“It’s Not About the Sex” My Ass (13 page)

Passive-aggressive prophets avoid direct confrontations.
Harmston said nothing more about apostles who “don’t believe what really
happened.” When Jeff’s turn to lead Sunday services rolled around, everyone,
Harmston included, expected him to appear in the front of the church as usual.

Jeff has a number of talents, but being a good liar was
never one of them. There was no way he could carry off leading the meeting as
if he still believed in the nonsense. We piled the kids in the car and left on
a drive instead. Jeff called a fellow apostle and asked him to fill in,
muttering something unconvincing about not feeling well. In the car, we told
the kids we were going to quit the church and leave Manti. They were now
eleven, nine, and eight years old. The youngest and oldest sat quiet. “Doesn’t
God want us here?” our middle child asked. “No,” we assured her, “he doesn’t.”

We never attended church in Manti again.

When we returned from the drive, Jeff prepared and mailed to
Harmston a letter officially resigning our family from The True and Living
Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days. Friends reported that
Harmston read our letter aloud in church the following Sunday. Many TLC members
wept. Harmston vowed never to disparage Jeff, who “had been a good and faithful
apostle for so many years.”

In fact Harmston refrained from badmouthing us for a good
five or six days. It wasn’t until the following Sunday that he proceeded to
rake us over the coals before the congregation. We had sinned against the Holy
Ghost, he declared. It was the unpardonable sin, worse than murder. Upon death
we would be banished to Perdition. But it was what Harmston said next that made
his followers gasp the loudest. In this life, God was going to “curse” us with
black skin.

No such luck. As of this writing, I am still an
embarrassing, pasty white.

Think about it: religion has actually convinced
people—many of them adults—that there’s an invisible man who lives
in the sky and watches everything you do, every minute of every day … and he
needs money.

—George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty

The moment we announced our intention to leave the Manti
cult, we were taboo. A few brave friends risked Harmston’s disapproval by
stopping by to tell us they would miss us, but most stayed away. We didn’t
blame them. Harmston’s wives routinely strolled past our home, peering at our
windows. If they spied a TLC member sitting in our living room or joining us
for dinner, they scurried home to tell Harmston, who lost no time in calling
the traitors on the carpet. They had no business fraternizing with us, Harmston
said, for we were enemies of God and of all that is righteous, just, and true.
Not the sort of people you want tainting you, your spouses, or your kids.

Harmston had good reason for wanting followers to keep their
distance. Jeff was popular. He was a stalwart who had brought a number of
families into the fold. Upon hearing of Jeff’s disaffection, many converts and
loyal friends began reconsidering Harmston and the TLC. Shortly after our
departure, a number of them also left. Some of the apostles who had served
under Jeff’s leadership left with their families as well.

Group insanity is not so easily doused, however. Fanatics
only draw strength from the apostasy of people like us. They take it as a
confirmation that we are the weak and that they are the strong, the valiant, the
Elect. We left in July 2000. Harmston and The True and Living Church of Jesus
Christ of Saints of the Last Days are still there, plugging away.

Still, you have to wonder. If Harmston really didn’t want
all the trouble that our departure had caused, he could simply have folded back
time. Where was Isaac Newton when Harmston needed him?

Perched atop breathtaking mountains about 30 miles east of
Salt Lake City sits Park City, Utah. It draws skiing enthusiasts from around
the world. It hosted a number of events during the 2002 Olympic Winter Games.
Its residents tend toward the more affluent end of the continuum. Park City is
known for being more liberal than other Utah towns, though that’s like saying
“more athletic than the average slab of bacon.” Still, it’s true. People often
refer to Park City as “in Utah but not of it.” Thinking it might provide an
ideal place for a fresh start, we drove there for a visit.

Park City is also known as “Utah’s California town.” That
refers only in part to its more liberal side. It also refers to the fact that
the town boasts a lot of moneyed, stylish, attractive people. When we stepped
out of our conspicuously dusty, oxidized van, we felt like bumpkins.

Not that we fit the Utah polygamist clan stereotype. Unlike
most, we didn’t confine the men to long-sleeved flannel shirts and jeans. We
women were allowed to wear makeup, popular hairdos instead of long, uncolored
braids, and pants instead of floor-length dresses looking fresh from
Little House on the Prairie
. But what
passed for sporty among polygamists looked dowdy and decades behind the times
in Park City. Feeling horribly out of place, we quickly agreed that our new
home would not be there.

Nor was it lost on us that we were the only people out and
about on that warm, sunny day dressed in stiflingly hot clothing. It was time
to rebel against our underwear.

When you leave Mormonism or a Mormon-based splinter group,
nothing feels quite so liberating and wonderfully rebellious as changing your
underwear.

Adult Mormons officially receive the all-white “garment”
during a temple rite, where they covenant to wear it for the rest of their
lives. They are told it will be “a shield and a protection.” Apocryphal stories
abound of Mormons whose garments protected them from fire, bullets, and knives.
Though Mormons are permitted to remove the garment for sports, bathing, and
sex, a few fanatics refuse to part with them even then, insisting on looping
through at least a leg or arm.

The garment top has a more or less scoop neck and short
sleeves. The bottom comes about to the knee. Women wear a bra over the top and,
if they wish, panties over the bottom. You can imagine how comfortable that
might be on a hot day. The ensemble looks weird on women, period. On men, it
looks just different enough from a T-shirt and a pair of boxers to stand out in
the locker room. On men or women, it looks even weirder if you’re close enough
to notice the four embroidered symbols. There’s a small L shape over one
breast, a V shape over the other, what looks like an em dash over the belly
button, and another em dash over the knee. To anyone acquainted with Masonic
symbols, the marks look familiar. That’s no coincidence. Mormon founder Joseph
Smith devised the temple rite shortly after becoming a Mason himself.

The symbols are to serve as constant reminders of the
promises you and God have made to each other. If you want to feel devoted,
righteous, and holy, you just can’t beat hot, clingy underwear creeping up your
butt all day and all night.

Typical underwear in Smith’s day was a one-piece affair with
a collar, long sleeves, and long legs, so that’s how the original garments were
designed. Over the years, the Mormon Church nixed the collar, shortened the
sleeves and the legs, and, in the 1970s, mercifully introduced a two-piece
version. Polygamist clans, including the TLC, insist on a return to the
original. That meant no short pants, short sleeves, or open collars, let alone
tank tops—no matter how hot it was outside. Though we didn’t look like
extras for a Western, we were nonetheless always overdressed for warm weather.

Looking back, the underwear thing is admittedly funny. But
it’s also a little scary. When leaders get away with dictating minute matters
as personal as what underwear to wear, along with when it’s OK and not OK to
remove it, it tells you something about the control that cultish organizations
exert over followers. The distance from “wear this weird underwear at all
times” to “drink the Kool-Aid” is shorter than the distance from “thou shalt
not lie.”

We’d had enough of envying comfortable clothing on hot,
sunny days. We gathered our garments and burned them in the backyard. It had
been 15 years since I’d felt a bra against my skin, much less donned sexy
panties in delightful colors. It felt more than just comfortable, literally
cool, and liberating. It felt scandalously naughty.

For the first time in my life, I ceased being a sheep. I
felt like an independent woman who at last dared to think for herself. It was,
perhaps, a step I needed to take before George Carlin could get through to me.

Besides finding a town, Jeff and I discussed finding a
church.

Harmston put a great deal of effort into convincing
followers that the mainstream Mormon Church was a counterfeit. He did a good
job of it. Though we no longer bought Harmston as a prophet or The True and
Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days as legitimate, for us
a return to the Mormon Church was equally out of the question.

Likewise, the Mormon Church puts a good deal of effort into
exposing the fallacies underlying all other religions, while deftly deflecting
attention from its own. We found ourselves not terribly interested in seeking
out any religion, Christian or otherwise. We doubted that there was such a
thing as a religion that had an ounce of truth to it.

Behold, then came George Carlin.

I happened to catch one of his television specials one
evening while lying in bed unable to sleep. He called religion—not just
one denomination, but all religion—“the greatest bullshit story ever
told.” Think about it, he said. “An invisible man … with a special list of
things he does not want you to do.” Break one of those rules and God will send
you to “a special place” of “torture and anguish.” But, Carlin added, “He loves
you, and he needs money.”

The common sense cut through the fog in my head. It spoke to
my brain and my heart. After a lifetime of nonsensical, self-contradictory
religious indoctrination, here was a clear and intelligent voice that dared to
tell, if you’ll pardon the expression, the honest-to-god truth. In a few
succinct words, Carlin articulated what I had begun more and more to sense but
had not yet quite faced. Since Carlin had an audience, I reasoned, there must
be many, many others who thought that way, too. I wasn’t alone!

That night, a new door opened for me upon a rational world.
In the years since, that world has proved far more mysterious and beautiful
than the mythological one I grew up in.

Our family would not be joining a church.

We would, however, be purchasing a few books and CDs by
George Carlin.

Astute readers may have noted that I poke fun at the
mainstream Mormon Church in these pages. That is not to say that Mormonism, the
TLC, and, for that matter, all religions don’t count some wonderful people
among their ranks. They do.

My parents are a shining example.

Imagine living a meek, quiet life of going to church,
minding your own business, never standing out, avoiding controversy, being
courteous to all you meet, and never causing trouble of any sort. You are
secure and happy in your religion, which you take seriously. Then your nutcase
daughter tells you she is moving to Manti with her husband and their children—your
grandchildren—to join a nutcase polygamist cult.

Imagine, too, that your surrounding mainstream Mormon
culture pressures you to shun them. Under a banner of trying to remain
untainted, Mormons congratulate themselves on what the rest of the world calls
intolerance. Mormon leaders vaguely counsel members to be selective in their
associations. There is no such vagueness when it comes to polygamists. A
too-close association with polygamists can bar a Mormon from temple attendance
privileges.

Though Mom and Dad tended to err on the side of not making
waves, they stood up to social pressure and official policy to ensure that we
knew they were still our family, they still loved us, and they still had our
backs. Sure, they expressed horror at the choice we made. But they didn’t cut
us off. Unfailingly for seven years, they made regular trips to Manti, bringing
gifts for the kids, offering help where we needed it, and telling us they loved
us. They kept it up even though we often returned the favor by telling them
their church blinded them and they should “repent” and join with us.

My parents were thrilled when I called to tell them we were
leaving the cult. Immediately they offered their help. They owned a rental home
in Orem, not far from their own home. The tenants had given notice. Knowing we
needed a temporary roost while we figured out where to land long term, they
urged us to take it. They would be nearby to help with babysitting and anything
else we needed during the transition. They did this despite their dismay that
we would not be returning to the Mormon Church.

We sold our Manti home and moved into Mom and Dad’s rental
in Orem, Utah.

I didn’t know it then, but it wouldn’t be the last time Mom
and Dad would come to my rescue in my adult life.

My gratitude was mixed with humiliation. Jeff and I had
rented this home from my parents once before, when we were first married. We
lived there when our first two children were born. Fourteen years later, we
were back in that tiny rental, facing the fact that we were starting at ground
level while most people our age were well into their careers and halfway along
paying off a home. We had gone full circle and landed back where we started.
The rest of the world had moved on without us.

We did our best to move into the home without drawing
notice, but word travels fast through a Mormon neighborhood. It travels even
faster with neighbors who knew you before, know your parents, and are well
aware that you are the whackos who joined a polygamist cult. Most remained wary
and kept their distance, content to talk about us instead of visit with us.