A Mormon Fundamentalist Review: Under the Banner of Heaven Ep. 4

  As a child, we used to drive from Utah to Arizona quite often.  My family lived in the central Utah town of Richfield, but my mother was from South Phoenix.  A few times a year, we would make the trek to visit my mother's family.  However, on the way, we would stop by Colorado City, home of the FLDS, to visit my dad's Jessop relatives.  As the car drew nearer to those red cliffs. my dad would get agitated with us.  Why was our hair so long?  Never mind that it was the '70s - everyone wore their hair a little long.  But too "long" for my dad was covering the ears.  Nobody wore their hair like that in Short Creek.  They had short, '50s conservative haircuts.  My dad also urged us to roll our sleeves down and button our shirts up all the way.  Just like the boys in Colorado City.  Soon, we rolled down the red dirt road in front of the house of the elderly kin my dad used to like to visit - Uncle Vergel or Uncle Fred.

The thing is - even though we were Jessops, we weren't FLDS or Mormon fundamentalists.  Yet.  We were LDS.  My dad was raised by his mother in southern California, away from his polygamous Jessop relatives.  He knew nothing about them except what he was told - they were evil, dirty men.  He did everything a good Mormon is supposed to do - paid his tithing, went to the temple, served a mission, married a good Mormon girl.   But when he moved to Utah to attend BYU, he came across his polygamous relatives and found that they were nothing like he was told.  They were decent and hard-working.  And very moral.  Being the super ex-missionary, he set out to prove them wrong.  Much of his time was spent in the BYU Special Collections Section, reading books like Women of Mormondom.  He read about controversial topics like the Adam-God Doctrine.  He became obsessed with his studies.  He skipped classes to pore over old books.  And my mom started to worry.

My dad and me, 1970

One night, she wrote a letter of concern to Harold B. Lee, the president of the LDS Church back then.  She expressed concern about his studies.  Soon, they were called in to see Apostle Mark E. Petersen, the general authority in charge of handling members investigating fundamentalism.  My dad assumed that Petersen would say something like, "Brother Jessop, the general membership of the church is not ready for the things you have been studying.  Can we ask you to keep this information under your hat?"  Instead, Petersen lied to him, said that the early brethren never taught the things that he had read.  My father was scolded and threatened with excommunication.  My father left Petersen's office dejected.  An apostle of the Lord had just lied to him. 

Petersen referred him over to Stake President Richards, a prominent member of the church, the owner of Granite Furniture, and assigned by the church to address fundamentalist cases.  Richards was kinder to my parents, and said to my father, "Can't you put these things on a shelf?  Can't you believe what you do and still remain in the church?"  This satisfied me dad, and he returned to church,  He didn't become a fundamentalist for another twenty years.  But he persisted in studying.  And occasionally opening his mouth, which frequently got him in trouble with the stake Seventies leader or the bishop.  And he stopped by Colorado City as often as possible...

To this day, I don't know if he had intention of joining the FLDS, but he would sit in the living room with Uncle Vergel and talk gospel.  Sometimes, we would spend the night.  Uncle Vergel's elderly wife (one of them) would serve us meals with steaming homemade bread, fresh peaches, and canned jam, but I didn't think they were Mormon because they drank coffee every morning.  My dad and Uncle Vergel would talk for hours about things like Lorin Woolley, the Eight-Hour Meeting, and the 1953 Short Creek Raid.  While they talked, I was a darker-skinned Mexican kid ("Are you a Lamanite?") playing outside with my blonde Jessop cousins - the boys in button-up shirts and the girls wearing prairie dresses over their jeans and sneakers.  There were a row of trailers behind Uncle Vergel's brick house, and I remember younger women with swooping hairdos hanging out wet laundry, the dusty wind catching their long dresses.  It wasn't until I examined this memory later in life that I realized that those women were Uncle Vergel's other wives.  The kids would regale me with stories of finding Indian pottery and arrowheads, of lost treasure buried somewhere in the red canyons, and one boy even bragged to me that he had been to Fredonia before - all of forty miles away.

My parents circa 1999

So, why am I telling a story about my father and his experiences in a review of the FX/ Hulu limited series, Under the Banner of Heaven?  Because my dad's journey closely mirrors Dan Lafferty's. (Dan is played beautifully by Wyatt Russell.)  Roughly around the same age, they both were studying controversial Mormon doctrines.  They both studied in BYU's tight-security library (you could only look at the books in the company of a professor) and were both dissatisfied with the answers they found there.  Both visited the FLDS and other Mormon fundamentalist groups, hoping to find answers that the LDS Church couldn't or wouldn't provide.  Both perused books that were considered forbidden.  Both were ultimately excommunicated from the church where they grew up, being charged of apostasy.  They both married women from other countries.  Dan's wife was from Ireland, and my mother was born in Mexico.

But there were some marked differences between them.  For instance, my dad distrusted the government, sure, but he wasn't a tax-evading zealot.  He was a civil servant all of his life.  But my dad was definitely a maverick in somewhat the same way.  Next, and rather obviously, my dad never murdered anyone.  My dad was a self-described jovial "fat man".  He was kind, compassionate, and raised us to treat people with dignity and respect.

So, whereas there are many comparisons that can be drawn between my dad and Dan Lafferty, somewhere there is a vast difference.  Somewhere their stories diverged greatly from each other.  Dan Lafferty murdered people.  My dad never did.  Dan Lafferty claimed to be the reincarnated Prophet Elijah.  My dad refused to let people thrust him into positions of leadership, to place him on a pedestal.  But he could have, if he wanted.  And people tried.  He used to claim that he had an A-type personality.  He had the priesthood authority to assume some sort of mantle; he had received his second anointing.  But he was self-effacing to a fault.  He never claimed superiority over people and tried to treat others as equals.  Oh, he had his faults.  Many, many faults.  But he was no Dan Lafferty.  In fact, the Lafferty brothers made him sick.  So, how did two men who started on such similar paths become so wildly different?  Even I struggle to understand.

Me & my dad, 1975, photo credit K. Reid

My dad spoke often about an experience that perhaps illustrates the difference.  My dad went to the funeral of his Aunt Kay Jeffs in Colorado City in 1989.  He entered the FLDS chapel and took a seat near a man and all of his wives.  This man with all of his brides took up all of one pew.  But it was this man's face that drew my dad's attention.  The man sat surrounded by his wives, but he wore a hard countenance, his mouth drawn into a taut line as if daring his wives to step out of line.  He used his sheer will to extract obedience and meekness out of his wives.  This man exuded a billigerence, and my dad knew immediately that he could never be like him.  

For many years, my dad was lucky to have bishops and stake presidents who overlooked his fundamentalist leanings until he was "blessed with one who didn't", as my dad said.  The bishop in our ward had a father who came back from the South Pacific where he was the mission president.  This man was appalled to find quasi-fundamentalists in his ward.  He called in a favor, and soon my dad, and the whole family, were excommunicated, on the order of Salt Lake.  Even my thirteen-year old sister.  In September, 1990, I was called into the bishop's office where he asked me two questions: "Do you believe that plural marriage should be lived today?" ("Yes.") and "Do you sustain Ezra Taft Benson as Prophet, Seer, and Revelator, and the only man on the earth to hold the keys?" ("No.") That was it; that was the extent of my interview.  I went off to college, and I received the invitation to my priesthood court and the results of my trial after the fact, on the same day.  (I was, however, encouraged to keep paying tithing through someone else.)

The scene in Under the Banner where Detective Pyre and his family go to church and have fellow ward members look at them askance and turn their faces away was very poignant to me.  I have experienced that very thing.  Shortly after our excommunication, it was announced over the pulpit to have no more association with us.  How do I know?  I wasn't there, but a dear friend of mine who was investigating the church was there the day of the announcement, and she told me about it.  She told me that they could not make her end her friendship with me.  To this day, I am occasionally treated like a pariah.  People who know me will pretend they don't know me, walk the other way.  Why?  Because I am the devil.  I am worse than an apostate.  I am a reminder of that part of the Mormon past that they are desperate to forget.  (I have to add a caveat - the branch in our little Arizona town treats us very well.  Here is an interview I did with Salt Lake Tribune that illustrates this fact.)  I can count one one hand the number of LDS friends who have come up to me and asked me why I got excommunicated.  I cherish my true LDS friends very deeply.

So, my dad, Ted Jessop, was cut off from the church he loved and worked his whole life to build up.  He spent the last fourteen years of his life as a Mormon fundamentalist, putting in as much effort into that as he did in the church.  He was a mover and a shaker, a bull in a china shop.  He questioned the status quo of the AUB, shaking them to their core before being thrown out of there as well.  He died on June 29, 2002.  He was a man of principle.

And he was no Dan Lafferty...

One final testimony about my dad.  He loved his food, especially Mexican food.  At his funeral, we rented a school auditorium, and many people from the community and his work life attended.  A man we knew volunteered to cook the meal for the family, not especially a religious man.  While he was cooking, stirring a big pot of carne asada, he approached us, very abashed.

"I don't know how to say this," he said.  "But while I was stirring the meat, I felt the presence of your dad standing right next to me.  And he was saying, 'Mmmmm'."

Bringing Hope To Short Creek: Southwest Recovery Mission's Labor of Love

Colorado City, Arizona

In the 1930s, an isolated piece of real estate came into the possession of the Priesthood Group, a loosely organized body of renegade hold-outs of polygamy, recently cut off from the LDS Church.  It seemed perfect, isolated, remote, only accessible (then) by dirt road, nestled against the Vermillion Cliffs on the Arizona Strip, hugging the Utah-Arizona border, originally called Short Creek.  It seemed the perfect place to practice their religion, which included plural marriage and a variation of a Mormon communal system of United Order that they later branded the United Effort Plan (UEP).

There were built-in issues from the beginning.  I spoke to a man who lived there in the early days, in the 1940s, and he told me, tongue-in-cheek, that the only "freedom" he had while living there was to decide whether or not to get his wife pregnant.  (That even changed with Warren Jeff's prison edict that no man could have sexual relations with his wife without his express permission.)  This same man told me of a story - he went with the other men to fell lumber on the Kaibab, and, while he was gone, the "Priesthood" came into his house, and, while his helpless wife looked on, they emptied his pantry of all food to redistribute to other members, leaving him only two jars of peaches.

Since those days, the community has grown, being incorporated into two cities - Colorado City on the Arizona side, and Hildale in Utah.  And over the years, so has the abuse of ecclesiastical leadership increased - arranged and forced marriages, underage unions, and a plethora of other abuses,  I have a theory about this - if a community and its lifestyle becomes, in and of itself, illegal and is forced into isolation, it becomes a fertile breeding ground for tyranny and oppression for the people under a despotic leader.  This is what happened to the FLDS community under megalomaniac Warren Jeffs, who maintains his control from prison.

In recent months, there have been arrests and warrants issued for many of the leaders involved in a Food Stamp (SNAP) fraud case.  As a former Arizona welfare caseworker myself, I was aware of welfare and benefit fraud as a prevalent problem in this community.  In essence, what the leadership was doing was collecting EBT cards from the people in the community and using it to redistribute food to other people.  But the way this worked was that the elite were eating lobster for dinner, and those maligned were lucky if they got anything.  So basically, the "Priesthood" was controlling all the food as a way to control the people.  If your behavior was acceptable, you were awarded food.  If it was not, you were denied food and literally starved, along with your wives and your children.  I can think of nothing more insidious than the deliberate starving of children!

Luckily, there have been people and organizations that have worked against the odds.  From the Safety Net initiative, an interstate government cooperative organization whose primary focus in the FLDS in this region to some people organizing a music festival, many have felt called or driven to help the less fortunate in the Short Creek area.

Southwest Recovery Mission Ministries is one such organization.  They are a non-profit whose mission is to bring food to the deprived children and families of Colorado City and Hildale.  They accept food donations from various donors and churches in primarily Utah and Nevada and make sure that these donations get to families in need among the FLDS, those who have fallen victim to the evil machinations of the leadership.  They make sure that these families have enough food to provide their children.  With the donations they receive, they are also provide clothing for those in need.  The leadership has also made sure that utilities are so expensive that they provide a burden on the people, and Southwest Recover Mission makes sure that people do not have their water and electricity because they cannot pay exorbitant bills.

I recently spoke to Alan Curtis, one of the organizers and volunteers at Southwest Recovery Mission.  He talks about driving into Colorado City for the first time and remembers having seen it in a dream.  It was almost as if he was called to help these people.  Soon, he met Phil Jessop, a local who had been cut off from the FLDS twenty years earlier and had been working to bring about positive change for years.  Al tells me the early days were adventurous, complete with threats from the Goon Squad, or local enforcers.  Many of the families that accepted help were often punished by the leadership.  But the ministry has brought positive influence, and the work that they are doing is mostly accepted by the community.

Al is refreshingly self-effacing about his role in the mission and stated that he did not want to draw attention to the organizers but to the mission itself, and he gives credit for their success to the women of the former FLDS who used their networks to spread the word and encouraged many families who were suffering to come forward and receive help.  He says that many of the families who have been on the receiving end of assistance, once they get on their feet, turn around and help other families.

The main opposition that the ministry faces is getting funding.  Often, they resort to paying for food shipments out of their own pockets.  Whereas many local churches have donated funds and food, Al says that the greatest challenge is getting other Christian churches to want to help a people with such social stigma as polygamy placed on them.

I would strongly encourage you to donate to this cause.  You can make a donation on their website or on their Facebook page.

For those among the FLDS, emergency food boxes are provided usually on Thursdays at"

2012 Bubbling Well Lane

Apple Valley, Utah 84737

Contact:  Donna McGinnis

(224) 217-2405

This is a good organization, and they are bringing hope and sustenance to a people who have long needed it.  Please consider donating.  It's a worthy cause, whether you are for polygamy, or against it.

The Land of Bountiful, Part 2

Bonner's Ferry, Idaho

Continuing on my story of traveling to Bountiful, British Columbia to meet the leader of the Mormon fundamentalist community there, the charismatic Winston Blackmore:

At midnight, the alarm clock in the room where we were staying went off.  I got up and shut it off.  I used my phone as a flashlight to shut it down.  I noticed that I had received an email from a friend from Casa Grande.  One of my good friends from my younger years had suddenly died. 

This was a shock.  I lay in bed for a while, thinking about her, unable to believe that she was gone.  I finally went to sleep, and then I woke up early.

I took a shower, and, when I got out, there was a text from Nate, inviting us over for breakfast.  We got ready and then packed up the car.  It was a chilly, frosty morning.

We drove to Nathan’s house.  He has such a beautiful view from his place that I took a couple of pictures.  (Seen above.)

We went in for breakfast.  I visited with the wives for a while.  I really like them.  

After breakfast, I hopped into the truck with Nate and his son, Vaughn, and my father-in-law followed us.  We drove to the Canadian border, which was just a few miles away.  We got to the checkpoint, and all of the border guards know who the people in Bountiful are.  He asked Nate what his business was in Canada, and Nate answered, “We’re going to see Winston.”

When they learned that I was visiting from Arizona, they started grilling us with questions.  They asked when we were leaving, and I said that I wasn’t sure.  Either Sunday or Monday.  Nate later told me that this was why they detained us for so long, that I needed to be up front with them and give direct answers.  They directed us to pull over, and we waited for about fifteen minutes until they let us go on in into Canada.

My first time in Canada!

We drove to Bountiful, which is just a few miles from the border.  It is beautiful, nestled in a narrow valley up against the tall mountains.  Nate drove us on a brief tour of Bountiful.  He showed us the school, which is broken down into several smaller buildings to avoid permit problems.  He showed us their chapel, where Vaughn is the sound technician.  The community is shared with the Warrenites, or people belonging to the FLDS.  It is not like Centennial Park, or even like out at the my community, where there is a physical separation between the factions.  They all live in the same neighborhood.  You can tell the home of the Warrenites, because they have high fences and trashy yards.  We would drive past Warrenites, and Nate would mutter about whether or not they would say hi.  He said that he has family in Colorado City, like his mother.  They can’t even visit with him, because it will get them in trouble with the priesthood leadership.

I have to admit – there was a lot of tension and an oppressive feeling in the community.

We stopped briefly to see my friend.  He came out of his house, barefoot, to see us.  We saw the rest of the family.  We went in, and he took my father-in-law aside for a little but to speak in private.  Winston contacted Nate and told him to bring us down for lunch.  My friend was invited, too, but he didn’t show up.

We went to Winston’s house, which was enormous, like an apartment complex.  He had a separate building with an enormous kitchen and dining room.  He has wives that work full time in there.  It is like an industrial kitchen, and they make 17 loaves of bread a day.

We sat with Winston, and we ate turkey sandwiches with avocado on homemade bread, raw milk, and peaches.  It was good. 

Earlier, Nate had invited me to ride with him and Winston to Cranbrook, a nearby community, on business.  It would give me a chance to see a bit more of British Columbia.  I was looking forward to it.  During lunch, Winston invited us out to ride with him to Cranbrook, so that we could talk more.

                

My father-in-law declined, saying that we were here for the benefit of our friends.  I looked at him in disbelief.  We have a chance to have a discussion with this dynamic character, and he declines?  When he saw my look, he decided to accept.  But he said that he would go, and my brother-in-law and I would stay and visit the our friends.  This upset me, too.  So the “adults” go and talk, and the “kids” stay at home.  I know this is the way my father-in-law sees things.  But I really felt like I should have been in on any discussions with Winston.  I was relegated to the status of unimportant, and Winston didn’t take me seriously after that.  I felt marginalized.  This made me a bit angry. 

As we got up from the table, Nate told me, “I guess you got bumped.”

They left, and my brother-in-law and I hopped in with Vaughn.  He drove us around the community, including taking us to see the rodeo grounds.  I got more information from Vaughn than I did anyone else.

I asked him if they live United Order.  They don’t.  All of the land is owned UEP Trust.  If the state of Utah hadn’t appointed a fiduciary to oversee the trust, they would have been in trouble.  Warren Jeffs could have told them to leave, and then they would have been without homes.  They do several work projects together, help each other build homes.  But one of the downsides is that they can only do work projects until they run out of money.  Then they have to wait to get money, and it seems that once funds come in that they move onto other projects, leaving previous endeavors unfinished.  The homes of Winston’s followers are clean, whereas the FLDS homes are junky and littered with trash.  They don’t appreciate their stewardship.

I asked him if they do endowments.  He said that they don’t.  They really don’t know much about that and have enough on their plate trying to live their lives as simply as they can.  Maybe someday they will receive those things.

Something unusual is going on in the community.  There are other visitors in the community this weekend from Salt Lake.  They are members of the Ivan Nielsen/ Frank Naylor group, a breakoff from Centennial Park.  One of Winston’s daughters was marrying someone from that group.  It was the first intergroup marriage.  The only stipulation was that Winston was the one to perform the marriage.

I told Vaughn, “One of the issues facing our young people is that there is no one for them to marry.  They are all related, so in order to get married they are going to have to go outside to find someone.”

“Exactly,” answered Vaughn.  “Winston may have many children, but there is no one here for them to marry.  The way I see things, if you believe in Christ, and we believe in Christ, there is no reason that our communities can’t come together.”

This really struck me.  I understood why we were there.  Winston is a very confident man who does not perceive himself as needing anything.  But there is an opportunity before him, if he will accept it.  Given his prejudices, he will probably not accept it, but it is a chance before him nonetheless.  What do we have to offer?  The ordinances.  The fullness of the priesthood.  What does Winston have?  Sons and daughters for our children.  I felt the Spirit strongly that this was the case.  I was very glad at this point that I stayed and had this conversation with Vaughn.  I was amazed to see that the Lord had brought us here. 

Winston Blackmore

I saw signs on some of the houses about water contamination, so I requested that we go into town to get some bottled water.  Vaughn drove us to Creston, and we went to a grocery store and bought a flat of water.  My brother-in-law had a silly grin on his face the whole time and made it a point to inform the cashier that this was our first time in Canada.

We went back to my friend’s house and visited with his family.  They served us some homemade kambucha. It was my first time trying it, and it was pretty nasty.

We went out to the living room, and then my father-in-law and Nate showed up.  My father-in-law later told me that it was a good visit.  He said that Winston had asked to know a bit about his perception of Joseph Musser.  He told my father-in-law that he appreciated hearing his side of things.  Winston told him that he refused to learn anything from someone who was less intelligent than him.  This made an impression on my father-in-law, because he kept mentioning this. 

Our friends served us a dinner of barley cooked like Boston baked beans with bread.  It was simple, but good.  We said goodbye to Nate and Vaughn, and our friends invited us to stay for their weekly meeting.  The kids all did parts, and it was impressive how they not only recited, but had to explain how they understood everything.

Our friend guided us over to a trailer owned by a man who was out of town.  It was simple on the outside, but very nice on the inside.  There were many huge ants crawling everywhere, though.  I was assigned a bed.  We visited for a while, and then I went to bed after plugging in all of my electronic devices.  I was exhausted.

This story will continue in one more installment.

The Land of Bountiful, Part 1

Bountiful, BC

In the news recently, Winston Blackmore, leader of the Mormon fundamentalist community in Bountiful, British Columbia, Canada was taken to court yet again.  The LDS Church had lapsed in their right to have the name "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" in Canada.  So Winston snatched it up.  He purchased the legal rights to the name, and, of course, the LDS Church took him to court.  They won the right to the name and, furthermore, blocked him from using the name, along with the generic term "Mormon", which is ridiculous.  There are a multitude of Restoration churches and organizations that use that name and who use the Book of Mormon.  How is it that the Utah-based church is the only entity that has a right to that name?

Anyway, I decided to write about my visit to Bountiful in March of last year.

I have a friend who lives in Winston Blackmore's community, and he invited us out.  Our visit would be part of a larger journey.  We were planning on visiting a few families in Idado, detouring up to British Canada, and then finish out by seeing my friend, Nathan Collier, in Montana, whose family was featured last week on "Sister Wives".  The visit in Montana fell through, but we were able to go to Canada - my first visit ever in that fair country.

In the afternoon, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and I left Boise and headed towards Oregon.  Our first mishap occurred when we hit the first gas station.  My father-in-law could not find his credit card.  We backtracked and looked everywhere.  After about an hour of looking, he found it in the shoe he was wearing.  The night before, for safe keeping, he had slid it in his shoe for safe-keeping and then forgot it was there.

We crossed into Oregon - also my first time in that state and cut across to Kennisaw.  It was dusk as we pulled into that city, and the lights extended into the horizon.  I texted my friend in Canada.  He said that he had spoken to Winston.  He had business in Spokane the next morning and would meet us there.  It was dark when we pulled into Spokane.  We stopped by Denny's for a late night dinner, and then checked into a hotel.

For those who know that I have health problems, I woke up with swollen, throbbing legs - all caused by riding into a cramped Prius.  For a moment, I wondered if coming on this trip was a good idea.

At 6:00 in the morning, I got a call from Winston.  His business was detouring him to Missoula, Montana.  He was sending someone else from the community, and then he would meet us later up in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, right on the Canadian border.

After breakfast, we met Winston's representative in the hotel parking lot - a kind, soft-spoken bespectacled man named Shem.  His accent spoke of southern Utah, and, sure enough, he was originally from Colorado City.  He had business in Spokane, so we piled into his very nice diesel pickup and rode around while he stopped at different shops.  Shem, along with many of the men in the community, worked for a commercial construction business based out of Bonner's Ferry.

Once his business was done, we headed up towards Bonner's Ferry.  My father-in-law followed us in the Prius, and I sat in cab with Shem.  As we got onto the highway, I looked at him and said, "Perhaps you are wondering what we are doing here, what our intentions are.  Honestly, I don't know.  We were invited to come and meet Winston, and well, here we are."

I made this statement, because I could sense the question, the wariness of having a stranger come out.  He didn't say much about my comment.  We spent some time playing the game that most polygs do when they meet each other - who knows who.  As a child, going to visit relatives in Colorado City with my dad, I met many of the old-timers is that community.

Then Shem gave me some background of their community.  For the two hour drive, we have a good discussion.  One of the things that I learned – things were NOT as we were told in Colorado City.  Many of the things that he told me reminded me of things that other ex-FLDS had told me.  Things were really good under “Uncle” LeRoy Johnson.  He was a kind man and well-loved.  There were not so many arranged marriages back then.  The women had a choice where they wanted to go, and, like Centennial Park, they discouraged men from trying to seek wives.

I asked Shem if they now practice placement in marriages, and he skirted the issue, not really answering me.

When Rulon Jeffs came into power, he became sick and had a stroke.  Warren Jeffs came into power, because he isolated his father and began speaking for him.  When Rulon died, Warren essentially seized power and began taking wives away from men and cutting off men.  At this point, many of the people in Colorado City decided to cut themselves off from Warren, including Winston. 

Shem mentioned that they remembered something that they had been taught, that Joseph Musser had had a stroke and that he wasn't held accountable for the things that he did (which, of course, I don’t agree with, because the thing that he did was to set apart Rulon Allred.)

He told me that half of the community lives in Bonner’s Ferry, those who are American citizens, and that half of them live in Bountiful.  Many have wives, children, and/ or jobs on both sides of the border and that many people from the FLDS – or “Warrenites” as they call them – still live in the community. 

Shem is a nice guy, but I could tell that he was feeling us out.  He reiterated that they were a simple people and believed in the teachings of Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith.  There was a death in the family down in Colorado City, so Shem was actually going to leave with his family as soon as he dropped us off.  He was going to take us to their offices to meet up with Nate, an employee that works as a foreman for their company.  He made several phone calls while he drove, making arrangements to leave with his family.

We pulled into their shop in Bonner’s Ferry.  It was a large warehouse.  We were introduced to Nate.  Right away, you could tell that he was kin.  His mother is a Jessop, and you can tell.  He was a nice man.  They sat us down in the lobby to wait.  We sat there while Shem arranged to leave, and Nate wrapped up his work.  

They mentioned to us that we would be staying in the apartment that they have on the top story of the office.  I became concerned.  My friend from Canada was texting me, asking me where we were.  I told him that I felt like we were being detained at the office until they decided whether we were good or not, that we were being screened.  My friend from Canada answered, “You probably are.”

I told Nate that we kind of needed to know what the plans were, because our friend was waiting for us.  He said that we were waiting for Winston to get back from Missoula, and then we would meet up with him and decide what we were doing.  He asked if we were hungry, so he invited us out to lunch.

I hopped in with Nate, and we went into Bonner’s Ferry to a local deli.  We met Nathan’s wife who was running the sandwich shop.  She served us sandwich wraps and smoothies.  It was good.  I was so hungry.  She seemed really nice.  She is a Barlow.

While we sat and visited with Nate, we got the same story that we got from Shem, and so I could kind of see their rhetoric.  Their split from Warren.  The justification about Joseph Musser being senile after his stroke and not being accountable, hence Rulon Jeffs not being accountable for the things that Warren did in his name.  The gospel is a simple thing; we should get back to the basics and just teach what Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith taught.  My father-in-law asked him how Warren could get away with bypassing the council and taking power the way he did.  He was intelligent and manipulative.  He was known to be a pervert from the early days.

From there, we went to Nate’s house.  He apologized profusely about his humble house.  It was a beautiful, two-story log cabin.  In the entrance, there was a huge room with an enormous, hand-carved wooden table in that was curved.  We went into the kitchen, and I met Nate’s other wife, also a Barlow.  I really liked her.  They had a large kitchen equipped to feed a large family.  We also met Nate’s sons.  Eventually more people showed up and visited with us.  There were stories and laughter and discussions.  They served us dinner.  Later in the evening, my friends from Canada showed up.  I almost didn’t recognize them; it had been a while since I had seen them.

Winston Blackmore

Then, after dark, Winston showed up with a wife and a daughter.  Winston is a short, stocky man with longish white hair and glasses.  He was wearing a white shirt and a leather vest, and didn’t look at all like someone who was once FLDS.  He had a charisma about him, and the whole room got quiet when he walked in, in deference to him.  He sat down and talked to us while he ate dinner.

He told us that his father had been set apart as bishop and presiding elder in Canada by Charles Zitting.  He had been set apart in that position by his father.  He recounted the story about they had split off from Warren Jeffs.  He used a lot of the same rhetoric that Shem and Nate had used, about Joseph Musser’s senility.  He talked about, because they had gone through what they had gone through with Warren that they no longer believed in the One Man Doctrine.  As a result, they had adopted a streamlined version of the gospel.  They focused on the teachings of Joseph Smith.  They focused on what Jesus taught.  As far as what other men taught, like Brigham Young, well, they honor what Brigham did and what he taught, but they acknowledge that he was just a man, prone to mistakes. 

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what Lorin Woolley taught,” he said.  “Don’t get me wrong.  I still believe in the 8-Hour Meeting.  I just don’t care about anything he said.  I want to know what the Savior said.”

Although I think they are throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water, I could respect what he said, and I could understand the circumstances that brought them to this.  It was refreshing to hear these sentiments coming from someone from the FLDS.  I told Winston as much when I shook his hand at the end of the meeting.  He brushed aside my comments, though.  I don’t believe he thought I was sincere.  I don’t know what kind of people he is used to dealing with.

We wrapped up the visit, and Nate gave us the key to the office.  We drove back to the office and went up into the apartment.  It was really nice, like a timeshare.  There were two bedrooms, both of them very nice.  My brother-in-law and I took one, and my father-in-law took the other.  The pantry was well-stocked.  I took a chance to use the washer and dryer and did my laundry.  Then I went to bed, my legs quite swollen.  What a day.

I will finish the rest of this story tomorrow...

New Hate Groups, & Other Polygamy News

So a few things going on the world of polygamy:

1)  Last week, the Browns put forth a lawsuit to the Utah Courts questioning whether or not Utah's bigamy laws are constitutional.  Go, Browns!  The Jessops got your back!

2)  A new Hate Group has sprouted up in Utah called "Sound Choices Coalition".  It is created by former plural wives who "escaped polygamy".  I find it ironic that most of these groups are started by women who once lived polygamy - one of them for 50 years.  The reason I call them a "hate group" - they are against decriminalization, and they want to keep it illegal.  In other words, they don't want talks; they don't want negotiations.  They just want to see polygamist men in jail.  On their website, they say things like:

“No one wants to break up happy families or throw good fathers in prison,” says Christine Marie Katas, founder of Voices for Dignity, who is a member of the Sound Choices Coalition. Katas, who wrote the symbolic petition, said, “But there has to be a better, more creative legal solution because the evidence clearly shows that significantly more harm comes to polygamous women and children than monogamous women and children.”

"These harms include higher rates of domestic violence and abuse, including sexual abuse, higher rates of marital dissatisfaction, higher rates anxiety and depression, higher rates of psychiatric hospitalization, higher levels of somatization, phobia and other psychological problems. Polygamous women have more children, are more likely to die in childbirth and live shorter lives than their monogamous counterparts. Children in polygamous families face higher infant mortality, and physical and mental disabilities from incestuaous marriages. Many children suffer more emotional, behavioral and physical problems, have lower educational achievement, and are at a higher risk of psychological and physical abuse than children in monogamous families."

So where is this so called "evidence"?  Where is the research that supports this?  Is it not bigotry to make these kind of negative statements about a particular group without having something substantial to present, to back it up?  Otherwise, it is just a stereotype.  Nothing more.

Hence, this group is...  a hate group.

3)  Flora Jessop has put down her meth pipe long enough to come in front of the cameras to celebrate her sister's escape from the FLDS.  Now, admittedly, I don't know what her sister went through.  And I am certainly not a fan of FLDS's brand of Mormonism.  But my question is:

Why are people listening to Flora Jessop?  Given the constant lies and unreliable information that she has fed the media, given the fact that she has been caught in these lies, why do they use her as a "reliable source?"  Because the media is looking for anything lurid and sensational, and Flora Jessop is always willing to provide that.

Yes, bigotry is alive and well in America.  And it is "okay" to demonize and discriminate against polygamists as a whole group.