Polygamy (Utah's open little secret)

[n2doc]

Polygamy.
(Utah's open little secret)

By Kirsten Scharnberg and Manya A. Brachear Tribune staff reporters
Published September 24, 2006

EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah -- The neighborhood looks like any other in the upper-middle-class suburbs: sprawling homes with porch swings and manicured lawns strewn with discarded kids' bikes. But beneath the all-American veneer, much is different in this upscale subdivision 40 miles south of Salt Lake City. "Pretty much everyone who lives here is polygamous," said Mary--a woman who gave a recent tour of the area and is herself the second wife of a Utah man. She, like other polygamists interviewed for this story, asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of prosecution. "There may be one or two houses that aren't, but virtually everyone else here is one of ours."

In the weeks since the arrest of Warren Jeffs, the fundamentalist Mormon leader who made the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for allegations that he facilitated the rape and marriage of underage girls, there have been constant questions about the real pervasiveness and peril of polygamy in Utah. Mainstream Mormons in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with 12 million members worldwide, have asserted that all polygamous denominations--including Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--are aberrations in a state where the influential Mormon Church suspended the practice of polygamy more than a century ago. But Utah's attorney general, pro-polygamy activists and other experts estimate there are 40,000 people living in polygamous families or communities like this one across the Western U.S.--with a large portion of them residing in suburban Utah.

Although it is rare that allegations of abuse are as systemic or egregious as those reported in the community led by Jeffs, virtually every other polygamous sect practicing in Utah today has been linked to financial, sexual or spiritual improprieties. Federal grand juries in Arizona and state investigators in Nevada are probing polygamist practices in those states, according to media reports.

Earlier this month, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), himself a Mormon, asked U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales to create a federal task force to investigate polygamy sects in the Western U.S., particularly Jeffs' church, a group in which girls as young as 13 are being married and hundreds of boys have been excommunicated and cut off from their parents in an alleged effort to reduce the elders' competition for wives. Still, in his letter, Reid's comments made clear he was referring to Utah's polygamy subculture in general as much as to Jeffs' community along the Utah-Arizona border.

"For too long, this outrageous activity has been disguised in the mask of religious freedom," he wrote. "But child abuse and human servitude have nothing to do with religious freedom and must not be tolerated".

more (reg req'd):

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0609240351sep24,1,3161781.story?coll=chi-news-hed

[Momgonepostal]

1. I have a hard time believing that...

"Pretty much everyone who lives here is polygamous" I know/knew two families who currently live there and someone else who was considering moving there, and they are most definitely not polygamous.

It's interesting though, that this is not a way out in the boonies town like Hildale/Colorado City, but a rapidly growing suburb with lots of new, attractive housing.

[kestrel91316]

2. Hey, I just figured out what they can do about their "excess male"

problem. You know, the reason they have to "excommunicate" (read "abandon") their teenaged boys......

I assume all these good conservatives support the troops and are gung ho for the war. They should be sure to sign up 100% of their sons to go fight in Iraq. Given that they are cranking out babies of both genders as fast as they can, there should be plenty of the young men to meet all our nation's military needs for the forseeable future. It will save us having to institute the draft when Bush nukes Iran.

Sounds like a win-win situation!

[MADem]

3. Polishing the Soul, my ass--more like polishing their knobs, the baastids!

Frankly, I think these women must be some kind of SERIOUSLY brainwashed, or horribly STUPID:

In the wake of such comments, Utah polygamists have come forward in unprecedented force to defend their faith, values and lifestyle. They say plural marriage fulfills the mission of all Mormons to be fruitful and multiply and to ascend to the highest reaches of heaven. They say it breaks their hearts that the mainstream church in 1890 abandoned polygamy--or what one expert called "the process of polishing the soul"--to appease the federal government and ensure Utah would earn statehood. They point to such communities as Eagle Mountain and Rocky Ridge, where polygamous families appear to be happy and prosperous, often with multiple wives of one husband living in palatial homes with adjoining yards.

"We're really sickeningly boring," said Jane, another wife to the same husband as Mary. "There is no high drama. We are the people next door--it's just that there are more of us."

During the 2004 campaign for Utah attorney general, polygamy was called the state's "dirty little secret," and candidates for the top law-enforcement position debated how best to deal with it. Mark Shurtleff won and has since implemented a policy to essentially leave polygamists alone unless they are committing other crimes simultaneously. Although the act of having more than one spouse is a felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison in Utah, authorities long ago stopped actively going after polygamists.

"We don't have the resources, nor do I think that we should use our resources, to convict every polygamist in Utah, put them in jail and put 20,000 kids into foster care," Shurtleff told a Canadian reporter recently when asked the state's approach to cracking down on polygamy. "What we're focusing on are crimes against women and children and tax fraud and other crimes involving misuse of public money."...

And the damn attorney general should be hanged from the highest tree, the bum.

I think perhaps Utah ought to start losing some federal funding--schools, highway money, and so on, until the AG gets his shit together. I'd love to know how many of those "plural wives" pass themselves off as single mothers, and get public assistance, like food stamps, and AFDC, and so on...