FLDS Ban on Television and Print Media

The FLDS Ban on Television and Print Media restricted residents of Colorado City from watching television or reading magazines and newspapers. Under Rulon Jeffs, it formed part of a wider order that limited contact with outsiders, including relatives who had left the United Effort Plan, and placed everyday conduct under prophetic authority. Its operation was not seamless: people secretly brought televisions into town, hid satellite dishes, and watched in private, only to discard the equipment after a sermon renewed the ban.

Scope and Authority

Residents were forbidden to watch television or read newspapers and magazines. Rulon Jeffs’s sermons treated television not merely as a distraction but as a spiritual danger: he warned that he knew who owned sets and that disobedience placed their eternal souls in jeopardy. The prohibition was reinforced by a larger boundary around acceptable knowledge. Members were taught that the earth was seven thousand years old and that the American government had fabricated the moon landing, while contact with people outside the United Effort Plan—including family members who had left—was also forbidden. The rule operated within a patriarchal religious structure in which dissent was treated as a threat to faith, men alone held priesthood authority, and prophets received revelations governing the faithful’s lives. In that setting, restricting outside media helped limit access to accounts and ideas beyond the community’s religious authorities. The ban therefore reached beyond what residents could read or watch: it helped define who could be trusted as a source of knowledge and which interpretations of the world were permissible.

Evasion and Recurring Crackdowns

The prohibition produced a repeated cycle rather than lasting compliance. Some residents travelled to St. George, Utah, or Cedar City, Utah, bought satellite dishes, and installed them where they would be hard to see. They then watched television secretly, often making it a regular private habit. When Rulon Jeffs preached against television and declared that he knew who had a dish, households began hauling the equipment into the desert and abandoning it. The pattern could leave the town without televisions for two or three years. Gradually, however, satellite dishes appeared again, until another sermon and crackdown prompted their removal. DeLoy Bateman described the contradiction plainly: banning something made it more attractive, while people’s attempts to obey did not erase their curiosity. The repeated rise and disappearance of the dishes shows how prophetic warning and the possibility of being watched could prompt residents to police themselves, even without a permanent end to covert viewing.

Information Control and Family Separation

The restriction on media belonged to a wider system of separation from outsiders and former members. DeLoy Bateman, who had left the faith, lived near his brother, with only a six-foot fence between their large homes. Although the brothers had been especially close as children, his brother was forbidden to speak with him. DeLoy said that if his brother’s wife caught them talking, she could take the children, after which Rulon Jeffs might marry her to another man. A husband who remained in the religion but lost his family was called a eunuch. The same authority over family relationships was made explicit when DeLoy stopped attending the weekly priesthood meeting. Within twenty-four hours, someone was sent to take his wives and children; according to United Effort Plan doctrine, wives and children belonged to the priesthood and could be reassigned. Both wives refused to leave him, and all but the three oldest children became apostates as well. Their response exposes the stakes of the community’s boundaries: separation from the faith could mean separation from family, while remaining connected to someone who had left risked punishment by religious authorities.

Public Exposure Beyond the Ban

Inside the community, restrictions on media limited ordinary access to outside reporting; beyond it, news coverage could make fundamentalist practices a national subject. After the Short Creek Raid, photographs of children being separated from their mothers drew public sympathy for the fundamentalists. The raid was widely criticized as religious persecution, and Arizona Governor Howard Pyle lost office in 1954. Although the arrests and trials cost taxpayers $600,000, all those arrested were out of jail and reunited with their families in Short Creek by 1956. The community resumed plural marriage, and its population continued to more than double each decade. The book presents the backlash as a major reason fundamentalists faced relatively little state interference for much of the following half-century. Later cases again brought plural marriage into public view. The prosecution of Tom Green in 2000 became a national media spectacle, and the 2002 kidnapping and rescue of Elizabeth Smart received intensive coverage. Dan Lafferty, watching television in prison, followed the Smart case and inferred from reports that the abductor might be a fundamentalist and that the case could involve polygamy. These episodes do not show that outside coverage ended the ban in Colorado City; they illustrate the contrast between controlled access to media within the community and the wider public’s ability to encounter and debate its practices through news reporting.