Resources For Media & Reporters
If you are a News Reporter or News organization that is looking for someone to comment on Polygamy or you have questions about Polygamy that you’d like expert advice on – here is a list of credible contacts that we know of:
Mormon Fundamentalist
Dorothy Allred Solomon
Dorothy Allred Solomon, a monogamist who is the 28th of the 48 children born to the late polygamist Mormon Rulon Allred, is the author of Predators, Prey and Other Kinfolk: Growing Up in Polygamy (W.W. Norton and Co., 2003).
She lives in the Salt Lake City area. She says that because of secrecy and isolation, as well as patriarchal tyranny, there is more of certain kinds of abuse – sexual, spiritual and mental – in the polygamous subculture, but drug abuse, physical abuse and crime are rare.
Contact 801-243-5068
E-mail:EmeraldDor@aol.com
Historian D. Michael Quinn
Historian D. Michael Quinn is the author of several scholarly books about Mormons, including Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Signature Books, 1998).
In 1997, the American Historical Association gave him a best-book award for Same-Sex Dynamics Among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example (University of Illinois Press, 1996). He has worked as an independent scholar since 1988, when he resigned his tenured position as a history professor at Brigham Young University because of disputes over academic freedom.
The church excommunicated the lifelong Mormon in 1993 over his writings about Mormon history. He is temporarily living in the Claremont, Calif., area.
Contact 909-946-1598
Jan Shipps
Jan Shipps, professor emeritus of religious studies and history at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, is a well-known non-Mormon scholar on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Her books include Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (University of Illinois Press, 1987) and Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons (University of Illinois, 2000).
Contact: 812-336-8244 or 812-325-1580
E-mail: shipps@iupui.edu
Janet Bennion Ph.D., University of Utah
Associate Professor, Sociology & Anthropology, Lyndon State College, Lyndonville, Vermont
A self-avowed feminist, Janet Bennion finds herself captivated by Vermont women, whom she has come to appreciate since her recent move to Lyndon. “I love women who survive, and so I can’t help but love Vermont women, who are tenacious and feisty,” she says.
The strength exhibited by women in often compromising lifestyles is the subject of much of Dr. Bennion’s research, and is interwoven frequently into her teaching. Raised in the Mormon culture, she developed an interest in gender dynamics and in the patriarchal lifestyle that was common to her ancestors, and became determined to learn how women survive in a lifestyle rooted in polygamy. “What I found was that women tend to band together in that type of society, and that many strong, admirable women emerge as leaders who do remarkable things.” Those findings have become the subject of two books that Dr. Bennion has published on women’s lives in polygamous societies.
Although she has taught in university settings, she welcomes the opportunity to share her expertise and experience with the small classes that Lyndon offers.
“Large classes are stifling; I do much better with smaller groups of students who can really interact,” she says. “How can you touch the lives of students when they’re just numbers and not names?”
http://www.lyndonstate.edu/majors/facultyfaces/JanetBennion/tabid/482/Default.aspx
Janet.Bennion@Lyndonstate.edu
John R. Llewellyn
John R. Llewellyn is a retired Salt Lake County, Utah, sheriff’s lieutenant who extensively investigated Mormon Fundamentalist polygamy cults.
A former polygamist, he wrote Polygamy Under Attack: From Tom Green to Brian David Mitchell (Agreka Books, 2004), A Teenager’s Tears: When Parents Convert To Polygamy (Agreka, 2001), and Murder of a Prophet: The Dark Side of Utah Polygamy (Agreka, 2000).
Llewellyn is now a monogamist and muckraker, and he was lead investigator in two major lawsuits against Mormon Fundamentalist polygamist cults. Read his article about the Elizabeth Smart case. He says truly religious polygamists treat their wives with respect and dignity, but corruption is widespread in Utah’s Mormon Fundamentalist polygamist groups.
Contact 801-446-1247 or 801-259-5415 (cell)
John Witte Jr.
John Witte Jr. is Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law and Ethics, director of the Law and Religion Program and director of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at Emory University in Atlanta. He specializes in legal history, marriage and religious liberty.
His books include Religion and the American Constitutional Experiment: Essential Rights and Liberties (Westview Press, 2004), which includes discussion of the 19th-century Mormon polygamy cases, and From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion and Law in the Western Tradition (Westminster John Knox Press, 1997).
He has written that if the basis for reforming marriage laws becomes social pragmatism and individual happiness, “then arguments against incestuous, adolescent and polygamous marriages must also fall aside.”
Kathryn Daynes
Kathryn Daynes is an assistant history professor at Brigham Young University in Utah with expertise on Mormon plural marriage.
She wrote More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 (University of Illinois Press, 2001).
Contact 801-422-3683
E-mail: kathryn_daynes@byu.edu.
Shane LeGrande Whelan
Shane LeGrande Whelan of Salt Lake City is the author of More Than One: Plural Marriage – A Sacred Heritage, A Promise For Tomorrow (Zion Publishers, 2002).
He edits Mormon Focus magazine.
Contact: 801-943-1374
E-mail: mto@zionpublishers.com or shane@zionpublishers.com.
Principle Voices of Polygamy
Principle Voices of Polygamy is an advocacy organization that educates people about families (many of them polygamous) adhering to the fundamental teachings of Joseph Smith Jr.
The organization has access to representatives of thousands of polygamous families across the United States, including those affiliated with various polygamous groups and/or communities. Among those are the Kingstons (Utah), the Allreds (Utah), the FLDS (Colorado City, Ariz; Hildale, Utah) and Centennial Park (Arizona).
Principle Voices also has access to those who are not affiliated with any organization and who predominantly consider themselves Independent Fundamentalist Mormons.
Read the group’s FAQs and Myths page.
Contact directors Linda Kelsch and Anne Wilde through mary@principlevoices.org.
Wilde is also co-author/co-compiler of Voices in Harmony: Contemporary Women Celebrate Plural Marriage (along with fellow Principle Voices directors Marianne Watson and Mary Batchelor), a collection of essays written by contemporary plural wives.
tags: polygamy, polygamy in the USA, US polygamy, polygamist, mormon polygamy, mormon polygamists in Utah, mormon polygamy in the USA
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