Latest articles by Dorothy Allred Solomon
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Surprises in Colorado CityI paid a visit to Colorado City today. I’ve been here a few times before, visiting the grave of my mother’s father in the Short Creek cemetery, or hoping to see one or two of my siblings who disappeared when their mother left our father and joined the FLDS. Things in Colorado City have changed. The vitiated air of oppression has lifted some, but fear spawned by the Texas raids makes people edgy. A decades-old community split has created sectors in this dusty town beneath the magnificent Vermillion Cliffs: The old FLDS die-hards loyal to Rulon Jeffs—he turned his leadership over to the notorious Warren—have thinned out. Many moved to other FLDS settlements, particularly Texas. But in the General Store you’ll find the FLDS women still taking care of business in their long pastel dresses and braided hair, piety wafting from their pores. There’s another faction, of Centennial Park residents. This progressive group broke away from Jeffs in favor of a more democratic theocracy. (An oxymoron, I know.) A committee of men represent the community and make decisions together. Women in this group hold positions of power in education, business, and health care.
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A Season of Understanding EndsTonight I’m watching Nancy Grace, absorbing the latest development in the FLDS Eldorado, Texas raid: a newborn baby has been taken from its teen mother and placed in the custody of the state. Everyone on the show justifies this action; after all, the baby may grow to be an adolescent, sexually assaulted by a dirty old man who will also provide food, clothing, shelter and some measure of affection. Meanwhile, another announcement rolls across the screen: it seems that many of the Texas homes where FLDS children have been placed violate the foster care codes. My head aches a little as I attempt to reconcile this cognitive dissonance. It’s ok to take a baby from its mother because it might someday be abused, and it’s also ok to put children in the homes of strangers who don’t keep the state’s basic codes. Now Nancy Grace is calling for other states to follow Texas’s suit—round up those plygie kids, take them away from their brainwashing mothers and their perverted fathers and allow the state to cradle them in its safe and maternal bosom. “Where will the next polygamous raid be?” the footer asks. Shades of my childhood in polygamy. The witch-hunt mentality of the McCarthy era returns.
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Giving the Polygamists Exactly What they Want?The authorities who rounded up the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint women and children and carted them away from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in vans probably fit the profile of do-gooders everywhere: at once sanctified and sanctimonious as they commandeer others’ lives and moved them in the right direction. “Success in Eldorado” shouted Texas headlines. But this two-sided coin of virtue and self-righteousness also describes the FLDS psyche. These polygamists carry a history of persecution, and a predisposition toward suffering for their religious beliefs. In their minds—and here I speak from experience—persecution and prosecution validate their righteousness and prove their sainthood.
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The Cult That Wants My Kids
When Teressa Wall testified against polygamist "prophet" Warren Jeffs, she assumed there'd be payback. But how could she know they'd come after her children?
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The Very Big Love: 47 Siblings, 7 Mothers, and 1 FatherChristmas with my polygamous family was usually chaotic — sometimes we were on the run from the Feds. But it was beautiful, too.
