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Show in my father's house/ 67 statement. But the men seemed blind to the suffering borne of constant comparison and subtle competition. "Every woman has the right to motherhood," Brother Musser wrote before he died in 1953, citing "proof" of the Principle's divine nature and unlimited benefit to women. My father reasoned that women outlived and outnumbered men due to wars and stress, and said women needed to flock together for companionship beneath the shepherding of a good man. The issue of eugenic breeding, which had been promoted by the early patriarchs of the Church, was another of my father's defenses of the Principle. He frequently reminded us that this Law designed to "raise up a righteous seed unto the Lord," guaranteed that, as bearers of the seed, we measured brighter, more capable and more beautiful than other people. But we must not shirk our responsibility. Part of that "responsibility" entailed accepting the pecking order without criticism. My father often reminded us how blessed we were to be assured of good parents and a good, broad base for our family. "Look around you!" he boomed. "The American family eroding everywhere! Divorce epidemic! But you children don't need to fear losing your loved ones. Even if your mother died, you'd have six other mothers to take care of you." And so it was in my father's house, a pecking order that resulted in a king of twinness --an intricate interdependency of personalities, of dominating and dominated, of extrovert and |