Polly stands outside the Merry Wives Cafe, a prearranged rendezvous point, nervously watching vehicles pull up. She is middle-aged, clear-eyed and maternal, with an easy smile.
She apologizes to a reporter for withholding her last name but says she cannot risk getting arrested. "I have children," she explains later, her eyes moist.
Polly leads the way to a nearby office. Three others are waiting there: her adult kids, each dressed in fashionable business attire.
The introductions begin:
• Lorine, 30, is not a birth daughter but insists that Polly is her mom. She has degrees in business management and English literature. She traveled the West on business before entering a polygamous marriage four years ago.
• Bethany, 21, a birth daughter, also is in a plural marriage. She has a community-college degree, works as an administrative assistant and runs a graphic-design business out of her home.
• Joseph, 19, who is Polly's birth son, graduated from high school two years ago and spent a year as a community volunteer before starting college. He is unmarried and not dating.
They decline to divulge details about their families, fearful that specific admissions may be used against them in a future purge of polygamists. But they are eager to challenge the popular notion that polygamous spouses are brainwashed, and they assail the history of anti-bigamy laws.
At a public forum days earlier, Polly says, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff made it clear he would prosecute polygamists if he had enough money, manpower and jail space.
"This is targeted persecution based on a religious belief," Lorine says angrily. "We're fighting for the right to decriminalize our lifestyle and legalize it."
Polly and her children belong to The Work of Jesus Christ, a group that rejects child marriages and embraces the modern world.
At 41, Polly has nine birth children and is a teacher at the local school, with a bachelor's degree in business and a master's degree in education.
She shakes her head at the depictions of her as a dupe or cultist. "I have these beautiful children and this wonderful family, and I try to figure out what I'm doing wrong," she says. "I'm completely baffled that someone would look at me and say, 'You know what? You're ignorant.'
"With the help of my spiritual leaders, I chose the man I was going to marry," she says. "I hate to call myself a women's libber because it has so many negative connotations. But in a lot of aspects the way we live is a woman's dream. . . . It's about being the woman that you know you can be." As an example, she said while working toward her degree and in a career, other mothers in her household helped look after her children and take care of housekeeping.
The dream comes with complications. To maintain secrecy, wives must be careful how they identify themselves. They avoid shopping together or socializing with the husband's business associates. Children learn not to refer to their father as Dad or their step-siblings as brother and sister.
Lorine says she was so fearful of prejudice while attending the University of Southern Utah that she never disclosed her background to friends or classmates, and she turned down all dates.
After graduation, she got into business, traveling throughout the West and continued that career after marriage. This year, she settled into domestic life with birth children and the rest of her family.
"I'm a plural wife. I chose this lifestyle with my eyes open," she says. "And I would fight for the right of my daughter to choose it. . . . I was raised in a culture of love."
While plural marriage is a tenet of her faith, Polly insists it also creates a stable family structure. She waves off questions about what happens to men who cannot find wives and rejects the idea that anti-bigamy laws were adopted for the public good.
Rather, Polly says, legislation outlawing polygamy constitutes an attack on one religious practice by a "moral majority" from other faiths.
The family members complain of bigotry and hypocrisy in a nation that treats adultery and divorce as routine yet is repulsed by plural marriages.
"America is about polygamy," Polly says. "It's just that they want to do it one person at a time - serial polygamists. We see marriage differently . . . something that will last forever."
Family Defends Polygamy | Polygamy - 4thefamily.us
