Polygamy and the Texas Raids
The massive raid upon a polygamist compound in Texas is one of the major violations of human rights in this country. This atrocity, shocking in its initial sweep, hugely over-broad , of children and their parents, gets worse day by day. Now, the pitiful last means of parents to communicate with their children and children with their parents by cellphones has been ended by confiscation of all phones.
I do not favor polygamy. Like most of the polygamous communities I have come to know over several decades, child abuse is prohibited by their own rules. So is torture or physical abuse of any kind.
When a people are driven into the desert, into retreat from a persecuting majority culture, a people may remain frozen in time just as if they were caught in ice and frozen, to appear later in a radically changed culture, during some thaw. In the nineteenth century, and every century before that, ages of marriage were much younger than now. I offer no excuse for the patriarchal distinction between genders though, sadly, it exists in many cultures. This I have long opposed in every dimension of society, polygamous and mainstream. But these deeply held traditions die hard. The only effective and compassionate way for this to happen is over time. With example set by leaders.
The criminal law is a vicious thing that possesses no subtlety. We need it for protection and as a last resort. But Jesus’ admonition against going to the law in all but the last most desperate alternative is simply the recognition of the law’’s savagery. It possesses no subtlety and little judgment, too often, in its execution The perpetrator of any crime of abuse upon any young boy or girl must be punished. But this massive war against polygamy is unconstitutional, savage, and utterly self-defeating. This is a tragic example of the misuse of the criminal law, made much worse by the idiotic reporting by CNN, Fox, and all the feeding frenzy inclinations of 24/7 news media, with blood, the blood of all the victims of abuse in this tragedy, in the water. Have we no shame?
Edwin Brown Firmage bio, website
Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, emeritus
University of Utah College of Law
Professor Firmage is the author, with Collin Mangrum,of Zion in the Courts: a Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,and with Francis Wormuth, To Chain the Dog of War: the History of the War Power of Congress,
both published by the University of Illinois Press. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah
April 14th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Ed - I get your point but I respectfully disagree. You wrote: Like most of the polygamous communities I have come to know over several decades, child abuse is prohibited by their own rules. So is torture or physical abuse of any kind. but I feel safe arguing that “spiritual” marriages between adult men and adolescent girls are inherently abusive. A girl of 13 or 14 of even 16 can’t give meaningful consent to a sexual relationship with an adult man. If nothing else, absent a legal marriage, any sexual relationship between them is rape; the presence of teens raising their own children is certainly proof positive that rape occurred. From that perspective alone, I believe the raid on the YFZ ranch seems warranted.
Now, as far as the question of how do we as a culture deal with an abusive, socially isolated, cult like this one, how do we brng its members into the mainstream of American life, you are correct - it will take time.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
In 2005, Texas raised the age of consent from 14 to 16 and increased the penalties for violations. This was probably to send a message to the FLDS. They didn’t take the hint. You know the saying, “don’t mess with Texas.” I lived in Texas for a few years, and in my experience that’s a state where law enforcement is no joke. Warren Jeffs made a strategic error moving people there.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
I agree Ed, it’s Missouri all over again.
Where’s the proof? Where is the girl who made the original allegation? I have yet to read any specific charges before these people have all been carted away, and seperated from their loved ones.
It is embarrassment from the social engineering fascist left. Look out, it is sad fact that the worst regimes that existed in the last 100 years all were sold as socialist utopias where intervention in peoples lives was always for their own “good”.
Under the US Constitution a people consenting together, can be frozen in time within the law. If the government has any trouble proving harm upon the children of the cult, we will have seen the government, once again, having overstepped its bounds.
If the justification can’t be proven, we’re goose stepping towards our brave new world, on just about every front.
April 14th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I agree Ed, it’s Missouri all over again.
What has become of the 16 yr. old that made the original allegations? Is she being held, can her claims be confirmed?
Socially engineered fascist experimentation. Funny how all the worst regimes in the last 100 yrs all sold their program of the back of what is best for the public, often children, and socialism. The federal government absolutely cannot tolerate successful competition in that department.Hence its over reaction.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Hi Glenden, and all.
I think we concur, really. Rape is rape and must be punished. When I said that most polygamist groups I know prohibit this, this by no means insures any culture, polygamist or mainstream, from violating their own rules. the Jeffs group have isolated themselves, partially by being pushed out of society by our own culture, and partially from their own dynamics, much more than any group advocating plural marriage. This major group is by far the most isolated and insulated from the common culture . Passing and enforcing a law in any culture does not mean that the law will always be followed. One point of my piece is what we’re discussing: the limits of the law. ( I’ll be out of action for a while with surgery. Please don’t think any silence from me means I haven’t acknowledged your thoughtful comments, all. ef)
April 16th, 2008 at 7:35 am
Heaven on earth is ok so long as it doesn’t cross THIS line. Then it’s the Texas Rangers and thier armor piercing armaments @ yer front door. Meanwhile, impeachment is ‘off the table’
Again I ask: Is this a great country, or what?
Hope your surgery goes well and that you have a complete and speedy recovery.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:18 am
Ed,
I know that this goes quite off topic, but I’m writing to inquire about a reference I found. I was wondering if you could give me a little of the context.
Quote
“Edwin B. Firmage, grandson of Hugh B. Brown, interviewed his grandfather extensively in preparing to publish a biography on Brown. Brown, who was a counselor to David O. McKay for many years, told Firmage that he and many others always believed that McKay’s secretary, Claire Middlemiss, was actually McKay’s plural wife. (Interview of Edwin B. Firmage by the authors, Thomas A. Green and Knut J. Knuteson spring 1999)”
I would really appreciate if you could give me a little more information and thank you for your help.
My email address is Shibie@hotmail.co.uk
Thanks
Luke
P.S. I hope you get well soon and recover quickly from your surgery and thank you for your work.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Where is the proof that these children are being abused? Where is this teen girl who claims these allegations? Is there proof? Can it possibly be that she may have been forced into this marriage and be the ONLY ONE out of dozens or even hundreds? Theres even the chance that she could of made these allegations up. Who knows? Doesn’t the goverment need to do a deep investigation before invading these familys lives? Yet could it be the goverment who may of created abuse by seperating hundreds of children and mothers away from there loved ones with out proof? Children being put through so much at once over something there is no proof of. Mothers who know there children better than anyone else in this world. There childrens needs, wants, personalitys, health, even the smallest littlest thing such as a freckle on there nose or such, has to leave the care of there children with strangers who know so little. Why drop it on these familys so quickly when there needs to be a deep investigation before invasion.
April 19th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Hear, hear! What’s even more shocking to me than this mass arrest without probable cause and unreasonable search and seizure is the silence with which this atrocity is met. Where is the ACLU? Where are law profs explaining legal justification for breaking up a religious community of freely associating people because of their “belief system”? An obnoxious belief system is cause for what amounts to mass arrests? Let’s arrest the Amish; they teach pacifism and oppose worldliness. So they are a threat to our foreign policy and to our economy. Let’s arrest hippies and confiscate their children and peace symbols; their belief system breaks drug laws and used to burn draft cards. Let’s arrest deniers of global warming as clear menaces to Earth. I thought we believed in liberty, in individual rights including freedom of religion, speech and freedom from intrusive search and seizure (no worse than one’s children). Gone, so it seems; all but gone.
April 19th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Steve Lawrence…You’re under arrest!
April 19th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Is that the sound of socialist jackboots clomping that I hear in the distance? A little resistance and it would have been another Waco.
You have to wonder how long this reich is going to last.
Better face the music America, we done been taken over without a shot.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Just to let everyone know I do not believe in the mormon religion. In fact I think it is very wrong but do believe in what has happened to these family’s is very sad and wrong.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Sasha
Just to set the record straight (again). These people are not Mormon. They are not affiliated at all with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
April 20th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
These people aren’t Mormon is like saying the Jews didn’t write the Old Testament.
That is a desire of yours Ken, not a pervasive reality. You can choose your friends, but you cannot choose your family. This FLDS is the church of Joe, and contrary to your statements, people who asked too many questions or challenged any authority, or attempted to reveal their own revelations were less than welcome in his church, only the wide eyed and worshiping were felt to be of the right stuff.
In my opinion the close fisted manner in which Joe and Rigdon, Avard, applied the discipline of being alone in control of the early church and its schtick, is to a great degree why it survived, and was able to maintain itself in the face of persecution. They maintained authoritarian control, and sanctioned dissenting members.
Of course true believing followers without question sure enough did their part to shore the weak side up of Joes’ hand.
My hero in the Mormon story is Lucy Harris, that kept the first 116 pages of Joes’ imaginings, after the dunderhead left them with her dunderheaded husband, who had agreed to publish the “Book” with his ample monies. Lucy, no fool, no doubt figured that if the 116 pages were divinely inspired, and Joe a prophet, God would grace him a re-run of his divine word. Instead Joe rewrote his imaginings from another set of plates, that of course were not exactly the same. That no one ever saw. No one saw any other of the plates either. When the faithful bought it she knew she had one on.
Joe learned from this error,(he was good at experiential learning) and for the future kept his own council with his revelations from God. Lucy for her part, saw a good spiel in action, that impressed her enough, that she became one of Joes’ plural wives.
This stuff is better than anything anyone can make up. It should be made into a comedy/drama. In old school dresses of course.
Question Ken: Where are Urim and Thummim, the 2 seer stones that Joe used to interpret the plates? Are they anywhere to be seen?
April 20th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
At one point Joseph declares in Missouri that he will bring Mormonism to the gentiles as Mohammed brought Islam to unbelievers, by the sword.
“If the people will let us alone, we will preach the gospel in peace. But if they come upon us to molest us we will establish our religion with the sword. We will trample down our enemies and make it one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic ocean. I will be to this generation a second Mohammed, whose motto in treating for peace was “The Alcoran, or the sword”
“So shall it eventually be with us - Joseph Smith or the Sword”.
Spoken by the man, shortly before he and his followers were beset upon by the mobs of Missouri, Daviess and Caldwell county gentiles.
This should absolutely make for some interesting reading, check it out.