For a moment, imagine, your fifty Mormon siblings and you all living in a single house that would normally fit ten people. Then one day your little sister, who is fourteen, is directed to leave the house and marry some man who is four times her age. The women are typically objectified by the men and are only seen as sex objects or baby makers. This is what the women and young girls have to deal with when they are apart of the Fundamentalists Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). The women have almost no rights within the FLDS church and the men make all the decisions in their lives. Although these are a select few of the Mormon population, these people are like a cancer to the whole religion by bringing a poor reputation to the religion as a whole. This religious sect, a part of Mormonism, is continuously in the media because of their ridiculous actions, such as plural marriage. In the FLDS, there is a great amount of discrimination between people in the FLDS community and with people outside of it. These types of discrimination are detrimental to the advancement of the religion. Although the members of the sect say that their actions are in the name of salvation; they are destructive in nature because they discriminate against women, discriminate against people outside of the sect, and they preform actions illegal in the United States. 

Mormonism in comparison to the other major world religions is quite new. There are may aspects of Mormonism that are similar to Christianity, like the belief in God the Father and the hierarchical structure of the church. Mormonism is known as the “True American Religion” because it was invented by Joseph Smith Jr. around 1817. It started when Joseph had experienced visons where an angel, Moroni, directed him to the location of the plates which were inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of America. Smith was supposed to translate those tablets which made up the Book of Mormon, where he was supposed to established a reformed true American religion. After a few years they were forced out of New York; they moved to Kirtland, Ohio, just west of Cleveland. Joseph had a vision saying that the Garden of Eden was not in the Middle East; rather, it was in the United States frontier.

The Church of Latter-Day Saints moved to northern Missouri in Jackson County. The Mormon church was called Jesus Christ Church of Latter-Day Saints. While in Missouri, everything that the Mormons did seemed to aggravate the native Missourians. For example, they used Church money to buy large tracts of land and only engaged in commerce with other Mormons. Joseph preached the “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” mentality, and this made it so the Mormon followers believe that anyone who was not Mormon was out to end the religion. In the town of Independence, the non-Mormon civilians held town meetings where they passed anti-Mormon laws. Then in July of 1833 an armed mob of Missourians tarred and feathered two Mormons, and rounded up nine leaders, where they forced them to sign an oath to leave Jackson County by years’ end. The Mormons never left and there where numerous mobs that attacked the Mormon settlements and drove out twelve hundred Saints from their homes. 1838 was election year in Missouri, the Whig candidate, William Peniston, gave a speech bashing the Mormons calling them frauds and cheaters. Then in October of that year, Smith gave a speech essentially telling all the Mormon people to assemble and fight back against the adversity they’ve seen. After a series of raids by both Missourians and the latter-Day Saints, the Missouri Militia came and fired on the Mormon settlement. This was known as the Haun’s Mill Massacre, after this skirmish, Joseph realized that’s if he started a war with the Missourians, his church would cease to exist. Missouri demanded that the Mormons to give up Joseph and Hyrum, Josephs brother, for a trial of treason. He surrendered and went to prison, but they eventually escaped and went to Illinois. 

The Mormon Church then moved across the Mississippi River to the town of Nauvoo. Here they were able to buy land and build a city of more than fifteen thousand people. Joseph later ran for President of the United States because he believed it was the only way for the Latter-Day Saints to gain protection from the persecution they have received. Although Joseph had escaped jail and moved out of Missouri, he still had criminal charges against him and was under constant threat of arrest. Similarly, Joseph prophesized that the retired Missouri Governer, Lilburn Boggs, would die violently within a year. He was later shot in the head while reading in his study; this made headlines across the United States. Men and women where constantly converting to Mormonism because the American religious culture was constantly changing, especially during the second great awakening. Joseph, in the mid-1840’s, had received a series of one hundred thirty-three visions, where he wrote the Doctrine of Covenants, reflecting on the evolution of Mormonism. 

Polygamy became apart of Mormonism around 1842 because a booklet, The Peace Maker, was published in Nauvoo. This book had created an uproar in the Mormon community because many people did not agree with its teachings. Joseph had been keeping polygamy secret throughout the late 1830’s, but the booklet really brought it to the attention of the Saints. Emma, Josephs first wife, was enraged after discovering that Joseph had taken another woman as his wife. She eventually left him and fought against plural marriage. Joseph would convince the women that he wanted to have as his plural wives, that if they didn’t marry him they would be in eternal damnation. 

Eventually the moods of the people of Illinois changed after the Mormons had been living there for many years. Joseph ordered the destruction of a local newspaper, the Expositor, because it printed a message that went against Josephs new divine law of polygamy. Governor Ford said if Joseph and the others responsible for the destruction of the newspaper turned themselves in, he would personally guarantee their safety. But the mob discovered the location of Josephs imprisonment, and raided it, killing Joseph, Hyrum, one other. After Josephs death, the Prophet Brigham Young took control of the Mormon church. He ordered the Saints to move to present day Salt Lake City, where they would establish their Mormon community. 

Fundamentalist Mormonism was a divided sect that came to be in the 1890’s after Utah was trying to become a state. For Utah to become a state, the Mormons had to stop practicing plural marriage because its illegal in the constitution. They now currently reside in Colorado City, on the Utah- Arizona border, where they have relatively few interactions with outside authorities. Warren Jeffs, the current leader of the FLDS, father, Rulon Jeffs, ruled the FLDS for fifteen years until he died in 2002. He established such doctrines that outlawed activities like swimming and watching television. The FLDS is a predominantly racist and homophobic group and they have many laws prohibiting those such peoples within the religion. There are man intricate rules the fundamentalists have to follow because Rulon and Warren had visions of them.

The majority of discrimination is between the sexes, but there are other forms of discrimination that the FLDS is apart of. For example, they do not allow men and women of color to participate in fundamentalism, as with homosexuals. The Fundamentalists are notorious for being judgmental and more closed minded, meaning they only have relations with other Fundamentalists. The FLDS has had many allegations around them that have involved rape or some sort of sexual misconduct. This is important to remember because these reports are all against women. In addition, the FLDS likes to control every aspects of the followers lives. So, the Prophet, Warren Jeffs, makes ridiculous rules like, not being allowed to eat foods with corn starch or sugar. Similarly, the FLDS plural marriages aren’t technically legal, rather spiritual, children do not belong to their parents, and the wives can be taken at any moment. Finally, the FLDS has told the lay people to give up money and other things of monetary value; claiming it’s a Church right and that its for God. However, the FDLS does produce men and women who are obedient and well driven. They are typically genuine people because of the simple culture they grew up in. 

Women have to do with a majority of the problems within the FLDS. Women are not allowed to do many things in their daily lives, and are expected to only talk to their husbands or co-wives. The FLDS currently has a belief that women are solely there to produce children, clean the house, and cook meals for the family. The men are expected to take on multiple wives in order to produce as many children as they can to help build the faith. The women often marry men who are two or three times their ages, so there’s sixty-year-old men marrying fourteen-year-old girls. In addition, the marriages are often not signed legally; rather, they are spiritual relationships. Similarly, there are many cases of rape or incest in fundamentalists communities because there is a lot sexual repression. Jon Krakauer, an American writer and novelist, wrote the book Under the Banner of Heaven about these people, and it discusses the intricacies of these people. The book tells of the discrimination the women experience being a member of the FLDS. 

Rape and incest are terrible things that happen in society, yet they are common in the fundamentalist communities. Jon Krakauer tells the story of this fourteen-year-old girl named Debbie; she married Ray Blackmore, the community leader in Bountiful, when she was fourteen and he was fifty-seven. In the book Krakauer writes, “Debbie remembers older boys taking girls as young as four into a big white barn behind the school to play “cows and bulls” among the hay bales” (Krakauer 738). The game “cows and bulls” is a reference to sex, and these kids would take the little girls in them and rape them. The fundamentalist men are taught that women are only objects and that they can do what ever they want to them. In addition, Debbie was also assaulted by her husband’s brother, Andrew Blackmore, when she was just four years old, she says in Under the Banner of Heaven, “Andrew Blackmore jammed a stick up my vagina and left it there for a while, telling me to lie very still and not move” (Krakauer 746). As ridiculous as this sounds, one would think it is untrue, but Debbie is a real person and this did happen to her. These sorts of atrocities happen quite frequently in the fundamentalist settlements. This is in part in the current doctrines from the Jeffs family that call for women to obedient to men, and to not to reject them. Often times if women were to reject what their husband or a man said, they would be beaten or reported to the prophet. When they are reported to the prophet there is a risk of the women being forced out of the spiritual marriage or even excommunicated from the sect. 

Women are constantly discriminated against when their members of the FLDS. As previously stated, they are treated as sexual objects by men from the day they are born. It is hard to think that rape goes unnoticed within this sect. coordinately, since the marriages aren’t legal, meaning there’s no state given marriage license, Warren Jeffs, or the leader of the settlement, would take men’s wives away from them if they did something that the leader disagreed with. Joanna Walters, a writer known for dealing with issues of religion, wrote an article telling the story of Kenneth Thomas, a former FLDS member. He was “separated by orders of the Bishop” because he was seen unfit for his wife. This caused him to up and abandon the religion as a whole. This discriminates women because the bishop essentially took Kenneth’s wife away from him and gave her to another man, completely objectifying women. In addition, British Columbia Court Justice Paul Pearlman convicted Brandon Blackmore and Gail Blackmore of facilitating a thirteen-year-old girl’s marriage and sex that followed marriage. This is important because men in the sect believe that women, as young as thirteen, should be producing children, often with men much older than they are. 

Although there are not many men who act like savages towards women, there are still some that do. There are men within the sect that also disagree with what the prophet’s visions say. For example, Warren Jeff’s made a doctrine while he was in prison saying that men, were not allowed to have sex with their wives, only the true “seed bearers” could. The seed bearers are people who are specifically picked by the fundamentalist leaders to reproduce with the women. Megan Wagner, an experienced writer on FLDS issues, writes, “The polygamist Mormon sect led by an imprisoned child rapist banned its men from fathering children and instead forced them to watch as their wives were raped by “seed bearers” – church members with “worthy bloodlines”” (Wagner). She goes on to further say that the men are literally forced to hold their wives’ hands while another man has sex with his wife. The men, although have multiple wives, are put through this pain because Warren Jeffs believes this is the only way to further the religion in the world. This is discriminatory against the men because they are now no longer allowed to have sex with their wives. Although they were convicted, that girl was later married to Warren Jeffs, who was forty-eight at the time.

The seed bearer doctrine was even harsher than the previous doctrine that men are only allowed to have sex with his wife only when she’s ovulating. Sam Brower is a private investigator who wrote the book Prophet’s Prey, he was quoted in Wagner’s article saying, “The no-contact rule was so strict, a couple wasn’t even allowed to shake hands. Any form of contact, from sex to a hug, could be considered adultery under church rules” (Wagner). He was saying that the rules where so strict on the men because Warren Jeffs was put into jail. Him being put into jail still being able to control the fundamentalist sect has generated some extreme doctrines that make life difficult like the seed bearer law and not being able to eat potatoes.

Members of the FLDS have been under scrutiny because of unlawful use of money. For example, the water company in Colorado City refused to provide water to hookups to residents who didn’t belong to the church, but connected water to church projects without waiting for an application. Jamie Ross, a writer for the Huffington Post, wrote the article and she stated, “The Justice Department accuses the Marshal’s Office of failing to investigate crimes against non-FLDS members and refusing to arrest FLDS members who commit crimes against nonmembers” (Ross). She is saying that since the FLDS has members in the Marshals office, police department, and other public facilities, the FLDS controls what public functions happen. If a project isn’t for the Church, then it wont happen. This is detrimental to society because there should be separation from church and state, but when the church controls the courts, sentences for crimes against the church are lessened significantly. 

There are other cases of the FLDS being fraudulent with money, such as food stamp fraud. Seth Jeffs, the brother of Warren Jeffs who is in charge of the North Dakota compound, pleaded guilty to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) fraud. Ben Winslow, a writer for Fox News Salt Lake City, writes, “Accused of ordering FLDS followers to hand over SNAP benefits to church leaders to do with as they wished. Federal prosecutors have claimed the fraud scheme bilked taxpayers out of more than $12 million over the course of five years” (Winslow). They fundamentalist leaders forced their followers to give them their food stamps and money to the church in the claim its for the Lord. The money they stole from the government was only for the leader’s personal use. In addition, as seen in figure 1, one can see that the people in the FLDS live a simple life where they don’t have very much money. These people need their food stamp benefits to be able to have meals for their extremely large families. The FLDS discriminates against them by taking those benefits for the monetary use of the Church.

Similarly, in Colorado City, the children who attend school are cheated from a proper education because the school system is run by the FLDS. John Dougherty, a writer of religious issues, writes, “It is a place where education beyond the eighth grade is deemed unnecessary by many particularly for teenage girls who frequently are coerced into polygamous marriages to older men by the time they reach 16” (Dougherty). He says that many of the girls drop out to be forced into marriages and the men are said to not need the education. Dougherty writes about Deloy Bateman, a second ward teacher in Colorado City, who is dedicated to educate the men and women within the polygamist sect. The second warders and the fundamentalists loathe one another because of religious differences. Dougherty further states, “It is a place where education beyond the eighth grade is deemed unnecessary by many particularly for teenage girls who frequently are coerced into polygamous marriages to older men by the time they reach 16” (Dougherty). This is concerning because the fundamentalists are in charge of millions of government funding for the schools, yet they use the money to pay for their families. This discriminates against the few children who are not part of the sect that attend these schools for more than an eighth grade education. 

There are many aspects of religion that are great for society as a whole. For example, the FLDS families produce obedient members of society, and their family roots are stronger than most American families. They preach God first, family second; this mentality should be adopted by American families everywhere. The main issue with this is the people are obedient because they don’t know any better. They only attend school until the eighth grade, in their school they are not taught to think for themselves. Since the Church controls the school system, the Church controls the course curriculum the students learn. In addition, freedom of religion is a right guaranteed by the United States constitution and it is lawful for them to practice almost all aspects of their religion. The plural marriage aspect is the part that is wrong, morally and legally. It is illegal by all fifty states plus Guam and Puerto Rico (The Edmunds Act was repealed in 1893). Plural marriage is also morally wrong because it is essentially creating adultery with another woman, other than your wife. It is like cheating on your spouse because marriage is sacred between man and women. Finally, the common Mormon belief is that the purer an individual is, the closer to God they are. Therefore, it the FLDS is spot on with their teachings of a simple life because there are aspects like no television and no alcohol that help them live a simpler life. Similarly, in figure 1, each person appears to be happy living the simple lifestyle that they have grown up in. This is important to them and to their beliefs. 

Discrimination is always prevalent within the FLDS because of the hierarchical leaders. When examining the information, one can see that most of the discrimination derives from the men trying to seek salvation, but in reality it appears its only for self gain. Warren Jeffs is in prison for child rape, where the women he is married to where only so he could have as many wives as possible. Most of the plural marriages are for sexual relationships, not the sacred coming together of two people. There are other allegations, such as Seth Jeffs case, where the leaders told the followers to give up the food stamp benefits in the name of the church. These were primarily for the monetary gain of the FLDS. These problems must be stopped because there are thousands of people who are being oppressed by one religion. Although people have the right to follow whatever religion they choose in the United States, we are also a nation of laws and morals, and it is unjust for plural marriage to exist and for the FLDS to get away with the numerous laws they have broken. Society today needs to understand the issues that are happening in the country. This issue can easily be solved by introducing the proper law enforcement in the area, where it can not be corrupted. As the followers continue to abandon the religion, the leaders of the FLDS will eventually become willing to seek the help they need to thrive. 
