Hi, Everyone!

Okay, I am beside myself. I just finished listening to NPR's Fresh Air interview with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who wrote "A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870." Have a listen. Whole bunch of lies.

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/17/510246850/how-mormon-polygamy-in-the-19th-century-fueled-womens-activism

Okay, I have to get back to work, but I hope you all are well. Things are good here. I miss y'all, but I have to take breaks or I'll be posting like a crack-addicted hamster.

MWAH!

Oh, and I searched to see if this interview has been posted as a thread on the board. I didn't see it, but if I missed it, sincerest apologies.

ETA: I sent the program an email basically saying, "Oh, wow. Please interview someone else with better information and is no longer a member." I included the website to the board.

Almost finished screaming...

Beth



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2017 04:23PM by Beth.

Thanks, Will do..

Thanks for the link, Beth!!!

Typical Mormon apologist. Making excuses for the polygamy that was rampant in her own family, and by extension, the LDS church.

I fail to see how it was empowering to those women, or that somehow their choosing to be married in polygamy was a feminist trait.

For the man it was a ready made harem of concubines. For the women they were slaves to not only their husband but the church who mandated the extent of the patriarchal order they lived by. A complete subjugation of their womanhood, femininity, and giving up their identities to become domestic chattel.

If they fell out of favor with their husband they had no legal standing to contest a divorce. Shunning from their faith community and cut off by their husband, where did they go? Some if were so lucky, might have parents to go home to. Some didn't fare as well, and were left destitute and penniless.

I guess we should all be polygamists, so that we can be empowered.

Hey, don't pick on Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. She's hardly an apologist or a brain-dead TBM. She even coined this phrase: https://www.amazon.com/Well-Behaved-Women-Seldom-Make-History/dp/1400075270

Ulrich is openly feminist in a patriarchal church. She's a professor at Harvard University and was a founder of the independent Mormon women's magazine Exponent II. In the past, she's been blackballed from speaking at BYU. She's definitely been in the sights of disapproving GAs.

If more Mormons were like Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, the church might be a tolerable place.

the interview is noxious and full of misinformation.

Let me kindly suggest that you listen to the interview again, without your RfM glasses on, and with the following in mind.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a historian speaking to a lay audience. She is discussing things from the point of view of her specialty, "the silent work of ordinary people". She is not judging her subjects or paying attention to extreme cases; she is talking about how ordinary people lived and worked under 19th century Mormon polygamy.

Professor Ulrich is in no way an apologist for the church, its hierarchy or its past abuses. She is certainly not ignorant of those abuses. Ulrich is a professional historian who studies what data exists about her subjects and tries to make it accessible to her audience. She has won multiple, prestigious (and non-Mormon) awards for her work. See her Wikipedia page for more info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_Thatcher_Ulrich

If you are disturbed by the interview, why don't you read some of her work or, better yet, write her a polite letter with your concerns. She might write you back.

Sheesh. I might write her.

If it's written for the lay person, maybe it should be more accurate and include a more critical assessment of polygamy. Your point that I'm looking at it through an RfM lens is well-taken. She is looking at it through a practicing member *and* descendent of polygamists lens.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2017 08:07PM by Beth.

As a historian involved in academia I can tell you that these people are frequently over-rated. I don't care if she's the Dean of feminist studies at Oxford (if there is such a thing)-that does not make her ideas objective, or even valid.

Were she all that informed and objective she wouldn't be a Mormon in the first place.

I listened to the interview as well and almost had to turn it off. Apparently, according to Ulrich, it was easy for women to leave polygamy if they didn't like it and polygamy provided a place for women to go when they left abusive marriages. I wondered how much she's being paid by the church.

Ulrich was interviewed last week on the Doug Fabrizio show on Radiowest and I thought that interview was full of apologetics as well.

How could it be easy for women to leave polygamy if it was so difficult for settlers to even leave the church and Utah?

Some women were conscripted into marriages against their will by parents and church lay leaders.

It was an easy way for a parent to relinquish support of a daughter, to let another on the assumption she'd be cared for in the new household according to her contributions as a domestic slave to her master.

It was not a loving arrangement between parties, with the exception of the favored wife or wives. Women who were left abandoned had to fend for themselves. If they found their husband insufferable they likely had nowhere to turn, unless they had family who was able to take them in.

Women were voiceless, not empowered by polygamy. Ulrich has fabricated a portion of church history for church history - and using her Harvard status for clout to rewrite its past. That's the indidiousness of her dishonesty on this "mission," she's embarked. She's a historical negationist. No wonder she's a Cover Girl for Mormonism.

In 200 years, will her work be the standard for the history of LDS polygamy? God forbid, I hope not!

I disagree with everything she's saying thus far into the interview I've listened.

Ms. Ulrich is a descendant from polygamous branches of Mormonism. She has a "dog in this fight," she is defending based on her slanted and biased research.

She is clearly making excuses for the women caught up in polygamy to justify its existence.

She says it "strengthened their bonds." It helped family ties, etc. I call complete and total BS to that based on what I've found out from reading the histories of my polygamous ancestors.

The women suffered big time. The men had their pick of the maidens (or old maids,) and the newer wives on the block tended to supplant the older ones who'd outgrown their usefulness.

Polygamy to some early Mormon pioneers was a cheap path to divorce ie, B-I-G-A-M-Y. Why divorce a first wife, if you could simply get hitched without needing to go through such formality?

Patriarchal males were/are dominant, controlling, narcissistic, and lean towards abusiveness of their mates. In polygamous marriages there was a rank and order where wives were favored and least favored. So too, children.

The only empowering thing I've found from early Mormon pioneer history of its women was it enabled some of its women to attain higher education, so they could use it within their communities. Some became doctors. Some lawyers, etc. That was simply to help the Mormon colonies grow, not the women's rights movement. They were still subjugated to men, and second class citizens/mothers and childbearers.

She stated that JS took his first plural wife in 1841. I thought the Fanny Alger marriage occured in the barn around 1833.

Ah, but that wasn't a pure, celestial marriage. It was just a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair".

Thank you, Oliver Cowdery. :-) :-) :-)

Although I can not recall the context, Laurel was the subject of an RFM thread about 6 years ago ...

I stumbled upon your site looking for the podcast of Ms. Ulrich because I missed it this afternoon.
While I can clearly see that you have a specific reason for existing I would just like to put in a plug for actually reading this excellent book.
I am not a Mormon, nor have I ever been one, but I enjoy reading about the history of nineteenth century religion.
I hope you will take the time to read it. It is an amazing look inside the lives of early LDS pioneers written using their own words.

I doubt very much it is a comprehensive look at polygamy or the many lives of those affected by it.

Just reading about my polygamous ancestors, two of my great gggrandfathers ... their wives went through living HELL being in plural marriages. It was a horrible thing for the Mormons to have endured for the women and the children.

My great grandfather was a convert after he married my great grandmother, late 1800's, just prior to the ban on polygamy by the feds. Great grandmother was a granddaughter of a polygamist, whose wives left him based on abuse and cruelty. He blamed them for their "lack of spirituality." The only wife who stayed with him was the younger of two sisters he had a handful of children with. The older sister he had 10 children with her, and she still left him - she went home to her family because of his cruelty. His other two wives left him (not counting the two who died before he reached Utah.)

Some woman from their ward decided she wanted to be his 2nd wife (to my great grandpa,) and started courting him right under great grandma's nose. GGrandma was so distraught over that (1880s still polygamy era,) she told her husband in no uncertain terms would she tolerate another wife in the household, and that was the end of that! She knew from watching those around her in her Mormon bubble, how destructive it was. The "other" woman was sent packing, and great grandpa told great grandma he didn't know she loved him so much until she did that. (Happy sighs!)

Another left his first wife (in their day it was still called abandonment,) for his second wife. He didn't support the first, and the 2nd wasn't either very well. 4 of his and the 2nd wife's five children starved to death in infancy because they only had alfalfa to eat, while all their "firstfruits" went to prop up and support Brigham Young's lavish lifestyle with all his concubines.

That's in the words of my ancestors on polygamy. A far cry from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich story. Why doesn't she portray the sordid side and the ugly side of polygamy? It wasn't at all like the misinformation and dishonest light she portrays it as. If it was written like that by her predecessors, all I've got to say about that is they're bigger liars than I might have originally believed.

Some of us don't need to read this book to learn about polygamists "from their own mouths". Some of us heard it directly from their own mouths.

Three of my four grandparents were children of polygamous marriages (the fourth arrived in Utah too late). If my grandfather were still around, he could tell you what it was like not seeing his father for five years. First, BY sent him to Europe to serve as a mission president for 2 years leaving his 4 wives and children behind.

Shortly after he returned home, BY sent him over the mountain to help start another settlement in the next valley. He took only his youngest wife (who had no children). The other wives and their children stayed behind for another 3 years until he got settled enough, and then he brought them over as well.

That meant five years of fending for themselves without husband/father. And no, the church didn't help support them. Unfortunately, his family was not unique. Polygamy may have helped Mormon women develop strength, but it did so only in an abusive way by forcing them to become self-reliant to survive - along with their children.

I wasn't that impressed with either the interviewee or interviewer (though Terry Gross has done some pretty good interviews on other subjects, including some related to Mormonism, in the past). That said, I am not surprised that some women may have actually supported the oppressive system of polygamy. Discounting those who may have had mental issues, what I am reminded of is the information from psychologists and psychiatrists about long-term hostages sympathizing (or sometimes even coming to support) the views of their kidnappers--I suspect that some women living under polygamy became sympathetic to it, even though it was so repressive to them.

I also liked the quote from the two early feminists (Elizabeth Cady Stanton and another) pointing out that monogamous relationships during that timeperiod weren't much better for women than polygamous ones. Caucasian males made the laws and women were viewed as not being much higher than African-americans when it came to property and legal rights. Thankfully, we have come a long way since then.

Finally, Mrs. Thatcher Ulrich is quite correct when she explains how polygamy was justified by Joseph Smith. Though I agree with most of the other responders that Joseph Smith actually began polygamy to fulfill his own overpowering sex drive, he justified its use by pointing to Genesis and the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, where polygamy was clearly accepted as what was to be. While there are many, including yours truly, who view the Genesis stories as not being literally true at all, there are many others, both then and now, and from both inside and outside of Mormonism, who believe the biblical stories to be historically true and accurate.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2017 06:24AM by blindguy.

I am the great grandson of a polygamist. He married three sisters, and all of them died before he did of poverty and deprivation. Thirty-five poor children were produced. We have family stories of these people and their offspring wandering from state to state in a desperate search for food and housing. The children would knock on the back doors of restaurants and beg for food.

When my father's mother died, he took all her money and refused to share it with his siblings. He did it again to his own offspring when his mother-in-law died, including ransacking her house for valuables before other relatives arrived. This is my polygamy story--no nobility, no character built from adversity, just some sorry sons of bitches trying to get by, and making a mess of things.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2017 06:28AM by donbagley.

If you really want to know what it was like for Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and their contemporaries in polygamy, all one needs to do is to observe the FLDS and their marriage rites in Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, CO.

That will tell you more than Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has covered up and glossed over in her retelling of a souped up LDS Ensign story. Despite her credentials, based on what she's selling and marketing to the public, it's more watered down Mormonism for the masses - ie, a retelling of history that I doubt is accurate or honest reporting - even for a historian of Pulitzer noteworthiness.

Maybe she's resting on her laurels? This interview is not one of them. If that's indicative of her book, I won't waste my time.

I caught the tail end of the interview when I was on my way home. I told my mom about it. She didn't seem that interested. I think she's gotten to the point that if I ever bring up any subject of Mormon history, or even mormonism it is only to castigate or vilify it, which isn't the case at all. Sometimes I just like to have a discussion. And I think fresh air doing an interview with someone on polygamy is interesting. I wish I had gotten to listen to the whole interview. I do remember thinking at the very end that I wish that they could interview someone who had a more objective opinion. I can't stand it when Mormon's start talking about the whole 'Rich tapestry' and 'strong family bond' stuff. Polygamy was nothing but Joseph Smith getting caught with a 14 year old girl, and then a subsequent decision to create a patriarchal, submissive and abusive marriage system to cover up for it.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2017 06:58AM by midwestanon.

Fresh Air? Hardly. My GGfather came across in a hand cart pushed through the snow and cold by his wife because his feet were frozen off. Upon arriving in the SL Valley, BY gave him 2 more wives and sent him to St. George to be the temple president. Wives each had to fend for themselves and their fifty two children. Poverty to the core.

Then, when GGF was 56, BY gave him a 16 year old bride. The other three wives treated her deplorably. She fought back of course. GGF told her to get in line and obey the other three wives or he would see that she only got 1/2 a house.

She had 2 children by GGF and still continued to fight with the other wives. Her 1/2 of house stood in St. George as a reminder of her disobedience until around 1970. I remember it well as my own mother relayed the history to me and showed me the house.

When this 4th wife was 20, she disappeared and her two children assimilated in with the other 52 kids. Four years later those 2 children had disappeared also. What could have happened? (Shades of Ervil Labaron anyone?)

My mother's telling and showing me this bit of history about polygamy was one of the things that caused my shelf to break.

I heard some of this while driving yesterday in the car and Concrete Zipper has some points. When women got the vote in Utah it was done as a parody at the nation or as a funny to mock the Easterners who were trying to tell everyone what to do (like they always do, anyone remember Bear Ears monument?). Mormons didn't do it with civil rights or fairness as the motive. But when women got the vote they all voted for the party line and threw off the abolitionists. So suffrage went with the mormon bretheren and backfired against the politically correct Washington.

So if Ms. Thatcher Ulrich seemed conciliatory and apologetic, yes that's the history, yes women went for polygamy, and yes we should avoid judging this with 21 century political correct feminist lenses.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2017 05:46AM by poopstone.

You forget it was an outrage in 19th century "politically correctness," as much or moreso than it is today.

It goes against the grain of the institution of marriage as one man and one woman, in civil matrimony and the eyes of the law. It violated common sense then, and still does for the majority of people today.

Only Mormons bent on living that lifestyle made apologies for it. And apparently still are.

Mormonism is still in the 19th century regarding women's rights. It only went along with the suffrage movement and the laws against polygamy because it had no choice. Think about it, if the law of polygamy were reversed, Mormons would still be practicing it openly.

Joseph Smith was hunted down by vigilantes for all the umbrages he'd wreaked over the course of his career. Polygamy was at the top of the list.

poopstone Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So if Ms. Thatcher Ulrich seemed conciliatory and
> apologetic, yes that's the history, yes women went
> for polygamy, and yes we should avoid judging this
> with 21 century political correct feminist lenses.

Sorry, but that's complete bullshit.
Women only "went for polygamy" as slaves to their husbands and the church. Even though they could vote, had they dared vote against the church line, their husbands would have beaten or dumped them, and their church would have cast them out. Others have already related personal histories regarding how badly the women in polygamous families were treated, countering your assertion. I'll add mine...

My GGGF was a polyamist, in Panguitch (he was one of the town's founders). I'm from the line of wife #2. This wife, an immigrant from Australia, married a "good mormon" shortly after arriving in Utah, and the "good mormon" beat her and then abandoned her. Prophet Briggy granted her a "divorce," and then "gave" her (with no choice on her part) to my GGGF. While GGGF didn't beat her, he also put her in a tiny hovel apart from wife #1 and family, used her only as a baby-making machine, and frequently told her that if she tried to leave like she did from her first "good mormon" husband, nobody would take her in.

She worked hard, pumped out 8 kids from GGGF, saved a few pennies, and after the last kid was old enough to live on his own, she left him, moved to SLC, and lived out her life as a single woman away from the polygamy she hated.

And keep in mind, my GGGF was considered a kind polygamous husband. How much worse must it have been for the wives of non-"kind" ones?

Why isn't the church calling Ulrich on the carpet, if she's so outspoken as a feminist, and a Harvard professor - wouldn't she be in the line of fire as next to be ex-communicated?

I'll tell you why she's not. It's because she tows the line with church policies and directives, and still wants to be on the inside of Mormonism - teaching a glorified history from a Mormon perspective.

That she would sugarcoat the vagaries of polygamy and eliminate the stories of the oppression and harm it caused thousands, she does a disservice to the actual lives of those it touched.

This is why she gets a pass by church leaders and the GA. Otherwise, she'd have been on the chopping block like others before her. I also don't believe she's intellectually honest.

"At Harvard, Ulrich is actively involved in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She is the adviser for the undergraduate Latter-day Saint Student Association, the Mormon campus club, and teaches an Institute of Religion class."
(Wikipedia)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/18/2017 10:09AM by Amyjo.

Havent heard interview...probly wont...im sure a modern mormon talking up plygmy isnt going to impress me too much Ive seen the shit show....she sounds educated but perhaps not smart...like so many mormons trying to make moism make sense...ive seen it first hand...have family still in it...she can kiss my ass before she can put lip stick on the pig of plygmy...its still a pig thatll never make decent bacon...the suffering of those early victims of joes lechery ranks high on the list of pure human tragedy and it continues today...but youd also be amazed how great the women brainwashed with it from birth feel about it today...those girls jeffs raped dont see themselves as victims at all...it was their mothers who taught them victimhood with ignorance and compliance..keeping the law alive indeed...or tragedy it seems..its still my belief that the brainwashing the church does today pales in comparison to the mind fuck of fundyism...i might be qualified to render that opinion having seen both sides of the matter...but opinions are also like aholes...everyone has one...how many men do you know who have five wives and thirty kids taken away by the profit due to some grievance...and hang around repenting from afar for years waiting to be approved again turning over every spare dime they make...thats serious mental slavery most can only imagine...perhaps jonestown level crazy...drop the N in jonestown...your left with moism and Nauvoo or Kirtland...or Eldorado...good people...just not sure what for

Some polygamous families fit her construct. Many never did and still don't.

Always in polygamous situations it's more likely there will be spousal and child abuse. In EVERY polygamous situation there are problems with jealousy and problems of poor self esteem for some if not all of the children and wives who are overshadowed, shunned, or abused.

Polygamous families are basically unstable and dysfunctional because they are always in a state of upheaval with a new wife joining the family and likely others leaving. Is easy to leave? Sometimes, depending on the situation. Other times it's impossible.

This woman is imagining how it would be in polygamous households and is writing it as fact.

Is she a mormon apologist? I don't think so. But neither do I think she has a broad based handle on the gritty logistics and interactions of mormon polygamy.

My mother remembers "Aunt Jane" who was the polygamous wife of her mainstream mormon grandfather and much loved by the family who was proud of their successful experience living the principle. For all of their happy reminiscing, they alluded to a life of grueling poverty and personal pain.

I knew Marvin Allred and his first three polygamy group wives who had to live a covert life. It was the most idealic situation that polygamy can offer. Still, it was hard for them. Two of the three wives had problems with the third and had to pick up the slack because she couldn't or wouldn't pull her weight. Only the first wife had legal status which was difficult for the others. Some of the many children didn't get the attention they deserved and were dependent on siblings for care. None of the children could easily leave if they chose because they were immersed in a cultish culture which did not prepare them to face the challenges in the outside world.

We all know how hard it is to leave mainstream mormonism. It's many times harder to leave mormon polygamy. Their brainwashing and isolation from the real world is multiples what happens to a typical TBM mormon growing up today in Provo would face.

I think sometimes our feelings of anger at personal suffering, family heritage, deception, etc., color our reading of history and impose a relatively uniform description on what was a complex phenomenon. Cheryl's post captures some of this when she says that Ulrich's interview describes how polygamy functioned for some families and some women. I think that is right.

There were many polygamies. There was the polygamy of Joseph Smith, which was a narcissist's power play, the destruction of families and child molestation. BY's polygmay was quite close to that. There was another polygamy that developed after the removal to Utah and the stabilization of Mormon society, a time when for many people with wealth in SLC and perhaps a few other places the system worked pretty well for some women. There are journal accounts of this, of women banding together to send one or two to East Coast colleges or other experiences that were not available to the vast majority of women in the United States. Then there was the polygamy of the margins, places like Lee's Ferry and other frontier places with no money and no society and drunk, angry husbands. I can think of no greater hell.

Then there was the polygamy of the 1890s and 1900s, when good men were driven randomly from their homes by government agents and their families left to fend for themselves in ironic poverty and insecurity in SLC and other major cities. There was also the polygamy that continued in secret in Utah after the 1907 "Second Manifestation," which went underground and forced children to deny their families and their lives. Meanwhile there were the polygamist colonies and derivative sects such as Cheryl experienced and which Warren Jeffs embodies, many of which were horrifically destructive--probably similar in practice and impact to what JS did.

My point is that Ulrich's description is perfectly compatible with a large number of accounts of the relatively stable Utah period of polygamist history and hence can't be discounted as incorrect. I personally believe, without conclusive evidence, that that lifestyle was in some ways better, in some ways worse, than the way a lot of American women lived at the time. So while I don't think what she said was a comprehensive vision of what polygamy was and is, I also think it was accurate regarding a substantial part of the experience.

My personal view is that on balance polygamy was a very bad thing. I learned a lot about it from studying how the institution functions in Islam and seeing how even in good families the political dynamics were harmful to women and to children. The angry young men blowing up airliners? A lot of them are middle- or upper-class children of second or third wives who never enjoyed high status in their fathers' eyes. At points in Mormon history, I think polygamy functioned substantially worse than in, say, Saudi Arabia.

In my family records I've seen both. My father's side of the family went late to SLC and entered polygamy at a point where the system functioned better; the diaries from that period are more like what Ulrich described. My mother's side was in Mormonism from the beginning, and there are horror stories from the earliest years and again from the years of hiding from government agents. I have told many people that the harm inflicted on my mother's family in particular continues, like an Edgar Allen Poe curse, a disease that has damaged five, six, even seven generations of people. It is a curse, I suspect, that manifests in certain forms of dysfunction in my parents' marriage.

That said, my point is that I think some posters are being unfair to Ulrich. When one speaks of marriage in the US, people are likely to mention the roles of joint parents, single parents, support from communities, problems encountered by normative families, etc. They describe something like the average experience. There is not an immediate need, unless asked, to describe extremely dysfunctional families. It may be that Ulrich should have cast her net wider to capture more varieties of polygamy, but I think the polygamy of which she spoke was a legitimate form of the practice for much of the Mormon population for a few decades. In terms of population and continuity, that may have been the peak period for the phenomenon.

Your reply is full of unfounded assumptions about me and that leads me to mistrust other aspects about what you say about this topic.

Cheryl,

I apologize if I so badly misrepresented your feelings. I was referring to this sentence: "Some polygamous families fit her construct. Many never did and still don't." I agree entirely with that, at least as I understand it.

My point, and I take it on as my own responsibility, is that in the 1880s, 1890s, and even much of the 1900s before the Second Manifesto, when the number of people involved in polygamy was highest, a world like what Ulrich describes did in fact exist. It did not include all people and it was limited to the most affluent and stable parts of Mormondom. But there are extensive journals written by women attesting to it.

What appealed to me in your post was simply that you recognized that there were multiple experiences, which is true both specifically and inevitably in any huge social institution. Again, my family experience bears close resemblance to what you have described about your childhood although there were women who did indeed benefit from SOME of the elements that Ulrich described.

So I think polygamy is a good institution? Absolutely not. In every society I have studied, including the Arab world, parts of Africa, etc., it sets wives and children in competition for scarce emotional, material, and social resources. That is true, in my mind, even of the most functional forms of polygamy and is damning. As I said, I think the legacy in my family continues damaging over a century after the event.

My point is that the "polygamy experience," like the "marriage experience" or the "Catholic experience," is not unitary but rather extremely varied. There were cases in which it worked for some people, according to their standards if not ours. Does that justify or legitimize the system? Not in my estimation.

Again, I'm sorry if I took that single passage of yours in a direction with which you were uncomfortable. Thank you for clarifying your views.

No, I'm not uncomfortable, angry or misguided. I'm stating the facts as I see them. Assuming nefarious motives when someone differs with a point of view is the weakest of arguments.

Cheryl,

Now I think you are being unfair. I took a sentence of yours and added commentary I thought related. You told me I misrepresented your thoughts, and for that I apologized.

I do not at all feel that you are "uncomfortable, angry or misguided" about your experiences or your facts. Maybe you feel "uncomfortable" with how I (mis)used your sentiments, but that is my fault and not yours.

I accept, as I always have, that you are "stating the facts as [you] see them." I do not assume you have "nefarious motives" of any sort. You have always spoken straight and honestly and I have learned more from you than you'll ever know. So, I repeat, I not accuse you of any negative motives.

I apologize for misreading your comments. Full stop.

Never-mo, long-time reader here and Terry Gross fan. I was very disappointed in the interview. Thatcher Ulrich kept stressing
all the rights polygamous women had without providing context.
As others noted above, the consequences for exercising those rights were very bleak, with few viable alternatives left to them.
A more accurate thesis would have been "look how much these women suffered, compared to the average pioneer women of this era, and their sacrifice is the foundation of the survival of the LDS church and its current prosperity." Milk before meat, spooned into the mouths of a national non-LDS audience.

I wrote the show and shook my fist at them in an old man sort of way.

I heard the interview, too, and I thought I was going a little crazy because it sounded very apologist to me. Ulrich made it sound like polygamy was just something Mormons practiced that enriched their lives, and didn't have much of an effect once Wilford Woodruff wrote the manifesto. At least Ulrich pointed out that polygamy continued for a good 20 years on the down low with several Mormon families.
However, I felt really confused by the notion that polygamy was a choice, and that it was a progressive lifestyle that afforded women safety and security. I was hoping for harder, more pointed questions from Terri Gross.
It was disappointing and a little insulting.