Celebrity Scene Archive

Fldsdress.com. The new fashion line started because FLDS children taken into custody by Texas officials kept losing their clothes.  Foster parents and group directors wanted the children to give up the long underwear and pioneer-style clo...

People who watched what happened after the Short Creek raid of 1953 may have speculated (as I did) that the raid on the FLDS community at the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado, Texas would have little impact, other than to drive polygamists farther undergro...

Today, I’m still preoccupied with YFZ spokesman Willie Jessop’s complaint that FLDS women called to testify before the Texas Grand Jury were being forced to choose between their children and their husbands, their freedom and their fa...

Starting today, several members of the FLDS will appear before a Texas Grand Jury to determine the validity of claims regarding child abuse and underage marriage.  Discord prevails as attorneys and clients accuse each other and the judge of ...

Alarms went off as I read last Friday’s AP report: The principal of the Gloucester (Massachusetts) High School had announced the results of an investigation into the spike in teen pregnancy, seventeen this year as compared to an average of ...

In the case of fundamentalists, if agencies would teach the FLDS people to live in the mainstream by providing them with financial skills, knowledge about housing, vocational counseling, etc., many FLDS members would probably leave the YFZ Ranch ...

People who know little about polygamy express surprise when they discover that so many of the FLDS women are returning to the YFZ Ranch.  Even though it’s clear that these women could lose their children if they again put them at risk ...

Recent reports indicate that only about a third of the children and their mothers have returned to the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado, Texas.  Others are living in homes around San Angelo. This raises some interesting questions.  Are many of t...

It seems that the tab on raiding the YFZ compound has run over $14 million dollars, billable to the state of Texas.  Costs range from about $4.5 million in legal fees (with the state paying for both sides of the docket) another $2 million in...

People often ask, tongue in cheek, why men who live polygamy don’t just have mistresses or affairs.  Sometimes they ask as if they already know the answer—although I don’t know what answer they would give.  John Lewell...

Enter to win today.

Recently, FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop objected to the “profiling” of polygamists by law enforcement personnel. I understand concerns about profiling; one reason I began writing was to erase the caricatures of polygamists entertained...

It’s nothing new. The weather gets warm and with it comes a slew of invites. Weekend beach getaways, parties, BBQs, outdoor concerts. You name it; it’s on my calendar. It’s exactly what a good summer is made of. And while it’s...

How did so many young women in the FLDS community end up married (many in marriages without legal standing) and burdened with babies before they turned twenty?  Spider webs attract with a faint hint of sweetness and catch victims in a nearly in...

When I was 16, I worked as a lifeguard at the local tennis club. But this was no ordinary, lounging in the sun gig. When my one-hour shift watching the pool was done, it was back to work—-in an un-air-conditioned restaurant! Each lifeguard w...

A sign that hangs in homes on the fundamentalist YFZ Ranch near Eldorado, Texas announces: “The Ones That Are Going to Survive Are the Sweetest and Purest.”  Given what we’ve discovered about the lives of FLDS women and childr...

It seems that the voice of America poured into the Texas Governor’s office asking and demanding that the FLDS children be returned to their mothers. In the first days after the April separation of mothers and children, more than 400 requests f...

Synopsis: At 13, Katherine Taylor left her family’s home in Fresno for an elite private school in New England, only to grow up and move to a rent-controlled apartment in New York, work as a bartender and date a string of foreigners. So what...

If you want to understand how on earth all those women in the FLDS community near Eldorado, Texas can tolerate early marriages and the threat of losing their children—if not to the state, then to Warren Jeffs and other “priesthood lea...

Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Cynthia Nixon - with a side of glitz.

In Salt Lake County, in the shadow of Twin Peaks of the Wasatch Mountains, twelve-foot high concrete walls kept the world out and kept the children in.  Everyone knew that the walls had been put up by Rulon Jeffs, accountant for the FLDS com...