“It’s Not About the Sex” My Ass (7 page)

I like threesomes with two women, not because I’m a
cynical sexual predator. Oh no! But because I’m a romantic. I’m looking for
“The One.” And I’ll find her more quickly if I audition two at a time.

—Russell Brand

Poor God. No sooner does he reveal a new commandment than
people start pestering him with silly technical questions.

In their journals, early Mormon polygamists indicated that
they spent one night with one wife, the next night with the next, and so forth.
But in these modern, more liberal times, a question arose that would not have
crossed the minds of early Mormons. Or, if it did, they possessed a sufficient
sense of decorum not to bring it up. Or at least not to write about it in their
journals.

But that was then. Now that God had ordered us to reinstate
polygamy, a forward-thinking member of our clan got it into his head—I’ll
leave it to you to decide which head—that, instead of spending each night
with one wife at a time, it would be a model of efficiency to have threesomes,
foursomes, and on up to ad infinitum-somes.

The idea caught on with some cult members and repulsed
others. It became a matter of debate. Those who found the idea of threesomes
compellingly
kinky were certain that God
did, too. Those who found the idea of threesomes
inappropriately
kinky were certain that God did, too. Those who
liked the idea but lacked the wherewithal to say so, or did say so but couldn’t
get their spouse to go along with it, didn’t care what God thought. They just
envied—and therefore resented—those who openly supported it.

It was time to ask God if he happened to have an opinion on
the matter. One can only assume that God let forth a weary sigh. Here were his
chosen, asking not about something significant, like how many angels could
dance on the head of a pin or whether Adam had a belly button, but rather about
something as trifling as how many people, per bed, were allowed to party at a
time.

The group asked, so God answered. I am at a loss to explain
how it worked out this way, but somehow God managed to reveal to everyone in
the Threesomes Are Disgusting Camp that threesomes were disgusting, and at the
same time to everyone in the Threesomes Are Great Camp that threesomes were
great. A bizarre stunt for a deity the scriptures describe as “the same God
yesterday, today, and forever.”

Since the groups were about equal in number, it fell to
Harmston, acknowledged as having the biggest in with God, to break the tie. It
seemed that nearly every time Harmston took a debate to God, God sided with
Harmston, and this debate proved to be no exception. Harmston was of the
Threesomes Are Disgusting Camp, and so, it turned out, was God. Now it was
official. A man could have two wives at a time, but he couldn’t
have
two wives at a time.

All talk of threesomes ceased. Everyone in the Threesomes
Are Great Camp meekly surrendered their position and humbly accepted the word
of the Lord. It goes to show the kind of unity and love that having a prophet
in one’s midst can engender.

Just kidding. Literally and metaphorically dissatisfied,
everyone in the Threesomes Are Great Camp split from the cult so they could go
wild with threesomes guilt-free.

Polygamist cults attract the benignly deluded like Jeff and
me. But they also attract child molesters and other predators the way expensive
carpet attracts the butter-and-jam side of falling toast.

Telling the difference isn’t easy. Predators excel at
winning trust and looking like the last person you should fear. Those who
joined our ranks knew better than to stand up in church on their first day and
say, “Bring on the flails, enemas, and sheep.” Rather, they regaled us with
their conversion stories. They all spoke of strong inner stirrings. Some even
shared tales of angelic visitations. Naively taking them all at face value, we
made ourselves their easy, unwitting prey.

Take Laura Brokaw, for instance.

Laura was one of Harmston’s many wives. She was a talented
seamstress, and we soon became sewing buddies. I helped paint and decorate her
sewing room. I was thrilled when the TLC appointed her to teach my little son’s
class in the elementary school. (We believed public schools were
evil—they didn’t teach religion—so we opened our own school.)

But over time, I grew wary of her.

Perhaps my suspicions started with the socks. Each morning,
Laura prayed for a revelation as to which pair of socks to put on. That was
weird enough. Weirder still, each morning God obliged her with an answer. You’d
think at least once he’d have said, “For heaven’s sake, I’m busy. Pick out your
own damn socks.” Being religiously deluded was all well and good, but even I
knew that praying over your socks took things to the extreme.

No, that wasn’t it. There was something else about her.
Something intangible, something unsettlingly weird. Which, when you think about
it, is saying a lot. At that time in my life, I registered high on the weirdo
meter myself. So did my friends. What was it about Laura that seemed to push
the needle way up into the red?

Try as I might, I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong.
But I knew there was
something
. Not
wanting to take chances, I pulled my little son out of her class.

It was not until a few years later that I learned about her
horrifying past. She had belonged to an Ogden, Utah, cult led by infamous polygamist
and convicted child molester Arvin Shreeve. Laura was part of his equally
infamous “Sisters program.” The Sisters molested underage girls—
in the name of God
—supposedly to
prepare them for their future as wives in polygamy. When a brave victim escaped
and reported them to the authorities, a police raid yielded 12 arrests,
including Laura’s.

In November 1992, Shreeve pleaded guilty to two charges of
first-degree felony child sodomy and two charges of second-degree felony child
sexual abuse. Four months later, Laura pleaded no contest to child sexual
abuse. Shreeve was sentenced to serve 20 years to life in Utah State Prison,
where, 17 years later, he died of natural causes. As for Laura, she was placed
on a registered sex offender list, fined $1,200, sentenced to 15 years in
prison—and then, amazingly, inexplicably, a judge suspended her sentence.
Laura was out on probation after a scant 120 days in jail. She headed to Manti
and promptly became a Harmston wife.

And then became a schoolteacher.
My little son’s schoolteacher.

I wanted to vomit.

Upon learning that Laura was a registered sex offender, I
checked up on a few other members of the TLC who had creeped me out. I learned
that another woman, who arrived in Manti at about the same time as Laura, was
also one of The Sisters. Charged with molesting a 13-year-old girl, she had
pleaded no contest to a second-degree felony charge of forcible sexual abuse.
After serving 60 days in jail, she was placed on probation, ordered into
counseling, fined $740, and ordered to pay restitution—how you “pay
restitution” for sexual abuse is a mystery to me—and moved to Manti.

There were other people in the TLC whom all of us knew to
avoid and to make sure our children never went near. There was the man who
lived at the local campground and spied on boys as they showered. There were
men who found ways to “accidentally” rub themselves against women. I
experienced that myself when I was hanging a painting in one of our meeting
places and a man stepped up from behind to “steady” me.

Heartbreaking stories emerged from quite a few of the cult’s
blended families. Imagine multiple women moving to town with children of their
own, marrying one man, and bringing their children together into his home. It
doesn’t take much imagination to see the potential for abuse. There were cases
of adults abusing children, children abusing one another, and children
perpetrating abuse they learned at home on children outside the home.

Only rarely was
anything done.
Even when Laura’s past became known, no one in Manti thought
to object when she would share a bed with an about-to-be-married teenage girl.
No one dealt directly with the other known perverts either. Rumor, a woefully
weak method for warning potential victims, was by and large the only “system”
in place in the TLC.

It didn’t help that Harmston and the apostles were easily
swayed by a good show of repentance. If predators are good at appearing
harmless before they’re caught, they are masters at appearing remorseful after.
Crocodile tears and emphatic promises to behave were all it took to get TLC
leaders to forgive and—worse—forget.

Let’s be honest. Not just polygamist cults are guilty of
turning a blind eye. It is a much broader problem. The injunction of Jesus to
“judge not that ye be not judged” and to forgive those who sin against you
“until seventy times seven” needs limits. Families, neighborhoods, and
religious communities need to stop thinking that being a good Christian means
allowing a repentant wolf back into the henhouse. What would Jesus do? I don’t
care. What
we
should do is ensure
that no predator ever gets a chance to claim another victim.

A reaction from a former TLC member to an early version of
this manuscript illustrates the problem. He accused me of being “a little hard
on Laura.” We should forgive her, he said, for the Ogden incident happened long
ago, and she had repented. “Besides,” he added, “she said that the girl who
went to the police lied.”

Too hard on Laura?
I decided I hadn’t been hard enough. You have just read the beefed-up version.

Following the Mormon Church’s lead, the TLC ordained all
“worthy” males age 12 and older to its priesthood. Yet the TLC parted company
with the Mormons on an important issue. After a ban of nearly a century and a
half, God decided in 1978—without explanation or apology for the prior
policy—that it was OK for the Mormon Church to ordain Negroes to the
priesthood.

Harmston’s God stuck with the original Mormon position.
Black skin was a curse brought upon oneself through personal unworthiness in a
pre-earth existence. Blacks were “the seed of Cain.” And a white person was
better off dead than mixing his or her seed with the seed of Cain.

The concept of dark skin as a divine curse and identifier of
people to avoid is found in Mormon scripture. The Pearl of Great Price says
that God “put a mark upon Cain,” that “the seed of Cain were black,” and that
those so marked “had not place” among the rest of Adam’s posterity. The Book of
Mormon says that God became so fed up with the disobedient ancestors of today’s
Native Americans that “… as they were white, and exceedingly fair and
delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did
cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.”

The Bible isn’t blameless, either. It wasn’t lost on the TLC
(or, for that matter, on the Southern States prior to the American Civil War)
that the Bible contains implicit endorsements of slavery and explicit
endorsements of genocide.

Notwithstanding, an African American man actually joined our
cult for a brief time. He did so despite the fact that he could hold no
priesthood, have no celestial marriage, and, therefore, take no plural wives.
For that matter, he could take no wife from among us at all, for there were no
black women in our ranks, and we believed that a white woman who mixed her seed
with his would curse her posterity, priesthood-wise, for eternity.

Why on earth he had anything to do with the likes of us is
beyond me.

He didn’t stick around for long.

Polygamists bristle at the suggestion that the second
marriage and those that follow aren’t real marriages. Who cares that the law
doesn’t recognize plural marriage? Polygamist women will tell you that they are
married. MARRIED. Don’t you dare call them single.

Polygamists also preach from the pulpit that government
welfare is an evil system that rewards slackers and robs the honest of the
incentive to work.

These high-minded principles do not prevent polygamists from
setting aside bristling and preaching long enough to score government welfare
dollars. On welfare applications, these women claim not to be married. They are
poor, unwed, unemployed mothers. Even those whose husbands support them in
style.

TLC members routinely gamed the welfare system. David and
Melanie, for instance, had 10 children together. When David’s second wife
arrived, she brought with her five children of her own, making a household
total of 15. During the next few years, the two wives gave birth to three
babies—apiece—which would have made 21 kids if David hadn’t added a
third wife in the meantime. She arrived with four children of her own, bringing
the total to 25. But apparently four of her own just wouldn’t do. Within three
years of marrying David, Wife Three conceived and delivered twice. Each time,
she had twins. Grand total: 29 kids. That is, as of the last time I checked.
(We have been gone for a few years.)

David, his wives, and children were fortunate. He provided
well for all three women and all 29 children. That little detail didn’t stop
Wives Two and Three from applying for—and receiving—welfare as
single, unemployed mothers. They were not unusual. In Manti, stories of “we
tricked the evil government out of money” were more than popular. They were
something of a status symbol.

No one needed to tell us that the Bible decries necromancy.
It’s there in black and white. So, after we looked up necromancy and found out
that it refers to communicating with the dead, we knew we were going to have to
call our séances something else. We settled on “Prayer Sessions.”