God’s Brothel

The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped

By Andrea Moore-Emmett
Read: August 2009
Rating: Hard-hitting

My bestie has often lamented that I do not read enough nonfiction. So naturally the last time I was at her place and saw some nonfiction I liked, I borrowed it. I’ve wanted to learn more about polygamy for quite a while, and I do my little internet forays every so often.

One may ask, What is polygamy? Moore-Emmett does a very good job laying out the facts and the history. It’s a good primer in fundamentalist Christian (usually Mormon) polygamy. No mainstream group officially condones the practice, but the Mormon church hints that one day in heaven everyone will be doing it. Then you have these splinter fundamentalist groups that stick to their own dogma.

“Polygamy” is actually a misnomer. Polygamy refers to any marriage in which one person is married to more than one spouse. That means you could have five women and seven men. What is being practiced in the groups discussed by this book is actually polygyny, when one man has more than one wife. The reverse is polyandry, when a woman has more than one husband. (I think one reason it’s called polygamy is to falsely imply that there’s some equality here.)

Now, it’s my opinion that your sexual and romantic preferences should be for you to determine. If those five women and seven men can make it work for them, more power to them. But they’ve got to all be happy and healthy. And any children they have had better be happy and healthy. So when people say ‘polygamy’ I don’t immediately think ‘bad’. After reading this book I’ve given that reaction a much narrower trigger: fundamentalist polygamists.

Moore-Emmett has collected the stories of women who were raised or married into polygamous families. Their stories illustrate the true conditions in which people in these splinter sects often live. Some of the women were born into sects and raised with certain expectations for their lives. Others were brought in, either from mainstream Christianity or Mormonism. Their experiences within the sects are very similar.

All sorts of things are promised to women who enter polygamous marriages. Besides the usual love, husband, security, etc., they’re also lured with an idealized image of sister wives. They are told they will have a special place in heaven. Sometimes, that this is the only way to get into heaven.

The reality is often this: Cramped quarters and few resources. Living outside the law. Being shuttled between homes (which are often the homes of sister wives) at the whim of a husband or church leader. Rivalry and jealousy. Sexual abuse between siblings, as well as pedophilia. Girls in their early teens may be courted by much older men. Some sects deny medical care, as that requires leaving the compound.

It doesn’t take much looking to find these horror stories. Many of them are brutal in the retelling. Everyone is outraged on behalf of the women, who are browbeaten, brainwashed, and abused. Sister wives often lure new wives into a marriage just as much as their husbands do. (It’s been noted before that one of the great travesties of the oppression of women is that women often convince other women to participate!)

But what I’m really, really upset about are the boys. The young boys, born to their abused mothers. Everyone knows what’s happening to their sisters, no one’s paying attention to them.

Polygamy is, in many ways, about dynasty. Mature men put together a stable, a harem, a herd of women to call their own. They may have images of themselves as divine leaders. But with daughters are born sons. A boy born in this world is a threat to the established males. Young men are attractive the teenage girls who don’t want to become fifty-year-old Uncle Ezekial’s fourth wife. Young men may split off to form their own dynasties. So the older men literally beat them down. Some meet untimely deaths. Others are forced out. Most cruel of all, they may be so abused by others that they become abusers, and commit the same atrocities all over again.

There is no room for a young boy in a polygamist sect.

Someone needs to reach out to the boys. They shouldn’t be given the choice of death, victimhood, or victimizer.