03] And do these kids usually have the option of coming back and living the principal or Do a lot of them decide to just, you know, leave that behind when they become adults?

Guest 2 [00:27:18] Well, this is where the Allred group is different from the groups. I know that there's always been pressure among all the fundamentalist groups for men to achieve their highest glories in kingdom building. They really need a quorum of wives. Now, the first pre quorum number is three, but to have a true quorum, it has to be seven, and then the ultimate 12. But, you know, although that's a pressure for men to achieve the highest level of priesthoods, not everyone can be a polygamist. And I think D. Jessup was interviewed as saying that we have more monogamists than polygamists here in Pinesdale. And as far as men go, you know, the pressure is to actually find work. I think it's an abusive condition for some polygamous young men because they have to share all of these reserved, precious stewardship with all of the fathers and the grandfathers and their cousins and their brothers. And those include getting preferred wives. There's strict competition over that. And so many young men become alienated by that, and they choose to leave or they're asked to leave or ostracized. And this is very much evident in the FLDS group. But it occurs in all groups. You have to have a portion of the young men leave the system for polygamy to thrive. What happens to the young women is that in the Allred group especially, they get a little bit of choice. They can choose to marry their high school sweetheart, who may be 18 or 19, inexperienced, without perhaps a stewardship. Or they can marry some young man in his 20s or 30s that already has a wife or two, but also has started an economic stewardship. Or they can choose to marry a very established mature man with three or four wives who's in his 40s or 50s, who always. Or, excuse me, who has already established himself as being a good husband. So that's the freedom of choice that a young woman has in the Allred group. In other groups, there's relatively little choice. The prophet tells you who you're supposed to marry. And typically the pattern is that young women aged 16 to 19 are covenanted to the established members of the council, the brethren, and that's God's message to the prophet. And she has to obey that commandment.

Host [00:29:58] So in some sense is the united order. The economic system used to entice women to be desirous to enter into a polygamous relationship because the men who are given better financial status are going to be able to take care of them better. Is there a little bit of that going on then?

Guest 2 [00:30:19] I would say that one of the reasons why in the Allred group, at least, there are successful female converts is that in the mainstream Mormon church, you have kind of a stigma associated with being divorced, widowed, abandoned especially. I've experienced this myself as a single mother in Zion, where my children were considered some other man's baggage. And so some of the women who are disgruntled in the mainstream will go to fundamentalism because they know they have an automatic socioeconomic kingdom that they can graft onto, regardless if that man has other wives. And in that Allred group, they can choose the man they want to marry. And so the conversion was extraordinary. Female conversion rates were relatively high. You also get conversion pairs where a cop will come in, possibly after they've read the mysteries and gone to a few cottage meetings with the Allreds. They choose then to become a part of it and then take on another woman who was already born in the group. She's been accustomed to the work. She knows what's in store for her. And it's much better for that couple if they have that kind of woman marry into their group because she's accustomed to what works in polygamy. She's a second or third generation native. And still, to try to answer your question, it's kind of tricky because obviously there are some choices for women, but there are some downsides, too. Let me just mention one of them. If you were born into one of the pure blood families, which is a Jessup or an Allred or one of the very important families, like a Jensen, Jensen's now the prophet. Well, then what you have to do is you have to recognize that this is a patrilineage, that your children will be grafted on to your. Your husband's father's kingdom. And that means that you have very little rights to those children if you decide to leave the group. And in some rare cases within the Allred group, I have heard women tell stories of how they have attempted to leave the group with their children, but that their children were killed, kidnapped from them. And since these children are not really on the records of the county because they're considered to be part of an illegal union and they don't have any vaccine records or school records until a certain age, that some of these children are not accounted for, there's no way

Host [00:33:06] to prove that it's your child.

Guest 2 [00:33:08] Right? And so sometimes these women really lose out if, again, if. If they have offended one of the more Important families, by desiring to leave, they must do so often without their children.

Host [00:33:21] Did you get a sense that the Allred leadership were generally good men trying to do what was right?

Guest 2 [00:33:28] I think I got the impression of that from Owen Allred. He was a regular grandfather figure, and he was very open, and I'm grateful to him to have allowed me, the first anthropologist in Texas, live with his people. But I also believe that he glossed over some very serious problems that were going on in the Allred group that now have been made public. One of them was that there had been a history of sex abuse, especially perpetrated by one man named John Ray. And also there were others that were considered to be, you know, breaching the law, and they should have had more strict interventions earlier. Eventually, there were excommunications made, such as Chevrol Palacios. But some of these men, including another man I can't mention that was a member of the council. I don't want to offend his family at this point, but he was a council member who, over the pulpit, had preached the law of Lot. And again, in the Allred group, this was a very rare incident, but this was one of the things that was often glossed over. Let me just tell you the story, and then I'll get to the second point. This one councilman said that Lot left Sodom and Gomorrah in a rush, and his wife was turned to salt. You may remember the story. Yes, he and his daughters fled. I can't remember whether there were sons or not, but according to this councilman's interpretations, Lot was forced to have intercourse with his daughters to prolong the line back to Abraham, and that was his religious duty. Now, he really didn't account for the true scripture, which says that the daughters actually seduced Lot with a task of wine or. I'm not really sure the whole story. The point is, this councilman was sanctioning abuse against his own daughters by using the law of Lot as a scripture mandate and absolutely wrong. And most of the people knew about it, but Owen was hesitant to say anything because this man was his friend. There were other cases of abuse, but in the Allred group, I would say that there were no more abuse cases in that group than you'd find in monogamy. The other point that was glossed over was there were some serious accusations of money laundering in the group that occurred. There was a woman who provided money in terms of a loan to the group. They never paid her back. And so there were some financial problems with the group. And so these were glossed over through Owen's kind of happy go lucky, you can trust me attitude. And I think that he was actually quite naive, but he was a powerful leader for his people. He tried to take on his brother's mantle and do the best he could. As far as the direction of the Allred group, I can't tell you. I know that the leadership is in question because of the illness on the part of Lemoyne Jensen, the current prophet. So we'll just see where things go from there.

Child Welfare and Safety Concerns in Polygynous Groups

Host [00:36:38] And just to make sure I heard you. You said you don't feel like pedophilia is any greater or lesser than in monogamous sort of societies. It's just sort of comparable. Is that your impression?

Guest 2 [00:36:50] Right. Not when you compare it with the particular Allred group that I'm. And that is because if you look at the factors that are contributing to sex abuse, and I've done several studies about that, you can find that there are some of those conditions in the all Red group, but there are also those conditions in monogamy. Just kind of read over some of these factors so that we can then make a comparison between the groups, which is what I've done in my Mellon book. And one of the big factors is isolation. When you are experiencing a stark, insular community, like, well, the Pinesdale group could be insular, but they also interact with the mainstream in Hamilton. So that isn't completely isolated. But where you find an isolated group is the Lebaran group down in Chihuahua. You also find it in the FLDS colonies. They're very isolated and insular. They're rurally removed. And the women and the children are circumscribed, which means that they have geographic barriers to getting help when they need it. In those conditions, you are at risk for not only child sexual abuse, but wife battery and basically finding lowered status for women. Another situation that is abusive is the remote removal, removal of a female network. Where women have access to a huge women's network, they're going to find empowerment. They find that they can work economically and spiritually together and emotionally, and that gives them power. But if they're isolated in remote family homesteads away from this female network, then there could be abuse. That's considered to be another risk factor. You also find another one that's been studied in the literature and that is father absence. If the father is absent from the raising of the child, certain types of men who have also been abused as children might find those children of theirs to be suddenly remarkably Attractive, they have bloomed as a rose. And again, if they're not in the raising process from, from infancy to maturity, there's a tendency for them to be sexually attracted. And this was studied by Edward Westermark. It's a famous theory that goes along

Host [00:39:21] with this, not just in polygamous societies, but just in parenting in general.

Guest 2 [00:39:26] Right, but why is this related to polygamy? Because men often have various homes all over the state and between states. I know several men who have to go to Oregon during the winter for their construction work. And there are in addition to that, other men who have wives in Oregon, maybe Montana, Salt Lake. And so how often do they get to spend time with their children? So they might be at risk for this issue.

Host [00:39:54] Ah, makes sense.

Guest 2 [00:39:55] Now there's also overcrowding and economic deprivation. So these are just some of the things that you might see in polygamy, but you can also see them in monogamy, especially the overcrowding and the economic recession issues. So

Host [00:40:14] what did you, what did you get a sense for in terms of people's convictions and their feelings about living polygamous lives? And let me tell you what I mean by that. They're sort of like, this is a drag, this is really hard. But this is what we've been commanded to do, so we have to do it, or there's, hey, this is awesome. This is God's law. This is really working for us and we're really digging it. You know, there's sort of those two extremes. Did you ever get a sense, and I'm sure there's a spectrum of how people felt about it, but at its best, did you, did you get a sense that people really believe passionately what they're doing and made it work and it functioned well for them and they were just really enjoying living the principle,

Guest 2 [00:41:00] I would say that there's an entire continuum and why wouldn't there be? It would be the same if you were to ask me about the orthodox Mormon members. Isn't there also a continuum? I found, although some interesting extremes. I did find men and women who were extremely excited about the so called mysteries of the gospel. They would be the ones to tell me the common utterances that you hear in fundamentalism. Such as fundamentalism is the meat, the church is the milk. We have gone to a higher level of learning now in God's plan and that in the church, we experienced a plateau and now we're receiving the higher mysteries and that will direct us on our path towards the celestial kingdom in a way that the Church was never able to help us do. And so those are often more recent converts. The zeal and the zest for, you know, this new, relatively exotic interpretation of the gospel. And really it's just looking at the journal of discourses and going back in time and underscoring some of the concepts of Joe Smith and Brigham Young. And so it's a revitalization movement. Those individuals are the most enthusiastic about it. Those that are born in have listened to it day in, day out. You know, how many testimonies have they been to, how many, how many church sacrament meetings have they listened to? So they're, they're not as enthusiastic and they're obviously more skeptical of me because they, they see me as an outsider. And so I didn't hear the enthusiasm, but definitely the satisfaction and the faith was there for individuals that were unsatisfied, both men and women. I think that I would have to look to the individuals who've been kind of swindled in fundamentalist situations. You find that it doesn't work well for everyone to honor the united Order. The united Order means that you're going to give up everything to the brethren, control of your assets. That's what you have to do. And you probably know that coming in. But then you find maybe you disagree with some of the brethren or maybe you find that there's a lot of stratification in the pathway to heaven and some of the brethren have more power than you do and that's not what you bargained for. But they still get to keep your gold and your cash investments and too bad it's over. And so you can find that some people feel disgruntled because they feel that they, they wanted more power than they were able to achieve. They wanted more callings. And if you're a man and you're going into fundamentalism, let me tell you this, it is a hierarchy. There is fierce competition for kingdom building. And you know, you may come in as a convert and you're giving up all of your proceeds. But you've got to realize that you may not get the calling you seek after. Mostly that's going to go to the pure blood families and those in the hierarchy and for women. What I notice as far as disgruntled systems is that, you know, it may be that they experience more abuse in a particular family and they can't get out because that abuser is a high ranking brethren, or it may be that they're finding a lot of financial trouble because they live in a family that has been abandoned by the husband. Or they find in some of the rare occasions that there's just too much co wife disputing. And that's rare. Most co wives work out their trouble and they begin to work together for survival and they foster very close friendships. But occasionally you get the real cat fights that you might see in some disgruntled families.

Host [00:45:02] Hmm. Do you get a sense for how many Allreds are there right now?

Guest 2 [00:45:08] Well, the Allreds are very difficult to count because of all the children that are being born. You know, just when I was up in that Montana group In the late 80s, I think there were approximately 50 men. 150 approximately, why? So about three on average, and then 700 children. But boy, you know, I've lost track. According to my last estimate, anywhere from eight to 9,000 members. But that's a low figure.

Host [00:45:38] But aren't they a smaller group than the FLDS group?

Guest 2 [00:45:42] The FLDS group has been estimated anywhere. And remember, not all children are counted right. Anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000. So they have the. The largest numbers, slightly larger than the Allred group.

Host [00:45:57] Would you say that the Allred group, on average is the most progressive and the one that would be most acceptable to modern day mores and expectations in terms of their enlightenment or their civility or, you know, modernity?

Guest 2 [00:46:12] Yeah, I think it's funny to call them progressive because they are, they're fundamentalists and they are patriarchal. But, you know, maybe calling them the progressive polygamist, which is an oxymoron or an oxymoron, let's call it. Yeah, they're the most progressive. They're the most like what you would see on Big Love, where, you know, he is wearing mainstream clothing, his wives are in mainstream homes, and they're blending in, in the job market. And you'd see more independence like that coming from an all red background than you would see from any other group. And let me just express this more vehemently. The independence that you find often come from the alred experience because they're told that they have to be responsible for their own family kingdom. And as men, they don't want to have to share the power with, say, the Council of Brethren. In the Allred group. They want to have their own kingdom. So after a few years, many of them decide to become independent. And that means that they are branching off from the community, operating as an isolated family kingdom on their own, commonly in the mainstream. And I say isolated, I mean from their religious community in Bluffdale or San Quentin or, you know, wherever it may Be So more independents come from the Allred group.

Host [00:47:41] Right. And have you ever heard of a, of a modern polygamous family where the, the husband and wives would all be attractive by modern standards. The kids would be playing Xboxes or, or you know, Nintendo Wiis. The kids would be popular, you know, sort of like almost a magazine esque, modern, attractive yuppie kind of experience where maybe even, you know, they're not sure if Brigham Young really was what he says he was. But they just love the lifestyle and they're kind of almost glamorous. Is that even, something like that even possible or envisioned? Potentially envisioned? I know, it's a strange question.

Guest 2 [00:48:22] Well, you find a couple of all Red orders that really do integrate into the commercialized mainstream world. And I would say some in Centennial park down on the border as well, they've really embraced the materialist realm. And you'll find that they have these big houses. One community out by Cedar Fort. Do you remember, have you ever traveled? I come from Vernon and so what you do is, gosh, don't you go through. It's been years since I've done this. But you go across the desert and from Utah Valley west and you cross through a valley called, we used to call it Cedar Ford. Well now it's a big pop up community and within that community there's a very large polygamous all red order. And you'll find mansions or McMansions, you'll find, you know, eight, nine, 10 bedroom homes. And the family appears to be doing very well. And they have all the accoutrements of modernity, technology and TVs and you know, very nice cars. And they're polygamous and they're living their polygamous lifestyle. And it appears like, oh wow, this is going to be an easy thing, you know, and maybe men looking at that might be envious thinking I'm going to have a relatively easy time to build my family kingdom. You know, they're doing it, I can do it. But I would say overall These type of McMansions and successful, wealthy, commercialized polygamous families are rare because, you know, where are they getting the money? If you've got six, six to seven wives and umpteen children, you know, how are you going to afford all that? I know that there's been some claim that some of the Centennial park families are coming from the council. So that money is directed from all kinds of things, including military contracts with the US government. And so, you know, maybe some of the pure blood or council families are able to afford homes like that, but not everybody can. Most people, I would say in polygamy, live at least at middle to below that income.

Polygamy's Relationship with Mainstream Mormonism

Host [00:50:36] Would you say that there are BYU students today from polygamous families?

Guest 2 [00:50:42] I would say.

Host [00:50:43] How would they hide that?

Guest 2 [00:50:47] I think that.

Host [00:50:48] How would they get their ecclesiastical endorsement?

Guest 2 [00:50:51] I think it's more likely that what you're going to find is a BYU student discovers the so called mysteries, you know, and is acquainted with a cottage meeting that teaches him about fundamentalism while he's going to byu, and then he converts during maybe the last year or two. That's more likely. And so he's already got his endorsements as a freshman, you know, and then over time, if you are a Mormon and you are interested in Mormon doctrine, eventually you're going to be reading the Journal of Discourses. Eventually you're going to be reading the works of some of the early Council of Friends, which means that that might be the turning point for you. As far as polygamists entering into their freshman year, I would say that that's a little bit difficult unless that family, like the Big Love family, is kind of living undercover. They're just assumed to be a Mormon family and the first wife is the legitimate wife, and the subsequent wives, well, of course they're using their maiden names and so they're unknown. In other words, that BYU entering as a freshman would have to be coming from the first wife. So they have their father's name. That would be much easier than the other.

Host [00:52:12] Okay, so here's a question that might be viewed as, I don't know, a little bit controversial. But I assure you my interests are purely academic. Are there ever any discussion of the wives having intimate relations or is that just taboo and never even discussed?

Guest 2 [00:52:32] Oh, this is something that isn't. Or is it permitted researched this? It's not permitted formally. It's, you know, just like in the Mormon Church, homosexuality is an absolute taboo. But informally it occurs in certain conditions and it may be called the Sisterhood, it may have other names, but it is known that certain women who basically spend a lot of time with each other and are virtually abandoned by their husbands must rely heavily on each other. Economically, socially, emotionally, spiritually. It makes sense to them for them also to be intimate on other levels. I recorded three interviews about this and I'm engaging in a larger study to see if this is common in other religious polygynous environments. And so far I'm finding that it's rare. But it does occur because you've got a lot of women in one Community and few men. And if you are a vibrant female with feelings and interests and desires, and you're supposed to share your husband with four or five other wives, doesn't it make sense for you to also look to other women for those desires? If that is your internal gender role identity, you know, it's not going to happen for everyone. There are some women who find that it matches their gender role identity, it matches their interests. And through deprivation, they're kind of cornered into a situation where they may not have ever considered it before, but it becomes natural to them. So I would say a combination of things are happening. In polygyny, you have kind of an opposing female unity, which fosters female friendships to begin with. Second, you have deprivation or abandonment or abuse by a husband, which fosters even more intense friendships and interdependence, emotional and sexual interdependence on the part of two women or three. You know, it depends on the scenario. And so these two women may develop an economic friendship that develops into an emotional and a sexual bond. I talked to, again, three women in one group that experienced this firsthand, but

Host [00:54:56] there's never been some breakout of this where they had to do a bunch of excommunications or some type of big scandal that was. It's probably something that's just kept between the women and never really discovered broader.

Guest 2 [00:55:07] Isn't that how lesbian behavior is worldwide? How much do we talk about in the history books of Roman lesbian intercourse, which did occur, was written about by women, but you never hear about it. Mostly you hear about the Roman leaders and their boys. And so I think that it's much easier in a patriarchal setting to cloak lesbianism as just the sisterhood or female friends, and then it gets ignored. And that's to the advantage of the women.

Host [00:55:37] Right. Have you ever heard of instances where a husband would be with more than one wife sort of sexually at the same time? Or is that also forbidden or.

Guest 2 [00:55:48] I think that's just kind of an urban legend. I think that that might have been, you know, something that one or two remote cases would illustrate. I don't even. It doesn't even merit discussion because it's so rare. Never heard of it. Personally, I've never seen it. I've never heard anyone talking about it.

Host [00:56:06] Okay, and what about a husband who just doesn't have a libido? A like I could imagine. You know, you hear that there are different men with different levels of sex drives. Some might assume polygamy is all about sex, but that's clearly. It's clearly more than that. What about a man who just isn't have much of a sex drive and he's got five wives or six wives?

Guest 2 [00:56:26] Talking about pre Viagra days.

Host [00:56:28] Sure.

Guest 2 [00:56:29] And then we'll talk about post Viagra.

Host [00:56:31] Okay.

Guest 2 [00:56:33] In many cases, if you were young woman and married to an older man, you could be insured of being left alone. And that might be an advantage to you because you're trained in the system not to be interested in sex. And so in that way, you know, there might be some very interesting studies to be done on personal and individual erotica within a rigid fundamentalist environment. That's another study. But what that means is that you just will not be having much sex. It may be that you never really experience a consummation of your marriage if he's 70 or above. Although there are many elders, including Joe Jessup, who keeps on trucking, he's talked to people about it and he's still very active. So that's pre Viagra days. When Viagra came out, there was an amazing transformation in polygamous society. And many of my informants would email me or call me and say, this is a miracle. And one informant said, I have five wives and two of them aren't interested in sex anymore, but the other three are very vibrant and I'm just not as active. And so Viagra has helped me to satisfy my younger wives.

Host [00:57:55] And do you think that, can we assume that it's just very traditional sexual activity, or do you think that there's a variety or exploration that you would see in a heterosexual couple? Or is there sort of social taboo against, you know, exploration in terms of style and means and ways of that type of intercourse?

Guest 2 [00:58:19] I think for the Allred group and many independents that I've talked about, for those groups, it's not that much different from the mainstream Mormon church. And remember, the mainstream Mormon church has had its interesting times. I remember being newly married the first time and going to a conference and hearing the general authorities tell me that oral sex was taboo. This was in the mainstream church. So what I'm telling you is that for the independence and the Allred group, you're not going to hear much. I mean, there's still the discussion of, you know, since, you know, we don't drink alcohol, you can't use that as a way to warm up to the situation. And there was actually a discussion in the Allred Priesthood Council about that that I was privy to. I went to that. And so they were asking the same things that I remember people asking about. In the mainstream church. However, I think that the Kingstons and the flds, based on reports of women and men who have left the group and can freely talk about it, basically you're looking at a one sided enjoyment, you know, possible missionary style, possible more patriarchal sexual experience. Because sexuality isn't important, it's appropriation. And if you dwell on it too much, it could be considered to be distracting you from your polishing of the soul. And so I would say that it's a little bit more archaic and old fashioned.

Host [00:59:49] Traditional, sure. What about male homosexuality among the all reds? Does it ever come up? Is it just they get excommunicated and they're gone, ostracized? Is it more finessed than that?

Guest 2 [01:00:04] I've never heard of any single case and it would be an incredible embarrassment to the people to talk about it. That's why perhaps they've shielded me from it. But certainly homosexuality naturally will occur in any community. And so how do they deal with it? And one councilman told me this, he said that if there was any signal of homosexuality among the young men, they would be absolutely ostracized, they would be disfellowshipped, they would be given an outside stewardship and eventually excommunicated. And so that kind of thing is nipped in the bud. As far as the older male adult population itself, I've heard of situations where there was activities against young boys, but that those were not considered to be homosexual, they were considered to be child molestation that was related to the perpetrator having experienced abuse himself. And so those were in a different category. So again, I haven't heard anything about continued presence of homosexuality in the group. I think that they really ostracize and alienate those young men. And I'm sure that those young men need a lot of counseling.

Host [01:01:22] Right. What about crisis of faith? The LDS Church right now is going through this, what I would say, a pretty significant phenomenon where people get on Google and they read about church history and they read about what Brigham or Joseph did, or they read about treatment of this or that or the origins, the Book of Mormon, DNA historicity of the Book of Mormon. Lots of different things that can sort of take someone's testimony away. Do members of any of these groups ever experience crises of faith where they realized this was just all a big, you know, a big hoax? And wow, I'm caught in this, this crazy social sort of system that's based on, you know, lies of these people back in the 1800s. And you know, is there any of that going on, or even a derivative of that, which is people who really don't take the teachings literally or seriously. But this is just my people, my culture, and I'm not a real believer, but. But I still like the lifestyle, and so I'm going to stay in it. Either of those.

Faith Crises and Fundamentalist Views on the LDS Church

Guest 2 [01:02:25] I think that, like, in the mainstream, there are people with crisis of faith and they may stay in, in spite of some of the things that they discover, because they, you know, they would say that, well, generally these men, these leaders were sound and they were human, and so they made mistakes. But I love the church, and so I'm staying in. I love it for its social and its, you know, blueprint for life, whatever. So I think that there are those who. Who do recognize some of the errors. I remember going to a cottage meeting, and I say cottage meeting. They're just groups of people getting together, talking about religion among the Allreds. And one fellow brought up this thing about Hugh Nibley, that Hugh Nibley was an apologist who basically was trying to convince everybody that Joseph Smith adoption of the Egyptian papyru was legitimate. We talked about it and we, you know, this was 20 years ago, and we all agreed that it was, you know, that we were skeptical about it, but that. That our faith was still intact and that we realized that Smith was under political pressure for that revelation. And so there you go. Wasn't the first time that happened. You know, look at 1890, political pressure for a revelation to abolish polygamy. And so in that context, we were able to discuss it as mainstream Mormons would. And so to answer your question, I don't see that much of a difference. I think that the fundamentalists would more keenly be interested in adopting the old letters and the old historical documents, because that's what they stand for. They are bringing up the original Mormon doctrine, and so they would be more likely to embrace that more than they would be skeptical of it.

Host [01:04:12] Gotcha. By the time we air this interview, we will have released an interview that talked pretty extensively about the 1880s, 90s and the early 1900s, as it related to how the church initially issued the manifesto, but then kept encouraging and performing polygamous marriages well into the early 1900s. And we will have talked a little bit about the, you know, the bodyguard to. Was it John Taylor and his son and the others that kind of started this underground polygamy? Let me just ask you, in your studies, are you able to get a sense for whether the early beginnings of this fundamentalist Mormon polygamy had some type of sanction from the church, or whether they really just were rogue dissidents who weren't willing to follow, you know, Wilford Woodruff and whoever else made these big changes. Is there legitimacy to their claims of being established by traditional LDS Church leadership, or are they just rogues?

Guest 2 [01:05:25] I have no, absolutely no way of knowing that. The revelation was said to occur in a closed room with John Taylor and a few close friends. And how do we know? I have absolutely no idea. I know that my own ancestor, George Cannon, practiced polygamy after the manifesto and gave it up somewhere in the 1910s because he believed it was a principle. And he thought that the political move by. Who was it? Woodrow? I'm losing my profits.

Host [01:06:05] Woodrow Wilson Woofer. Woodruff.

Guest 2 [01:06:07] Woodruff, Yes. I get the wolfer.

Host [01:06:09] Woodruff. Yeah.

Guest 2 [01:06:12] So Woodruff was using it as a political compromise, and that's what he believed. But I have no way of knowing whether it was officially sanctioned by John Taylor, and I don't think anyone can ever prove whether it was or not. As far as polygamy is concerned, you know, if you are a student of Mormon doctrine, you have to recognize that polygamy was a part of Mormonism from the days of Joe Smith. Whether Joe Smith was sanctioned by God to institutionalize polygamy at that point or not is the true question.

Host [01:06:47] Right, right.

Guest 2 [01:06:49] That's the true question for me.

Host [01:06:51] What's that?

Guest 2 [01:06:52] That's a true question for me anyway.

Host [01:06:56] Whether he received that original revelation and whether he was sanctioned by God to

Guest 2 [01:06:59] do it or not. That's what you have to ask yourself.

Host [01:07:02] Right, right. And is there a sense among fundamentalists that the traditional LDS Church is kind of a sellout and is kind of really betraying their heritage and their history?

Guest 2 [01:07:17] Sure. It's not how I feel. It's how polygamists feel that they. The church has a purpose to kind of foster a beginning inquiry in the child. But to really get to the next layer of level of exaltation, you have to be a fundamentalist. And many of them do feel that the church is sold out by shortening the garments, allowing blacks into the priesthood, etc. And, you know, many of the most beautiful, progressive things that the orthodox church has done, certainly giving the black the priesthood has been an amazing step forward. These are the very things that the fundamentalists are angry about.

Host [01:07:56] Do you ever have feelings about the traditional LDS Church distancing itself so far from polygamists to even go as far as to say that there's no such thing as a Mormon polygamist? Or a Mormon fundamentalist or something to that degree. I remember Ann Wilde having some pretty strong feelings about that whole deal. Have you had any reflections. I don't mean to put you on the spot, but have you had any reflections in that regard for the extent to which the LDS Church has distanced itself from polygamy?

Guest 2 [01:08:28] When Gordon B. Hinckley said those words on the Larry King Show, I was shocked. I was surprised because many of us come from polygamous families. And how can you say that it has absolutely no connection to the Mormon experience. And when you say, be aware that when you say traditional Mormon church, what is traditional? You know, I would say orthodox are mainstream rather than traditional because the fundamentalists believe that they are the traditional early election. But yeah, I think that, you know, many scholars and fundamentalists, too, feel that that statement was a weakening of the heritage that really has a polygamous past. You know, many Mormons do share that. In some cases. Mormons, some Mormons believe that in the life after there's going to be polygamy.

Host [01:09:24] Well, it's still in the Doctrine and Covenants today, right? Section 32.

Guest 2 [01:09:27] Exactly.

Host [01:09:28] Okay, you've been wonderful. Let me just ask you one last question. Let's say that, you know, let's say Obama in his second term is trying to really be inclusive and he commissions a study on polygamy and he sends some federal commission to you to say, should we legalize polygamy? You know what? Would you. Would you have any advice or recommendations? Do you think it's something that should be legitimized as a legitimate lifestyle choice on par with trust, traditional marriage, and maybe even monogamous gay marriage? Or would you say that the costs outweigh the benefits or you're not able to make a judgment?

Should Polygyny Be Legalized?

Guest 2 [01:10:14] Okay, while I'm in favor of gay marriage across the board, I think that that's something that we should have on a federal level. I don't think we're quite ready to fully legalize polygamous marriage. I think we should decriminalize it. That's our first step. After we decriminalize it and remove that stigma, then we can assess it and find out exactly what the cost would be for the American people to legalize it. Because, remember, if we do legalize it, then there may be situations in which the American people would be required to provide benefits for those wives and children who were abandoned, because that often happens in polygamy. So decriminalize and then assess the efficacy of legalizing it over many different years of inquiry.

Host [01:11:07] Gotcha. But in terms of its pros and cons on the people who live, doesn't sound like you've come away from studying individual families feeling like it's abhorrent and needs to be eradicated. You find some beauty and some empowerment in it, as well as some disadvantages. Is that fair? To summarize your reactions and feelings, yeah.

Guest 2 [01:11:34] Let me just say that again, there is many faces. There are many faces of polygamy. There are some in particular groups that really do struggle with autonomy and have lost much of their freedom and are abused. Like. Likewise, there's many that find autonomy and empowerment, just as you would find in the mainstream monogamous world.

Host [01:11:55] Gotcha. Well, Dr. Janet Bennion, thank you so much for coming on Mormon Stories. This has been fascinating.

Guest 2 [01:12:02] You're welcome. And take care, John.

Host [01:12:04] All right, take care.

Guest [01:12:08] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. To comment on this episode or to provide feedback, please check us out@mormonstories.org if you want to help keep Mormon Stories alive, please consider either making a financial contribution or spreading the word about this episode through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, family newsletter, or through your Ward Bulletin and Ward newsletter. Just kidding about those last two. Music on this episode was provided by Clayton and Sky Pixton. Check them out@claytonpixton.com or skypixton.com that's sky with an E S K Y-E pixton.com thank you.