Here is the full transcript of American basketball player Lance Allred’s TEDx Talk: What is Your Polygamy? at TEDxSaltLakeCity conference.
Listen to the MP3 Audio: What is your Polygamy by Lance Allred at TEDxSaltLakeCity conference
TRANSCRIPT:
“Wow, you’re really tall. How tall are you? Do you play basketball?”
“You played in the NBA with Lebron James? What was that like?”
It was fun; we got along well. Lebron, the inner city kid from Ohio, and me, the deaf polygamist kid from Montana.
Poof! “What?! You grew up in polygamy? What was that like? I don’t get it. Why would people do that? Why would they stay? I could never be a second or third wife.”
Not that complicated really. It’s what they know. It’s the world they grew up in. And they know what the boundaries and the rules are. And they’re told to stay inside those boundaries, the physical boundaries of the commune and furthermore the mental and emotional boundaries. Stay inside those boundaries and you will always be safe. Safe from pain.
Most people will choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. So, now I ask you: what is your polygamy? What are the thought patterns you have inherited from your childhood? From your parents, your grandparents, your community, that you’ve taken with you into your adult life.
What are the stories and perceived truths that still linger, and that may be sabotaging your adult experience? What are the boundaries and comfort zones you have settled in? Never daring to take risk.
Physically escaping from polygamy at the age of 13, for me, was the easy part. Mentally and emotionally escaping? Far different story.
My grandfather was Rulon Allred, the prophet and founder of the Apostolic United Brethren. I never knew him, as he was assassinated four years before I was born, by the wife of a rival polygamous leader. But I was raised in his Utopian dream, at Pinesdale, Montana.
My childhood was a world of wonder and mysticism, solidified by black and white absolutes. Absolutes that said that we were special; that we were God’s chosen people; that we had the one True Church, with a capital “T.” And that my grandfather was up in heaven, waiting for me.
The nature and appeal of absolutes is that they provide certainty in an uncertain world. And most people will do anything, anything they can, to protect that.
[Video clip -> Interviewer: Could you become a God?
Vance Allred: Yes.
Interviewer: How far would you be willing to go to defend the principle of polygamy?
Vance Allred: I was raised for it, I was born for it, reared for it, trained for it, all my life.
Interviewer: Would you die for it?
Rulon Allred: We are trying to keep all the commandments of God.
Female speaker: Early this morning, Rulon Allred, fundamentalist leader of the Apostolic United Brethren, was found shot dead in his medical office. Witnesses noticed two unidentified females leaving the scene. – Video clip concludes]
So again, I ask you, what is your polygamy? What are the black and white absolutes that you hold on to that allow you to believe that you have the truth, that you are right? And what relationships would you sabotage or endure to hold on to that story.
Maybe you are an expert mental gymnast, like myself. You had to be, growing up in that world of pesky absolutes. On one hand, you are so special; yet, on the other, you’re not quite worthy — you could do better.
You are loved, unconditionally, without question — on the condition you do everything the prophet says. And when you speak of the prophet, you speak very softly, like this.
You are told that lying is a sin. Yet, if anyone asks you if your dad is a polygamist, you have to lie.
What are the mental gymnastics you pull to stay within your paradigm to avoid cutting your losses? Would you like to see a polygamist wedding? Jazz hands!
This is my mother at the age of 16, being placed in an arranged marriage with my father. Now, note: these are not bridesmaids, these are my mom’s sistermoms, and those are my dad’s — one, two, three, four, five, six…There is just a lot of women in that room.
Throughout my basketball career, I’ve had team mates come up to me and say, “Hey yo, dawg! This new club be hoppin’. There’s like a three girls to one guy ratio, we gotta go check it.”
And I’m like, “I’m good.”
As a boy, growing up in polygamy, you saw men in power, the prophets with multiple wives, and so you began telling yourself a story that a woman is how God validates you. More wives equals more worthy, equals more power, equals more blessings, equals more wives, and so on, and so on.
And you’re also told that women don’t need the priesthood because they’re already so spiritual. So, as a boy, I began putting women on pedestals believing that they were inherently better than me, that they somehow had X-ray vision, and could see right through me, and determine if I was worthy or not.
A dialogue went like this one day with my cousin, when I was 12 years old:
Steven Don — and it’s proper etiquette to use middle names when you have 400 first cousins running around the wilderness like smurfs. Steven Don, I think I like Lisa. Do you think she might like me back?
“No, I already claimed her. I called dibs.”
But, you called dibs on Sarah, last week.
“Yeah, so? We’re polygamists.”
Oh. Can you imagine how competitive that world might be? Polygamy? Once a girl began to mature, not only did you like her, but your brothers, your cousins, your uncles — Heck! Even your dad, theoretically, is your competition. And you’re all playing for keeps. Because the founders of the Mormon faith did declare, you need at least two wives to get to the highest degree of glory in heaven.
My fear and anxiety around girls is only exacerbated by how difficult it was for me to hear them, as they speak on a higher register, and I was also very self conscious about how I talked.