Nice to see our justice system doing something about this. We can’t just turn our back and hope it all goes away.

Thanks, Jon, for keeping this subject in the forefront of our minds.

Jon, when you say “polygamy is all around [you]“, exactly how close do you mean? Is there something you’re trying to tell us?

But the issue at hand isn’t the polygamy, it’s the institutionalized child abuse under the guise of polygamy that’s allowing adult men to molest young girls. Marriage and molestation are two separates.

No, it is solely about polygamy. Sexual relations within a marriage is generally not considered molestation or abuse.

In Arizona, 16 year olds can marry with the consent of their parent or legal guardian. Assuming Jeffs was a licensed minister, then the only illegal part was that it was a second marriage.

If polygamy was legal, this wouldn’t have been a crime. It’d been just another routine civil union.

Sebastian

Sebastian, nice try on the divide and conquer.

Jolie, this is technically a link. I just integrated my links into the main body of the site. Some links I wanted to open up for comments and it just seemed better to put them in the main column of the site.

I’ll fix the link.

There are two issues at play; one, polygamy. The other marriage of a minor without parental consent. Together a toxic mix of fundamentalist craziness.

Actually, the third issue, which is the creepiest of all, Fischer’s 16 year old “wife” was also his stepdaughter.

What people have to realize is this so-called religion (fundamentalist Mormonism) got started by a snake oil salesman who concocted a bunch of bullshit about God speaking to him under some tree and started his own little cult. If you want to know the history and evolution of fundamentalist and moderate Mormonism, read Jon Krakauer’s Banner Under Heaven.
http://tinyurl.com/zgdwa

Polygamy benefits insecure men who’d otherwise have to pay prostitutes to get laid. They’re sick, twisted, perverted bastards. We have a similar community in Bountiful, BC that is now under investigation for all kinds of crime including pedophilia. You can read about it here http://tinyurl.com/japmd – and take a gander at Warren Jeffs…He looks like something straight out of Fargo.

Although this community of Mormons milks the government’s education and welfare coffers dry, women and female children are robbed of education and independence. Bountiful Mormon polygamists trade underage brides with sick fucks like themselves in Utah…it’s nothing but sexual slavery. A brave local reporter, Daphne Branham, has been outing this community for the past few years and forcing the government to do something about it. For years the law has turned a blind eye and taxpayers have enabled this hideous cult.

I don’t know that you CAN blame the mothers in most of these intances, particularly if that is the culture in which they were raised. They are figuratively beaten about the face and head with a fear of God and Satan since infancy. The teens that “escaped”, I think ultimately returned. They are not educated beyond middle school, and outside media is just that: outside.

When a woman is in an abusive relationship, fear is the over-riding emotion. Think of the women in society that stay with their abusive spouses. This is a religious cult. Add some grape juice and some Nikes, and it will look more familiar.

Tomorrow is Sunday morning. I’m going to my Presbyterian Church and say a prayer for these girls. I can wear jeans, I have cut and styled hair, and I know that man actually did walk on the moon.

Here’s my soap box: Anjelina Jolie can go to Africa and bring the world’s attention to the plight of people there. There is question about the fate of some of the babies right here in AZ. Huh. Not glamourous enough? NIMBY?

Gosh, blurb, you advocated legalized marriage for polygamists and gays just last week. I’d assume that the monogamous, heterosexual laws on age limits would still apply. So accordingly, there would have been no case. It would have been a legal marriage and never made the news.

So I don’t understand on what basis your moral outrage stands. Presumably older men are marrying younger women every day. Perhaps many of them teenagers and most of them not to polygamists.

If a marriage is legal based upon age and consent, then what further would you have the State do? Must the State divine the motivation of all parties and measure them to some ideal?

And when that day comes that gays can marry, are we just the same going to be morally outraged when the 16 year old marries the 36 year old lesbian or gay? Or will the MSM celebrate that as a milestone?

Sebastian

I know a Fijian woman who was married off at 16 to a 28 year old. Her mother arranged it because it was their ticket out of poverty. Eventually he couldn’t control or influence her in the same way and their marriage ended because she dumped him. He then married another young girl. If Sebastian thinks for one second these adult-teen relationships are consensual, he’s delusional.

Adult males benefit from polygamy. Women, girls, and young boys do not. All you have to do is talk to women who’ve escaped, and rescued their children, from polygamous situations to know that.

I’ve yet to read about multiple husbands…anybody got any historical data on that?

As for the HBO show…it’s hardly reflective of reality. Most polygamous wives and their children are living isolated 19th century lives.

I don’t know about the States, but Canada has age of consent laws. Pedophiles are fighting to abolish age of consent laws. (See NAMBLA.) Canada can now prosecute any Canadian citizen caught abusing children in the third world sex tourism market. Fat chance that many of them will be caught, but if they are they’re facing long jail sentences at home.

Adult males who prefer girls aren’t healthy or well adjusted. I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t endured, at some point in her life, sexual advances by men who for one reason or another, can’t manage relationships with women close to their own age. Like rape, it’s less about sex and more about the power imbalance.

Moonrattled – Polygamy has its practical applications in some cultures where there is a deficit of one gender and survival depends on membership in a family. Where there have been too few women, polygamy has allowed men to have a family and children where they otherwise wouldn’t, quite often it is brothers who marry one woman. It still happens today in cultures outside the US, although it is predominantly the case that there are several women married to one man. In the United States no one can use that argument to justify polygamy.

Focusing on the US only, I see two issues here and the only one that alarms me is the exploitation of underage minors. In our society we consider our young people children until 18, I think the age of consent for marriage should reflect that AND it should be enforced.

“Actually, the third issue, which is the creepiest of all, Fischer’s 16 year old “wife” was also his stepdaughter.”

Ok, that did it. Pass the brain bleach.