Words like "polygamy" and "mainstream LDS members" don't belong in the same sentence. Mormon polygamy got off to an awkward start, with Joseph Smith secretly propositioning many women - some of them married to faithful Mormons, some of them twins, some of them as young as 14 - amid denials to his wife, revelations to his wife, continuing secrets from his wife, continuing conflict in the home, official Church denials and a scandal that led to the murder of Joseph and Hyrum. The Church lost some key figures - including Oliver Cowdery, who was ex'd for rebuking Joseph's behavior in a letter.
And yet, where some movements might implode from such revelations, the Church - under the leadership of Brigham Young - revered the life and martyrdom of Joseph and then went public with polygamy in a big, big way. Where many churches would be mortified at such sexual adventure, the Church divied it out to all worthy members and even openly encouraged folks to do their duty and do likewise.
Polygamy made weirdos out of what might be called "second-generation Mormons." It produced a kind of Mormon War in Heaven, with apostolic rivals saying, "I have a plan." Numerous key figures balked at trekking West - including Sydney Rigdon, Emma, Joseph III and Mother Smith - and stayed behind. The death of Joseph Smith produced a three-year succession crisis that ended up separating one Mormon tradition from another. One group, while loyal to Joseph, were reluctant to cross over; the other group followed the sunset to a promised land where Mormons could be Mormons - in every sense of the word.
It's in this context that we begin to see polygamy in a new light. Many see the practice as a sexual perversion, or a vestige of patriarchal slavery. To me, it represents an uncompromising Utopian idealism, a romantic dream of building a whole new society, a city in the wilderness. Despite later denials, some of them from Church leaders, I think it's obvious that polygamy - in all its weirdness - fed a deep craving to create a Mormon empire in the desert. If you wanted to be somebody in this Mormon Gilligan's Island, you had to be connected to a sprawling, collectivist, corporate family. Despite the sexual asymmetry suggesting that one good man was equal (or even superior) to so many women, the impression I get from the letters and journals I've read, is that - at least initially - people were dying to hook up, including many women who gained status by joining and building polygamous families.
My take - from the primary sources - was that polygamy was emblematic of a Mormon rebellion against the social status quo, a fraternity-like stunt representing spiritual independence. As Protestantism had splintered between crusty intellectuals and brain-dead emotionalism, Mormons were eager to experience the religion of the Bible. Let me reiterate and clarify. They didn't want to just understand or describe it. They wanted to live it. While other groups were meeting to hammer out creeds and arguments, the Mormons were trying to live the kind of life described in the Bible. They wanted to live as if no separation existed between the Biblical and the Modern.
In this context, polygamous families were more than just unorthodox family arrangements. They were expressions of solidarity and idealism, not unlike the Israeli kibbutzim. To live such a life was to fully commit to the Mormon way of life - which included tithing, monthly fasting, lay ministry and the ordination of ordinary men, temples, missions, promised lands, patriarchal blessings and the idea that God, angels, devils and men were all connected by a plan where choice defines destiny.
Not surprisingly, second-generation Mormons saw polygamy as the centerpiece of their way of life. They imagined that Jesus was polygamous - God, too - and that polygamy was practiced in Heaven. But the solidarity created by polygamy also gave rise to a Mormon War that threatened the Church, tainted with Mountain Meadows and stood in the way of the real dream: the spread of the Restored Gospel and the conversion of the world.
When third-generation Mormons abandoned the practice, declaring its authority revoked by God, it produced yet another schism between the old-timers, to be known as Fundamentalists, and Modern Mormons, to be known as Mainstreamers. In the same way Christians dropped circumcision - and other peculiarly Jewish customs - in favor of a broader Christianity appealing to a wider world, Mainstream Mormons defined the faith in broader, more generic, less peculiarly 19th-Century terms. In fact, it's not an accident that this shift corresponded with a changing zeitgeist in the turn of the century. Just as we were prone to view the 1990s in apocalyptic terms, Modern Mormons viewed the 1890s as a time of change, with one thing ending so something else could take its place.
The Mormon move toward the American mainstream reflected a nascent view that there was now more to be gained by rejoining the country than there had once been in leaving it. But this was a broad institutional shift, embraced by the vast majority of Utah saints, one reflecting exhaustion with an isolationism no longer necessary for group survival. As happens in general, there are times to withdraw and times to embrace. In retrospect, it was an inspired decision, one that let the Church rebuild as well as expand.
Now, there are various "Mormons" who don't care for mainstream Mormonism. They crave the isolation and peculiar flavor of a marital institution outlawed by federal, state and Church. The first of these were those Fundamentalists who embraced second-generation Mormonism but couldn't handle the third wave. A lot of these folk fled the states for Mexico and Canada - or withdrew to more secluded areas of America, such as Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. These folk want to be backward, primitive and rough around the edges. They live at the edges of the law - and not just with polygamy.
There are others, however, who come from mainstream Mormon life and who crave a modern withdrawal of sorts. Rather than physically flee into the wilderness, they want to stay put but quietly adopt practices that spiritually withdraw from the modern teachings and practices of the LDS Church. Some of this may come from gospel hobbyism. I've met my share of fetishists who obsess over second-generation culture and quotes. They take something wholesome - like honoring the Mormon pioneers - and turn it into something cult-like. I've met dummies who think the Word of Wisdom includes colas and sugar, who read the Journal of Discourses uncritically and with more passion than their scriptures, who think black people are the race of Cain and who think Heaven will be full of polygamists. If you were raised by a stern grandparent who thought there was no school like the old school, or you're just bored, it's not that hard to imagine how extra special you must be if you're descended from the right pioneers - or that polygamy is your highest and best gift to God.
I lived in Utah for nine years. During that time, my apartment was tracted out by a missionary from some group in Juarez. That was my only personal brush with polygamist exiles. I also knew a lady who went to a singles dance and met a man who wanted her to secretly marry him and become one co his wives. It wasn't fundamentally different from a brush with a rapist, a spouse-abuser, a control freak or a near-abduction. It's just that this form of danger came dressed as a modern form of polygamy, the secret kind that lives next door.
In the rest of my time in Utah, I failed to run into or notice a third such situation. Most Utahans I've met may be a little goofy, in that rural-state way that makes the Midwest so memorable, but they're not creepy. Some f them may be dorks, with license plates that read, "RULDS2?" but they're not the Addams Family, let alone the Mansons.