Now that Romney opened the door....

[moriah]

.... to questions about his family's polygamist background and his ancestor's decision to actually leave the US and take their wives and children (the children were his grandparents) with them rather than obey the law of the US about the "institution of marriage", then claimed he would uphold the institution of marriage....

Are we free to attack through that open door? I mean, seriously, I think it was an *incredibly* stupid door for him to open in the first place. The fact he did it as a smarmy way to say "See, I wasn't *really* born with a silver spoon in my mouth" and to claim a Mexican heritage in order to appeal to the Latino community, just makes it worse. No, he has no "Mexican heritage". His Dad was born in Mexico as a direct consequence of his ancestor's decision that they "didn't like America" enough to obey its laws, so they "got out".

It does bring up questions of religious freedom. I'm sure to the LDS of that time, they saw themselves as fleeing religious persecution. Our country's insistence on fighting against polygamous LDS-branch sects led to such a culture of fear that the communities isolated themselves and were more afraid of the law than they were of their religious leaders raping their 12-year-old daughters.

It also brings up questions about what we will do with the descendants of US citizens who were born in Bountiful, Canada after Canada decides whether or not their own laws against polygamy are unconstitutional. Will we give refugee status to women and children who elect to flee from Bountiful back to the US, even if they may not be considered legally US citizens if they were born to wives other than the first, legal wife, regardless of if polygamy is declared constitutional or not in Canada, if they are fleeing from abusive polygamy?

Yes, I've read way too much about the FLDS because they scare me silly. I cannot understand how anyone could choose to live that way, so I really believe most (female) members are either brainwashed or more afraid of the outside world than they are of the abuses they know inside the cult. Personally, I don't have an issue with the idea of polyamorous marriages being legal if 1) all are consenting adults and 2) they can figure out a way for equitable distribution of property in a divorce that doesn't leave single parents with children who are divorcing from a polyamorous marriage impoverished.

At the same time, while trying to fight for marriage equality, with this door being opened, is it one we really want to go through? There are enough people trying to compare the movement for marriage equality to polygamy and bestiality without us bringing Mitten's great-grandparents and their sister-wives.

[Booster]

1. You bring up a good question. Has there ever been a divorce in a polygamist relationship? I've

never heard of one. I have a feeling if a woman wants to leave something bad happens to her because wouldn't going to divorce court be the absolutely last thing a man would want to do? Wouldn't he automatically be arrested?

[moriah]

2. Carolyn Blackmore Jessop fled from polygamy with her eight children.

She was "spiritually married" to Merrill Jessop, who essentially took over the FLDS cult after Jeffs went to prison, and is now currently in prison for "officiating" the "spiritual marriage" of his 12-year-old daughter to Warren Jeffs -- the one who we all saw the transcripts of her recorded rape during Jeffs' trial.

Since Carolyn was not legally married to him, there was no legal divorce -- she managed to get out and sued the man who fathered her eight children for child support. I don't think he'd paid a penny of it prior to going to jail. She was his fouth "wife". The mother of the daughter he married off to Jeffs at 12 was his third "wife". He was never charged with bigamy that I know of, even when Carolyn sued him for child support and the fact he was involved in polygamy was brought forth before the courts.

If we legalize marriage between multiple people, then there would be a need for a way to have an equitable divorce. As it stands, since none but a man's first wife is actually legally married (and in some cases, even they aren't legally married -- for example, Elissa Wall was the first "spiritual wife" of her half-cousin who she was forced to "marry" at 14, but to my knowledge they never had to have a legal divorce because their marriage wasn't actually legal under Nevada's laws, they just never applied for a marriage license -- Jeffs transported them across state lines to get "married" but I don't think they ever had to get divorced) the only reason a legal divorce proceeding would be necessary would be if the first wife left.

[Booster]

3. Thanks for that info. I'm not really sure how I feel about poligamy. One part of my

brain says I don't really care because I'm for same-sex marriage so it might be hypocritical to say I'm against polygamy. What I don't like, of course, is when children are forced to marry someone. I also don't understand why some woman hasn't tried to marry several men. lol What a mess that would be.

[moriah]

9. +1 -- Consenting adults, IMHO, should be free to do as they please.

I do know a woman, not crazy, who had two "husbands", one legally married to her, the other not. They actually worked out quite well, and her son (who had been born well before this arrangement was made) didn't seem to be traumatized -- he loved both of his Dads even if neither were his biological father, and as an adult still watches out for of one of them who has had to go on disability. When she left both of them, all property was split amicably and equitably, because it was an amicable separation. When consenting adults who aren't crazy and aren't being driven to do this because of religious belief choose it, it could work.

But it's not an avenue I'm going to pursue when we're trying to get marriage equality passed.

[Jenny123Wren]

4. Canada and the laws against polygamy

Moriah seems unaware that this question was decided last year. Chief Justice Robert Bauman of British Columbia Supreme Court first listened to 13 groups, both pro and con polygamy. He took 4 months to examine many lengthy briefs, and on November 23, 2011, brought down his decision that polygamy is an anti-social act in that it contravenes women's equality rights, impoverishes their children, and, because Nature has not even made two women for every one man, sets poorer men against richer men who could afford many "wives," thus robbing their poorer brothers of a chance to have a wife and family of their own. He then ruled that S.293 CC, proscribing polygamy, IS CONSTITUTIONAL. Canadians are now waiting for "Bishp" Winston Blackmore and other elders of Bountiful to be charged under S. 293 CC, as well as with sexually exploiting underage girls, and illegally trafficking them down to and up from the USA. Canadians have made it clear they do not want to see concubines and harems in Canada. We are a First World country, not a Third World country, and the year is 2012 AD, not 2012 BC.

[etherealtruth]

5. Yet another reason to love Canada

Welcome

[Warren DeMontague]

6. I'm personally of the opinion that consenting adults should be free to do whatev. the hell they want

(Obviously, that doesn't apply, for instance, to "underage girls&quot

However, plural marriage as a legal institution would open a whole can of worms in terms of society, taxation, etc. But I do think that on purely moral or religious or "what nature intended" grounds, such arguments against must necessarily fail in a pluralistic and modern free society.

[Scuba]

7. If only we Americans had the brains of our northern neighbors. Welcome to DU.

[moriah]

8. Thank you for filling me in.

Apparently Wikipedia is not filled in.

So what are we going to do if some of the wives and children wish to come back to the US? I would hope we would welcome them with open arms, but since the requirement is that even if both parents were US citizens by birth, the children must be "born in wedlock" to be US citizens (which is why Mitt's Dad was allowed back in, he was born in Mexico but both of his parents had been born in the US and it was a monogamous marriage).

When I describe "poly-amourous marriages" vs religiously endorsed polygamy, I'm referring to the many non-crazy, non-religious people in this country who happen to fall in love with more than one person (I know a woman that for many years had two "husbands", only legally married to one of them of course). I personally think if they can figure out a way for divorce to be equitable, there shouldn't be a problem, but it's not an avenue I'm going to pursue when we are trying to get marriage equality for one-on-one marriages when it is being denied solely because of the gender of the people who fall in love.

[EdKociela]

10. Good question

He opened the door, it is a legitimate question, and a door to pass through. The whole polygamy issue, as discussed in my book 'plygs,' is much more than most people believe. Modern-day polygamy, particularly as professed by the FLDS faith, is a complicated, vile arrangement with welfare fraud, deterioration of women's rights, and, most importantly, the incidents--more than we would like to think--of pedophilia, with church elders taking little girls, some as young as 12, as wives.

It is an abusive, perverted existence. Because of the religious/cultural intertwining it is impossible to separate polygamy from fraud and child abuse. They all come as part of the fundamentalist Mormon lifestyle.

Personally, what two consenting adults do with and to each other in the privacy of their own home is of no concern to me as long as it is not harmful or violent. However, you simply cannot use that reasoning to justify polygamy as practiced by this cult.

[moriah]

11. Yes -- there is a great difference between modern polyamory and fundamentalist polygamy.

And if you are really THE Ed Kociela, welcome to DU! (No offense, you may learn that newer posters are sometimes scrutinized, because a lot of trolls used to plague this place. It was a battle I fought when I first joined in 2008, because I joined during the extremely heated three-way primary.)

Fortunately, most modern practitioners of polyamory are perfectly fine with not actually being legally married to all of their partners, and the largest polyamorous "family" I've met has been a quad -- two men, two women, and the women were bisexual so they both ruled the roost *and* kept the "family" together. They just don't want CPS swooping in and saying that it's a bad environment to raise children in just because four people live in a home and raise their children communally. (Back in the late '90s I also knew a polyamorus "family", two men and one woman, who had to fight a CPS battle not only because of the additional male in the home, but the fact they were Pagan as well, but this was in a very conservative county on the Arkansas/Tennessee border, the same area and not that far from the same time that the West Memphis Three were incarcerated.) They know that marriage equality must come first before even trying to get their lifestyle accepted (which IMHO *is* a lifestyle and to some degree a choice, not anything close to the same thing as the LGBT community's struggle for marriage equality and anti-discrimination, and every polyamorous person I've spoken to has agreed with me on that one.)

The differences between polyamory and fundamentalist polygamy really show in these examples -- fundamentalist polygamy focuses on building a harem of wives with the man at the top, ruling with an iron fist, and the boys are tossed aside as they are competition for the older men looking for new, younger wives to add to their harems. Yes, they *do* scare the hell out of me, and I'm very well aware of the second person with the initials of "MJ" (Elissa Wall's first pseudonym was "MJ&quot who drew the courts attention. I don't see how Barbara could have allowed it or thought it was actually acceptable to be a witness to the marriage of her 12-year-old daughter to Jeffs. Religious brainwashing is a scary thing indeed.

At the same time, governmental attempts to come down on polygamous sects have created an even stronger culture of fear among the adherents, and strangely, the sympathy of the American people. The Short Creek raid was bad enough, and I do think directly contributed to the rise of arranged marriage and "One Man Rule" among the FLDS and eventually to Warren Jeff's ascension to the role as "prophet". Just like during the Short Creek raid, the YFZ raid generated enormous public sympathy for the cult (at least until the MJ tapes came out). But while Texas has continued to prosecute the men they can prove were involved with "spiritual marriages" to underage women, the rest of the cult has scattered, especially those in the Short Creek area, to states where justice is not nearly so swift.

Carolyn Blackmore Jessop was one of the few women who had the courage to leave the cult with her children -- but she also had a college education, something EXTREMELY rare for women in the cult, and if you are the same Ed Kociela, you understand exactly what I mean. Even if she was 18 when she was forced to marry Merrill, she was still forced -- it was not her own choice to marry a man close to three times her age and with three wives already. Once arranged marriages started in the cult, "consent" went out the window, so it really wasn't that far of a jump from deciding that if 18 was okay, 16 should be fine.... then 14.... then 12. After all, women had all choice taken from them by this time -- even the choice of whether or not to continue raising their male children the cult wanted to force out.

It is truly a sick, sad thing...

[cali]

12. no. and anyone who does is an idiot.

we don't need to. it's totally counterproductive.

[gkhouston]

13. Mitt is sinking. Diverting the conversation to his religion would be like throwing him a lifeline.

He'd love the opportunity to be able to riff on religious discrimination and religious liberty, and the fundies who might be uneasy with the LDS church would lap that shit right up because it feeds into their "we're persecuted Christians" mentality. It would be far more effective to keep the focus on his time at Bain and his unwillingness to reveal his tax returns or any specific economic policies.

[moriah]

14. I tend to agree with both you and Cali.

It may seem like an easy door to go through, since it *is* wide open, but there are enough issues to focus on without trying to pull in the religious practices of his ancestors, especially with all the people comparing marriage equality to polygamy.

Still, I do think as a country we will have to figure out a way to deal with the problem of fundamentalist polygamy eventually -- in a way that doesn't drive the adherents into further isolation and fear of the government. Maybe some way to make it law that any woman fleeing from a polygamous marriage has immunity from any charges that could be filed against her (though I don't think any charges really could -- bigamy is taking two or more wives or husbands, whereas "sister-wives" are only "spiritually married" to one man) or something. Anything to reduce the fear that women have had conditioned into them that the government will take their kids if they flee -- unless they actively participated in child abuse.