The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or Mormon church) works to maintain the public image of a loving-Christian religious group while simultaneously acting as an anti-queer international political organization. If you’re at all familiar with the church, you’re probably aware of their pro-nuclear family / anti-LGBTQIA2s+ politics. What you may not be as aware of is how their current anti-queer beliefs, practices, and policies are tied to 1) their past polygamous practices, as both are rooted in settler-colonial eugenic ideologies, and 2) the World Congress of Families, a known hate group founded and funded by Russian oligarchs.
Polygamy was seen as uncivilized and thus not-white by many in the late 19th century United States. In President Hayes’s 1880 State of the Union, he called out Mormon polygamy proclaiming that “marriage and the family relation are the cornerstone of our American society” and asking Congress to reorganize Utah Territory to allow more “intelligent and virtuous immigrants” in.
Immigration, marriage, and the family were as central to the rhetoric and politics of this Euro-settler-nation then as they are now. Settler-colonialism “destroys to replace” and “intelligent and virtuous immigrants” who become married and reproductive Euro-settler-couples are essential to the “replace” half of this equation.
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