A little-known fact is that polygamy is more common in the United States than most people think. It’s almost exclusively practiced by Mormon and Fundamentalist Christian radicals, with the occasional Muslim group here and there. While it’s technically illegal, the authorities in states like Texas, Utah, and Idaho, which see these cults in action, rarely take action, because dragging white haired bearded men from their homes with their wives and children screaming, or tearing the kids out of the commune forcibly, makes very poor headlines and looks just awful on the nightly news. Few judges or prosecutors or cops want to be part of that, for multiple reasons; thus the only time they generally go after these cults is when they can get them on serious racketeering charges, along the lines of husbands who marry a wife, divorce her, have her and her kids go on welfare as single moms, and keep their money, and keep adding and legally (but not “spiritually”) divorcing their growing harem of wives. Catch them at that enough, and the authorities will give it a shot. But as it turns out, even in recent cases like that in Texas, the authorities wind up getting bad press.
You know, anyone who thinks polygamy is a non-issue in the U.S. or is only found amongst Mormons or Muslims basically doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
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Seeing the pictures of the crying women and screaming kids hasn’t sat very well with me. Maybe it’s because I don’t trust state governments to mess around with people’s lives (one of the reasons why I reluctantly support Roe v. Wade even though I believe abortion is murder).
I haven’t followed the case very closely so I can’t speak intelligently about it. But I have seen polygamy up close in Tanzania, and it has its advantages/disadvantages in that society that I don’t think would translate one-one in ours. It just seems to me that as long as there isn’t obvious abuse going on (and yes, geezers "marrying’ prepubescent girls is a form of abuse in my opinion), then government has no place telling people whom to sleep with.
So you support state sanctioned murder because you don’t trust the state to mess around with people’s lives? Like how, exactly? By saving them? The government is involved either way you slice it. I don’t understand how siding with the side you admit is murder somehow lessens government intervention.
Still, I look at that podium photo of the Sheriff and wonder about his religion, and his religious bias and the projection of his own vainglorious religiosity into the matter. Was it a publicly aggressive Uberbapti who plotted and seethed for "four years" preparing to storm this temple? Was this "Mother Superior Jump The Gun" to a Baptist backbeat? Was this a battle of "born one too many times" vs. "borne one too many?"With the exception of the tragic impact on the children (and some may rightly argue they were tragically impacted from the get-go) it seems Divine providence has dispensed a considerable amount of poetic justice here amidst the greater questions to be faced.Clearly, there’s no morality to be found in this affair. No clean hands. Much irony. A remarkable ethical puzzle. An orgy of double-binds. Fools rushed in.And what a government lesson re separation of church and state. And what a revisiting of an old problem with government being involved (wrongly) in the religious practice of marriage.This travesty has occurred in large part because we conflate the law’s recognition of joint property rights with religious practice, and allow our government to license, tax and police elements of religious practice commonly referred to as Marriage. From this Texas disaster to the battles over same-sex unions, our failure to separate church and state regarding the religious practice of marriage lies at the root of these issues. The government should have no role, and, I think, gravely transgresses in the role it now enjoys. There are other ways government can record paternity and preserve/dissolve joint property declarations.Freedom. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are not abstract concepts. As adult children we know the failings of our parents had profound consequences; as parents, we know and fear our impacts on our own children. Should we be criminalized because the state has produced a formal moral tyranny by which a particular utopian minimum may be forced upon us under a doctrine of administrative secularism?These are difficult questions of balance and boundaries. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Let my boundaries end where your’s begin and vice versa."Our government has every right to investigate human slavery, unlawful incarceration and "welfare" racketeering — something that can occur with one wife or 50, one husband or twenty, or none at all. Under RICO they can march the racketeers off to jail.But, that has nothing to do with the religious practice of marriage. That which seems most wrong with this situation has its roots in the wrongful intrusion of government into the religious practice of marriage as a failure of the separation of church and state. In a very real sense, the problems here have nothing to do with formally practiced poligamy as a societal threat separate from informal, ad hoc poligamy readily practiced throughout our society.
Dean & Scott —
The FLDS have co-opted law enforcement and the courts in the remote Arizona Strip north of the Grand Canyon, and adjacent Southern Utah, for over 100 years, in service of their corrupt and exploitative dogma. Hurray for Texas because they are not allowing this abusive and domineering group to gain a toehold/refuge in yet another state. Read this piece, look at the pic of the former prophet and his "last two wives" and tell me this isn’t seriously weird.
And please provide evidence for your allegation that ‘fundamentalist Christians" practice polygamy. Web ravings don’t count; "Anyone can post on the internet."
Oops, forgot the link:
<http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/83517/>
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