BIG LOVE
was awaiting trial on treason
charges and shot him several times.
He fell out the window and died
shortly after hitting the ground.
Smith was succeeded in the
church by Brigham Young, a carpenter and blacksmith with a
beard shaped like the spade of a
shovel. Young led his followers
over the Rocky Mountains, where
he founded the state of Utah and
built two neighboring mansions to
accommodate his enormous family.
He is said to have married some 55
women, earning the epithet “most
married man in America.”
In 1878, a year after Young’s
death, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a blow to these unconventional unions, rejecting the argument that “religious duty” justified
the violation of federal laws prohibiting the practice of polygamy.
By then, the U.S. Army had invaded Utah in part to end Young’s
theocratic rule, and the people had
elected a non-Mormon governor.
In 1890, Congress voted to disincorporate the LDS church and
seize its assets. That same year, the
church’s president announced he
had received a revelation from God
disavowing plural marriages.
It’s unknown exactly how many
Mormons from fundamentalist
HUFFINGTON
03.09.14
sects continue to practice polygamy — estimates range from 10,000
to 50,000 in the United States.
But the vast majority of America’s
more than 6 million Mormons
have never had anything to do with
it. In giving up polygamy, Mormons
made a “deliberate and distinct decision to join the nation,” said Mason, the Mormon historian. And
while members of the LDS church
had their own political party in
Mormonism has been
largely defined by a
sense of pragmatism, an
ambition to survive and
expand above all else.
the 19th century, “today, they are
comfortably situated in the GOP,”
he said. It was a Mormon former
governor of Massachusetts, after
all, who won the backing of the Republican establishment to run for
president in 2012.
Since that pivotal moment in
the late 19th century, Mormonism has been largely defined by
a sense of pragmatism, an ambition to survive and expand
above all else. Some say this desire for broad acceptance influenced the church’s decision, at
the height of the culture wars in