© Associated Press
Family time: Mr Williams with his wives, from left, Robyn, Paulie, Rosemary, Nonie, and Rhonda, at their home in a polygamous community outside Salt Lake City
- A pilot episode featuring Brady Williams and his family drew good ratings on the network in September
- The Williams family are among an estimated 15,000 independent polygamists in the West who don't belong to an organized, fundamentalist Mormon church
TLC has announced it will air a full series about a progressive polygamous family from Utah that starred in a one-hour pilot earlier this year.
The cable TV network said Thursday it will produce nine, one-hour episodes about Brady Williams and his five wives and 24 children. The first episode is set to debut March 9.
The September pilot episode drew good ratings.
Members of the Williams family are among an estimated 15,000 independent polygamists in the West who don't belong to an organized, fundamentalist Mormon church. Williams and his wives withdrew from the Apostolic United Brethren during the mid-2000s after re-evaluating their core beliefs.
The family no longer teaches the tenets of fundamental Mormonism to their children at home, opting instead to take from other teachings such as Buddhism to instill good, morale values in their two dozen children, who range in age from 2-20.
Their move into the national spotlight comes with much less risk than it would have just a month ago. A federal judge in Utah last week struck down key parts of the state's polygamy laws, saying a provision that forbids cohabitation violates the First Amendment.
The ruling decriminalizes polygamy, making only bigamy - holding marriage licenses with multiple partners - illegal.
Comment: The prediction of a 'slowdown in U.S. labor growth' may also end up being attributed to how many people actually survive this decade, if you factor in: rising rates of both poverty and homelessness, disease-inducing diets, addictive, braincell poisoning of millions due to massive psychiatric drugging of the American population,a mostly Frankenfood-GMO-menu devoid of healthful niutrients, lack of affordable or adequate healthcare, and mega-war-everywhere-the-U.S.-can-make-war. Budget cuts to social assistance programs will only increase the existent hardship of struggling families to survive down the road.
We'll be lucky if we even make it to the next decade, let alone BE here to apply for a job, considering the dizzying rate at which conditions are devolving in the U.S. Jobs are needed NOW.