Polygamist deserves to be on FBI's most-wanted list
 
Opinion/Insight
By Andrew Hunt
Waterloo Record - Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
 
The usually quiet community of Bountiful in southeastern British Columbia, near the U.S.-Canada border, has been attracting a lot of media attention lately. CNN news crews have already descended on the remote town several times this month.

Recent episodes of CNN's ultra-hip Anderson Cooper 360 have been focusing on the controversial polygamist sect in Bountiful as part of its coverage of Warren Jeffs, a self-proclaimed prophet with multiple wives who's now on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. The FBI wants Jeffs because he arranged numerous marriages between underage girls and older men in his polygamist church.

Even though the Jeffs controversy has drawn attention to Bountiful, this isn't a new story. The Canadian media and B.C. authorities have been watching Bountiful for years.

Warren Jeffs is the head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has built a polygamist empire in the American southwest and Canada. A few years ago, his church trust was estimated to be worth $100 million.

The church is headquartered in Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, two adjoining border towns where most of its followers live. A 2005 story about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the British newspaper The Guardian estimates the church has 10,000 members.

In B.C., this church boasts approximately 1,200 followers, although a recent split has caused about half of them to remain loyal to Jeffs and the other half to support Winston Blackmore, a former Jeffs ally and Bountiful resident who was "excommunicated" over a difference of opinion with Jeffs.

Mainstream Mormons detest the polygamists. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints banned the practice more than a century ago. Genuine Latter-day Saints members often refer to polygamists contemptuously as "polygs." Admittedly, part of the current fascination with polygamy has to do with Big Love, a new HBO series about a Utah polygamist who's married to three wives.

Critics love it, and like most HBO shows, it enjoys a cult following.

I admit I haven't seen Big Love, but I suspect it's not as unsettling as real-life polygamy. For instance, when CNN correspondent John Simon recently asked Winston Blackmore whether he personally has ever married any girls under 16, the polygamist replied, "Just barely."

Asked for clarification, Blackmore said, "There was one that was and one that lied about her age, but that's not unusual for women, is it?"

Blackmore told CNN that he has 20 wives (although the Salt Lake Tribune claimed 26 in 2004) and around 100 children. Blackmore also insists that Jeffs is currently in Canada, preparing to move his followers to Alberta or Saskatchewan.

Over the years, there have been countless reports of girls in their early teens being forced into marriages in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Almost as disturbing is the plight of the "Lost Boys," a thousand or so young males in Canada and the United States, ages 13 to 17, who have been banished from the church communities for such minor infractions as watching risqué movies or sampling alcoholic beverages. "Their expulsion," says the Guardian newspaper, "had more to do with the ruthless sexual arithmetic of a polygamous sect." These homeless young boys have nowhere to go and no one to look after them.

It is strange, I must admit, to see Jeffs' picture on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. He looks like a total geek, and his mug shot is sandwiched between Osama bin Laden and Columbian cocaine boss Diego Leon Montoya Sanchez. But don't let looks deceive you. Jeffs belongs on the list. In addition to violating the human rights of countless underage girls, he routinely spews hate ideology.

He once preached: "You see some classes of the human family that are black, uncouth, or rude and filthy, uncomely, disagreeable, and low in their habits, wild and seemingly deprived of nearly all of the blessings of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind."

Canadian authorities are handling the polygamist problem in B.C. as well as can be expected. They're not cracking down, which is smart. Rounding up all of the male heads of polygamist families has been tried in Utah and Arizona, but it merely makes matters worse by depriving these huge families of the primary breadwinner.

Local police and the RCMP are wise to keep scrutinizing Bountiful. Earlier this month, Canada Immigration ordered three of Blackmore's U.S.-born wives to leave the country. Predictably, Blackmore is crying foul and claiming that Canadian authorities are stepping up harassment of him.

Fortunately, tolerance and kindness are helping to diffuse the situation. Recently, some of the Bountiful polygamist wives began sending their children to the nearby two-room Yahk Elementary School. For these women, allowing their kids to attend public school was a major breakthrough. The school's only teacher, Linda Allred, welcomed the new pupils. "This little school," she said, "is working as a catalyst of hope. The public school policy is to accept everyone -- Muslim, Buddhist, Catholics -- and they don't question their religion or dress."

Acceptance of this type is the key to undercutting all fanatics, whether it's Osama bin Laden or Warren Jeffs.

Andrew Hunt teaches history at the University of Waterloo.
 
TheRecord.com
Originally published May 27, 2006
 
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