<![CDATA[An assistant dean had to remove his website about Mormon polygamy from the Brigham Young University server, but he relocated it quickly. So much for a university keeping true to its name by exploring the broadest possible range of topics using critical thinking and intellectual fervor.
In the 1870s, Emmeline Wells, suffragist and activist, was able to publish her own magazine with other like-minded people in Utah, and discuss subjects like polygamy. A wife in a plural marriage, Wells believed that the institution allowed the wives more time to explore their own interests, without being tied to a single household and children if that wasn’t her inclination. It made the man less a center of the women’s lives. The movement against polygamy in the U.S. became so strong that the some of the first female voters in this country were deprived of that right in an effort to force the eradication of plural marriage in Utah.
In recent years, however, polygamy scandals and the perverted authority of polygamous husbands like Warren Jeffs have put the whole issue in an even worse light, and made it difficult for students to understand why anyone would have defended plural marriage. How unfortunate. I wonder if this is just a case of the victors writing the history, or whether the “Survivor” reality-TV inanity is creeping into our perception of the historical past.]]>
