A Comment on the FLDS...

So, inadvertently, I have been turning my blog into an anti-FLDS rant, so I wanted to backpedal a bit. I realized this when I read some of the responses to my post. There are many things that I disagree on with the FLDS. I have mentioned a few items:

a. The “One-Man”Doctrine – or the selection of a potentate to preside over them. (This is not singular to the FLDS, but to many groups.)
b. The Doctrine of Placement – or arranged marriages.
c. The tendency to marry young – I am the father of a teenage daughter that is almost fifteen. I am not keen to the idea of her marrying anyone just yet.

But I want to point out - generally, all FLDS people that I have met have been kind and very amiable. In spite of the few differences, there are more similarities. It is akin to me criticizing my older brother. I can make fun of him all I want, but if you do it, watch out.

Yes, I am soft-spoken and considerate, but I am also very vocal and critical in some areas, especially when it comes to questioning authority. That is my nature to be mildly dissatisfied with everything. That is the mark of my generation – when nobody knew who Madonna was, I liked her; when she became a megastar, I hated her. The first week “Titanic” showed in theaters, I thought it was a great movie, but the moment the hype started, I couldn’t stand it.

So when I start on one of my rants, one shouldn’t take me too seriously.

When “Big Love” first came out a couple of years ago, I wrote a letter to the Arizona Republic that was openly critical. I got chewed out by someone in our community who was ex-FLDS. “How do you know that it is like that there?” she demanded of me. “Were you raised there? Do you really know?”

She had a good point. So I thought I would post a brief history of my connection to the FLDS. In order to do that, I have to go waaaaaay back.

The Mormon fundamentalist movement was largely born in the town of Millville, Utah (near Logan). Some young men from that town got a job at a radio plant in Salt Lake City. Their last names are names that are common in the polygamy movement today (Jessop, Barlow, Jenson, etc.). One of those men was my great grandfather and namesake, Moroni Jessop. These men met a charismatic little cowboy named Lorin Woolley, who claimed to have received a special commission from the late LDS Church President John Taylor to keep plural marriage alive. The meetings they held afterhours in the radio plant gave birth to the Mormon polygamy movement today (even in all its schisms).

My grandfather Jack Jessop was a part of this. He was a rough and rowdy former pro-boxer who met my grandmother at a dance, kissed her, got slapped and wound up walking her home. But she was staunch LDS. Her family warned her about marrying him, since he was a Jessop. “He’ll take another wife.” So she extracted a promise from him that he would not live polygamy, they got married, stayed active in the LDS Church, stayed away from the polygamists and relocated to California where my dad, Ted Jessop, spent his childhood.

Jack Jessop died when my dad was a boy, and my grandmother’s family jealously guarded Ted from his polygamist relatives. It wasn’t until my dad was a returned missionary that he came into contact with some of his Jessop relatives. With access to the BYU library, he set out to prove his relatives wrong, but wound up uncovering a conspiracy perpetrated by the LDS Church to cover up the early teachings and practice of polygamy. This bothered him, but the Church threatened to excommunicate him. So for the next twenty years, he kept his thoughts on the matter to himself and stayed active in the LDS Church.

But he began getting to know his polygamist relatives, nephews of his own grandfather – Vergel Jessop and Fred Jessop, residents of Colorado City and FLDS members. He also associated with others like Newel Steed, and my Uncle Jim Jessop, who was unaffiliated with any group.

We lived in Utah, but my mother’s family lived in Phoenix. So our trips to Phoenix rarely went by without a visit, stopping by Uncle Vergel’s house. His wives were sweet and always served us homemade bread and canned peaches. But I remember thinking that they weren’t Mormon, because they drank coffee.

Once, they invited us to stay the night. The spread blankets out on the living room floor, and the children went to sleep on the floor. I was only 6 years-old and belonged to the LDS Church. I woke up in the middle of the night when the old grandfather clock in their living room struck midnight. I had such a peaceful feeling come over me, and I KNEW that there was something special being lived in that home. And at 6 years-old, I KNEW that someday I would live the same form of marriage that was being lived there.

It is funny writing about that, from the present, being a polygamist. That sentiment has been fulfilled. But at that time, I had no idea what path would bring me to this point.

When I left Arizona to begin my life as a Mormon fundamentalist, my dad stopped me in the hallway and placed his hands on my shoulders, laughed and shook his head. “I don’t think the world of Mormon fundamentalists is ready for you yet.”

I am odd. I am weird. I have never fit in anywhere. I have always been the proverbial square peg. I have often tried to stop and talk to FLDS people when I see them in the grocery store, in a restaurant, and they always look at me like I am a nut.

Generally, I think the FLDS are strange, and I find many of their practices to be different and contrary to the gospel, as I understand it. But then I am different and contrary, often as well. And definitely strange.

But I wept tears when I saw what happened in Texas. I would give everything I have - I would give my own life to protect them in their liberty to live their religion according to the dictates of their own conscience.