Beehive Nest…I Mean House

Yesterday Chelsea and I went to the Beehive House. I took her there because when I went on a tour a few years ago I enjoyed the discussion of polygamy that went on. It’s a peculiar bit of Utah history and culture, the practice of polygamy, and as a woman I have a healthy dose of curiosity about what it would be like to be one of many MANY wives. My original tour was conducted by an older woman who had vast amounts of knowledge of the history of the house, the people who lived there and anecdotes of interactions between the wives. I thought it’d be an interesting thing for Chelsea to see and prompt some womanly bonding time between the two of us. I could not have been more wrong.

We walk into the house to find two young “sister” missionaries leading the tour. As we quickly walked through the various rooms of the house I keep waiting for mention of them…the wives. Not only was there no mention of them but the only story that was told was of one wife and her seven children that lived in the house with him. The girls referred to them as “the family that lived in the house”. I’m sorry but you can’t just stand there and refer to “the family” as a nuclear one-man-one-woman-with-kids affair when you are talking about Brigham Young. The man had 55 wives. FIFTY-FIVE! Talk about alternative forms of marriage. I wanted to raise my hand and say, “Ahem, where did the other wives live?”. But I couldn’t do it. I was feeling the redness boil up inside of me and my anger was directed at a place beyond these 21 year-old girls who were given this script and only this script to recite. Their task is obvious. They aren’t there to discuss history, they aren’t there to even know real history, they are there to ask me about my current faith…ummm, none…and make me listen to passages from their Book of Mormon. As I realized that this place is not at all what I remembered it to be I had to acknowledge the change in my own perspective since the last time I took this tour. The last time I was a believer and I was in awe of this place. The last time was before Prop 8, before the Mormon church became a stakeholder in the concept of “marriage” on such a public stage. I mean you can’t do that and then bring people into the parlor of one of your most cherished historical figures and tell the tales of the most massive demonstration of alternative marriage that this country has ever seen without looking like a complete hypocrite, right? I guess not. I think if I would’ve even said the word “Ahem” this entire train of thought would have come straight out of my mouth and I just couldn’t be an ass to these little sisters.

The end of the tour resulted in a captive audience situation as we sat in almost a circle in the last room and listened to the little sisters read and testify. We were then asked individually to fill out comment cards. Each person got a card and questions about their faith…ummm none… I could see the looks on the faces of some of the people in the room that made me fantasize that a few of them were thinking “I call bullshit on all of this”. Not the couple who met in the singles ward in Vernal, Utah, but the Catholics from Ohio who already filled out one of those cards and had some representatives show up at their door last Spring were thinking it for sure. You know THEY googled. Before we could be cornered, Chels and I stood up and looked for the door. The little sisters were distracted by the Catholics. There was no sign that said “exit” or “this way out” or “here’s where you GTFO” or anything. We took a chance that the big front door was the appropriate exit and we did, indeed, GTFO. On the way out I brushed by a table that had a small easel with a single piece of paper on it. The Proclamation on the Family…the document that defines the Mormon church’s stance on marriage as that between one man and one woman. On a table. AT THE BEEHIVE HOUSE. Yeah, GTFO.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

test Filed under Exmormon, politics | Tags: Marriage, mormonism, polygamy, prop 8, religion, Utah | Comment (0)