Reactionary

I left as soon as I was 18 for a university far away. Most childhood friends have gone, too, typically making their homes in California or other parts of the West Coast. My family has only a few representatives left there and siblings and cousins and friends have also left that wretched state behind. Neither my family nor our closest friends were ever part of the dominant religion but living amongst so many who were changes the whole social and cultural order of the place.

When I tell people where I’m from, I always get the look and then the question. “Are you one of those Mormons?” The answer is “no” but that doesn’t entirely free you from the weirdness, the otherness of the place and the bizarre beliefs and thought patterns that constantly eddy around you. People always ask me about polygamy and while I’m not privy to the ins and outs of what went on behind my neighbors’ doors, it doesn’t seem to matter to my non-Utah friends and neighbors. Though I’ve never been part of it and never knew anyone who practiced it, polygamy follows me like the embarrassing toilet paper stuck to a shoe. This story on Warren Jeffs is the latest.

Says CNN:

The FLDS is not to be confused with the Mormon church, which abandoned polygamy in 1890. The church renounces the polygamous FLDS, which in turn believes it is practicing the true religion of founder Joseph Smith.

This obeisance to the Mormon church bothers me in a way that isn’t clear to anyone who didn’t spend the first eighteen years of their lives around these people. I can hear them in half-remembered, half-imagined states of uproar over their portrayal in the national media. I can hear and almost see their hand-wringing. It’s always polygamy that brings out the strongest emotions but not everyone knows the subtleties of other aspects of life in the land of Zion. The missionaries. The fake smiles. The car that follows you down the street. The strangers who know where you live. The eyes and ears that belong to the long arm of the organization that controls everything that goes on within its borders. It runs so deep and yet it’s so well-hidden that only if you’ve been there for a long time you’d know what I know. Only then would you understand why I shudder. We the Others, the escaped non-Mormons, the ones who fled never to return know what life is really like behind the Zion Curtain and what makes it tick. You who are curious about polygamy will never understand. There’s nothing I could tell you to make you understand.

Go for the skiing. Leave for everything else.

Posted on September 12th, 2007 under Life, News •  Print •  Email • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback