Rulon Jeffs finally expired at the age of 92. Surviving are his wives (one of them said to be 70 years his junior), by best estimate sixty children, and hundreds of grand and great and great-great grandchildren. (One of his possible successors as leader of the Fundamentalist Mormon sect, Winston Blackmore, is the father of more than 100 children.) Though most of its members live in or near poverty, Jeffs church controls more than $200 million in assets.
Most (certainly not all) polygamous Mormon schisms are peaceful. (The URL=http://www.ldshistory.net/1990/kingston.htm]Kingstons are insane, inbred, and incredibly wealthy, and to this day I can’t even drive a [LeBaron car because of the terror that surname struck in my childhood, but they are the exception.) Most of the cults are law abiding other than the bigamy laws and practice a sort of oddly commendable family values with truly enviable familial bonds. They also arrange marriages between 15 year old girls and middle-aged or even old men, and frequently by the time a woman really considers that there is a life beyond this tiny town where everybody knows your secret she’s the 24 year old uneducated mother of six children and pretty much bound (for time and eternity) to her 55 year old husband for support.
Abraham Lincoln called polygamy “the stump we just have to plow around”. The raid on Short Creek (a tiny town now called Colorado City, seat of Jeffs’ cult) fifty years ago didn’t solve much of anything, the singer-swapp standoff 20 years ago was a needless bloody fiasco, and with the wealth controlled by some of these groups another Waco or worse is not out of the question, and the Tom Green trial last year was basically a standalone tabloid epilogue. If the women choosing to enter into polygamous marriages were informed 25 year olds I honestly wouldn’t’ have much of a problem with it, but most of them are not- they’re teenagers who have lived their entire lives in a polygamous cult and indoctrinated with the divinity of their calling and the righteousness of persevering in persecution.
Do you feel that more should be done to end this lifestyle? Do you feel that FBI raids are warranted for groups not violating drugs or weapons laws? I personally am too passionate about this subject to be objective, but I’m curious to hear if others have opinions. (Bear in mind that these people are not posing serious risks to the lives and liberties of those outside their sects and that government operations quickly rise in the millions of US $ and often are botched, but at the same point child marriage and numerous other abuses [including an increasing amount of welfare fraud, justified with a “we can’t leave this valley and get good jobs because of the government so it’s not unfair to take the government for a ride” rhetoric.)
Do you feel there are too many more important issues to deal with, or that this should be a major sting? Or, for that matter, do you believe their lifestyles should be protected under the First Amendment?
I’m on my way out the door to a business trip, or I’d comment substantively. Most of what I’d say, though, was covered in this thread from a while back. Suffice it to say that while I don’t much care in the individual instance, polygamy as it is practiced en masse in “fundamentalist” Mormon communities is of sufficient harm to justify government intervention.
Of course, I got roasted for that opinion back then, and I expect to be in the minority once again. Oh well, at least I have demographics on my side.
Heck, I don’t feel that FBI raids are warranted for groups that are violating drug or weapons laws.
As far as polygamy goes, I feel that the whole notion of “legal marriage” is a mistake. If people (two or more) love each other and want to commit to each other or raise children together or live under the same roof or have some religious ceremony of holy union performed upon them or what have you, why the heck does the State need to poke its nose into it?
Do you feel that a 16 year old girl really knows what she’s doing when she’s “heavily encouraged” to marry a 45 year old man with 2 wives and 13 children (not a hypothetical situation, incidentally)? Then in the case of the Kingstons there were allegations of beatings and documentation of multigenerational incest. (In the case of the incest, it was usually entered into consensually- uncle/niece and half-sibling marriages being the norm.)
First, with regard to the First Amendment. I don’t believe freedom of religion has ever been successfully interpreted to allow behavior that was against secular laws. (This is just opinion) Meaning, as a more extreme example, human sacrifice is not protected even if it could be argued to be a traditional religious practice, so I don’t think the government is likely any time in the near future to accept polygamy on the basis of religious freedom.
As far as whether or not people want polygamy to be legal, I personally don’t have any problem with it, provided all parties concerned are of legal age of consent, and truly want to be in the relationship. I mean, if a group of people take up residence together and sexual partnerships are fluid that’s their own business. If they want to be married, why not?
Looking at two different websites regarding age of consent, there appear to be only two states where people under 16 can be legal (South Carolina and Iowa) according to one website, (www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm) and none according to the other (www.actwin.com/eatonohio/gay/consent.htm), so, if girls or boys are being “married” at 15 it may be illegal in any case, polygamous or not.
How much of the governments resources should be aimed at stamping out polygamy? Well, considering some of the other issues we’re faced with right now, it doesn’t seem like it should be a priority at all, if all the parties involved are consenting adults. If not, then it should be treated as a crime and stopped, although I question the need for the FBI to handle it. I would think it could fall within state or local law enforcement jurisdiction.
I would like to ask Sampiro, if these groups aren’t actually breaking any laws, on what grounds would you even be able to do anything to them on the order of an FBI raid?
“Step out of the house! We don’t care for your lifestyle!”
Okay, Mormon fundamentalism can screw up a lot of lives. So can Christian fundamentalism - kids can grow up being indoctrinated into a lifestyle that teaches that to be happy is a sin (yes, I know that not all, or even most, Christian fundamentalists are like this, but the precedent exists - I know of a few Christian fundamentalists who have a healthy loathing of all things happy). How about the Amish? They grow up never knowing the joys of videogames and expensive sports cars. Facetiousness aside, the point is this: Where do you draw the line? If you allow the government to interfere with this bunch of people practicing their religion while not breaking any laws, based on the fact that their religion leads to unhappiness, at what point do you say, “Okay, this religion causes a lot of unhappiness, but not quite enough to warrant government involvement. Please carry on.”?
Note that I’m assuming here that the age of consent in Utah is such that these marriages between 15 and 55 year olds aren’t breaking any laws. If they are, then all bets are off, and the government is free to go in and break things up.
Personally, I think marrying off your 15 year old daughter to an old man is a tad messed up, but there’s this thing called “freedom of religion” we have here, and I think that takes precedence.
Jeff
The legal marrying age with parental consent in Utah is 12 for girls, 14 for boys. This causes problems when the union is wanted by the parents. (It also made me laugh when Orrin Hatch was protesting Bill Clinton’s “molestation” of a naive youth in the Monica Lewinsky case when realizing that in his own state Monica could have married at half her age.)
Allow me to correct the above: Utah has changed it’s age of marriage with parental consent to 14. Curiously, the only two states left where a 12 year old can marry are Massachusetts and Kansas, two that have nothing else in common that I can think of save for snow.
In most states, if you are under the age of parental consent marriage BUT you have been married before (e.g. you’re in Alabama which requires you be 14, but you were married at 12 in Kansas and then divorced the next year) there is a loophole.
El Jeffe wrote “How about the Amish? They grow up never knowing the joys of videogames and expensive sports cars.”
Personally I consider the Amish a backwards cult, but not a dangerous one. I think it’s extremely cruel that teenagers must make the choice of “live on the outside or stay with us, but if you leave you can never come back and you’re dead to us and we will not sit at the same table anymore because you are an unholy corpse… not that we want there to be any pressure”. They don’t practice child marriage to much older men and they’re not nearly as likely to send religiomaniacal assassins to wipe out the head of a rival sect as the fundamentalist Mormon sects.
I’m curious to see what the Amish are like in another generation. Perhaps by then we’ll be driving airships and they’ll have worked their way up to Yugos and Betamaxes.
Lest somebody misunderstand, I would interject: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. the Mormon church) condemns the practice of polygamy. In a recent interview with Larry King, the president of the church, Gordon B. Hinckley, explained the matter precisely. Here is a transcript.
I don’t know if Sampiro was referring to the LDS church or Jeff’s fundamentalist group, but I would just like to clarify that point.
P.S. The LDS church is worth at least $30 billion.
Lest somebody misunderstand, I would interject: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. the Mormon church) condemns the practice of polygamy. In a recent interview with Larry King, the president of the church, Gordon B. Hinckley, explained the matter precisely. Here is a transcript.
I don’t know if Sampiro was referring to the LDS church or Jeff’s fundamentalist group, but I would just like to clarify that point.
P.S. The LDS church is worth at least $30 billion.
I have no problem with Polygamy. Heck, I think in the right environment, it teaches children tolerance and respect, as well as how to deal with groups of people with different outlooks much better than the 1+1 families.
I bet the only reasons it’s still illegal is a- insurance companies and the like that would hate to sort out the paperwork and b- lingering judeo-christian ‘ethics’. It is my hope that within another 20-50 years, those will fade away enough so that group marraiges and the like can be out in the open.
Note: relationships between consenting legal adults only, and no co-erced marriages. That should be the only law.
The problem with polygamy as practiced by some to include marrying off teen agers to geezers can be dealt with by regulations already in place in multiple states without making life hell for those consenting adults who find multiple marriage suits them just fine. Banning all polygamy because one group practices it in a way that is antithetical to individual liberty does not make it ok for the state to further unnecessarily hamper others individual liberties.
