Polygamy in the Desert

Utah's Founding Father Brigham Young had 27 wives, but his Mormon Church banned polygamy in 1890 by "revelation"--after losing several U.S. Supreme Court cases. Just last year Mormon President Spencer Kimball warned that "the Lord brought an end to this program many decades ago." That divine word has not reached everyone. There are some 35,000 heretical Mormons in the U.S. and Mexico who still practice polygamy.

This underground activity burst into public notice this spring when pistol-packing ex-Marine Alexander Joseph, 39, led 12 of his wives and 15 other families--all members of Joseph's Church of Jesus Christ of Solemn Assembly--to establish a settlement on a 2,000-acre tract of federal land in southern Utah. Before the Bureau of Land Management began proceedings to evict them, they had put up ten buildings, started a dam and planted vegetables. A federal court is now deciding whether they are homesteaders or simply squatters.

Legal Buffer. Joseph talks of his "church" as a "legal buffer" against prosecution, but he gets a low rating as a religious patriarch, even from Osteopath Rulon Allred, founder of the polygamous Montana community where Joseph once lived. Says Allred: "He used the doctrine of plural marriage to justify conduct not acceptable to the priesthood." Indeed, Joseph has acquired his 15 wives (who now have five children) rather casually. "I decided to marry Judy after 15 minutes," he says, "and I asked Paulette [age 16] after 29 hours." The obedient wives, most of whom work as waitresses in Joseph's nearby Red Desert Inn, profess to believe in the Josephian faith. Says Joni, who turned down a $6,000 National Merit scholarship to marry him: "Polygamy provides the sense of fulfillment I never experienced at the First Baptist Church in Billings." Although polygamy is illegal, authorities have trouble prosecuting it. Says Kane County Sheriff Norman Swapp: "Sure it's against the law, but I can't even prove he's married to all those women."

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