» Continued from Part 2

=== Noted
25. Polygamy prevails in remote Ariz. town
26. Diet program looks to religion


=== Noted

25. Polygamy prevails in remote Ariz. town
Denver Post, Mar. 4, 2001
http://www.denverpost.com/
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March 4, 2001 - COLORADO CITY, Ariz. - As a little girl, Laura Chapman taped the words ''Keep Sweet'' on her bathroom mirror to remind herself how to get by in this remote, polygamous community.

Keeping sweet, Chapman says, meant staying silent as her father molested her starting at age 3. It meant hiding her secret from her 30 brothers and sisters.

It meant being lashed with a yardstick by one of her father's four wives. It meant having to quit school at age 11, then work without pay in a store owned by her church's prophet.

Keeping sweet meant being forced into marriage at age 18 to a man she didn't know, let alone love. It meant having a baby every year. It meant walking 10 paces behind her husband.

And, above all, it meant smiling, sweetly through her pain.

''We were just little girls in odd clothes and funny hair who thought we were going to hell if we didn't obey,'' recalled Chapman, now 38, who has made a new life in Longmont since fleeing 10 years ago with her five children. ''Who would think, right here in the United States of America fathers are trading their daughters away like trophies? It's brainwashing and slavery. It's a complete system of organized crime right in our backyard that for some reason the government has simply chosen to ignore.''

Chapman is one of dozens of people known among locals as ''apostates'' - mostly female dissidents who have fled or been booted from this fundamentalist Mormon community and are calling attention to the child abuse and sexual slavery they say are rampant here. They're demanding that law enforcers investigate crimes they say have gone overlooked too long.

Community leaders dismiss those outcries as carping by bitter, godless women. They insist problems here are no worse than in any other town, and that locals simply are following the straightest line they know to God.
(...)

''I've seen underage girls married off, marriages between relatives and families removing youths from school. There's an element of abuse, physically and sexually, involving some members of these households that in most cases go unreported,'' said investigator Ron Barton, who is conducting Utah's first statewide polygamy probe in decades.

''Some men seem to be using their religion as an excuse for behavior that shouldn't be tolerated. I'd say it's time for all levels of government to stand up and take notice.''

Plural marriage is one of the ''eternal principles'' of Mormonism, based on a revelation by founder Joseph Smith that he should take more than one wife. Practitioners believe that men attain exalted status in the afterlife by having multiple wives in the present one. Only wives who sweetly comply will be ''lifted up'' to the ''celestial kingdom'' by their husbands.

Polygamy is taught in several verses of the standard Mormon scripture, ''Doctrine and Covenants.'' The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disavowed the practice in the 1890s after what church leaders call a divine revelation, but what others say was a political compromise so that Utah could become a state.

Rebellious zealots calling themselves the ''true Mormons'' claimed that if the principle was valid once, it's valid forever. Leaving family and friends behind, they moved in the 1920s to this parched landscape south of Zion National Park. Here, they formed a new order, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which shares most of the same doctrines but is unaffiliated with the mainstream LDS Church.

LDS officials don't recognize members of the FLDS as Mormons.

''I don't think it's accurate for them to call themselves that. They have nothing to do with our religion,'' said LDS spokesman Mike Otterson.

Known as Short Creek until the 1960s, Colorado City and Hildale, Utah, its neighbor across the state line, now make up the nation's largest polygamous community. Most of the towns' estimated 8,000 residents live in polygamous families.
(...)

The pecking order for FLDS members is unwavering: Children are subordinate to their mothers, who are subordinate to their husband, who is subordinate to the church prophet, who answers to Jesus Christ.

''I have to be a chauvinist in order to manage my family,'' said high school science teacher DeLoy Bateman, who has 17 children with his two wives but has left the church and questions gender roles in the community. ''The women give their minds over to the men. They're really, really good, if you want a Stepford wife.''

Families have intermarried over the decades so that husbands and wives commonly are stepsiblings and cousins. Visitors remark on the number of children who suffer from physical or mental disabilities.

''It's the incest capital of the world,'' said Rowenna Erickson, co-founder of Tapestry Against Polygamy, a Utah group pushing for investigations into such communities.

''These huge families are forced on each other,'' added Hammon, most of whose 75 siblings haven't spoken to her since she split from the church not because of polygamy but because of what she describes as the group's increasing cultishness. ''They're all living like sardines. It's all incredibly unhealthy.''

Not so, counters one church defender, who touts the community as ''a piece of lost Americana.''

''Everyone talks about family values, but these people, they've really got family values. They've got 20 to 30 children who've all got to get along. Money is always tight. They're more committed to family than anyone else I've seen in America,'' said Scott Berry, a Salt Lake City lawyer representing the church.
Berry dismisses apostates' allegations as sour grapes.

''They probably feel pretty badly that they've devoted large chunks of their lives to the church. They're pretty bitter about that. They have their own agenda and will tell their yarns to anyone who will listen,'' he said.
(...)

Continued use of the land depends on good standing with the church and its reclusive prophet, Rulon Jeffs, whose words are held in godlike esteem by members. The 92-year-old retired tax attorney is said to have 48 wives. Berry, his attorney, refuses to confirm that number, saying it's ''impolite'' to ask.
(...)

As several townsfolk tell it, Warren Jeffs has prophesied a mass lifting up in which only the most devout will rise to heaven. The ascension is supposed to take place from the community garden in the center of town, which dissidents call the ''launching pad.'' Warren Jeffs is said to have named several dates that have come and gone with no apparent heavenly rapture.

''They've predicted so many doomsdays that I think it's messing with their mental processes,'' Hammon said.

Berry said apostates make too much of the predictions.

''The church does believe the end is near. But I can assure you that no one has set a date,'' he said.

To prepare for the end, Warren Jeffs preaches increasing isolation from the secular world. He urges his flock to avoid newspapers, television, the Internet and other exposure to outsiders, known as ''gentiles.'' The town radio station shuns popular songs with lyrics, broadcasting mostly upbeat, patriotic instrumentals. Computer bar codes printed on most retail products are believed to be the ''Sign of the Beast.''
(...)

In a move toward further isolation, Warren Jeffs urged parents last summer to yank their children out of public school. Contact with non-believers, he said, could hurt their prospects for the afterlife. As a result, about 800 kids - threequarters of the school district's entire student body - didn't show up for classes in September.
(...)

Officials say lax laws in Arizona and Utah give them no authority to monitor whether those students are being taught either at home or at the FLDS parochial school, nor to check the qualifications of the people supposed to be teaching them.
(...)

Seven female apostates interviewed for this story said they were molested or raped as children. None of their alleged perpetrators were charged.
(...)

Police here have never made an arrest for polygamy.

''I'm not going to mess with it,'' Roundy said. ''The state hasn't taken it upon themselves to prosecute. Why should we?'' Officials call polygamy`a victimless crime

Sheriffs and prosecutors in Arizona and Utah call polygamy a victimless crime that's difficult, if not impossible, to prove in such a closed society as Colorado City and Hildale. Because most plural marriages aren't licensed, they're legally similar to a man and women living together - which officials don't prosecute.
(...)

One notable exception to such government ambivalence is the current, highly publicized case against Tom Green, a northern Utah man with five wives and 28 children.

Juab County attorney David Leavitt - brother of Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt - launched the case last year after Green was featured on ''Judge Judy'' and ''Jerry Springer'' talking about his polygamous lifestyle. Leavitt alleges that Green's wives were between 13 and 16 when he married them. He charged Green with bigamy, welfare fraud and one count of child rape, for having sex with one wife when she was 13. That wife, Linda Kunz, is Laura Chapman's first cousin.

Other than the Green case, however, polygamy is ''something that prosecutors haven't been real enthused to prosecute,'' said Reed Richards, who left office in January as Utah's chief deputy attorney general.

Lawmakers, too, generally are unwilling to step in. Several bills to investigate polygamous groups and fund shelters for women fleeing plural marriage have failed in the Utah and Arizona legislatures. Utah lawmakers compromised last year, earmarking $75,000 for a part-time investigator to probe ''closed societies.'' That ''is the politically correct term for polygamy,'' said Barton, the investigator hired to do the job.

Some critics say authorities are otherwise reluctant to intervene because of wariness left from the 1953 raid.

Others say mainstream Mormons - who control government throughout Utah and in much of northern Arizona - are unwilling to face their polygamous roots.

They add that many Mormons are sympathetic because they think the practice could someday be reinstated.

''I've been surprised to find active LDS members who are extremely supportive of polygamy. My impression is that if they had wives that would go along with it, they would be polygamists themselves,'' said Barton, himself a member of the mainstream church.

LDS church leaders note that plural marriage has been grounds for excommunication for more than 100 years.

''The matter's closed as far as we're concerned. That is, until the Lord speaks again on the subject,'' said Otterson, the church spokesman.
(...)

Critics complain bitterly that authorities don't crack down on Colorado City's town councilmen and police officers, who have a stake in preserving plural marriage because they gain status by accumulating many wives and children. Apostates describe a bartering system whereby the more young daughters a man gives away, the more young wives he is rewarded.

Dissidents don't challenge polygamy between consenting adults. Rather, they object to the practice when it involves coercing and bartering adolescent girls.

''If they're married in the eyes of their religion, it's really of no concern to me,'' said Arizona state Rep. Linda Binder of Mohave County, one of the few lawmakers besides Allen rallying on behalf of the apostates. ''But they're dealing in trafficking underage females, forcing them to marry older men, not allowing children to be appropriately educated. Then they tell them they'll be condemned into eternity if they talk. That's brainwashing, and that's not OK with me.''

Exacerbating the problem, watchdogs say, is that even women who want to flee are stuck. They own no property, have little education and no job training. They're typically bound by several kids. Most know no one outside the community. And they believe they'll burn in hell if they stray from the church.

''When you try talking to the girls, they say nothing because they're convinced they'll die if they talk,'' said Allen. ''They just look straight ahead and stare, like deer caught in headlights.''

That's a familiar look to visitors here.

Girls turn away in apparent horror when asked about their lives. A photographer's tire was slashed and a reporter's car keyed while parked outside homes of apostates still living in town.

It's that kind of wariness that some perceive as the community's increasing cultishness. Warren Jeffs is so isolating the group, dissidents say they fear a Waco- or Guyana-type tragedy.

''People here are armed. The 1953 situation got people defensive. If (officials) ever did that again they'd be looking down the barrel of a shotgun,'' Hammon said. ''The kids who were kidnapped are now adults. Like hell they'd let that happen again. They have a cause. You know the most bloody wars are holy wars with causes.
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Cult defenders like J. Gordon Melton, Lonnie Kliever, and David Bromley casually dismiss the testimony of apostates - going as far as to suggest they ''invariably shade the truth'' (Melton).

But Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi states:

''Recent and less recent NRM catastrophes help us realize that in every single case allegations by hostile outsiders and detractors have been closer to reality than any other accounts.''

26. Diet program looks to religion
CNN, Mar. 2, 2001
http://www.cnn.com/
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(...) The typical plate at a U.S. restaurant has grown to an average diameter of 12 inches, compared with a home dinner plate, which is nine inches. A decade ago, movie seats were 18 inches wide -- today the industry standard is 22 inches. More than one half of U.S. women say they don't like their own bodies.

Many who are overweight are now turning to religion for help. In a small church in Lawrenceville, Georgia, near Atlanta, a group of overweight women gathers every week for mutual encouragement and support. They share experiences and talk about how many pounds they have lost, all the time praising God.

It's part of the ''Weigh Down'' program, a faith based dieting plan that runs 30 thousand workshops across the United States.

Marianne Cook has been on the program for three years, and has lost 40 pounds. When she feels hunger pains, it's God telling her it's time to eat, she explained.
(...)

''Weigh Down'' is all about eating less -- no foods are forbidden and there is no exercise plan. Cook rejects the idea of eating five servings of fruit and vegetables a day.

''I don't agree with that because that's not in the Bible,'' she says.

That attitude concerns dietitians, who argue that the only way to lose weight and keep it off is to learn to eat healthier food. Chris Rosenbloom also worries about the psychological impact of relying on religion.

''If you're not successful on the program you might have a double whammy. You might not be just letting yourself down, but you might be letting your God down too. So, if a faith based diet doesn't work for you it might be difficult for you psychologically.''

Despite the criticism, the number of faithful continues to grow.

Gwen Shamblin started ''Weigh Down'' 15 years ago in Nashville, Tennessee, and says there are thousands of success stories -- people who have changed their lives, not just by losing weight, but by embracing Christian ideals in every way.
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Ms. Shamblin unrepentantly teaches heresy regarding the Trinity.