Saturday, April 18, 2009

After Warren Jeffs, Abuse Still Rampant

Arizona State University's on-line news site published a very disturbing article by Melanie Kiser about the abuse that continues still in Colorado City, Arizona. This is the home of Warren Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. On November 20, 2007 he was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison and has begun serving his sentence at the Utah State Prison. The charges against him included sexual conduct with minors and incest. Wikipedia has a good overview of Jeffs' story.

It has now become clear that with Warren Jeffs' incarceration, the abuse which is endemic in the polygamous system has not ended in Colorado City.

Among the peculiarities of the town are birth defects unheard of anywhere else in the world, a female life expectancy of 32 years, black trucks that follow outsiders around everywhere and a baby cemetery, said Rep. David Lujan, D-15, in a lecture on Monday night at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

“Colorado City is a town with a population of less than 10,000, yet they have a baby cemetery that extends over two acres,” Lujan said. “Just an inordinate number of baby graves for a town that size. But that’s not even the most stunning thing. You see a lot of graves that are either dug up or unmarked, and so many where the headstone indicated they died years ago, in 1997 or something, yet there is fresh dirt on the grave.”

Also present at the lecture at Arizona State University was Flora Jessop.

Flora Jessop grew up in Colorado City, Arizona and was raised in a polygamous family, with two mothers and twenty-seven siblings. After years of abuse, she fled her family and faith and became one of the few women to get out alive. Today she works as a social activist helping other abused women and children escape polygamy.

Jessop provided some books as examples of what the community’s children learn in homeschooling. Lujan read aloud from one titled, “Sisters Are Eternal Friends,” which he said refers to sister-wives (other wives of a woman’s husband).

“These sisters do not have bad tempers. They are always sweet to one another,” one page said. Another stated, “Father is the master of the house.”

“Keep sweet no matter what — it’s a matter of life and death” is a motto in the FLDS, she said. “And they mean it. You cannot have emotions.”

The competition to be perfect and the favorite causes constant arguing between sister-wives, Jessop said.

“I didn’t come out of polygamy hating men — I came out of polygamy hating women,” she said. “It took me 16 years after getting out of Colorado City before I could trust a female. That’s why you don’t see a more united front.”

Girls raised in the FLDS cannot be friends with their birth sisters, have girl friends or share confidences, she explained. They are taught from birth that their only friends are their sister-wives, and after marriage, even private contact with one’s own mother is forbidden, she said.

“So often people think that Warren Jeffs is behind bars and all is well in the world,” Lujan said. “But the abuse continues.”

What's your opinion? Is this a legitimate set of religious and social customs that the government has no business meddling in? Where do we draw the line? When does child abuse and domestic violence behind closed doors become everybody else's business?

If polygamy were practiced among consenting adults, would it be wrong? In theory, couldn't it be done properly?

How widespread do you think this is? Colorado City is a town of 10,000. There are other towns, mainly smaller, but there are probably hundreds of them throughout Utah, Arizona and Colorado. So, it's fairly widespread, don't you think?

I'll tell you what I think. As much as I find government intervention distasteful, and only would suggest it in the most urgent matters, I believe the government is justified in trying to put a stop to these abuses, first through legislation and then if necessry through forceful intervention.

When we spoke about Jeffs before, I said I thought he and his friends were using their religion to justify child abuse, like in the marrying of a 12-year-old and in the general abuse of underage women, as described above by Flora Jessop. I think the same kind of abuse continues in these isolated communities. I suppose the temptation is too great for men to resist, but whatever the explanation, I believe it's time it was stopped.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

9 comments:

  1. Clearly Jeffs and his followers are wrong, and if the law allows this sort of abuse to continue, the law needs to be changed.

    That said, it is a difficult balance to have laws to prevent this abuse, while not allowing excessive government intrusion in raising children and *freely chosen* lifestyles. Voluntary adult polygamy (without relying on welfare) should be allowed, as well as wide latitude in how children are raised and taught.

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  2. When Mormon polygamy was outlawed the first time, the wives came forward to tell about the dances where the randy old geezers were just on the make for new young brides. Legalized debauchery is what it is.

    However, if you legalize gay marriage, you have less moral standing in the law to oppose polygamy. Every "consensual" adult relationship will be approved by our idiotic judges who are helpless in the face of a religiously neutral, secular gov't that says "anything goes" in the name of pursuit of happiness.

    Without our Judeo-Christian base, we seem helpless and witless, unable to distinguish between things that are obviously right and wrong and better for us --like normal monogamous marriage vs. every other sexual arrangement.

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  3. I agree that the government has no business involving itself in adult consensual polygamy, or homosexual partnerships for that matter. I see no moral problem with them, but more importantly it's not the government's job to regulate morals. To me this is so obvious that I always find it surprising that some people object.

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  4. How odd, considering the news you quoted here, Mike.

    It seems there is something inherently wicked toward women and children about these inbreeding Mormon cults --and so we once outlawed polygamy and we need to enforce the law against it and liberate women from it again. It IS ILLEGAL! ENFORCE THE LAW!

    And don't legalize gay marriage.

    Both are bad for individuals and society, in general.

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  5. I'll just nod here, Mike.

    No--strike that; I'll _also_ mention that I happen to be _in_ a consensual, loving, mutually supportive relationship with two women, one of whom I'm married to and one of whom we'll be "married" to sometime next year. We met through our various subcultural circles, and there's no religious pretext involved (hell two of us are "strong" atheists, and the third is a "weak" atheist). We just want to be with each other, take care of each other, and raise a family together without bothering anybody or being unnecessarily bothered.

    Child abuse is illegal. Spousal abuse is illegal. Laws aginst polygamyaccomplish nothing but to give prosecutors something else to throw at abusers, and at the cost of leaving supportive, functional relationships like mine without legal protection. If my wife and I died in a car crash tomorrow, our fiancee would face huge legal problems, not least of which is the loss of a substantial portion of the savings we've put together as a family.

    The things Jeffs and his cronies have done to women and children are disgusting, but let's keep the focus on the abuse, huh? Polygamy has only a circumstantial relationship to these abuses, not a causal one.

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  6. Michael, Thanks so much for your very personal comment. I appreciate your sharing your situation with us.

    As a practitioner of polygamy, don't you think it lends itself to abuse? I mean, in a world where the man is so elevated as the "boss" of the family, wouldn't it take a special kind of man not to take advantage of that power? I guess I'm asking if there might not be a "casual" effect.

    May I ask how old your wife was when you married and how old your fiancée is now?

    Those "subcultural circles" which are not religious, is that some kind of "hippie" thing? Could you elaborate?

    Does your lifestyle require that you live in violation of some laws? Do you feel comfortable with that?

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  7. I'll go point-by-point. ;)

    ...don't you think it lends itself to abuse? I mean, in a world where the man is so elevated as the "boss" of the family, wouldn't it take a special kind of man not to take advantage of that power?

    No on two counts. First, you're giving the category "polygamy" all the attributes of one specific example: "the kind of polygamy Warren Jeffs practices". Patriarchal polygamy may have been the historically most common kind, but then historically most marriages were patriarchal. Modern polygamous unions don't have to have a boss, period, and they don't have to involve one man and multiple women. (As one example, we've had a friend in a MMF polygamous triad. It's less common, but not by as much as you'd think.)

    Second, we're very close to our local BDSM community, a group that proves men and women can _both_ handle authority responsibly in a relationship. ;)

    May I ask how old your wife was when you married and how old your fiancée is now?

    Of course. When we married last year, I was 27 and my wife was a week shy of her 30th birthday. Our fiancee is 25.

    Those "subcultural circles" which are not religious, is that some kind of "hippie" thing? Could you elaborate?

    My wife and I met in college. We met our fiancee at Rocky Horror. :)

    New Jersey is a bit of a nexus of subcultures, and the three of us overlap into dozens of 'em. Between various sexual minorities, neo-burlesque, gaming, SF geeks, shooters, political mutts, rennies, music geeks, theater geeks, neovictorians, outdoorsies, and a few others, our dance cards are full. This weekend our burlesque troupe does the Rochester Erotic Arts Show... It's usually easier to just describe all this stuff as "subcultures".

    Does your lifestyle require that you live in violation of some laws? Do you feel comfortable with that?

    We'll be getting "married" in the same sense that gay people get "married" in most of the US: we won't be seeking a marriage license, or claiming any of the legal protections of marriage. We'll do all we can to protect each other through contracts, trusts, wills, and powers of attorney, but won't break any marriage laws I'm aware of. There's a case in the Canadian courts that may result in legal plural marriages up there in the next year--if so we'll get legally married north of the border, but still won't claim any benefits we aren't legally entitled to back home.

    As far as I'm aware, the only laws my wife and I may be technically violating are laws against adultery. This doesn't bother me.

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  8. Michael, You are a fantastic addition to our discussions. Please keep coming around.

    Here's one of the funniest, in an understated way, things I've ever read.

    "Between various sexual minorities, neo-burlesque, gaming, SF geeks, shooters, political mutts, rennies, music geeks, theater geeks, neovictorians, outdoorsies, and a few others, our dance cards are full. This weekend our burlesque troupe does the Rochester Erotic Arts Show... It's usually easier to just describe all this stuff as "subcultures"."Yes, indeed, it would be easier to describe all that as "subcultures." Fantastic. And by the way, I grew up in Jersey, but I missed most of that stuff.

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  9. It's interesting; when you get involved in one Jersey subculture, you immediately meet people from others. If your interests bleed at all, you start drifting into a third subculture, where you meet people who know people you know through your first subculture via yet another... It's like Two Degrees of Separation. :)

    It's gotten to the point where the Jewrsey subculture scene has hit critical mass: an event that started out as an off-season indoor renfair has actually morphed into an annual subculture convergence convention.

    There are some great advantages to being as densely populated as we are. I'm not a hundred percent sure the merits outweigh the debits, and we're strongly considering moving over the border to greener pastures, but you can't deny this is a special place.

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