The Principle

The Principle is the name fundamentalist believers give to plural marriage, making a contested marital system sound both sacred and foundational. In the book, it is more than a rule about family structure: it signals religious belonging, shapes imagined households, and raises the question of whether divine instruction or civil law has the final authority.

Meaning and Religious Authority

For David Coronado and Pamela Coronado, belief in The Principle formed part of their commitment to the Work under Onias. They had met Onias in 1984 and were already drawn to fundamentalist Mormonism. After Dan Lafferty murdered Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty, the Coronados were excommunicated and feared for their safety, but neither the murders nor the hostility around them weakened their faith in Onias or plural marriage. They also regarded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ decision to admit Black members to the priesthood as an apostasy.

The book places this commitment within a longer religious argument about obedience and authority. Rulon Jeffs’s sermons emphasized submission and drew heavily on nineteenth-century writings by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Brigham defended plural marriage as a sacred practice and maintained that God’s laws took precedence over human laws. In Utah, a Mormon-dominated legislature expanded the authority of local probate courts controlled by Brigham; Mormon bishops often served as judges, and church members made up most juries. The Principle therefore appears not only as a private conviction but as a doctrine with consequences for public authority and legal institutions.

Law, Community, and Household Status

The book describes a sharp conflict between religious marriage and civil recognition. Polygamy was illegal in Utah and Arizona, and typically a man in Colorado City legally married only his first wife. Additional wives were spiritually married by Rulon Jeffs but remained unmarried in the eyes of the state. This arrangement left them legally single mothers and helped large families qualify for public assistance. The contrast between religious status and civil status was thus built into the organization of family life.

The community’s public defense of its practice also invoked religious liberty and privacy. Sam Roundy, Colorado City’s polygamous police chief, argued that the state had no right to interfere in what families did at home. Yet the book sets that claim against the duty of police officers to uphold the law, exposing the strain between a community’s religious rules and the legal obligations of its officials. The Principle could be presented as a protected belief while its practice remained subject to criminal law.

The Coronados’ Consideration of Plural Marriage

David and Pamela believed in plural marriage but had not entered into it themselves. Pamela recalled that they had considered adding another wife many times, including women who were close friends and seemed attracted to the family, but that the prospect had proved too difficult when the opportunity arose. Her account makes a distinction between affirming the doctrine and making it part of a household: conviction did not erase the practical difficulty of acting on it.

Pamela later said she could imagine living The Principle more easily as she grew older. She saw possible benefits for her children in another woman’s talents, while acknowledging that the arrangement could bring difficult times. In a scene at home, she stopped stripping wallpaper and went to prepare lunch for her daughter, Emmylou Coronado, and Onias. The ordinary work of family life sits beside the larger religious ideal: for Pamela, plural marriage was not merely an abstract doctrine but a possible reorganization of care within the household.

An Inherited Family Ideal

Emmylou’s design for a future home shows how The Principle could shape expectations before a person had entered adult life. She had planned the house online as a home built according to the doctrine, imagining a single-story structure eighty-five feet long and seventy-seven feet wide, made of rammed earth or adobe. An open central courtyard would divide children’s rooms for girls and boys, with a nursery for younger children; the father would have a master bedroom, and the mothers would have separate rooms.

The plan included space for a third wife, so the possibility of adding another spouse was built into the architecture from the beginning. Emmylou described the house as the life she hoped to have when she grew up. The book’s account thus moves from adult belief and hesitation to a child’s confident blueprint: The Principle persists not only through sermons or formal arrangements, but through the future a family teaches its children to imagine.