TresSugar

Guides Hope Public Will Have Big Love For Polygamy Tours

TresSugar — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 11:10:00 -0700

Has Big Love only intensified your curiosity about the mysterious lives of polygamists? Perhaps you should book your next vacation to Arizona, where former fundamentalist Mormons have launched a tour of a polygamous colony.

Starting next weekend, outsiders will get an inside look with "The Polygamy Experience: A Guided Tour of Colorado City." The tour is not for the passingly curious, as it lasts four hours and involves meetings with people who have been exiled by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). Even so, it promises to be respectful. The guides will educate tourists on the history of fundamentalist Mormonism and explain why they take more than one wife in the first place. Paying customers will also learn what's behind the prairie dresses and long braids.

The tour costs $70 for adults and $60 for children (children, really?). Would you shell out the money to see polygamy up close?

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Polyglamorous? Oprah Visits Polygamists, Gets Hair Secrets

CitizenSugar — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:00:36 -0700

It's good to be Oprah. Well, most of the time. Dreams of infiltrating polygamist compounds come and go, but daytime's queen got to live it, going as she is with a TV crew. Thank goodness for that! Though she didn't get any FLDS secrets - unless you want that poof!

So what was she told? The FLDS is definitely not racist. Sister wives? Learn about themselves through conflict. Kids? No need for play when there's work. Teen girls? Trust their parents will choose the right husbands. Underage marriage? Um. Answers ranged from "absolutely not" to "not really, no." Oh.

But she did get straight answers on their long hair. BTW, poof height does not correspond with righteousness. "It's just a style," Oprah's told, "come back in 10 years." Will do! To see how they get the look, read more.

Three Is Enough: Polygamist Families Want Right to Marry(s)

CitizenSugar — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:30:01 -0700

The third season of Big Love ended with a bang (or a gasp?) Sunday, so we'll have to follow real-life polygamists until next season. Good thing there's some who want to be seen and heard, saying things like Jesus had many wives. Maybe he did?

Anne Wilde, a polygamist widow, is leading the Principle Voices campaign to legalize, or at least decriminalize, plural marriage in Utah. She showed BBC her basement/publishing house filled with books she and her husband published, including their bestseller, Jesus Was Married, which shows Jesus was married and married and married.

She led dozens of polygamists to the square outside the Utah State Legislature building to lobby for plural marriage. While it's felony in Utah, and every other state, there are too many people (nearly 40,000 just in Utah) to prosecute it. In fact, Anne and self-identified polygamists talked congenially to Utah's attorney general that day. His stance? As long there are no child marriages or pedophilia accusations, he'll let them be.

One openly polygamist family, which couldn't be more like Big Love's Hendricksons and less like the stereotypical prairie-garbed families, let BBC into their home. To find out what their lives are like, read more.

Kody Brown, husband of three and father of 12, lives in a house divided into three apartments. While his teenage daughters have mixed feelings about entering plural marriage, he says his own is working out well. "Usually whoever knows what they want," he said, "can get it." Imagine that's so when there's three wives who give!

Check out a video of the family, sans the second and third wives, at home on BBC.

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Does This Family Change the Way You View Polygamy?

LilSugar — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:00:00 -0700

Kody Brown, a hoodie wearing, shaggy-haired dad is one of the 40,000 people living in an illegal Utah polygamist family. The laid back father of twelve children, by his three wives, breaks what many consider the polygamist stereotype with his modern appearance and casual demeanor. After watching this clip of the seemingly happy family, do you believe that taking more than one spouse should be legal?

People Checks In With Polygamous Ranch Children Year Later

CitizenSugar — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:00:47 -0700

Last April, authorities in Texas seized 439 children from their homes, thanks to suspected sexual abuse on the FLDS polygamous compound where they lived. The children were returned to their homes after the Texas Supreme Court found that the state had illegally seized the children from the FLDS ranch. One year later People magazine has checked back in with the families that captured America's attention.

The parents are still transitioning the children back into life on the compound, after the kids were kept from their families for two months and "exposed" to mysterious modern marvels like baseball, bikes, and TV.

The caretakers dressed them in mainstream clothes such as shorts(!) and introduced the children to a different way of life. One mother said her children "had so many toys thrown at them. Toys tend to teach children to be selfish. We make it real and useful to them. Gloria loves to do the dishes. If you cultivate that, then they're happy."

Will you be picking up this issue of People to learn more about life on the polygamous ranch?

HBO to Air Controversial Big Love Episode Despite LDS Outcry

CitizenSugar — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:30:12 -0700

Thank goodness the show will go on, because I could not take one less of the two Big Love episodes left this season. What's the problem? Sunday's episode will feature a ceremony sacred (and kind of secret) to the mainstream Mormon church.

In the episode, Jeanne Tripplehorn's character, notorious do-gooder and wishy-washy polygamist Barb, goes through an endowment ceremony when she's threatened with excommunication. I hesitate to describe what endowment is because I'll probably get it wrong. But it's like an adult baptism with the water and the oil, and unlike it in that participants are taught gospel laws, given key words they'll need in the afterlife, and tested afterward.

Probably the most accurate depiction you'll find outside a Mormon temple is Sunday's episode. An adviser who is familiar (yet nameless?) with temple ceremonies advised Big Love's producers so they could get every detail right. He even remained on set during filming. HBO has half-heartedly apologized, saying, "Obviously, it was not our intention to do anything disrespectful to the church but to those who may be offended, we offer our sincere apology."

From the church's point of view, HBO is breaking its earlier promise to focus on polygamy and stay away from mainstream Mormonism. But the only legal promise HBO ever made was a one-time disclaimer that aired in the series premiere, stating the modern-day church did not support polygamy.

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Polygamist Leader Calls His Arrest Religious Prosecution

LibertySugar — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:30:06 -0800

The leader of a polygamous community in Canada says authorities are engaging in religious persecution by charging him with practicing polygamy.

Winston Blackmore claims there are tens of thousands of polygamists across Canada, but that his religious sect is being targeted and authorities are disregarding his right to religious freedom. He told the media: "This is not about polygamy, to us this is about religious persecution.

Authorities arrested both Blackmore, 52, and another man with polygamous factions in British Columbia. Blackmore is charged with marrying 20 women (that's a lot more than anyone on Big Love!) and Oler is accused of marrying two women. The case will be the first test of Canada's polygamy laws.

Photo courtesy of HBO

Polygamous Community Releases Voter's Guide

LibertySugar — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:43:02 -0800

Hoping to move away from the fringe and regain political influence, Utah's polygamous community has released a voter's guide to help members decide how to vote tomorrow.

A coalition of polygamist groups - Communities in Harmony - asked federal, state, and local candidates about their positions on a wide range of topics that impact the once powerful demographic. Of the 150 candidates questioned, 60 responded and were rated on a scale of one to 10. Neither Obama nor McCain responded, but Libertarian candidate Bob Barr received a total score of 7.5.

Politicians who submitted their answers (to questions such as "Should polygamous people have the same right as other Utah citizens to hold public offices?" or "Should the government spend public safety funds disproportionately to target one group of people?") may see a modest bump in the polls. Out of 2.7 million people living in Utah, 37,000 are polygamists. If you were a politician, how would you answer the group's questions?

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Too Much of a Good Thing? This Cat Has 86 Wives

CitizenSugar — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 07:00:19 -0700

While we may have been shocked by the FLDS polygamy case in the US, this Nigerian man has that beat by a harem. Mohammed Bello Abubakar, 84, has 86 wives. Yes, that's right: 86 wives and at least 170 children. Far from recommending the practice to others, he says it takes a very special spirit to be wedded to scores of brides. He says, "A man with 10 wives would collapse and die, but my own power is given by Allah. That is why I have been able to control 86 of them." He has a reputation as a healer, which is why they're drawn to him. "I don't go looking for them, they come to me. I will consider the fact that God has asked me to do it and I will just marry them."

To find out how he cares for an Economy-Sized family, and how the women feel about it, read more.

The Nigerian Archbishop says polygamy flies in the face of Christianity, and Islamic authorities have branded the family a cult, but the big question remains: how does one man provide for a brood so big? Abubakar says by the grace of God. He doesn't work, nor do any of his wives, yet they still manage to pay the giant cost of feeding and clothing an army - they eat almost $1,000 of food per day. One of the wives says sometimes the children are sent out to beg, and the wives live three to a room in an unfurnished house. He doesn't allow any of his family to take medicine, and denies that malaria exists.

The wives, however, seem content. One says, "I am now the happiest woman on earth. When you marry a man with 86 wives you know he knows how to look after them." He's had a lot of practice, to be sure!

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Iowa Flooding and Polygamy Cause Debate Within Religions

CitizenSugar — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:07 -0700

What do the recent floods in the Midwest, and the attention garnered over the FLDS polygamy case have in common? It might not be obvious on the surface, but they're both instances where headlines are having a big impact on religion. First, the floods:

One grocery-store owner in Iowa, who is a devout Muslim, saw his business of six years washed away along with hundreds of others in the severe flooding last month. But whereas other businesses are signing up to receive federal loans at low interest, he cannot; it is forbidden in the Quran for any believer to pay interest. The store owner claims he will need $18,000 to replenish his stock, a sum he does not have, yet his faith has not faltered: “With all of our losses here, even the loss of a six year effort, I still feel we were blessed.”

In Utah, a somewhat different religious struggle is taking place between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the more renegade Fundamentalist groups, most of whom practice polygamy. To see what's causing the debate, read more.

Each group believes they have a rightful claim to the appellation “Mormon.” The LDS Mormons believe that since traditionally the word Mormon has been used to describe their church that they are the ones whom it should refer to exclusively. The more fundamentalist branches, including the group recently raided in Texas, disagree stating that it is their belief in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon is all that is needed to be called “Mormon."

Should a religion's name be proprietary - does the LDS Church have a rightful claim to it? Would you refuse government assistance because your religion dictated?

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