Our dear Mormon feminist matriarch goddess is undertaking an exciting, important new project. Please read and consider getting involved.

by: Carol Lynn Pearson

For some time I’ve thought I should do something about eternal polygamy. (Like I should do something about the gophers in the front yard, except that it bothers me a great deal more.) It is way overdue that our leadership ceases to be given a free pass in the press by saying, “Polygamy? That has nothing to do with us. We gave it up long ago.” And it is way overdue that our leadership acknowledge the terrible fear under which many believing Mormon women live that they will have to share their husbands in eternity.

I would like to collect stories, thoughts, anything that indicates the burden this is to Mormon women. Two examples from my own experience:

I spoke to a woman who regularly prays that her husband will die before she does so that he does not have the opportunity to take another woman to the temple to be married for time and all eternity.

And I told the following little story in my Sunstone talk “Why I Stay” last summer:

Not long ago I asked a dear cousin who is in her nineties how she felt about going to the next world. “Fine,” she said, “except…” and her face clouded, “…except sometimes I worry that my husband has taken a second wife over there.” This was a man who cried when he said how dearly he loved his wife and how lucky he was to have her. That my cousin now has to live with the fear of his eternal infidelity angers me more than I can say.

I don’t know what this project will look like, but I would like to receive stories, thoughts, specifically on how women have been harmed by this threat, how it damages their feelings about their marriages, about themselves, about the Church. I intend to be very brave about this project.

Please send to clp@clpearson.com. One-liners or stories, short or long.

Thanks, Women! Glad to be walking with you.