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April 16, 2000

Polygamous Mormon Sects

Region: North America (USA: Utah, Texas, Arizona. Canada: British Columbia, Alberta. Mexico)
Adherents: 40,000

Early in its history The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) practised polygamy in the United States and referred to it as "plural marriage". It was publicly taught by the Church in 1852, and was a sacred ordinance. Only some members of the Church practiced polygamy.

The practice of polygamy quickly led to persecution of the Church and the enacting of anti-polygamy laws. (The U.S. Congress made the practice illegal in U.S. Territories in 1862). Many members of the Church fled to Canada in an attempt to set up communities free from prosecution; for example, Cyril Ogston founded Seven Persons, Alberta. Although Latter-day Saints believed that their religiously-based practice of plural marriage was protected by the United States Constitution, opponents used it to delay Utah statehood until 1896. Increasingly harsh anti-polygamy legislation stripped Church members of their rights as citizens, disincorporated the Church, and permitted the seizure of Church property until the Church ordered the discontinuance of the practice in 1890.

National attention in the United States again focused on potential polygamy among the Church in the early 20th century during the House hearings on Representative-elect B. H. Roberts and Senate hearings on Senator-elect Reed Smoot (the Smoot Hearings). This caused Church president Joseph F. Smith to issue his "Second Manifesto" against polygamy in 1904. Since that time, it has been Church policy to excommunicate any member either practicing or openly advocating the practice of polygamy.

The ban on polygamy resulted in a schism within the Church, with various splinter groups leaving the Church to continue the practice of polygamy. Polygamy among these groups persists today in Utah and neighboring states, as well as among isolated individuals with no organized church affiliation. Polygamists of this kind are sometimes called "Mormon fundamentalists", despite their lack of affiliation with the mainstream Church. This contemporary polygamy is estimated to be practiced by about 40,000 people. Most of the polygamy is believed to be restricted to about a dozen extended clans.

The practice of informal polygamy among these groups presents itself with interesting legal issues. It has been considered difficult to prosecute polygamists partly because they are not formally married under Utah law. Without evidence that suspected offenders have multiple, formal or common-law marriages, these groups are merely subject to the laws against adultery or unlawful cohabitation. These laws are not commonly enforced because they also criminalize other behavior that is otherwise socially sanctioned.

Another major concern has recently arisen with the discovery that many women are brought into these polygynous relationships prior to the age of consent, meaning that some men may be committing statutory rape. Many modern polygamists and polyamorists deliberately classify "plural marriage" as wholly separate from other forms of polygamy.

Source


For more information:

Tapestry Against Polygamy - "a non-profit organization located in Salt Lake City, Utah that advocates against the human right violations inherent in polygamy and provides assistance to individuals leaving polygamous cults."

Fundamentalist Mormons - A polygamous Mormon sect

The Principle - A clearing house of information to the general public "concerning the secretive, abusive and hidden practice of polygamy in the United States and worldwide"

Mormon Polygamy - A collection of Essays on Polygamy and the LDS Church.

New Covenant Patriarchy - Pro-Polygamy Organization

Posted by Julia at 08:36 PM

April 03, 2000

Parents belonging to doomsday sect led children to their deaths

BUNYARIGI, Uganda, April 3 - After her young grandchildren's abrupt departure, after the gas-fueled flames and the charred remains, 74-year-old Margaret Kibetenga wonders if there's something she could have done.

On Dec. 28, her daughter-in-law came to her mud-walled home to fetch two children she had left in Kibetenga's care. Saying she needed to take them to visit a sick relative, Jane Ayebare began packing her youngsters' belongings.

When Ayebare muttered something about the end of the world being near, Kibetenga thought little of it. Ayebare had joined a strange religious group, but as far as Kibetenga was concerned, she was still Catholic. That's all that mattered.

Of course, the world didn't end Dec. 31, as the sect had predicted. But for Ayebare and her four children, life ended 10 weeks later in the flames of a sealed chapel belonging to Uganda's doomsday cult.

They were not alone. Terrified, trusting or willingly marching off to glory, children of the cult streamed out of hill villages by the hundreds to die trapped in the flames of the sealed church or by ropes and knives in the hands of grown-ups.

Children made up a large part of the bodies recovered from mass graves in southwestern Uganda since the March 17 inferno at the chapel at Kanungu alerted the world, and some Ugandans, to the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God. Authorities now are pursuing the sect's leaders, who they believe masterminded the murders of at least 924 people.

''I never took it seriously,'' Kibetenga now says, her eyes dropping to the ground.

For the movement, childhood was an occasion of sin. ''These days ... the majority of the youths go to hell; only very few go to heaven in a day,'' its handbook states. The sect's leaders went to brutal lengths to ensure children wouldn't fall into what they believed were the clutches of Satan.

In the early 1990s, Credonia Mrewinde, one of the movement's founders, forced 60 children to live in a 15-by-40-foot backyard shed in the village of Kabumba, according to Juvenal Rugambwa, son of sect leader Joseph Kibwetere.

He said the shed's windows were nailed shut and the children forced to sleep on the dirt floor, where many contracted scabies, a contagious skin disease.

Children and their parents were placed in separate living quarters when they joined the sect, Rugambwa and former sect members said. Parents also were forced to withdraw their children from school.

Rev. Paolino Tomaino, who became acquainted with the sect when he worked in Kabumba from 1976 to 1989, says it was inevitable that the children would follow their parents, even to their deaths.

''You would expect a Uganda child to follow his parent,'' Tomaino said. ''They were with their parents. I'm sure they couldn't leave.''

John Katebalirwe sold his mud hut for $30, then forced his wife, 27-year-old married daughter and her seven younger brothers and sisters away to attend a gathering at sect headquarters in Kanungu. Neighbors say the wife and eight children went with him unwillingly.

''He told us he was going to pray in Kanungu,'' said Aida Kaguze, who bought the hut from Katebalirwe. ''They had heard from God, and they were going to meet Jesus.''

On March 8, Katarina Tumuhimbise's daughters, aged 8 and 14, left the remote western foothill village of Sweswe with adults who were leading other children to the March 18 dedication of a new church at the sect's home in Kanungu.

Residents in Sweswe said the girls' parents couldn't afford to go to Kanungu. Instead, they stayed behind with their three younger children at their mud hut, decorated by a shrine with straw prayer mats and pictures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the pope.

The father insisted to his neighbors that he had left the cult but wasn't able to stop his girls from going since they still were members.

Tumuhimbse, rosaries draped around her neck as she spoke to a reporter, denied membership as well and said a woman in the sect had taken her children away. The father chased after them, but in vain.

Their daughters were among the 530 sect members on March 17 who entered the chapel on the sect's main compound in Kanungu to pray. Within minutes, they were enveloped by what police believe was a gas-fueled fire sparked by an explosive combination of water and sulphuric acid.

MSNBC News
Associated Press
http://www.rickross.com/reference/tencommandments/tencommandments39.html

Posted by Julia at 06:54 PM