Q. Why don't you put your real pictures up on your site like many other polygamists do? It would give us (the readers) a better idea of who you are.

There are many reasons why we do not put our real photographs up on this website:

• 1. The main purpose of this ministry is not to advertise ourselves but to teach the message of Christian/Messianic polygamy to the world, and especially to the Christian Churches (Messianic Assemblies), and to do this we wish principles to have the spotlight and not personalities;

• 2. In your country (USA) it is more possible to be open than we can because of your tradition of religious freedom, and whilst polygamists are no longer (or very rarely) persecuted or imprisoned by the government in your nation, they still are in ours, and our children kidnapped by the state, put into foster care or adopted away. Our main reason is therefore to protect our sons and daughters who may find themselves put into government institutions, where abuse is rampant and to prevent the trauma of having them ripped away from their families;

• 3. We are not advertising to find more wives for our family like most others. If there are prospective wives who belong here in the divine scheme of things, we are trusting Yahweh to do the guiding, by His Spirit, and not by the flesh. Once we are comfortable and satisfied that a prospective wife has been led to us and are sure her motives are pure, we share our real pictures, inviting her to visit us - this way we tend to attract those who are of more solid character and who truly love the Lord Yah'shua (Jesus) and are not mere curiosity-seekers or (as sometimes though rarely happens) stalkers, satanists, government officials or sensation-hungry journalists in disguise;

• 4. Some polygamists may well have a calling from Yahweh to have a high public profile and we respect them in their choice. Others of us do not. Doubtless more will raise their profiles, including publishing photographs on the net, as and when the political, religious and social climate changes, or if Yahweh tells them to irrespective of these. I am sure many more (though not necessarily all) will 'go public' if your government makes polygamy officially legal, and I expect the same thing here in Europe. Already our hyper-liberal neighbour, Sweden, is talking of making it legal though personally I very much doubt it will ever happen;

• 5. Finally, I do not for one moment believe that our real photographs would give you a "better idea of who (we) are". Without a doubt every reader of these webpages has his own uniquely personal mental pictures of what I and my wives look like anyway, and none of them will agree. Worse, the actual images may give a totally false impression of what we are like personality-wise and spiritually.

No doubt some of our readers will disagree with my reasons and I respect that - however, they must at least respect our right to choose what we do with our lives, and if that means keeping a low public profile, then they will just have to learn to live with it. In the first website (1997-2003) we placed imaginary pictures but decided with the new website (2016- ) to remove these entirely. We accepted some of the earlier criticisms that these first pictures might mislead people in spite of the many disclaimers sprinkled throughout the site. They didn't, in any case, look very much like us.

I wish to therefore state - again - that all of the pictures and names of people, places and countries on this website are not our real names or the places and countries we live in or come from. Some of the personalities who are not immediate members of my family are also composite in order to protect their anonymity. This is how it must be. I am sure most of you will understand: the world is not always as kind as we would like it to be. Indeed, there are all kinds of lies and misrepresentations about us on some websites which have simply reinforced our belief that our decision to remain anonymous was, and is, the right one.

Author: SBSK