April 18, 2006
OPINIONSCivil liberties and equality behind polygamy issue
Plural marriages are in the media and on our televisions, like on the new HBO series “Big Love”. I have often wondered what would happen if we caved into the polygamists and legalized their right to have more than one wife.
When I first learned about polygamy, the notion seemed quaint, and absurd, maybe because it was my mother who talked to me about it.
As I got older I was fortunate to join the U.S. Army and tour much of the United States and parts of the Middle East. While in the Middle East, I met many men who were married to three, sometimes even seven wives.
This right is guaranteed under Islam and is enforced to protect the women married to one man by proclaiming each wife should and will be treated as an equal to each wife. If one gets a car, each other wife will get a car of equal value.
What would be happen if the U.S adopted a policy of legal polygamy?
Is our social fabric so brittle that it would crumble? Or would we learn to recognize a religious right to a small group of consenting adults who believe this is a mandate to them from God?
Would new laws finally protect the 12 and 13 year old children who are currently marrying men in their fifties?
Would Utah and Arizona prosecutors start prosecuting these groups who seem to love pre-teen girls and make them marry women of their own age who actually believe the same principals as their fellow wives and husband of an age of consent?
Or would the public resent this idea and rail against it as an abomination to our own social norms with wide spread protesting?
I ask you, are we now in this free country denying a right to free religion, and providing a catalyst for child molesters by not enforcing a law that federal and state prosecutors seem to not want to talk about?
Or are we ignoring a law that is archaic and immoral?
I think we should legalize polygamy and give women the same right to marry many men, all the while making sure each spouse is treated equal.
I foresee this conversation being at the center of a potential polarizing debate in the near future with two choices: do we legalize this practice, or do we continue to ignore the silent torment of hundreds, if not thousands of underage women who’s civil liberties are being taken by an ideological group of men and an incompetent legal system?
Right now there are men in our state married to pre-teen girls and women who live in a vacuum of law and order.
These polygamists right now are living in our country with their own set of laws and rules right under our own public servants with no consequences. The women they marry are subdued by a code of silence that cripples their rights and mental growth.
Their voices will never be heard until we the people stand up for these silent souls and give them a voice.
I don’t need to remind you our country was founded on the principals of freedom of religion, but I may need to remind you that an open mind is a free mind.
Volume 43, Issue 13. Today is
