Youths defend plural marriage

Calling their lives blessed, more than a dozen children and young adults from Utah polygamist families spoke at a rally Saturday, calling for a change in state laws and the right to live the life and religion they choose.

"Because of our beliefs, many of our people have been incarcerated and had their basic human rights stripped of them," said a 19-year-old identified only as Tyler. "Namely life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I didn't come here today to ask for your permission to live my beliefs. I shouldn't have to."

The youths, ages 10-20, belong to various religious sects, including Apostolic United Brethren, the Davis County Cooperative Society and Centennial Park, as well as families that practice polygamy independent of religious affiliation. They spoke voluntarily but gave only their first names, saying later they were protecting the privacy of their parents.

The rally, which drew a crowd of about 250 to Salt Lake's City Hall, is thought to be the first of its kind, said Mary Batchelor, co-founder of Principle Voices of Polygamy, a pro-polygamy education and advocacy group that helped organize the event.

Polygamy has been practiced here longer than Utah has been a state. First brought to the high desert by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1846, the practice was abandoned by the church in 1890 as a condition of statehood, which was granted six years later.

The church now excommunicates members found to be practicing plural marriage.

Polygamy is banned in the Utah Constitution and is a felony offense under the state's bigamy statute. Those who choose to live "the principle," as it is known to insiders, typically try to live their lives secretly out of fear that attention will bring police to their door.

Rachel Young, a 45-year-old mother of one of the speakers, said that underlying fear kept some away from the rally.

"People are actually really scared to be known as polygamist because of the prejudice the public — not just the government — has about them," Young said.

Also absent Saturday were the stereotypes most often seen on television and in movies about polygamists and their kids — girls in prairie dresses with long, braided hair and boys in buttoned-to-the-collar long-sleeved shirts sporting dour expressions.

Instead the kids here looked like any other teens. Dressed in flip-flops and blue jeans, bangs drooping over their eyes, they talked on cell phones and played rock music, crooning lyrics written to defend their family life.

All of the speakers praised their parents and families and said their lives were absent of the abuse, neglect, forced marriages and other "horror stories" sometimes associated with polygamist communities, particularly, the embattled southern Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

"We are not brainwashed, mistreated, neglected, mal- nourished, illiterate, defective or dysfunctional," 17-year-old Jessica said. "My brothers and sisters are free-thinking, independent people. Some who have chosen this lifestyle, while others have branched out to a diversity of religions."

The youths, who called for an end to prejudice, were praised by organizers for their courage.

"You have paved the way for others to come forward as well," said Laura Fuller, a law student said to be a wife of well-known Utah polygamist John Daniel Kingston. "Today is just the first step. With courage like yours, someday, we will have the same rights as everyone else ... someday we will have the freedom to live our religion."