Liberation at Whose Expense?

Taylor Frankie Paul was struggling before she became a television star. 

But there were segments of our culture that saw liberation when they should have seen distress.

On September 21, Paul announced that she was stepping away from the reality program that made her famous, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.” She says she was being bullied by fellow cast members, but her announcement comes in the wake of allegations of domestic violence, her season of “The Bachelorette” being canceled, and ongoing legal issues related to the custody of her children.

In her announcement, she wrote, “I’m just relieved to be out.” She acknowledged the role her own actions had played.

The end of this chapter of Paul’s public life should prompt more than the typical schadenfreude we often feel when a very famous person falls. Perhaps it can be an opportunity to reconsider the story told about her and the women around her: that their rebellion against the safeguards of religious life represented an advance toward liberation that we should celebrate.

And what if that overeagerness to praise the rejection of religion caused us to miss the crisis that should have been obvious?

Consider the response from Marie Claire’s Australian outlet to the show’s first season. It called the series “surprisingly feminist” and approvingly suggested that its subjects were “women in revolt.” The article concluded by wondering whether the women would “bring the church forward” or ultimately leave it.

This captures a common sentiment at the time—that Paul and her cohort represented a positive step away from the restrictions of high-demand religion. In their view, the show wasn’t taking advantage of struggling individuals; it was highlighting a better way forward.

Glamour similarly profiled the cast members. It called their adultery and divorce “rather juicy,” and then asked what was empowering about it. 

Of course, from the beginning, many Latter-day Saints saw something different. In the Deseret News, Meagan Kohler and Jacob Hess warned that this language of liberation was obscuring the real damage being done, and wondered whether the religious standards being presented as blasé might actually have been helpful to these women. 

Latter-day Saints were not the only ones to recognize the problem. Naomi Fry wrote similarly in The New Yorker about the bleakness just underneath the surface of the “empowerment” rhetoric. The failure to recognize the harm was never a universal cultural problem. It belonged to a specific cultural reflex, the presupposition that conservative religion is an obstacle to human flourishing and that rejecting it is therefore good. 

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints understands the simple truth that sexual fidelity is connected to a deeper understanding of family and love. And for Latter-day Saints, this understanding is one crucial component of understanding the purpose of life. 

Severing this tether without a robust philosophical and moral system to replace it would naturally lead to collapse. 

The infidelity that made MomTok a national trend is far from unforgivable. But when we acknowledge that these acts are corrosive, we take a very different path than when we reinterpret them as liberating. 

When a culture doesn’t fully understand or respect religious morality, it can see simple boundaries around fidelity as repression. It recognizes the real cost of self-restraint but fails to recognize the associated rewards. It doesn’t see the broken family or the wounded hearts. 

Contempt for conservative religion can result in a failure of empathy toward the very people being cheered on.

We need to recover the ability to distinguish a person’s freedom to choose from the wisdom of her choices. And we need to stop assuming that disapproval is the same as hostility. Sometimes the people warning about the harms ahead are the people who care about you the most.

I have found myself feeling quite sad for Taylor Frankie Paul. My life has been touched by some of the same harms that have hurt her. But Hulu hasn’t documented those harms. 

I certainly don’t know her heart or her journey. But amid this most recent spiral, I know she announced she was stepping away from the Church. 

In my experience, there is no better resource for rebuilding a life than Jesus Christ and His Church. So, as Paul is now turning to a more private season of her life, I want to invite her back. You said you still believe in Jesus Christ. Bring that faith, bring your questions, and bring your hard-earned experience. There are people here who are rooting for you and your children to build something that will endure for eternity. We want you to have relationships you can trust and a home where you can find and depend on that love.

It’s not easy. There are real choices to be made to build that life. And we’re all struggling in one way or another on that journey. Taylor, you can come home. Join us as we work together to build something better.