So, during downtime at work, we’re pretty restricted on what we’re allowed to do. One of the things we CAN do is read the local papers. Which sort of suck, but they’re better than nothing, and I’m getting pretty good at the crossword puzzles.
Anyway, so because of this, I’m much more up to date on (the usually boring) current events, like the current issues with polygamy in Bountiful, and currently the concept of whether or not polygamy is constitutional is being debated. The latest addition is evidence that young girls were smuggled across the border to marry polygamists in the US.
I admit, I haven’t read a TON about it, but I simply can’t understand why this is an issue for polygamy, and not an issue for say, child abuse, human trafficking, slavery, and sexual abuse.
The articles usually say something like this:
Parties in favour of scrapping the polygamy law argued at trial that those laws were sufficient to deal with the problem.
“This evidence and the picture it paints demonstrates really eloquently why that just isn’t so,” said Jones.
…no, it means that what we have in place to prevent child abuse, human trafficking, slavery & sexual abuse are NOT sufficient. Not that we need to prosecute for polygamy too.
Confession: I’m not a fan of polygamy, personally. I know full well it doesn’t work for me, but if other people want to have consensual, adult polygamous relationships, who am I to judge? Yes, clearly I have a HUGE issue with elderly men marrying multiple 13 yr old girls. I also have a problem with elderly men marrying ONE 13 yr old girl. This isn’t about polygamy, it’s about pedophilia.
What am I missing? Because I honestly don’t get the debate about polygamy in this case. Shouldn’t they be working on, say, stopping child abuse and giving the women of Bountiful options & education so they can choose to leave, not just banning polygamy in general? I’m so confused.
The problem with polygamy is that it’s the setting in which young women can be browbeaten from an early age into believing that they must either marry on demand or fry in Hell. The difficulty in prosecuting the downstream offenses is one of obtaining documentation (which the polygamists deliberately obfuscate as much as possible) and the cooperation of the victims, who, if we return to point 1, have been browbeaten from birth to believe that they must yield or fry.
How can you prove that a child that shares DNA with both a 60 year old man and a 14 year old girl is really the 14 year old’s child when her 19 year old sister is also married to the same man and willing to lie to prevent frying in Hell? Birth certificates are scarce, witnesses lie, and the whole sick process sustains itself.
The Mormons of Bountiful have found a way of using polygamy to protect pedophilia. That doesn’t mean polygamy is the problem, tho, any more than the concept of a free press is responsible for Fox News and what it does. Perhaps we just need to accept that it’s going to take a long time to catch up to a sick little group of inbred perverts unless we’re going to gut our personal freedoms?
Hey. Sometime lurker here, with an interest in the legal issues around polygamy. Check out the book “Under the Banner of Heaven” by Jon Krakauer. An excellent, well-researched look at Mormonism including polygamy that explores these issues. Personally I don’t think polygamy is wrong per se and that consenting, informed adults should be able to have whatever kind of marriage they want. But polygamy as practised by the extreme fundamentalist Mormons (mainstream Mormons gave up polygamy as part of their religion a long time) is very bad and I don’t like to see “freedom of religion” used to allow it keep happening.