By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
Rebecca Kimbel, who escaped from imposed polygamy at the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) says the so-called “reality” show known as Sister Wives is not reality at all but an attempt to deceive the public into accepting polygamist cults.
In an article appearing on the Stop Polygamy in Canada blog, Kimbel says the star of Sister Wives, Kody Brown, is from the same polygamist group where she was born and raised, which is how she knows that much of what he is presenting in the show is false.
For instance, he recently appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and said that for him, polygamy was a life style “choice.”
“This is every FLDS polygamist’s ‘choice’,” Kimbel writes, but it’s not the woman’s.
As she points out, even the women in Sister Wives seem to be saying as much when they tell viewers polygamy is their “faith” or something they were “born into.” But when it comes to “choice,” Kody Brown is the only one who has that privilege.
“We were systematically and repeatedly taught we had to live polygamy or suffer eternal damnation and the only way our souls could be saved was by blood atonement,” Kimbel explained. “Jesus didn’t die for our sins. We had to die for the sin of rejecting the gospel, to be saved. We were told we had a choice. We could obey or suffer the consequences. Like holding a gun to your head and saying, ‘Do you do as I say, or do I pull the trigger? Your choice.’”
Kimbel, who was one of 39 children born to her father’s six wives, says the children born into the FLDS sect are taught to deceive “non believers” to protect their so-called “prophets of God.”
“The TV series Sister Wives is doing this,” she says.
“I am a fifth generation fundamentalist polygamist. I was born a slave and sold as a slave. Few polygamist brides are sold. Most are bartered off to men of power to strengthen family ties. We are told we can choose our own husbands, but we must choose the one we are told to choose or suffer the consequences. We were taught to forfeit our minds, bodies and our lives to those in power who “spoke for God.”
The glue that binds FLDS polygamist families together is fear, not faith, she says. “Look closer and you will see that we are America’s Taliban by another name.”
Kimbel has joined the fight against polygamy in Canada where a case involving a polygamist cult is currently pending that could lead to legalization of the practice in that country.
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