Polygamy is the "ultimate feminist lifestyle" because of the flexibility and freedom the marital construct affords career-minded women.
So said Elizabeth Joseph in her keynote address to the Utah chapter of the National Organization of Women, who met in a daylong conference Saturday at Westminster College.Joseph - who is an attorney, a community college instructor and an Arizona radio station news director - is one of eight women wed to Utah polygamist Alex Joseph of Big Water, Kane County.
She said being married to a man with seven other women and living "within spitting distance from them" is liberating - not debilitating - as some might believe.
"People come up to me and say, `You have an eighth of a husband,' " Joseph said. "I say, `No, I have eight times the husband.' He learns from all of us, and we learn from him."
But she was quick to quip: "I have as much of a husband as I can stand."
She is the sixth wife of Alex Joseph, now 60 and diagnosed with cancer that has spread to his liver. When they married in 1974, she said, "I married the best man I ever met. The fact that he had five wives didn't matter."
Elizabeth Joseph, an independent fundamentalist, said throughout her 23 years of marriage, the polygamous state has enabled her to pursue a professional career and raise three children in a relatively stress-free environment.
"Polygamy is an empowering lifestyle," she said.
And the eight women married to Alex Joseph have embraced the "liberating" way of life much the same way the wives of early LDS leader Brigham Young did in the 1880s, she maintained.
Those women held "great indignation meetings" in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, endorsing polygamy and calling on Congress "to call off the witch hunts."
"We're just as courageous, fierce and resolute. Just like Eliza R. Snow was."
An advocate for women's rights and the fight against domestic violence, Joseph has litigated many divorce cases and has witnessed the pressures of monogamous relationships.
"We have 8,000 people in Page, Arizona," she said. "And we have six domestic calls a day. That's appalling. I bring you a new slogan today: Let the batterers be bachelors."
In that regard, she said it is more than evident that polygamy helps more than it hurts.
"We (as wives) all share responsibilities and enjoy more freedom. My daughter hasn't spent a day in day care," she said. "We're all friends but at a different level. It's very special, and I deeply respect (the other seven women)."
Joseph said most of the 21 children and 27 grandchildren in the Joseph family also seem to support the lifestyle.
"They've expressed gratitude in growing up with the family, grateful for the relationships they have with their half-siblings," she said. "It's good for them. We have lots of kids to practice social skills.
"We support alternative lifestyles 100 percent, and we're pro-choice," she said. "Do you think I have any place to say, `You can't be gay,' while I practice polygamy? No."
Joseph estimated the polygamous population in the Intermountain West to be near 100,000.
Luci Malin, former Utah NOW executive coordinator and the chapter's current action coordinator, said the choice for Joseph to be the keynote speaker made sense, even if her name would not always be immediately associated with the women's organization.
"If NOW is about anything, it is about choice," Malin said. "We selected a speaker with whom we might not normally have an opportunity to communicate.