Just when you thought you had heard every twist and turn in Charter World, along comes another bizarre story. The Utah State Charter Board ordered the replacement of every member of a polygamy charter school.
WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah (KUTV) — In a dramatic move, the Utah State Charter School Board ordered Vanguard Academy to replace all seven members of its school board. In addition, the USBE will appoint a temporary director to work with the current director.
Vanguard is affiliated with the Kingston polygamist group, known as “The Order.” In a 2020 investigation, Crisis in the Classroom revealed the school regularly hires Kingston-connected businesses and pays them with taxpayer dollars. We found the board is made up almost entirely of Kingston family members. We also found that a Kingston-related business owner won the school’s lucrative contract to feed the students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reminds me of Kev Russell’s lyric to the song Lower 48 by The Gourds:
Married my cousin up in Arkansas
Married two more when I got to Utah
🙂
Geez Louise, any group called “The Order” has a ominously sinister quality about it.
There was a fascist, terrorist, white supremacist group in the northwest in the 1980s known as The Order. They were the precursors to the paramilitary thugs sprouting up all over the country now.
There are sinister goals in any group that makes people inside (and out) of the religion call its leader, “father”.
Po!thanks clans are paternalistic go the max. Women have few rights and expected to do two things: lie on their backs and take care of the resulting kids.
Po!ygamist clans
I lived in Utah for 15 years and actually taught several kids from a polygamist clan at an “alternate school”. The kids were well behaved and nice enough, but the whole thing was pretty damned weird.
I generally think orthodoxy in any religion (or politics, or life, for that matter) is really weird. A few years ago in southern Utah I encountered a group of Mormons with a number of women in light blue, long dresses, even as it was more than 100 degrees outside. They didn’t look happy or sad, just blank. I felt very creepy just looking at them, but I really couldn’t take my eyes off of them, never having seen something like this before. I can drive by accidents without looking, but something came over me then.
As Linda points out, the orthodox religions are simply the ones whose bizarreness is so familiar that people fail to recognize, any longer, how bizarre it is. Case in point: the infallible “Papa” and wafers that become god. I rest my case.
Greg, they are NOT Mormons.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disavowed polygamy more than 130 years ago.
Bob-
I was one of the people you describe. I credit Diane’s blog for expanding my frame of reference which led me to recognize the danger of the Catholic church’s right wing politicking aimed at creating an authoritarian theocracy.
And, I credit you with showing me why there is much for the nation to fear from many of the religious and their beliefs.
Media’s selectivity in coverage shows us isolated problems like Christian nationalism, priest pedophilia and polygamists in Utah (who use their interpretation of the Bible to justify the indefensible, etc).
The course that you take Bob is what is omitted in media coverage- you expose and frame correctly, Biblical messaging that is highly detrimental to humanity’s progress.
The Order
1) Male clan leader who has often fathered ten or more children with several different mothers
2.Other Fathers
3) mothers
4)Male children
5) female children
The Taliclan
Male children come way before mothers. They’re first in Jewish and Indian families! (That’s a joke, son.)
Probably right about the male children
Because of the marriage of many women to one man, these polygamous clans have excess boys that are expelled. So all of the boys do NOT get treated well. Quite the obvious. BTW:
Probably wrong about Greg probably being right about the male chikdren?
Yikes. Quite the opposite.
Lots of teenaged boys get expelled from these clans, shunned on some pretext, because they aren’t needed. They are superfluous.
I think the real problem — reason that they are expelled — is that they are suspermfluous.
Suspermfluous?
Alito goes back to the 13th century, Shepherd goes back 3,300-8,300 years earlier! 😇
Oh yeah, The Order be sinister. I live in Utah.
The Kingston Family trio?
Polygamy has been illegal in Utah since the late 1800’s when it became a state. It was actually a prerequisite for statehood.
But the law has rarely been enforced and today, there is a nice away from most enforcement. There are gowns in Sone parts of the state that are almost totally polygamist.
While one might take a live and let live attitude toward polygamy, it’s not quite that simple. Polygamy is often associated with physical & mental abhse of
women and children and sometimes veritable wars break out between different clans.
Warren Jeff’s is probably the most famous case, but the reality is that many if not most of the clans are basically cults with all the baggage that is usually associated with them.
Polygamy is no longer illegal in Utah. Constitutional provision several years ago.
One of the saddest books I’ve read was the Loneliest Polygamist. The story is told from the perspective of a man who the cult leaders deemed worthy to remain in the group and have multiple wives.
It’s extremely difficult to get out of a group like The Order. One of the daughters of the leader of The Order describes on Tok Tok her adjustment after exiting.
People who care about other people must leave the churches that treat women and gays as lesser, that are snake handlers, etc. Those churches can’t survive to do the harm they do without members.
Does polygamy allow women to have multiple husbands?
There’s something to be said for that.
key point
I think polygamist clans allow multiple husbands, but only if they are gay.
That way there are fewer men competing for the women and more potential wives for the straight men.
It kind of has the same net effect as kicking men out of the clan., Without having to actually kick them out.
Keeping it all in the family. Creepy!
Polygamy makes heart(s) grow fonder
Also makes the recessive genes grow more prevalent
https://www.hjnews.com/incest-defines-kingstons-ex-member-speaks-out-on-the-multi-million-dollar-empire/article_091108e7-6897-55c2-b804-ed3c54c4c5de.html
Incest defines Kingstons: Ex-member speaks out on the multi-million dollar empire
A daughter of one of the leaders tells her story on Tik Tok. She left when forced to marry a 1st cousin.
It’s not enough to replace this board. The state needs to fix the law that allowed this to happen.
It won’t happen.
I suspect the only reason state officials even did what they did was because the investigation left them with no choice.
In Utah, if they can sweep things under the rug, officials do
A d the very last thing they want is for people outside Utah go learn about such bizarre goings on.
Bizarre and corrupt.
gosh, imagine THAT happening….
“……polygamy charter school…” Sounds like some kind of far-fetched satire. Teacher at polygamy charter school: Now boys and lesser beings, just remember that polygamy is G_d’s way, a divine MANdate with an emphasis on man, not those lesser beings. Oh yeah, the lesser beings who carry the fetuses and give birth to the children.
Thanks for the HIStory lesson, Joe!
Welcome to Utah. It be crazy. Please note that these polygamists are NOT Mormons. They are NOT “fundamentalist Mormons.” They are not of the faith.
Polygamy charter school. Polygamy charter school? Polygamy charter school!
Seriously.
Charter schools are completely out of control.
Lots of charter schools are polygamist.
They have one father (Public Dole*) and many mothers (Eva Moskowitz, etc)
*Bob Dole’s cousin
What the heck?
Where’s the condemnation and/or ridicule for the GOP candidate for Minn. Lt. Gov.? American Independent reported, 8-24- 2022, about his speech at St. Thomas College (conservative Catholic) in 2018. He joked about women’s rights to drive and vote. His speech was given to commemorate Humanae Vitae (a letter written by Pope Paul IV) that states contraception is intrinsically wrong. The GOP candidate links contraception to sexual freedom. He says that there is a stealthy promotion telling women they should have careers. His running mate for Governor likened Covid 19 mitigation efforts to Kristallnacht.
Anyone who still has his or her head in the sand about what group is working to destroy women’s rights and to advance fascism is complicit.