Shirlee Draper was born and raised in Colorado City, Arizona, within the fundamentalist polygamous sect now known as FLDS. She was “placed” in an arranged marriage and had four children. She holds an MA in Public Administration and is currently the Director of Operations for Cherish Families and the Board President for the United Effort Plan Trust.

My Dad died last month. His health had been steadily degrading along with his mental faculties for a couple of years, so it was not unexpected. In writing his eulogy, I reflected at length on what a wretched life he lived—not of his making. You see, Dad had the misfortune to be born into what society has deemed a “Deviant” community, and culture. He was born of goodly parents—who practiced polygamy. Their goodly parents had, too, and on and on back about a century.

The week Dad turned 12, he and all the other children in his community (that would come to be known as “the FLDS”) were rounded up in the 1953 Raid on Short Creek. The history of this raid has been told so I won’t do it here. But I will draw attention to the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study[i] which demonstrates the very poor life outcomes of children who suffer trauma in their youth. Dad exhibited nearly every one of the poor outcomes on the list of projected issues created by ACEs. One of the manifestations of his trauma was his unswerving belief that his children would be taken from him if he accepted help, if we participated in extracurricular activities, or if we ventured outside our community. These fears directly impacted his children’s life opportunities. Dealing with my dad’s death and the way he raised his children because of his early trauma really sharpened the sense of injustice I harbor regarding the way “cults” are treated. 

When I was 33 years old, with 4 children in tow, I left the FLDS community and my faith. My decision wasn’t made because I hated the religion, or even that I disliked living polygamy. My decision was driven by the fact that Warren Jeffs had made my community unsafe. I had made the decision 6 years earlier, but the “outside” was even more unsafe for me during those years. This is because the dominant discourse had so effectively labeled my community as evil that I, in my distinctive clothing and hairstyle, was also evil in the eyes of others. Therefore, when I ventured outside my community, I received treatment that was appropriate for my “sins.” This external treatment created unnecessary and nearly insuperable barriers to my emigration, already difficult due to the internal crises I had to confront in ambiguous loss (that of my family, my identity, my sense of community and belonging, support, and safety.)

Since leaving, my life has been devoted to providing social services to others who—like me—come from a polygamous background and find themselves to be domestic refugees in mainstream society. In so doing it is very clear that negative public opinion is the biggest barrier to finding or creating appropriate resources for folks whose only crime was having the temerity to be born to the wrong parents. The largest part of my job is to persuade those in power that the human beings from these communities are worthy of dignity and services. I have learned about the massive disservice that is done by the social construction of target populations, which is defined by researchers Schneider and Ingraham^[2] as “cultural characterization or popular images of … groups whose behavior and well-being are affected by public policy. These characterizations are normative and evaluative, portraying groups in positive or negative terms through symbolic language, metaphors, and stories.” These characterizations then impact legislative behavior (and ensuing policy), as well as social programs and delivery.

It is difficult to overstate the counterproductive impact that the negative language, metaphors, and stories (which comprise the dominant discourse) have on the so-called “Deviant” communities and strata of society.

As is true with most marginalized and stigmatized communities, fundamentalist Mormons have been driven underground and silenced by the overwhelmingly negative and prejudicial attitudes toward them. The destructive discourse that feeds and informs their treatment is largely based on external, misinformed assumptions about the motivations and beliefs behind practices, symbols, rituals, events, and activities. The unjust extrapolation and interpretation that privileged voices provide serves to justify maltreatment of these communities, and more specifically, the people that comprise them. 

In the absence of a counter narrative (which is made unsafe by the criminalization of the religion,) those with the luxury of a forum to discuss their assessment of these communities become the sole source of information, regardless of its verisimilitude. Consequently, those who are the most opposed to the religion and the most motivated to cultural destruction are elevated as “experts,” instead of those who actually know and understand the communities. 

Media reports about my hometown frustrate me regularly. I have read various news reports, books, watched documentaries and movies in which events are represented, but the meaning and reasoning that are assigned to the events are always skewed. It is reminiscent of the imperialist studies done on “barbaric” societies in centuries past, where events are recorded but interpreted through the dominant narrative, instead of understanding the events in their unique cultural perspective.

The view of this entire culture as a “zoo” to be studied from outside, with ideas imposed on it rather than understood from it, was delightfully eviscerated in an article by Shayna Sigman in the Cornel Journal of Law and Public Policy aptly titled “Everything Lawyers Know About Polygamy is Wrong.[ii]” Sigman began her lengthy diatribe with this sentence: “Everything judges, legislators, policymakers, and legal scholars think they know about polygamy is based on faulty assumptions and presumptions, conceptions and misconceptions (p. 102).” She goes on to argue that because polygamy was labeled barbaric, immoral, and harmful to women, from the nineteenth century forward, all political and social discussion focused on legal aspects and outside-in views rather than making space for empiric information and inside-out discussions. Since polygamy was prosecuted up until the end of the 20th century, people practicing it were compelled to keep silent or risk losing everything. This ensured that all dialogue, including legal, academic, and cultural, was reserved to those who opposed it. Consequently, all current examination of FLDS culture has been done through this misinformed, external discourse.

That privileged and hegemonic perspective is on full display in Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven.[iii]Krakauer makes no effort to explain the differences between various expressions of Mormon traditions. In fact, he seems to go to great lengths to blur those lines so that he can draw convenient (if entirely specious) parallels for the sake of drama. Nuance is not the friend of the powerful, nor serves their ideological aims. It can be difficult to create hatred toward those with whom there is recognizable humanity and kinship. Therefore, it is important to continually dehumanize those who have been relegated to “Deviant” status.

From my perspective, the conclusions, analogies, and comparisons that Krakauer drew were lazy and opportunist. At the time he was writing this book, public antipathy toward the FLDS sect, courtesy of Warren Jeffs, was rising. From the first chapter, Krakauer labeled all Mormon Fundamentalists “FLDS.” 

            “Nevertheless, Mormons and those who call themselves Mormon Fundamentalists (or FLDS) believe in the same holy texts and the same sacred history.” (pg 5 para. 1)

Anyone who did as much research as Krakauer did for this book doubtlessly knew that FLDS is the incorporated name of ONE of the groups, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, shortened to FLDS, and the one that Warren Jeffs was leading. He knew that there were at least 7 major groups and probably more than 50 other offshoots, not counting the tens of thousands who considered themselves to be fundamentalists but not attached to any group. Yet within the first pages of his book (and in the index) he neatly tied all of these into one so that he could make broad statements and conclusions about all at once, regardless of their variations in practice, interpretation, and beliefs. This was enhanced by the cover photo (of Hildale/Colorado City, where the FLDS church was headquartered) and the map provided between the prologue and the first chapter that shows the Arizona strip, where Colorado City and Hildale are situated, as if that was the setting of the Lafferty brothers’ crime.

The School of the Prophets, the group to which the murderous Lafferty Brothers belonged, was a very small, disorganized, and shifting collective. They were not as well known, and public sentiment could not be aroused just at the mention of their name. It appears to me that the effort to tie the Laffertys to the FLDS, a much more recognized name, was calculated to exploit the dominant discourse and mainstream hostility toward the FLDS to make the Lafferty’s story more sensational—and to further demonize the FLDS by adding ritualistic murder to the charges and assumptions leveled at that group.

More than a few times, Krakauer mentioned the Laffertys “and the residents of Colorado City” in the same breath, although the residents of Colorado City, including myself at the time, had literally never heard of the Lafferty brothers until the rest of the world did as well. Far from being violent, our community (prior to Warren Jeffs’ reign) had eschewed gun owning or really any aggression. But Krakauer’s effort to inextricably tie the murderous extremism of these men to everyone in my community worked. By the time I needed to break free, I was also viewed as a murderer.

This criticism is not intended to minimize the harms that were done by Warren Jeffs, or anyone in Mormon fundamentalism. It is intended instead to call out the harmful, counterproductive, and autogenic loop that is created by the interpolation and misconstruction of events and beliefs of underrepresented groups like the FLDS. I submit (and Michael Hogg’s work on Uncertainty-Identity Theory[iv] bears out) that the reason that Jeffs was able to perform and require more and more bizarre and extreme atrocities is that people who were born into his group were more uncertain about the outside than what they were suffering on the inside. 

This is directly attributable to those mischaracterizations in the media and works like Krakauer’s. His (and others) tendency to extrapolate the crimes of a few to an entire unpopular sector of society is what drives both their flight underground and further mistreatment by mainstream. We don’t see this treatment in other sectors. If someone were to characterize all of Christendom as rapists because one of its adherents committed rape, they would be laughed out of the publisher’s office. Further, if we examined Judeo-Christian religions (any who study the Bible) with the same lens that Krakauer used, would we call them all out for their “violent faith” because of the very violent acts promoted in the Bible? It doesn’t happen, and the hypocrisy is stark. Fortunately, in the legal system—if not in literature—people are charged, tried, and convicted for the actions, not their faith, nor their religious texts.

Works like Under the Banner of Heaven vividly describe marginalized communities such as the FLDS as “cults,” which is extremely pejorative and demonizes/dehumanizes everyone within. Those who were born into these structures, victims of bad actors, and the most vulnerable in these groups are all swept up in the summary judgment. That’s why street-level bureaucrats are self-righteously justified when they determine that people from the community are unworthy of services, and for my money, a huge factor in so many poor outcomes such as lack of access to education, income, and opportunity—again perpetuating the downward spiraling loop.

In an era when racism, homophobia, and sexism are being called out and disavowed in serious publications, it is time to end the acceptance of xenophobic and prejudicial works as well. It is one thing for such works to enjoy popular acclaim, and another one entirely for journalists, researchers, or academic associations to accept those works as serious examinations of target populations, or reputable for reference. With the well-researched and demonstrated harmful effects that this dialogue creates, it is irresponsible to perpetuate the vicious cycle.

It is past time to create a multi-paradigmatic understanding of these (and other marginalized) cultures and introduce a more academic, objective and pragmatic approach to its examination. To counter the kinds of discrimination which causes wider gaps between low-status groups and mainstream society, and perhaps open them up, we need to have more dialogue with people from those communities. We need to be open to understanding their fears, and our privilege. Facilitating multicultural dialogue is a means to broaden perspectives on oppression, which can lead to isolation and radicalism, especially among low-status and fear-based groups.

I advocate the use of words and definitions that are shared by all parties. This means using language that is specifically not pejorative, and which meanings are mutually understood. I recommend open dialogue—not just conversations wherein each side is trying to convince the other of its rightness—but the kind of dialogue Bohmprescribed[v]:

Such an inquiry necessarily calls into question deeply held assumptions regarding culture, meaning, and identity. In its deepest sense, then, dialogue is an invitation to test the viability of traditional definitions of what it means to be human, and collectively to explore the prospect of an enhanced humanity.

An enhanced humanity is an ideal worth striving for. I can’t help but wonder what my world would be like if my mother would not have been denied a driver license by an employee of the State of Utah, who snidely told her “Frankly, we just don’t want you here.” This prejudicial treatment caused my mother, who had been on her way out of Warren Jeffs’ group, to retreat to where she felt safer, under his control. There, she was not allowed to get proper medical care and she died from a very treatable disease.

Yes, this is personal to me. When works of spurious claims and demonization of an entire community are allowed to continue to inform public policy and create prejudice which keeps the human beings in those communities disempowered, then we must expect poor outcomes in those communities.

Let’s do better.

[i] https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/index.html. See also Schneider, A., & Ingram, H. “Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy.” The American Political Science Review, 87no. 2 (1993): 334–347. 

[ii] Sigman, S. (2006). “Everything Lawyers Know About Polygamy is Wrong.” Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy 16 no. 1, 101-186.

[iii] Krakauer, J. (2003). Under the banner of heaven: A story of violent faith. Anchor Books.

[iv] Precarious social relegation appears to promote extremism among low-status groups. Hogg (2014) points out that inflexibility in dogma and cult-like behaviors within a powerless and unpopular group are often a reflection of its members’ feelings of uncertainty about the world, the individual’s place and identity within society. He postulates that for members, identification with a group which has rigid ideologies resolves those uncertainties and encourages a stronger bond with the group, even though it enjoys low social status. As a child, I remember that lack of widespread social acceptance was held as a badge of honor. We were taught that it was because Satan was working against God, and that “God would have a tried people.” True to Hogg’s Uncertainty-Identity theory (2007), that external social stigma caused the believers to close ranks.See Hogg, M. (2007). Uncertainty–Identity Theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 69-126; Hogg, M. (2014) From Uncertainty to Extremism: Social Categorization and Identity Processes. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23, 338-342.

[v] Bohm, D. (2009). On dialogue. London: Routledge.