By way of full disclosure:

I am a descendant of James Stephens Brown , Mormon pioneer and polygamist (not to be confused with his uncle, Captain James S. Brown of the Mormon Battalion, though both served in the Mormon Battalion). His life’s story was published by the Deseret News, as The Life of Pioneer after his death. When his grandson Hugh B. Brown became a member of the Mormon Church’s highest levels of leadership, it was republished as Giant of the Lord (ack, I know!). I’ve seen various counts for his wives (most say he had four, but I’ve also heard family members claim had seven or eight wives). His wife Eliza Lester gave birth to Elando Lester Brown, who married Mary McIlveen who gave birth to Edwin Brown, my grandfather, in 1910 in Salt Lake City.

When I talk about polygamy, I am talking about my ancestors, my family. I would not be here today had James Stephens Brown not been a randy old goat who liked to bed younger women and managed to find a church that provided him with theological cover for his desires. That’s the cynic’s version. The faithful version says that he was inspired by his faith to take multiple wives, that his obedience to God motivated his actions. When his life’s story was written, it was intended to inspire other people in their Mormon faith.

Mormon polygamy, as Jon Krakauer chronicled in Under the Banner of Heaven, was controversial from the start. It’s difficult not to think that Joseph Smith invented polygamy for his own purposes and that God had precious little to do with it. From the start, Emma Smith opposed it and she was, aparently, not shy about expressing her opinions to her husband and almost anyone who would listen. When the Mormons came west, a group stayed behind to form the RLDS church, now known as the Community of Christ. As I understand it, this group always rejected the practice of polygamy. Once in Utah, Mormons engaged in polygamy until the Mormon church was forced by Federal Government to abandon the practice – which coincided with a terribly, terribly convenient revelation. (Allowing African American men to hold the priesthood has always struck me as a similarly convenient revelation.)
Again, that is the cynic’s interpretation of events; a less cyncial person sees the workings of God in these events. Certainly had the Mormon church not abandoned polygamy, it would not have achieved the success it has today.

Mormon polygamy as practiced has consistently exploited adolescent girls and women. Based on that alone, I feel comfortable saying the practice of polygamy violates the rights of those born and raised in polygamist cults and communities. The extreme control exercised by polygamist leaders among the FLDS (including physical isolation, threats, “brainwashing”, financial control, sexual exploitation and threats of physical violence, as well as very likely real acts of violence), seem part and parcel of the practice of polygamy. In its modern, North American incarnation, polygamy is an inherently immoral system – not because men take more than one wife, but because of the inherent abuses in the system, abuses arising from the assumptions made by people who lead these polygamist cults – assumptions for instance that women and children are property, either of their husbands or the community.

Treating women and children as property leads naturally to the abuses we’ve seen revealed at the Yearning For Zion ranch in Texas. If women and children are property, then who cares if they aren’t happy. Who cares if what happens to them isn’t what they want, because, they are after all property. Once you make that leap, once you accept that view, which denies the moral agency of women and children, which denies that they have rights of their own, which sees women largely for their ability to bear and nurture children. The extreme patriarchal beliefs of groups like the FLDS deny that women and men are equal and in fact treat women like large children. There are accounts of polygamist husbands spanking their wives as they would spank a child. Women who “act out” by refusing to take their husband’s orders or who try to run away can face not just spankings, but beatings of horrific violence. FWIW, I see no reason to believe these behaviors were absent in the 19th century practice of Mormon polygamy.

As it is practiced today, polygamy in North America violates what I consider the basic standards of sexual morality. So what are those standards? They are age and developmentally appropriate for the persons involved. They are mutual and consensual. They are mutually pleasurable. They are non-exploitive. I have a hard time imagining those qualities are present in polygamist relationships where the wives are routinely married against their will and in early adolescents, in which even as adults they are not free to divorce their husbands – which by itself suggests that consent is not found in polygamist relationships. However, the qualities of a moral and healthy sexual relationship are not by design absent from poly relationships – polygamy, polyandry and polyamory. In the broadest sense, polygamist relationships could be moral.

All that said, I nevertheless have sympathy for the people living in polygamist communities. Many of them have never known any other life, they’ve been raised to fear the outside world, they’ve been raised to fear us – the people who live in mainstream American life, who watch TV, listen to music, who have sex outside of marriage who drink coffee and wine. But, despite their whack job beliefs and their criminal actions, the world of the people of the FLDS church have seen their world turned upside down, their lives twisted and turned and squeezed like a rag.

Over Orcinus, Sara has an interesting post:

Texas doesn’t harbor the ghosts of Mormon pioneers or FLDS martyrs. Any liberal Texan will tell you that the Lone Star State is not cursed, as BC is, with an overbroad sense of religious freedom. What does lurk in its memetic closet is the memory of Waco — another closed, secretive, sexually abusive cult that was left to fester unattended too long, with horrific consequences. Many of the people who are dealing with the FLDS had enough of an up-close-and-personal view of the 1993 disaster with the Branch Davidians to know what they’re dealing with here.

There’s no shortage of people in the media trying to make this a debate about religious freedom, which is fair enough. But the question they’re not asking — and the one that is central to that debate, in my mind — is how we can reasonably and justly incorporate America’s historical ideas about religious freedom with what we know now about how to identify and chart the prognosis of dangerous cults. As I’ve written before, governments in both Canada and the US are well aware of the signs that indicate a community headed toward violence. The FLDS exhibits almost all of those signs. As a society, it’s time to figure out where the line gets crossed, and when government intervention becomes justified.

In an upcoming post, I’ll discuss the specific ways the FLDS is following that well-understood path — and how current events could conspire to either pull them back from that fate, or push them farther toward it. In the meantime, go over and put in your pre-order for Daphne Bramham’s The Secret Lives of Saints. It’s essential for anyone seeking a broader context and a deeper understanding of the events of the past two weeks.