Posted in:
August 15, 2008 2:11 AM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
Somewhere in my mind, the definitions of "stubborn" and "fundamentalist" have merged. I watch the news and notice that even after losing their children for two months in the YFZ raid, some mothers are more committed to being stubborn than they are to keeping their children. Two women married to Merrill Jessop may lose their children to foster homes if they don't cooperate with the court by signing an agreement to keep their children out of harm's way. The "harm" consists of the children's exposure to men who may force them into an early marriage-in other words, underage sexual assault. It seems these women care more about supporting men who think it's ok to abuse young girls in the name of religion than they do about the well being of their own children. Such blind loyalty and stubborn steadfastness can't be seen as devotion. Can it?
Posted in:
August 14, 2008 3:21 PM by Yael Kohen | COMMENTS
Michael C. Hall isn't as creepy as he seems
Dexter Morgan feels no guilt when sneaking up behind his victims, stabbing them with a hypodermic needle, and using a power saw to take them apart, limb from bloody limb. So what is it about Dexter, Showtime's acclaimed series now premiering its third season, that makes the gruesome murderer so damn endearing?
For one thing, there's Michael C. Hall, whose grin, strong jaw, and easygoing demeanor--in all those scenes where he isn't dismembering someone--make it possible to see beyond the violence. Funny, we hadn't fully appreciated his good looks when he played type-A mortician David Fisher on HBO's Six Feet Under.
It's strange how the psychopathic murderer role raises fewer eyebrows than did the one on Six Feet Under, in which he played a repressed homosexual. "I do get a sense that many family members of mine are more comfortable watching me simulate murder than simulate a same-sex relationship with a black man," says Hall, a Raleigh, NC, native. "I got a lot more questions then about, 'Is it weird playing a gay character?' than I now get about, 'Is it weird playing a serial killer?'"
Not that spending so much time surrounded by corpses isn't creepy. Says Hall, "It's an occupational hazard that you take your work home with you"--exacerbated by the fact that he's currently dating Jennifer Carpenter, the actress who plays his foster sister on Dexter. "I totally have dreams that I might not have had otherwise. But I like the idea that on some unconscious level, there's an intersection between my dream life and the life simulated through work, you know? That's the fun of it." Sure, sounds killer.
Posted in:
August 14, 2008 10:55 AM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
Recently, one of my insightful friends wrote, "I got thinking about polygamy and how interesting it was that the saints were commanded to live that principle over a hundred years ago and not today. Honestly, I think it would really go over well today, since more and more marriages are seen as 'open' and fidelity is optional." She mentioned that the early Latter-day Saints considered polygamy a hardship, while people today struggle with monogamy.
My friend points up the polygamous character of our culture, although people in the mainstream don't generally commit to polygamous relationships as fundamentalists claim to do. According to recent polls, women in America are almost as likely as men to engage in extramarital relationships-over sixty percent of them. Roughly two out of three marriages are headed for divorce and thus, serial polygamy. And many people will remain uncommitted and unmarried, finding sexual and romantic partners in a 'catch as catch can' style. The question hovers: which way of life breeds a stronger nest for shoring up the character of the relationship and the children born into the relationship? The time for a responsible, penetrating, and authentic study of polygamy by choice versus "accidental" polygamy is upon us.
Posted in:
August 13, 2008 12:15 PM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
A coalition has been formed in the small Colorado community of Westcliffe, located near the Bull Domingo Ranch where a group of FLDS members have taken refuge. The coalition's action committee, called "Step Up," has invited several FLDS detractors, beginning with Laurie Allen. Allen's vitriolic Banking On Heaven video paints the FLDS to look like the violent and crazy LeBaron group into which she was born and raised. "Step Up" has enthusiastically engaged in educating themselves about their FLDS neighbors by reading books by Stephen Singular, Carolyn Jessop, and Jon Krakauer--all vehement critics of the FLDS people and their way of life.
Gathering evidence to prove you are right about a preconceived conclusion doesn't result in real education. Rather, it breeds prejudice and creates intolerance. A one-sided "education" could be better termed "propaganda" because it doesn't present both sides of the story and because the information flows from sources who have a fixed position and agenda. I have a question for the good people of Westcliffe: Why not walk down the road, knock on the door of the Steed residence, introduce yourself, and have a real conversation? Your FLDS neighbors will likely learn as much from an authentic encounter as you will. The best education is the one you experience first-hand.
Posted in:
August 12, 2008 3:12 PM by Thelma Adams | COMMENTS
WHY SHE'S ON OUR RADAR: The 31-year-old seasoned thesp plays a newlywed whose interracial marriage inflames her nutty neighbor (Samuel L. Jackson) in the suburban thriller Lakeview Terrace.
HER SHTICK: Regal, self-possessed, and straight-A-smart, she makes concertos of second-fiddle roles opposite Oscar-winning costars like Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland and Jamie Foxx in Ray.
GIRL JUST WANTS TO HAVE FUN: Washington says those who know her best characterize her as "driven, compassionate--and playful."
DADDY'S GIRL: She inherited her sense of humor from her pops. "He looks for the joy in life. He's very gregarious. My dad has never met a stranger."
QUEEN MUM: "Mom's the opposite," says Washington. "She's the epitome of grace--as a person, and as a woman of color. She's very cerebral. She taught me about walking with dignity in the world."
ALPHA DOG: Having split from fiancé David Moscow last year, Washington bunks in L.A. with her shih tzu--Yorkie mix. "She knows I'm talking about her," she says, as "Josephine Baker" crawls into her lap.
BRONX BABY: Washington attended tony Manhattan prep school Spence, yet remains faithful to her home 'hood: "Any musicologist will tell you hip-hop was born in the '70s in the Bronx. So was I. I appreciate having grown up there in the age of hip-hop as much as I appreciate having graduated from George Washington University with honors."
GRRRL POWER: "I sit on the board of V-Day, an organization that wants to end violence against women and girls. Our mission is to put ourselves out of business! Women are our most precious resource. We all come from a woman."
Posted in:
August 12, 2008 11:56 AM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
The Associated Press repor
ted that Kelly Fischer has appealed his conviction of sexual conduct with a minor. One of the "Colorado City Eight" prosecuted for taking underage teens as plural wives, Fischer claims that his religious freedoms-which are protected under the 1st and the 14th Amendments-have been violated because Arizona law prohibits the practice of plural marriage. But the appeals court upheld the original decision and stipulated that people have "the right to believe and profess whatever religious doctrine they wish, but no absolute right" to live their beliefs. Invoking an 1878 precedent, the ruling judge stated, "Conduct remains subject to regulation for the benefit of society." The judge also noted that Arizona law constitutionally prohibits sexual activity with a minor-regardless of the minor's consent.
In other words, you have the right to believe anything you want and you have the right to talk about it freely, but you don't necessarily have the right to carry out what you believe. I, for one, am grateful that people who believe in human sacrifice don't have permission to perform sacrifices. And I sure don't think pedophiles should be able to cry "religious freedom" as an excuse for sexually abusing little girls-even if the little girls say they want to be abused.
Posted in:
August 11, 2008 1:16 PM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
Warren Jeffs gets love letters in his prison cell, some of them written by the young girls he married-twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old. It's pathetic and a little nauseating to think of a pretty young woman wiling her tender life away with dreamed-up concoctions of celestial bliss with a convicted felon. Yet the desires of fundamentalist girls aren't too different from the fantasies of other young women, who are notoriously dreamy in adolescence. Such has been the subject of novels and plays throughout literary history: Romeo and Juliet, Kathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Maria and Tony in West Side Story. As long as Warren Jeffs is beyond reach-whether in a prison cell or in a grave-fusty, fickle reality can't interfere with the pristine ideal.
Posted in:
August 8, 2008 12:41 PM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
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 security, a higher incidence of fond
expressions, and generally more love to go around. But when insecurity
prevails, the potential for apathy increases. Just as FLDS followers
can distance themselves from their neighbors and wholly discount the
"wicked world," they can also insulate themselves from each other.
Warren Jeffs has proven his willingness to hack away family bonds and
excommunicate lifelong FLDS members at his whim.
READ MORE 
Posted in:
August 8, 2008 12:00 AM by Unknown | COMMENTS
THE PLOT: A group of evangelicals have descended on sex-ed teacher Ruth Ramsey's Northeast town, and now the 41-year-old divorced mother of two is forced to teach a dubious abstinence curriculum; meanwhile, her daughters--one a star soccer player--want to join the church. Add to that her strange attraction to acolyte Tim Mason, and you have a perfect storm of suburban psychodrama.
LUCY(EXECUTIVE EDITOR): Perrotta kills two birds with one stone, writing a novel and the inevitable screenplay all in one.
YAEL(ASSOCIATE EDITOR): I had Tina Fey cast as Ruth from the first scene, when she walked down the hall of the high school with a latte.
LEA(FEATURES EDITOR): Yeah, I've never read a Tom Perrotta book before, and this was lighter than I anticipated. I didn't hate it, but the story felt a little dated to me, like, we had this conversation about prayer in schools maybe 15 years ago.
LUCY: But I think Perrotta is good at locating the tensions that threaten everything you thought was in place--in Little Children, it was a pedophile in Stepford suburbia, and in this book, it's sex-ed in the land of competitive girls' soccer. On the one hand, the subject matter for both books seems too obvious to be even remotely engaging, and yet in both cases Perrotta nails it. These are the things people fear, that overshadow their perfect life.
SHYEMA(ASSOCIATE RESEARCH EDITOR): My first thought when I started reading was, Perrotta is a liberal pushing an agenda. That it was going to be all these "normal" people against the "fanatics." But once he really gets into Tim's story, that he's this recovering druggie who turns to the church, you got an extra layer there.
LEA: I thought his take on religion was very heavy-handed. That scene where Ruth's kids go to church with one of the families in the community, and the parents are taking pictures of Ruth's kids all dressed up, was a bit over the top. I imagine going to church on a Sunday can be a mundane ritual for many people--just a commitment they have that they don't break, and it doesn't come with all the religious fervor.
LUCY: The thing Perrotta does quite well is get into the mind of a woman. When Ruth is watching one of her daughter's soccer games, he writes, "Watching them, Ruth felt a sharp pang of envy . . . wishing she'd grown up at a time when sports were a routine part of a girl's life. She would be a happier person now, she was pretty sure of it." That struck me as an incredibly genuine lament of a woman of a certain age.
YAEL: Or when he writes: "Later, after Tim left, she realized--though maybe it was less a matter of realizing than of being able to admit it to herself--that she'd secretly been hoping to find herself enmeshed in one of those corny 'opposites attract' narratives that were so appealing to writers of sitcoms and romantic comedies." What single woman doesn't think that?
SHYEMA: So who would play Tim?
LEA: That guy from Thirtysomething, with the long hair and the scruffy beard. Peter Horton. Did I just date myself?
NEXT MONTH: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz (Riverhead)
Posted in:
August 7, 2008 1:55 PM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
I've been reading Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, where a young woman falls in love with a vampire and has to deal with the prejudices of the general public about the undead. We humans are so intolerant! :) I think of Hamlet's warning to his friend, "There more things between Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Remember, this is "the dawning of the Age of Aquarius." We live in an era of secret worlds revealed, when even the primitive tribes of the Amazon, hidden for millennia, can be viewed on television screens everywhere. How predictable then, that the "peculiar people" who believe that God wants them to practice plural marriage would have their lives advertised on the tube and in print throughout the world. Whether we like it or not, we live in the prophesied time when our secret lives are "shouted from the rooftops:" the Information Age. As with the famous apple, and all knowledge, whether we use the information for good or ill is up to us.
Posted in:
August 6, 2008 1:47 PM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
What goes around comes around--even if you don't believe in karma. In the beautiful Creston Valley in British Columbia, Canada (where Teressa Wall Blackmore raised her children) a split occurred in the polygamous community some years ago. Longtime "Bishop of Bountiful" Winston Blackmore had gathered a loyal following that must have been threatening to Warren Jeffs. Jeffs replaced Winston with a more malleable bishop, one he could count on not to upstage him. But Bishop Winston wasn't willing to be undermined. Half the FLDS community insisted on upholding him as their leader. Those who remained loyal to Warren Jeffs continued going to the FLDS school, but would not allow the "Winstonites" to attend.
Now, years later, Warren Jeffs' self-serving decision has come back on him--like many other decisions he allegedly made (especially the decision to force underage girls into marriages of his choosing). The FLDS school board may soon be relieved of their responsibilities by court-appointed trustee Bruce Wisan. The reason? The Canadian government funds the FLDS school with hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Since half the community of Bountiful (the Winston Blackmore half) is barred from attending the FLDS school, the school board is violating basic rules of public education. So, Warren Jeffs' FLDS board of education special-cased itself right out of the picture. Karma does catch up--even if you don't believe in karma.
Posted in:
August 5, 2008 5:17 PM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
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 patriarchs have retaliated. In the
past week, a series of controversies have proved that polygamists can
sling mud with the most seasoned politicians. When FLDS apostate Dan
Fischer testified against his former sect before the Senate Judiciary
Committee, sect attorneys filed fourteen affidavits from his children
and his former plural wives accusing Fischer of lies, non-support, and
abuse.
READ MORE
Posted in:
August 4, 2008 10:51 AM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
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 mainstream woman is puzzled by videos of FLDS sisterwives
embracing each other, comforting each other, and walking arm-in-arm.
No wonder she disbelieves a woman in her fifties who promises to
cherish her husband's teen bride-one she'll have to teach "the ropes"
of motherhood. Why don't too many cooks spoil the broth in polygamous
households?
READ MORE
Posted in:
August 1, 2008 3:30 PM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
Some people ask if early marriage is mandated for FLDS teens? The obvious answer is "no," since only some of the girls aged 12 to 16 are married. Many are allowed to reach the ripe old age of 18 before being "assigned." So why do some marry young, while others don't?
We can look in a couple of directions. I tend to look to my own family for information, since my father took his wives under similar priesthood leadership, before the FLDS and AUB became separate entities. He married two fifteen year-olds. The first, Aunt "Rachel" worried her father with her inclination toward sensuality. Rachel's mother had died giving birth, and although his plural wives looked after her, her father may have worried that if she didn't get married, she'd get "in trouble." My father married her as requested, but didn't consummate the relationship until she was older.
The second woman had been the mothers' favored babysitter, and she made it clear to her father that she wanted to come into Dr. Allred's family. But she probably didn't expect to marry him until she was older. My father had been sentenced to prison for illegal cohabitation, so they married the night before he sentence began. She had no warning, was dressed in her nightgown, hair braided for bed, feet dusty from the coal bin where she'd propped her feet while doing her math homework at the kitchen table. Her father married them in my father's doctor's office, with no one else present-it was to be kept a secret even from her mother. My father forgot to kiss her after the ceremony, and she had to remind him. They didn't consummate the marriage until after he'd served his sentence and then some, since conditions of his parole precluded his being with his plural wives.
We can also look at the experience of Elissa Wall, whose nightmare marriage at the age of fourteen to her cousin Allen Steed is the focal point of her book, Stolen Innocence. Elissa gave her priesthood leaders big headaches. Like her brothers and her sister, Teressa, Elissa objected to religious leaders breaking up her parents' marriage. Elissa asked too many questions. She showed subtle signs of rebellion. And because she was so deeply bonded to her mother, she interfered in her mother's second marriage, to Colorado City Bishop, Fred Jessop. "Fred didn't like Elissa for some reason," Teressa told me. "He wanted to get her out of the house." He also wanted to reward Elissa's cousin, Allen Steed, for being a loyal follower. So he talked Warren Jeffs into assigning Elissa to Allen-against her initial pleas and her subsequent refusal. In the final analysis, Elissa was forced to marry Allen as the outcome of a power struggle between a teenaged girl and the head of the FLDS community.
I suspect that girls are assigned to marry young because they are precocious-intellectually or emotionally or sexually. But that doesn't mean it's justifiable. Gifted teens sometimes start college when they're fourteen or fifteen, but that doesn't mean they're ready to attend frat parties. Precocity doesn't equal readiness for adult life. Right?
Posted in:
July 31, 2008 3:40 PM by Dorothy Allred Solomon | COMMENTS
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 case, when a sixteen-year-old girl protested being forced to marry her uncle. But not all polygamous groups condone incestuous marriages. In my father's religious group (which later became the Apostolic United Brethren, or AUB) any sort of incest was taboo, as it is in most cultures. As a doctor, my father knew the hazards of genetic coupling and he wouldn't support the marriage of second cousins, let alone closer relatives. As the attending physician in many fundamentalist communities, he had witnessed horrific births when polygamous people ignored this taboo, where children came into the world with severe and heart-wrenching deformities. Despite his lectures and strong advice, many patriarchs stubbornly continued the practice.
Now that two of the men arrested in Texas are charged with marrying underage girls who were also relatives, the question rises again: Why do polygamists figure they are exempt from the ancient and scientifically-sustained taboo against marrying and bearing children with members of one's own family? The answer has to do with the same entitlement that accompanies polygamy in general: a belief in eugenic breeding. In these circumstances, eugenic breeding is rooted in the idea that people who are "called to live the Principle of Plural Marriage" are somehow superior to other members of the human race: more intelligent, better looking, physically superior, etc. If the idea seems familiar, look to Germany during the Holocaust. Eugenic breeding was used to justify the murder of millions among of mental patients, political activists, retarded people, and various ethnic groups, including gypsies and Jews so that the "Aryan race" could retain its "purity."
As for me, I think people who go to such lengths to justify their "superiority" are covering deep-seated fears of inferiority. What do you think?
Posted in:
July 31, 2008 1:27 PM by Jane Green | COMMENTS
The first time I met Josh, I thought he was a nice guy but a
transient friend. The first time I met Si I fell hopelessly in love and
prayed I'd somehow be able to convert him.
But the first time I met Portia I thought I'd found my soul mate.
She
was the sister I'd always longed for, the best friends I'd always
wished I had, and I truly and honestly thought that, no matter what
happened with our lives, we would stay friends forever.
Forever
feels like a long time when you're eighteen. When you're away from home
for the first time in your life, when you forge instant friendships
that are so strong they are destined, surely, to be with you until the
bitter end.
I met Josh right in the beginning, just a few
weeks after the Freshers' Ball. I'd seen him in the Students' Union,
propping up the bar after a rugby game, looking for all the world like
the archetypal upper-class rugger bugger twit, away from home with too
much money and too much arrogance.
He-naturally-started chatting up
Portia, alcohol giving him confidence he lacked when sober (although I
didn't know that at the time), and despite the rebuffs he kept going
until his friends dragged him away to find easier prey.
I'm
sure we would all have left it at that, but I bumped into him the next
day, in the library, and he recognized me instantly and apologized for
embarrassing us; and gradually we started to see him more and more,
until he'd firmly established himself as one of the gang.
I'd
already met Si by then, had already fallen in love with his cheeky
smile and extravagant gestures. I was helping out one of the girls on
my course who was auditioning for a production of Cabaret. It was my
job to collect names and send them into the rehearsal hall for the
audition.
Si was the only person who turned up in full
costume. As Sally Bowles. In fishnet stockings, bowler hat, and full
makeup, he didn't bat an eyelid as the others slouched down in their
hard, wooden chairs, staring, jealous as hell of his initiative. And
his legs.
We went in, bold as brass, and proceeded to give
the worst possible rendition of "Cabaret" that I've ever heard, but
with such brazen confidence you could almost forgive him for being
entirely tone-deaf.
Everybody went crazy when he'd finished.
They went crazy because he is so obviously loved, loved, being center
stage. None of us had ever seen such enthusiasm, but even though Si
knew every song, word for word, he had to be content with camping it up
as the narrator, as Helen, the director, said she never wanted to hear
him sing again.
Eddie was a friend of Josh's. A sweet gentle
boy from Leeds who should probably have been overwhelmed by our
combined personalities, but somehow wasn't. He was easy company, and
always willing to do anything for anybody he cared about, which was
mostly us, at the time.
And then of course there was Portia. So close that our names became intertwined: CatherineandPortia. Two for the price of one.
I
met Portia my very first day at university. We were sitting in the
halls of residence common room, waiting for a talk to begin, all sizing
each other up, all wondering whom to befriend, who seemed like our
type, when this stunningly elegant girl strode in on long, long legs,
crunching an apple and looking like she didn't have a care in the world.
READ MORE
Posted in:
July 31, 2008 1:20 PM by Jane Green | COMMENTS
I had just got married when I started writing my fourth novel. I'd come back from honeymoon, moved into our first house - a gorgeous little carriage house in London - and made my office on the third floor, overlooking the treetops in North West London. I thought, given how my art had imitated my life, I would write about an engagement, the planning of a wedding, the trials and tribulations of suddenly inheriting a new family who weren't exactly what you expected.
I started Chapter One, and sat back, halfway through, running my fingers through my hair. Bored. I was bored and the words I was writing were boring. I didn't want to write the same old first person thinly-veiled account of my life. I wanted to do something bigger. Broader. Something that had some meat on its bones. I wanted to write about friendship, I decided. About a group of friends who had known one another since University, who were now in their thirties and
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