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Originally Posted by dalmations202
IMO, these 40-50 year old guys who are impregnating teenagers in the name of taking on multiple wives is wrong. Period. Why, because it has nothing to do with Love, but everything to do with selfishness, power, and lust.
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Polygamy is wrong regardless of any law.
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i've several quibbles with the foregoing....not necessarily out-n-out disagreements, but problems nonetheless.
hmm......
the first thing is this: I certainly can't say for certain that the reason these dudes are banging teenagers is because of "selfishness, power, and lust." I have to allow for the possibility that they sincerely believe that being fruitful and multiplying is part and parcel of path to salvation. let's not forget that however silly they may be, mormons have been asserting this for a long, long time....whether I agree or not, I certainly owe them the benefit of the doubt that they are being sincere. Plural marriage, in their view, is a religious act.
the second thing is this: we, mostly people other than me*, say that polygamy is "wrong", and I'm not sure that this is self-evident (and ok, even if polygyny is wrong because it oppresses women, is polyandry necessarily wrong as well, even in the absence of anything resembling oppression?)
Polygamy in one form or another has been around since the dawn of man, and such a practice is hardly inamicable to the survival of the species. Even in the west today it's most harshly decried (or only decried) when it is *religious* polygamy.....Swingers arguably have multiple spouses, Hugh Hefner has what amounts to 3 wives and a Reality Show, the line between *serial monogamy* (marriage to and childbearing with multiple spouses in succession) and polygamy is paper thin, especially from a moral standpoint. That is to say, polygamy is polygamy whether it is a hedon with a reality show or a fundie mormon with instructions from an angel.
But, you're not going to open the papers tomorrow and read "children of couples with open marriages were confiscated because mothers were found to have had on-going sexual relations with more than one man." That is, "polygamy" can take multiple forms, but the state is nevertheless very selective about whom it prosecutes for polygamy.
alternatively I might say that polygamy is just one form of many non-monogamous relationships, and I'm not sure morally how it is so different from others.
thirdly: even if it is conceded that polygamy is objectively wrong, how does it follow that confiscation of children is an appropriate punishment for polygamy, rather than (say) a $50 fine and a weekend of picking up trash?
Or I might ask, is adultry any less objectively wrong than polygamy, and if not would it be appropriate for the state to take the children of an adultress?
finally: it's all about the abuse, right? kids are being abused, hence these kids need to be taken by the state for their own protection. and we know that all of the children of mormon fundamentalists are being abused because they're children of mormon fundamentalists, and that's what mormon fundamentalists do....abuse children.
right?
it's not as if i'm suggesting that this is a classic case of prejudice in action, where we take the worst actions of a few members of a given group and make the knee-jerking ugly assumption that these bad actions must apply to the entire group.....
....oh, wait....that is exactly what I'm suggesting. and I believe this is exactly what is happening in El Dorado.
It wouldn't surprise me in the least if one, or two, or more dudes out there were hittin' (in multiple senses) 14, 15 or 16 year old girls. If so, they ought to be arrested and prosecuted.
But, it does not follow from this that the state ought to confiscate children who aren't being abused from mothers and fathers (father?) for no reason other than the transparently obvious and odious reason that these people belong to the same religious sect. This is almost certainly happening, and it sucks.
(*I should add here that alex has one wife and that is all he shall ever have. moreover, he takes fidelity quite seriously in practice, if not in comedic rantings. )