“It’s Not About the Sex” My Ass by Joanne Hanks, Steve Cuno

rescue Esther from her current husband who
couldn’t get her pregnant. And that Harmston was starting to teach that as
Joseph Smith he needed all of his wives back before Jesus could return. And
that since Judith was Eliza Partridge, “all of his wives” arguably included
her. I might even have sort of mentioned that if she felt she should be rescued
by Harmston, it was OK by us and to get on with it.
    Not that my doubts were growing or that I was ready for
Judith to move on or anything, you understand.
    It worked. That is, had I been trying to nudge Judith out of
our nest, which I wasn’t, you could say it worked. Judith prayed and got
herself a revelation that God wanted her to trade in Jeff on Harmston. Being on
the timid side, she wrote down and hid the revelation. Finding her courage a
few weeks later, she retrieved the written revelation and shared it with
Harmston.
    One good written revelation deserves another, so Harmston
talked over the matter with God and afterward wrote down both sides of the
conversation. God confirmed that it was Harmston’s duty to take Judith and to
be for her what Jeff had failed to be. “What am I,” Harmston lamented, “a
celestial stud service?” God said that he was. It was poor Harmston’s burden
and calling to make up for lesser men.
    Harmston had no more tact than to read his conversation with
God aloud in church, including every one of his and God’s slights directed at
Jeff’s manhood. He and Judith seemed to gloat at us with every shortcoming he
cited. He seemed to vocally underscore each one. Jeff and I burned with
humiliation. And with hurt. Even though we were ready for Judith to move on, we
cared about her. She had been part of our family for six years. Losing her felt
like a failure. This “revelation” only rubbed our noses in it. All of this was
happening in front of the very people we had been called to help lead.
    Harmston’s First Wife Elaine didn’t much care for hearing
her husband-prophet proclaim himself a “celestial stud service.” Her dismay may
have had something to do with the fact that Harmston hadn’t touched her in
years. Nor was she alone in not receiving his attention. She lived with five of
his other wives, who, like her, were older, willing, and angry, for Harmston
never touched them either. Elaine referred to herself and her roommates as
“cows put out to pasture.” To the casual observer who didn’t know better, it
would have looked as if Harmston liked sexy young women better than wrinkled
old ones. Perish the thought. As I’m sure you understand by now, polygamy isn’t
about the sex.
    In January 2000, Judith was officially numbered among
Harmston’s ever-growing collection of wives.
    One month later, Harmston announced—yet
again—that something big was coming.
    Sorry if that sounded cynical. Actually, this one was pretty
big. God had just told Harmston to mark Saturday, March 25, on the calendar.
That was to be the day of the Second Coming of Christ.
    Thank goodness God chose a Saturday. More people would have
the day off.
Diminishing importance
    With the Second Coming all but upon us, the time of warning
had passed. Now it was time to prepare, at home, for the coming of Jesus. As
the chief apostle in The True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of
the Last Days, Jeff’s principal calling had been to preach to the world, to
warn the world to repent. The switch from “warn the world” to “prepare at home”
made Jeff an apostle without much to do. He was suddenly less important in the
overall scheme of things.
    Worse, Jeff was no longer a practicing polygamist. With
Ginger and now Judith gone, all Jeff had was me. As I said earlier, polygamists
are competitive. How many wives you have, or how many wives your husband has,
is a big deal. Along with Harmston’s pseudo-complaint about having to make up
for Jeff’s inadequacies, another clear message was beginning to emerge: What kind of head apostle has just one