”They don’t have horns”

CRESTON, B.C. – Shortly after Christmas, things got a lot less comfortable for the people of Bountiful, a polygamist community just south of here near the Idaho border.

The book “Keep Sweet,” co-authored by a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, had just been published, full of tales of sexual abuse and oppression as a woman growing up in Bountiful.

Marlene Palmer, a longtime member of the community, was at the local exercise club working out when a stranger approached her and said, “You are the scum of the earth … If I was you, I would never show my face in this town again.”

Those and other stories were shared at the Summit on Polygamy, hosted by the Bountiful Women’s Society on Tuesday evening in Creston’s Recreation Center, which was packed with hundreds of supporters, local officials and curious Creston residents, and a large contingent of journalists.

Speakers shared information on the history of the FLDS. Fundamentalists refuse to give up one of the original tenets of the Mormon faith, polygamy, which was abandoned by the mainstream church in 1890.

With the help of a PowerPoint presentation replete with photos of happy children and rainbows, nurse and midwife Leah Barlow explained some of the benefits of being one of multiple wives. Having “sister wives” means having a built-in support system for child care and housework that allows the women more opportunity outside the home, she said.

Trying to debunk the impression that they are all brainwashed, Barlow and several others emphasized it was their choice to remain in the church.

“If I wanted to choose something different, I would have done it a long time ago,” said Lavon Blackmore.

The women also attempted to counter the allegations that many women are married off as young girls.

“I don’t encourage my girls to get married when they’re 14, or 15, or 16, or 17 or 18, but please wait until they are 19,” Blackmore said. “But they get to make their own choice.”

Barlow said the community recently agreed that girls would not be allowed to marry until they are 18, Canada’s legal age of consent.

Yet while they tried to portray themselves as normal, the word of the recent birth of the 100th baby of Bountiful patriarch Winston Blackmore was getting around town. A contingent of polygamy critics greeted participants at the door of the recreation center with signs proclaiming “One Man, 26 wives, 100 kids, Ungodly” and “Grown men having sex with children of 15 years is a pedophile.”

A local government official, John Kettle, who is not a member of the church but represents the members of Bountiful, made it clear that he thinks the polygamists are protected under Canada’s constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.

“They are not an anomaly,” he said. “They don’t have horns. We find it a little off that every five years this circus comes to town.” The community of Bountiful is estimated to have 800 to 1,000 members, while the communities of Colorado City, Ariz., and the adjacent Hildale, Utah, are estimated to have as many as 10,000.

Barlow said she grew up in a polygamous family in Hildale, got her medical training in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, and moved to Bountiful when she was 23 by choice.

“I was amazed in the difference of the acceptance of me here,” she said. However, “it’s definitely changed in the last couple of years.”

What changed in that time was a split in the church.

When the former church prophet, Rulon Jeffs, died in 2002, his absolute power over the church and church property – which is nearly all the property in Bountiful and Colorado City/Hildale – transferred to his son, Warren Jeffs.

The younger Jeffs has banished men not loyal to him, including former Bountiful bishop Winston Blackmore, and reassigned their wives to other men. Blackmore refused to leave Bountiful, and he and his followers live side by side with FLDS members loyal to Jeffs. Tuesday’s summit was sponsored by the followers of Blackmore.

Polygamy is illegal in Idaho and Canada. However, Canadian authorities have yet to prosecute leaders of the Bountiful community, saying that the law may be in conflict with Canada’s Constitution.

Some members of the FLDS church live in Boundary County and travel across the border north to worship with their Canadian neighbors. A legislative task force to look into the problem of human trafficking is expected to examine whether young girls are being taken across the border. If coercion is involved, then the girls would be victims of human trafficking.

The Bountiful Women’s Society said the rumors of trafficking are untrue. Said one woman who identified herself as Nola, “Polygamy does not equal abuse … We care about our children more than all the people who criticize us do.”