I conducted a telephonic interview with Anne Wilde, one of the founders of Principle Voices, an advocacy group for fundamentalist Mormon polygamist women, on February 27.   Ms. Wilde lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

SWT: Where are you from originally?

Anne Wilde: I was born in Detroit, but was raised in southern California.  I attended BYU (Brigham Young University) in Provo, Utah, and graduated in 1958.

SWT: You grew up in LDS (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, mainstream Mormonism)?

AW: Yes.  During my first marriage [this was monogamous], I’d found there’d been a lot of doctrinal changes in the history of church.

SWT: You’re an independent fundamentalist.

AW: I don’t belong to any of the groups.

SWT referred to an earlier interview in which she had noted that certain fundamentalist communities give “too much power” to one individual.

AW: When a person wants to get in control, it gets pretty dangerous.   I do like the free agency of not following a leader.  I believe that someday the Church [LDS] will be set in order.  Right now, it’s in disorder.  I’m focusing on getting my own life righteous so I can be part of (setting the Church in order).

SWT: You were the second wife in your second, polygamous marriage.

AW: I was the second wife for 33 years.   I was very, very happy.   I helped him [her husband] write about 65 books.  They were all on LDS history and doctrine, pretty much.   I also did printing of book.

Ms. Wilde declined to state the precise number of wives her late husband had altogether, but said it was “just a small number.”

AW: The average number is only two or three wives.  People have this vision of 12 or 15 wives.  Sometimes, this is the case; it’s the leader.

Ms. Wilde has consistently denied that plural marriage is inherently patriarchal.

AW: They [plural wives] have the best of both worlds.  Other mothers can take care of their children.   They can go back to school and get a college degree or go out and work and have a career.  I think there are a lot more opportunities for a plural wife than there are for a monogamous wife.

SWT: Have you read Jon Krakauer’s book Under the Banner of Heaven, which deals with Mormon fundamentalism and polygamy?

AW:  Yes, I have.  I gave a paper on it.  The main criticism I have is, of course, that it focuses on the negative – the Lafferty brothers [who murdered their niece and sister-in-law], Warren Jeffs…It’s not a balanced book.   I’ve met Jon…He’s coming from a certain perspective.   When one focuses on a negative, it’s not a very balanced view.  We admit very much that Voices in Harmony is biased.  This is not a balanced presentation, because the negative is already out there.  We had the testimonies of 100 women that were happy in it [plural marriage], had chosen it as consenting adult.  It’s a very biased book, but it had to be…

I think that people have the idea that polygamy is patriarchal, where the man is very dictatorial, and that couldn’t be further from the truth – at least in most cases.  My husband almost went overboard to make sure I got what I wanted.   I consider myself a fundamentalist feminist because I’ve heard a definition of feminism that [it is about women having the power to make fundamental choices about their own lives].

I asked Ms. Wilde about her and others’ struggle to decriminalize polygamy, which is currently a felony under Utah law, as it is many, if not most, other jurisdictions in the United States.

AW: We do not have our equal civil rights…[We want decriminalization] so polygamists will not lose their jobs or be kicked out of homes that they’re renting because the person above them finds out that they have more than one wife…I think alternative lifestyles are the majority…single parents, same-sex couples…polygamous marriages should have that right [to live without fear of prosecution or persecution].

SWT: How do you feel about same-sex marriage?

AW: I don’t comment on the religious aspects of that.  But, legally….we’re in the same category…as consenting adults…They should have equal civil rights – blacks should have their rights, [other groups] should have their rights…We do believe that, as consenting adults, we have the right to choose.

SWT: You’ve said in a previous interview that you recommend 18 as the ideal minimum marriage age for a young woman.

AW: We recommend that, because of the sensitivity (of the issue)…We tell people that whatever the laws is the age, you should conform to it.  Eighteen is the marriage in Utah – 16 with parental consent.  In our case, there is only one legal marriage license – the rest are religious sealings.

Ms. Wilde said that there may be exceptions, and that, in any case, the age recommendation applies only to legally sanctioned marriages, not to the additional marriages that are solely religious.  We spoke about Tom Green, a polygamist successfully prosecuted for marrying and have sex with a girl “two weeks shy of 14,” according to Ms. Wilde.  She said that she generally did not approve, personally, of marriages to girls that young.

AW:  That’s another thing I don’t go along with personally [again referring to the Green case], a mother and daughter marrying the same man…I believe he betrayed a trust as their [step]dad; he should have waited at least until they were 18, in my opinion.

SWT: You’ve talked about men marrying very young women.  Have seen an instance of a husband marrying a significantly older woman?

AW: We’ve seen that.  I think, for practical purposes, a big age difference can be difficult, but I think that’s a personal choice.  We look at it [marriage] as an eternal union [so the chronological ages are not extremely important].

SWT:  When you talk about decriminalizing plural marriage, do you mean merely an end to prosecution, or do you mean also allowing more than one legal license?

AW: Generally speaking, we are not in favor of more than one legal license, even if it were decriminalized.  That puts the government in change.  The religious sealing is much more important to us anyway.  By decriminalizing it, you’re just removing the criminal penalty…Even though we live a very high moral standard, [we are considered felons].  We don’t believe in adultery or one-night stands or anything like that.  But Utah is a difficult state because of the strong influence of the LDS Church.  Many people have a dislike of plural marriage…It’s a long, uphill battle.

Ms. Wilde added that plural marriage rights activists are seeking the overturning of the Supreme Court’s 1879 Reynolds decision, which has allowed for the prosecution of polygamy in various states.

SWT: Have you faced any legal consequences since you’ve become more public?

AW: No, because the [Utah] Attorney General has assured that he’s not going to prosecute consenting adults…Also, I’ve been a widow for four and a half years.   Some of us are on the Attorney General’s Safety Net Committee because our motto is “Do nothing about us without us.”   They eventually invited us on that committee so our voice would be heard.   They realize that we’re generally law-abiding citizens.  It’s just this issue of taking more than one wife that’s this constant problem.

SWT: You’ve noted that the Prophet Joseph Smith married some women who were already married to other men.  You do not criticize him, but you implied that, in principle, polyandry is not a good idea.  Why do you feel that way?

AW: We go back to the Bible as a foundation for our belief, and you don’t find polyandry to be endorsed by the Lord...It is also difficult to establish paternity if a woman has more than one husband…A woman is generally monogamous by nature, and men are generally polygamous.

I think, in his [Smith’s] preexistence, he made covenants with them [the women who ended up marrying other men first].    He was not intimate with them…I think he was going toe open door to them to have the opportunity to be part of his family.

SWT: What about polyamory?

AW: That’s not our choice, but I still feel that consenting adults [should be left alone]. 

SWT: You had mentioned HBO’s series Big Love.

AW: Yes, because we get asked about it so much.   The very explicit sexual scenes in the first couple of episodes were very offensive to me.  [In real life], the man is sensitive to the feelings of his other wives.  However, I think it’s the first show that’s had those kinds of families.  There’s a wide variety of people in this lifestyle.  I think it showed that a polygamous family has many of the same situations (as any other family.  People say, “Gee, our lifestyle is very boring when you get into the day-to-day.”

[Big Love] shows a polygamous family that is independent and in society and also an isolated community with a strong leader, with some possible abuse.

SWT: When did you start your Website, principlevoices.org?

AW: About 2003.   It just kind of evolved because of the response to this book.  The group Principle Voices was organized in 2002/2003, and we formed a Website a year or so later.   I think (it helps if people) just look at the Website.  The p-word automatically gets people’s interest, pro or con.  We couldn’t pay for this publicity.   There are 37,000 fundamentalist Mormon polygamists in this country.  For us, it’s important to have a voice.

SWT: Thank you very much for your time, Anne.

Go to http://www.principlevoices.org  for further information.