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FLDS exodus prompts call for 'foster homes'
Fox13 (Salt Lake City) ^ | Dec. 22, 2011 | Ben Winslow

Posted on 12/26/2011 4:04:21 PM PST by Colofornian

Imprisoned polygamist leader Warren Jeffs has reportedly issued an edict to his followers with a deadline -- renew allegiances to the Fundamentalist LDS Church or be excommunicated.

With a Dec. 31 deadline looming, non-profit groups who help those leaving Utah's polygamous communities say an ongoing exodus from the FLDS Church is turning into a "humanitarian crisis," with people walking away with no place to go.

"You've got new control where you have to give everything," James Barlow told FOX 13. "And I mean everything."

Barlow left the FLDS Church last month after refusing to give his allegiance to Jeffs. Barlow, 19, described being called before Jeffs' brother, Lyle, and asked to confess his sins and be re-baptized into the FLDS Church. Tired of the increasing restrictions on people's lives within the church, Barlow left with the clothes on his back.

"I said 'no' and walked out the door," he said. "To come out here and just fall on my head, just not have anything. Nothing... nobody to give me anything, a roof over my head."

He wound up at a home in the Salt Lake City area where his sister, Ruth, has been staying. She left the FLDS Church in September after deciding she no longer believed in the faith under Jeffs.

"I've really enjoyed the family," Ruth Barlow said in an interview with FOX 13. "They've been really good and really fun to be around. It's different than being with my own family, but it's still the same."

The siblings are being "fostered" by the group Holding Out Help, which works with those in Utah's polygamous communities. Since Jeffs went to prison, the group said it has seen a steady stream of people leaving the FLDS Church.

"They leave with absolutely nothing," said Holding Out Help's Tonia Tewell. "The first thing we try to hit is the basic needs: food, clothing and shelter."

Warren Jeffs is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for child sex assault related to underage marriages. Since he's been imprisoned, he's released a steady stream of "revelations" he claims are from God to lawmakers across the country. They include demands that he be released or the wrath of the Almighty will destroy the earth. The most recent revelations sent to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff claimed they were a "final warning."

Amongst his followers, Jeffs has reportedly made even more demands. Ex-FLDS members tell FOX 13 he has demanded that children give up toys, and adults sell things like ATVs.

"The demands range from coming up with $5,000 at the end of the month to handing over all the food stamps. I've heard they're no longer allowed to have sexual relations with their wives except to have children," Tewell said.

Tewell said she has heard of as many as 50 people a month leaving the polygamous border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. Some are going to a rival polygamous leader. Others, mostly young adults, are trying to find their way in the world. Holding Out Help and Utah's Safety Net Committee (a coalition of government agencies, social service agencies and polygamists) are trying to find shelter for everyone.

"We need the entire community here in the Salt Lake Valley to step up," said Tewell. "We cannot do this alone any longer."

The Safety Net Committee and Holding Out Help are setting up sort-of "foster homes" across the state. The Safety Net Committee has been holding open houses in St. George, asking people to be willing to open up their homes for children, teenagers, adults or entire families.

"Would I encourage other people to do it? Absolutely. It's been, I think, a blessing to our family," said Kristi Gower, who is hosting the Barlow siblings.

The Safety Net Committee said it would conduct background checks and has a few terms for families willing to foster those from the polygamous communities. More information can be found at holdingouthelp.org or by contacting the Safety Net Committee through Utah's Family Support Center (www.familysupportcenter.org).

James Barlow said with a New Year's Eve deadline coming, more people will likely be leaving.

"Family means everything to most of us from there," he said. "I know, to everybody I know, it means everything. That's why a lot of people haven't left. But you have to the end of the year and you're excommunicated."


TOPICS: Current Events; Moral Issues; Other Christian; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: flds; inman; lds; mormon; warrenjeffs
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To: Scoutmaster

I guess that Joseph Smith didn’t believe that “pride goeth before a fall”


81 posted on 12/27/2011 1:37:18 PM PST by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: restornu; Saundra Duffy; Elsie; Colofornian; greyfoxx39; Tennessee Nana; Godzilla; SZonian
Plural marriage as LDS was never lived in this matter but the anti Mormons take delight in disinformation and falsehoods.>

restornu, both you and Saundra Duffey quote from FAIRlds.org and Saundra advices people to go there for the truth. FAIR tells all about> the polygamous wives of Joseph Smith, Jr.

Now, I'll let you in on a secret. I'm late to go somewhere. The official lds.org website also recognizes most of Joseph Smith, Jr.'s polygamous/polyandrous wives on its site in the History of the Church and in other places. Yes. The official www.lds.org site.

I'll post it for you tonight or tomorrow.

That is, except for Fanny Alger, who is recognized by FAIR as Joseph Smith's first wife. Fanny presents a problem. Oliver Cowdry says that Fanny was an affair of Joseph Smith, not a marriage. And Fanny was before sealing existed, or priesthood authority was restored, or something - but anyway, Fanny presents a problem. The LDS Church CAN'T recognize Fanny, because she doesn't fit into the timeline properly. Yet there are many, many LDS writings about Fanny, and LDS scholars and FAIR recognize her as Joseph's first wife.

So she was either a mistress, an affair, a wife before polygamy was authorized by God, or something else embarrassing. Because everything in LDS-dom recognizes her except the official LDS website.

Does Saundra recognize Joseph Smith's polygamy?

Do you recognize it restornu?

And those other organizations that "don't have anything to do with the original organization'? They were LDS until they disagreed about who the next prophet was after Joseph Smith, Jr., or about whether polygamy should still be practiced under Brigham Young, or over whether Joseph Smith lied about polygamy, or over whether the LDS church had God's permission to ban polygamy with the Second Manifesto in 1904, despite D&C 132. The were part of the original organization.

82 posted on 12/27/2011 1:41:16 PM PST by Scoutmaster (You knew the job was dangerous when you took it)
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To: Scoutmaster
Some split off while Joseph Smith, Jr. was still alive because they found out he was committing polygamy and polyandry (marrying other men's wives) and lying about it.

A MORMON 'lying' about stuff?

Surely NOT!

83 posted on 12/27/2011 1:49:34 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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To: svcw; restornu
If you want to say that is spin, then it appears you are completely blind to your own mormon history.

Or is LYING about it!

84 posted on 12/27/2011 1:51:51 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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To: yldstrk
I guess that Joseph Smith didn’t believe that “pride goeth before a fall”


JESUS: Hey Smith!       Remember that boast you made about doing more than even I had done to hold the 'church' together?

JOSEPH SMITH: Where am I?

JESUS: Don't you remember? A few seconds ago you were in that jail.

JOSEPH SMITH: Oh; yeah; but where am I NOW?

JESUS: Don't you remember? Does bang - bang ring a bell?

JOSEPH SMITH: Oh; yeah - that crummy gun I had was about USELESS!

JESUS: I hope you left instructions on how to hold your church together.

JOSEPH SMITH: Dang! I knew there was SOMETHING I was forgetting!

JESUS: Looks like there's a power struggle going on down there.

JOSEPH SMITH: Yeah; there was always SOMEone who wanted the power that I held - especially over the LADIES - wink wink.

JESUS: No need to worry about that now; remember what my friend Matthew wrote down?

JOSEPH SMITH: This? “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30)

JESUS: That's it.

JOSEPH SMITH: I thought that was mistranslated.

JESUS: Nah - it was right.

JOSEPH SMITH: Oh well; it was fun while it lasted. My buds will still get it on with the girls.

JESUS: Uh; I'm sorry; in just a few more years; your followers will cavein to the United States government and abandon the 'Eternal Covenant' that you came up with.

JOSEPH SMITH: ME!? YOU are the one that told me to do that!

JESUS: Sorry; but you must have mistranslated what I told you. What part of Do NOT commit ADULTERY did you not understand?

JOSEPH SMITH: mumble....

JESUS: What did you say?

JOSEPH SMITH: Oh, nothing.

JESUS: Well; it was interesting talking to you; but now I must get back to perparing a place for those who believe in Me.

JOSEPH SMITH: Oh, yeah; the Celestial Kingdom.

JESUS: No...

JOSEPH SMITH: The Telestial one?

JESUS: Nope.

JOSEPH SMITH: SUREly not the TERRESTRIAL one!!

JESUS: Nope. Didn't you read that the mind of man had NOT conceived of it? Paul wrote it down in 1 Corinthians 2:9.

JOSEPH SMITH: I thought that was mistranslated.

JESUS: No; it wasn't.

JOSEPH SMITH: You SURE?

JESUS: Yes. Now I must be going: what did you say your name was again?

JOSEPH SMITH: Smith... Joseph Smith.

JESUS: Hmmmm. According to my Heavenly FAITHbook, you didn't sign in as one of my friends - sorry, I never knew you.

JOSEPH SMITH: But.... 

85 posted on 12/27/2011 1:53:20 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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To: restornu
Who cares if a 14 yr could or could not get married in those days. Smith was ALREADY married, that made him at a minimum an adultery hound.
86 posted on 12/27/2011 3:48:15 PM PST by svcw (God's Grace - thank you)
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To: King Moonracer

Ouch


87 posted on 12/27/2011 3:54:26 PM PST by Tennessee Nana
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To: restornu

Just so you learn something, according to government statistics the average woman married at 24.5. You could marry as young as 16 with parents permission in most states. Legal age to marry was 21.


88 posted on 12/27/2011 3:59:22 PM PST by svcw (God's Grace - thank you)
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To: restornu

You didn’t mention Kimball’s mother, restornu.

You didn’t address what I what I said about her mother’s pain and her feelings about her daughter marrying Smith. She was a CHILD. He was an adulterous man that lusted after young women.

What about the young women that he chased after and their mothers’ hearts?

Do you believe their mothers were charmed by Smith the Snake and believed he only had wholesome and delightful plans for their daughters?

They knew better. In their heart of hearts, they worried about the fate of their daughters in the clutches of this man. And the fact that he tried to hide his lust behind a thin veil of marriage did not offer them solace.

It kept them up at night.

He brought polygamy crashing into the worlds of these families and expected them to swallow it and accept it at face value.

No woman with any sense could have ignored the reality of the fate of these young girls without a lump rising in her throat. It wasn’t just where these girls would live in eternity that is the question, but where they would be sleeping at night.


89 posted on 12/27/2011 4:03:10 PM PST by Pan_Yans Wife ("Real solidarity means coming together for the common good."-Sarah Palin)
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To: restornu

Resty the “plan of Happiness” for Mormon males as designed by Joey Smith in his d&c 132 is strong and well among the fLDS..


90 posted on 12/27/2011 4:10:18 PM PST by Tennessee Nana
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To: pennyfarmer

I am learning so many new things about the bible this is awesome.

- - - - -
It is a real upside to debating Mormons. That and you get your theology and apologetics down pat. You really dig in to what you believe and why and explaining it to others.


91 posted on 12/27/2011 4:10:50 PM PST by reaganaut (Ex-Mormon, now Christian "I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see".)
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To: restornu

After the marriage vows HMK was return home with her father matter a fact she was to stay home that night and not attend a social function.
__________________________________

No Resty

Helen spent the night in the same bed with Joey Smit6h..

Oy was a one night stand, a shack up..

Thats all these girls were to Joey Smith... always on call booty calls..

(Why is it Resty that you continue to insist on the need to be hit on the head with a 2X4 ???)

It was the NEXT night (the following night) that Joey Smith went out dancing with some of his other girlfriends and made Helen go home to her fathers house

Helen thought she was now going to be treated like a wife with all the privileges, honor and rights of a wife,,,

she was sadly mistaken...

While she was good enough for Joey Smmith to have sex with, she was not good enough to date and take dancing..


92 posted on 12/27/2011 4:22:28 PM PST by Tennessee Nana
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To: reaganaut
That and you get your theology and apologetics down pat.

Yup!

93 posted on 12/27/2011 6:53:23 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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To: Tennessee Nana
Thats all these girls were to Joey Smith... always on call booty calls..


94 posted on 12/27/2011 6:55:43 PM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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To: restornu; Saundra Duffy; Elsie; Colofornian; greyfoxx39; Tennessee Nana; Godzilla; SZonian
For those who aren't restornu, skip to the bold. As I understand it, restornu, you do not believe that Joseph Smith, Jr., engaged on polygamy or polyandry. I promised that I would provided you with links from Latter-Day Saints' sources on the topic. Please note that none of these sources These sources are from fairLDS.org. Although not officially speaking for the LDS Church, you have cited FAIR on occasion, and Saundra Duffey had listed them before as the #1 source to go to for information, even before LDS.org on her list of sites.

These all make it clear that Joseph Smith, Jr. was a polygamist:

Introduction of the Practice (to Joseph Smith), at fairLDS

Joseph Smith/Polygamy/Polyandry, at fairLDS (this is about the practice by Joseph Smith of marrying multiple women in addition to Emma Hale Smith, including women who were already married to other men - polyandry)

Pre-publication book chapter approved by FAIR on the subject of Smith's polygamous marriages

Joseph Smith/Polygamy/Plural Wives> some FAIR articles on a few of Smith's polygamous wives

Joseph Smith/Polygamy/Marriages to Young Women a FAIR articles with multiple subarticles regarding some of the young wives of Smith - you'll notice that "polygamny" is preceded and followed by a "/" in the title. That's because there are so many articles about and attempting to justify Smith's actions regarding his polygamy that there's an entire subsection on LDS polygamy devoted to Joseph Smith's polygamy within FAIR

There are countless books on the subject. You could start with In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, a meticulously researched book by LDS author and Ph.D. professor Todd Compton, which won the Best Book Award by both the Mormon History Association and John Whitmer Historical Association. It's 798 pages long. It takes each women Compton can document as a wife (nobody knows exactly how many - the Kirtland temple's records on Joseph Smith's wifes have been sealed in recent history by the First Presidency), and documents their feelings based in their diaries, journals, letters, conversations with friends and family. When a young girl tells another in a letter than she thought she was only marrying Joseph Smith ceremonially, but that he took her to bed that night and married her 'in deed,' well . . . those poignant words of a young girl tell what took place.

Or read Rough Stone Rolling, by Richard Bushman, a LDS professor of Mormon Studies. Yes, it's an apologetic account of Joseph Smith, Jr.'s life, but it includes polygamy and polyandry.

Friends? Were you aware that www.lds.ord appears to have recently scrubbed its site of the "History of the Church"? Or at least that appears to be the case. This multi-volume publication of the LDS Church's history, started by Joseph Smith, Jr., used to be on the www.lds.org website. I was going to link my bookmarked pages from that history for days when Joseph Smith took specific polygamous wives and the mention of them.

My links are no longer valid. So I assumed they were moved. It's easy to search for the History of the Church.

If I search "History of the Church" on the site, none of that huge publication (save part of Chapter 1 in Pearl of Great Price) exists on www.lds.org.

If you attempt to access history, you'll be taken to a new subdomain, called josephsmithpaper.org. The history's not there.

it's been scrubbed. Please show me if I'm wrong. All of those inconsistencies with current teachings, all of those historical issues with the church that could be cited to the official LDS cite and no to third-party cites . . . they're gone.

95 posted on 12/28/2011 4:27:26 AM PST by Scoutmaster (You knew the job was dangerous when you took it)
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To: Scoutmaster
it's been scrubbed. Please show me if I'm wrong. All of those inconsistencies with current teachings, all of those historical issues with the church that could be cited to the official LDS cite and no to third-party cites . . . they're gone.

 


 
Eerily familiar...
 
 

Party ownership of the print media
made it easy to manipulate public opinion,
and the film and radio carried the process further.


 



16. Ministry Of Truth

.......

The Ministry of Truth, Winston's place of work, contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below.

The Ministry of Truth concerned itself with Lies. Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further.

The primary job of the Ministry of Truth was to supply the citizens of Oceania with newspapers, films, textbooks, telescreen programmes, plays, novels - with every conceivable kind of information, instruction, or entertainment, from a statue to a slogan, from a lyric poem to a biological treatise, and from a child's spelling-book to a Newspeak dictionary.

Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs - to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance.

When his day's work started, Winston pulled the speakwrite towards him, blew the dust from its mouthpiece, and put on his spectacles. He dialed 'back numbers' on the telescreen and called for the appropriate issues of The Times, which slid out of the pneumatic tube after only a few minutes' delay. The messages he had received referred to articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to rectify.

In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and on the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.

In the cubicle next to him the little woman with sandy hair toiled day in day out, simply at tracking down and deleting from the Press the names of people who had been vaporized and were therefore considered never to have existed. And this hall, with its fifty workers or thereabouts, was only one-sub-section, a single cell, as it were, in the huge complexity of the Records Department. Beyond, above, below, were other swarms of workers engaged in an unimaginable multitude of jobs.

There were huge printing-shops and their sub editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programmes section with its engineers, its producers and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices; clerks whose job was simply to draw up lists of books and periodicals which were due for recall; vast repositories where the corrected documents were stored; and the hidden furnaces where the original copies were destroyed.

And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.

 
 


96 posted on 12/28/2011 4:34:43 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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To: Scoutmaster
Is there ANY doubt now; as to what kind of an Organization we are dealing with here?
97 posted on 12/28/2011 4:36:01 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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To: Elsie
The 'Ministry' of Truth concerned itself with Lies.




Party ownership of the print media made it easy to manipulate public opinion, and the film and radio carried the process further.

98 posted on 12/28/2011 4:38:13 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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To: Elsie; restornu; Saundra Duffy; Colofornian; greyfoxx39; Tennessee Nana; Godzilla; SZonian
A cleansing may be taking place as we speak, with bleach. I've been pouring through some of the academic articles I work with and came across a reference to the LDS Church History in the Fulness of Times Student Manual .

For some reason, all of the corresponding chapters that previously had references to Joseph Smith taking additional plural wives on particular dates (the reference to the first one recognized by the LDS, who isn't who you would think it is), to marriages within prominent LDS families? Those chapters are now missing. The links are inoperable. Other chapters are fine. Those chapters are down and missing.

For editing?

99 posted on 12/28/2011 4:40:00 AM PST by Scoutmaster (You knew the job was dangerous when you took it)
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To: Elsie
"A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" was a favorite hymn of Joseph Smith, Jr.
100 posted on 12/28/2011 5:00:31 AM PST by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going)
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