On Polygamy

Like all issues, the removal of children from the polygamous "Yearning for Zion" group because of alleged abuse is complex and has many sides to it. On the face of it, the anonymous phone call from a 16 year old who was claiming abuse, but who then could not be found, seems to render the whole episode suspicious (who REALLY made the call? Were the police looking to close down the community?) and of questionable origins.

Having said that, I want to say how surprised I am that the courts have upheld the parents and ruled that the children will be returned to them soon. I want to go on record as saying that sooner or later, there will be a case which overturns this one. As I watch the news coverage and see the women in 19th century prairie attire, with identical hairstyles from that same era, I am struck that at the very least, the existence of an apparently sanctioned "cult" in which women can be "kept" as a harem, and stuck in a lifestyle over a hundred years old, is, on its face, abusive. Add to that that young girls who are barely teens are "married" to middle-aged men and forced to bear their children, makes the situation even more abhorrent, and in my opinion, illegal.

I always thought that bigamy was illegal. How is it that polygamy is o.k.? Where is the outrage from all those folks who think that gay marriage will undermine "real marriage?" i.e. one man, one woman.....Where is the outrage from the folks that perceive the oppression of women in Muslim cultures because they are kept behind the veil? In our culture, being kept in a compound, wearing identical dresses and hairstyles of another century, and being one of many wives to the same man, seems to me to be equally or more oppressive.

The reason, finally, that I think this case will be overturned some day, is that it reminds me of the progression of court cases from Plessy v. Ferguson in the 1890s, that determined that "separate but equal facilities" for blacks were constitutional, to Brown v. Board of education in 1954, which ruled that "separate facilities are inherently unequal." I would say that polygamous marriage is inherently abusive. How long will the courts take to come to that same conclusion?