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Are We Having Any Fun Yet?
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Rude Awakening
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Insight From a Friend
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Small Towns, Small Minds
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Religious Freedom Has Limits
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Adolescent Idealism
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Big Love and Big Apathy
Psychologists point out that the opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy. Indifference seems anathema to the bonds of caring that we call love. In a big family, the potential for more affection can result in a greater sense of securi...
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FLDS and the Information Age
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Karma Catches Up With FLDS
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Mudslinging, Polygamy-Style
Typically, fundamentalist polygamists have tried to keep themselves exempt from the ways of "the wicked world." But the alleged crimes of polygamous patriarchs have eroded their insular world, placing polygamists under scrutiny. And pa...
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Too Many Cooks?
People keep asking me how plural wives live together without getting in each other's way. "I'd beat up a woman who messed with my house," said one woman. "No telling what I'd do if she went to bed with my husband!"No wonder the mainstr...
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Why Do Some FLDS Teen Girls Marry While Others Dont?
Some people ask if early marriage is mandated for FLDS teens? The obvious answer is "no," many are allowed to reach the ripe old age of 18 before being "assigned."
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Incest and Polygamy
Recently a young woman interviewed me for a paper she was writing on polygamy. One of her first questions involved incestuous marriages. People tend to equate polygamy with incestuous marriage partly because of the widely publicized Kingston cas...
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Jessops Behind Bars
Merrill Jessop, a leader in the FLDS community and top dog at the YFZ Ranch, may not be in prison, but two of his namesakes have been arrested, along with three other patriarachs, with bail set at $100,000 each. Raymond Merrill Jessop allegedly as...
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Principle Voices Dissent
Principle Voices, an organization advocating the right to live the religious "Principle of Plural Marriage," disagrees with Senator Harry Reid's Victims of Polygamy Assistance Act 2008. Principle Voices fundamentally objects to the proposal that fund...
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Day Breaks Over Texas
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Fine Distinctions
As navigators know, if you start a journey a few degrees off, you must make a correction right away or miss your destination by miles. One would think that the Senate Judiciary Committee would realize this as they convene their inquiry into crimes...
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Pioneer Day
On July 24, Utah state and local government agencies close up shop in celebration of "Pioneer Day"--when LDS Church President Brigham Young rose from his sickbed in a covered wagon, looked over the Salt Lake Valley and declared, "this is the place...
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Justice Shows Her Face in Texas
A scripture often quoted in my childhood in fundamentalist polygamy read, "Thy sins shall be shouted from the rooftops." I suppose our parents and teachers intended to warn us that there's nowhere and no way to hide dark deeds forever....
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Senate Hearings on Polygamy
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Fundamentalism and Violence, Part 3
In response to the bombing at the Atlanta Summer Olympics in 1996, the first African-American Ambassador to the United Nations and Co-Chairman of the Atlanta Olympics Committee declared, "Violence is the language of those who are not heard." ...
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Fundamentalism and Violence, Part 2
We hear reports on the evening news and on the Internet of Jihad-religious war. Usually those engaged in Jihad have been raised in a distortion of their religion that gives members permission to shed blood. The Middle East excuse has to...
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Fundamentalism and Violence
I've long been preoccupied by the link between fundamentalism and violence. My father's assassination by a fundamentalist cult first captured my interest. Then a series of violent crimes committed by people linked to polygamous fundame...
