Today was a rare day, I got to watch television. I almost wished I hadn't. The topic was Polygamy. As I sat there staring at the t.v. with tears in my eyes, these young girls talked about escaping from compounds in rural Utah and Arizona. All of them forced to marry before the age of 16. Some to their first cousins.
Yes, I knew polygamy was still practiced, I'm not an ostrich with my head in the sand, but I thought it was a choice. I didn't realize that children were being forced against their will to marry grown men. Their fathers or prophets deemed these "celestial marriages" by special permission, authority, sanction, vow, covenant, command, by or on behalf of God.
In the Spring of 1998 TAP brought worldwide attention to the horrific abuses that occur within these secret polygamous societies such as incest, statutory rape, underage marriage, welfare fraud, tax evasion, lack of education, trafficking of minors across boarders for the purpose of sex, medical neglect, and extreme forms of domestic abuse & mental torture.
It is estimated that 2 billion women and children around the world live under the oppression of polygamy. An estimated 100,000 people in the United States are practicing polygamy secretly and illegally. Why then are these people not prosecuted, urging a man to think twice about marrying his 13 year old niece?
State government still refuses to take any preventative or pro-active measures to rid Utah of polygamy. How in this day and age does this exist in our society?
5 comments:
It's not so much the polygamy that's the problem, it's the whackos who are trading it under ther guise of their own crackpot brands of religion and set themselves up as "God". I have several friends who have lived in "polygamous" relationships while not actually being legally married to either, so they haven't broken any laws. The relationships in each case lasted much longer than conventional marriages and had absolutely nothing to doi withg religion. So these crackpots using force, and arranged marriages are not the measuring stick to judge polygamy by.
AV
http://netherregionoftheearthii.blogspot.com/
http://tomusarcanum.blogspot.com/
I don't care what two consenting adults do, I have a problem with all the underage marriage and insest. It is wrong to force a 14 year old girl to marry anyone especially her cousin.
I in no way justify this travesty. It is a psychological problem that could only be resolved by castration without anesthesia.
With that said lets take some of the possible causes into consideration.
Abuse. They could have been abused. Not an excuse, just a cause.
But to create a complete society? How likely is it that so many "abused" men found each other and conspired to create a society like this. Sometimes we overlook the fact that women in this society are not without fault. They have to be there somewhere, they just aren't mentioned.
I'm not talking about the victims. Speaking of the victims, I'm sure there are boy victims too.
I wonder what reasons the older women have for supporting a society like that.
I have ONE theory. It is a closed society running away from the "strong" women of today. The ones looking and hoping to recreate a society of their own with submissive women and masculine manly men.
Sounds innocent enough like that but then their power gets to them and they go crazy.
Great post!
Happy Birthday Leah! Love you so much! xoxo.
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