August 23, 1998
http://www.ishipress.com/utah-pol.htmUtah Struggles With a Revival of Polygamy
By JAMES BROOKE
SALT LAKE CITY --
snip...
In this conservative state, "don't ask, don't tell" means that sheriffs and judges turn a blind eye to polygamy, a felony that has not been prosecuted here in almost half a century. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose founder sanctioned polygamy, has excommunicated polygamists for more than a century.
But in the current laissez-faire legal climate, the number of Utahans living in polygamous families has increased tenfold in the last 50 years and is now at about 40,000 people, or 2 percent of the state's population, social scientists say.snip...
What has fueled the issue of polygamy statewide as well as nationally is the case of a 16-year-old girl who stumbled into a remote gas station in northern Utah this summer. Covered with fresh bruises on her legs, arms and buttocks, authorities said the girl had run seven miles through the night, fleeing her father's belt and the future he had ordained for her: marriage to her uncle, and life as his 15th wife. The teen-ager's 911 call has resulted in a charge against her father, John Daniel Kingston, a leader of a wealthy but secretive polygamous clan based in a Salt Lake suburb. Rowenna Erickson, a Tapestry member who left the clan in 1991, said that incest, child marriage and birth defects were becoming more frequent in the clan, which numbers about 1,500 people. Although Ms. Erickson said the
value of the clan's ranches and companies totaled more than $150 million, she asserted that women and children in the group often lived in poverty, earning minimum wages from business and receiving food stamps. Ms. Erickson said that John Daniel Kingston had fathered 10 children with a half-sister and that the 16-year-old girl who fled was his eldest child.
snip...
Until the early 1950s, men found to be living in polygamy were routinely jailed by the state. The last major raid on a polygamous colony, on the Utah-Arizona border in 1953, backfired in the face of negative public reaction to photographs of children being torn from their parents and taken to foster homes. Since then, Utah has largely taken an increasingly tolerant stance toward polygamy. In 1991, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that polygamous families were eligible to adopt. In July,
Gov. Michael Leavitt, a Republican, speculated that polygamy might enjoy protection as a religious freedom.snip...
Polygamy is difficult to prosecute because the men generally obtain marriage licenses for only their first wives. Subsequent marriages are performed secretly, and the
additional wives often present themselves to society as single women with children.snip...
Poverty is often a hallmark of polygamy in this country. The border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., targets of polygamy raids in the 1950s, are now heavily subsidized by federal and state aid, according to a study of welfare and tax records by The Salt Lake Tribune. The
two towns, with a total population of about 6,000, rank in the top 10 in the states in the mountain time zone for receiving federal aid for poor women and children. With an average household of 8.5 people, Hildale has the lowest average federal tax return of any Utah town, $651 for each filer. With household incomes about half the state average, the Tribune study found, the two towns have received almost $5 million in recent years in federal and state aid to build better houses and sewers. Yet because of high birth rates and conversions to Mormonism, polygamy in Utah has rebounded from a low point involving a few thousand people in the 1950s, Altman said. Recalling that federal troops and judges tried to eradicate polygamy more than a century ago, he said of Utah's polygamists, "They are here to stay." Indeed, four years ago, Wilford Woodruff Steed died in Colorado City at age 94. He left six wives, 43 children and 235 grandchildren. Steed was born 10 years after his namesake, Wilford Woodruff, proclaimed the Manifesto -- the first church order to all Mormons to stop practicing polygamy.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
