A Simple Sexist Test

"If this were done to a man or would it ever be done to a man—has it ever been done to a man?"
~Gloria Steinem

Is the practice of polygamy inherently sexist or abusive? Take a long look at this photograph of Warren Jeffs' concubines and put it to the simple test one noted American feminist recently suggested.

With that simple test taken, now I invite you to review a piece I wrote in February of 2009. It angered some and offended others. I still stand by it, though.

An Open Letter to My "Sister" Feminists

Dear American Feminists,

Although I have contacted numerous national feminist organizations, which I will not attempt to embarrass by naming here- because I would still like to see you step up to the plate, about the gross abuses occurring to women and children living in polygamy, in the American west, none of you has responded, not one. You have ignored me.

To my "sisters" on the East and West Coasts, I have concluded you must not think I am a real woman or a real feminist. I suppose, I've failed to attend Vassar, Brown, Berkley, or NYU, and abort a baby or two along the way to protect my academic career and prove I'm worthy of being considered a real woman.

To my "sisters" in Atlanta, who are diligently working to ensure that road signs are not sexist, by spearheading a campaign to change them from "MEN AT WORK" to "WORKERS AHEAD", all I can say is, bless your hearts.

It is to the rest of America's women, who may not fall into one of those groups, I now appeal. We have a problem here in Texas, with a sex cult run by Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints leader, Warren Steed Jeffs.

We have hundreds of eyewitness testimonies from men, women, and children who have left, been abandoned, abused, or exiled from polygamy in the states of Utah and Arizona, where the FLDS residents of the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas came from. We now have evidence of sexual abuse perpetrated against young girls, Texas citizens, on Texas soil.

Our other "sisters" continued silence indicates they are indeed flirting with the trendy, liberal idea of allowing legalized polygamy in America, as another valid alternative lifestyle choice. In doing so, they are allowing their sophomoric, fantastical, and unrealistic ideals about political correctness and liberal tolerance to endanger every woman in America.

If they go along with legalizing polygamy as a valid alternative lifestyle choice, here, based on my four-year investigation of the FLDS in Mohave County, Arizona, is what you can look forward to as an American woman:

• Your husband can come home one day and tell you that he has taken a new wife or three...
• You will now have to compete for his time attention and affection, daily, or divorce him.
• You will now share the financial resources of your family with the other woman or women, and any children who come along.
• The more that come along, the less there is for your children, or their futures.
• If you leave, you are no longer entitled to half of everything in your marriage. Now you get one third, or depending on the number of concubines in the marriage, one sixteenth, or one hundredth?
• Muslim American men, now free to build American harems, pressure masses of Muslim American women to wear the burqa.
• Other costumes, uniforms, or "coverings", such as long prairie dresses emerge from Middle America, as men claim "religious inspiration" to pressure their concubines to dress "appropriately".
• These same masses of women will be secluded, and as they give birth to more children, their access to communication with the outside world and education cut off.
• Emotional, mental, sexual, spiritual, and physical abuse will thrive in environments where one man is now the focus of the complete attention of multiple women.
• When a polygamist man dies, and his multiple unions recognized as legitimate marriages, each wife is now entitled to receive a check from Social Security.
• Each now legally legitimate child also gets Social Security benefits.
• Thousands of women will find themselves thrust into abject poverty, because their husband is unable to support all of his concubines and children equally.
• Thousands more will be forced to accept government assistance for food and medical care, for the same reason. Their family structure is legitimate in the eyes of the law, so they will qualify for multiple government assistance programs for the poor.
• Birth rates among polygamist marriages will skyrocket, more children = more benefits.
• Infant mortality and child death rates among polygamists families will soar – see the Colorado City, Arizona death rates.
• Accidental child death rates among polygamist's families will increase – see the Colorado City, Arizona death rates..
• The reporting of domestic violence shrinks to zero in entire communities, for decades at a time – see the Colorado City, Arizona history of zero prosecutions for domestic violence in over a decade.
• Competition to the older, more powerful men, underage boys and young men driven from their communities, with no education or job skills, become a burden on law enforcement and social services in neighboring, non-polygamist communities where they are abandoned - see the Colorado City, Arizona history of driving 400 boys out of their town.
• Trained from birth to expect assignment in marriage, complete submission to patriarchal religious authority, and acceptance of the "blessing" of an early marriage, millions of bright American girls, along with their potential talents and contributions to society, will be lost for generations.

We face that chilling future if polygamy remains either unchecked or legalized in America.

These sorts of things, however, are apparently unimportant to the average American Feminist.

Stay up there in your classrooms, drum circles and symposiums, where you can drone on forever about the suffering and ignorance of the typical American housewife, I mean homemaker. My grammar check doesn't seem to like the word housewife and has now twice suggested homemaker, as an appropriate gender-neutral job title.

You laugh when I support a Marriage Amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman. I'm not an intellectual, I'm a Southern conservative, so how can I know anything about the world?

On Gays and lesbians: Come let us reason together. Like Sara Palin, I am not against civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, the key word being couples. They deserve, when they are in loving, committed, stable, and monogamous relationships to enjoy the tax, ownership, inheritance and medical power of attorney benefits, or the same property/custody/relationship termination headaches of heterosexuals. Kinky Friedman is right, "Homosexuals should be free to be as miserable as the rest of us".

Go play with your words. I've got dozens of unexplained dead children, sexually abused little girls, abandoned little boys and abused women to think about. You know, the same ones that child advocates and anti-polygamy activist in Utah and Arizona have been begging for your help with, for years now? I am a Texan and a Southerner. I am a woman who believes in living in a free country, where I have rights equal with men.

Nobody is going to come down here to Texas and take away my right to be my husband's only living equal. I know many other people, straight, and gay, across America that feel the same way about protecting women and children from the cultural disaster of polygamy.

If we have to fight this alone down here, we will. Y'all just hide and watch how real Southern sisters take care of each other.

Don't, however, expect to own the words feminist or feminism when we get done, especially if you threw all your party invitations away.

P.S. Confidential to Phylis Chesler and Noni Darwish:

Help!

Like Rats in the Walls

"Like rats in the walls" was a phrase I read on a site dedicated to exposing the growing threat of Sharia law in the U.S. The writer posited that those concerned about the issue, rather than being out in the open with their campaigns, were often content to lurk inside social networking sites, like Facebook, where they chat among themselves, and in a way 'hide' from those who are opposed to their truth.

It stuck with me, because it reminded me of how I have felt personally since January of 2010, when an 18-wheeler came after me and chased me all over the road at speeds exceeding 90 mph. I spent that entire night sitting in a hot tub in the back yard, drinking vodka and shivering in the 20 degree temperatures. I tried several times to get out but every time I did, I was so overcome with shivering, even inside the heated house, that I found I could do nothing but return to the tub. I was in shock.

There have been less posts here in my blog since then. Some of it has to do with time constraints and some of it, no doubt, has to do with what happened that January day. The real action happens not here in the blog, but on Facebook. For anyone wondering about the long gaps between posts here, there are no such gaps on Facebook, and we do stay on top of it there. If you want to be kept abreast of the very latest developments in the situation regarding American Polygamy, that is the place to be. Friend me. At some point, I am sure I will have to make a Facebook page for Americans Against Abuses of Polygamy. In the mean time you can find me there on Facebook listed under k.Dee Ignatin. If you want to friend me drop me a note explaining your interest in staying abreast of the cases, otherwise I will have no clue who you are or what you may want.

I am getting ready to leave this phase of acting like a rat inside the walls, though. September should prove to be an interesting month.

Polygamy: A Matter of Consent

By Marion Munn
April 2011. Written for an Analysis of Argumentation Class at the University of Utah

Polygamy: A Matter of Consent

Over the past few years the media has been filled with high profile debates about same- sex relationships, such as the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy, and the possible legalization of gay marriage. At the same time, another relationship controversy, that of polygamy, has been brought to both national and international attention in news reports featuring Warren Jeffs and his followers in The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or FLDS (Appleyard 48). This group is only one of several referring to themselves as Mormon Fundamentalists - all polygamist offshoots of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon, or LDS) which abandoned the practice around the turn of the last century. Tenacious in its practice of polygamy, one of these groups has spilled over into Canada, precipitating a major debate there that will affect Moslem as well as Mormon Fundamentalist polygamists, as British Columbia’s Supreme Court decides on the constitutionality of its ban on polygamy (Wetzstein).

In the US, debates about polygamy take place in a society where grass-roots movements have promoted greater tolerance for alternative lifestyles, shifting away from biblical standards of morality towards a greater prominence for the bedrock American principle of individual freedom of choice. Because of this, some liberals who are pro same-sex marriage are now being drawn into support of polygamous unions. Society’s response to this issue is an important one, since its values are defined by what it condones, and some have identified problems inherent in polygamy, including “imbalances of power and psychological abuse” (Young 18). If this is so, responsible citizens would be well advised to withhold their support. As a 2006 Economist article states, “hardly anyone …is thinking about polygamy as social policy...” and that “for reasons that have nothing to do with gay marriage, polygamy is a profoundly hazardous policy” which includes implications of increased crime rates, male-female ratio imbalances affecting marriage prospects for men, and undemocratic processes (Rauch).

There are indeed multiple factors inherent in polygamy that should give cause for concern. One of these is the aspect of “consent.” Any factors limiting or compromising this vital facet of a relationship would certainly cast doubts upon its validity or desirability. Accordingly, this essay contends that polygamy, as typically lived in the United States, may violate accepted principles of informed consent. The term “consenting adults” has become familiar in the US, and implies freedom of choice, particularly in matters of sexual partners (Lawrence). To demonstrate the limitations of this term within polygamy, evidence will be presented including my personal insights as a past member of one polygamist community (the AUB or Apostolic United Brethren) for a period of approximately twenty years. It should be noted that the polygamy discussed here is more precisely termed “polygny,” i.e. one man with more than one wife, since this is the typical form (Valsiner 67-68). Additionally, the term “wife” or “husband” denotes a religious, not civil contract. Consent within these unions centers around two main factors: a woman’s agreement to becoming part of a polygamous union, and her consent for her husband to take more wives.

In considering a woman’s consent to entering polygamy, we will focus on adults, discounting the obvious abuses involving female children in sexual liaisons with adult males, which may not necessarily be typical. As Cassie Ambutter points out, “many of the women that opt for fundamentalism abandoned the mainstream LDS church in their later years, far beyond age of consent’s relevance” (14). This was true in my own case, and may appear to implicitly validate that choice in terms of free exercise of will, and to offer no grounds for challenge. However, there is an important qualifier to “consent” that has a bearing on decision making - even in the case of mature women not brought up or conditioned within societies where polygamy may be the norm, bringing into question even adult female compliance.

Definitions of informed consent include “Voluntary agreement by a competent person to another person's proposition” with ”competent” defined as “Able to act in the circumstances, including the ability to perform a job or occupation, or to reason or make decisions”(Nolo). In general it is conceded that an adult with no mental disabilities, not being physically coerced, usually has the potential of arriving at an informed decision. However a 2010 California Law Review article identifies another element relevant to this discussion, focusing on the word “imperfect.” It states that “imperfect consent… [is] where the ability of a person to consent to an act is questionable either because the act is arguably harmful to the person, or because social or cultural pressures compromise the person’s autonomy (Richards 200). Richards here identifies two important factors which he suggests may exist in polygamist culture– undue pressure, and compliance in spite of possible resultant harms to the individual - a view supported by others, writing on the subject of ethics (Arneson 42). It is important to identify these pressures and harms.

First, it should be recognized that within Mormon Fundamentalist culture polygamy is not optional. It is considered to be an essential commandment that must be followed to gain God’s approval and to enter the highest level of heaven (Walsh qtd. in Wetzstein par.6). Writings considered to be revelations directly from God to Joseph Smith (first leader of the LDS church) recorded in the Doctrine and Covenants, clarify this. One passage states that “all those who have this law [polygamy] revealed unto them must obey the same" (132:3). Even more compelling is the penalty attached to its rejection, which is that if a woman is taught polygamy by her husband and refuses to live it “she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her....” (132:64). Early Mormon leaders hammered home these teachings to those who were unenthusiastic about polygamy, warning that such people would “go down to hell and be damned if they do not repent" (Pratt). Such threats may not carry much weight with today’s average member of the public, but Fundamentalists take a very literal reading of these passages; and emulate LDS leaders who, in the past, have defied the law and have been willing to risk imprisonment over the principle (Smith). In this context, however incredible it may seem, there are women who do agree to polygamy even though it may be repugnant to them and cause mental anguish (D’Onofrio 383). This was my own experience, and the experience of other women in my circle. For instance, a young woman whom I will call “Sarah “confided to me that she was angry with her parents for teaching her about “plural marriage” because that meant she “had to live it.” She also admitted that she was afraid of “being destroyed” if she “rejected the law [polygamy].” The result of this kind of experience is often emotional pain exacerbated by diminished time with the husband, and a reduction in resources that are spread increasingly thin (D’Onofrio 380). Some of the emotional effects have been noted by Dr. Lawrence Beall, Utah trauma psychologist, (Summary) and are also paralleled within Moslem communities, as will be shown later.

Not only do some women feel compelled to enter a polygamous relationship, once within such an arrangement their consent may be compromised in another important way. This is demonstrated in the ability of a man to take on new partners without the consent of existing wives. A man may solicit a woman’s agreement and sometimes obtain it under pressures already noted. However, if she does refuse, this may have no bearing on the outcome since the Doctrine and Covenants justifies her husband in taking new wives without her compliance (132:65). This renders a polygamist wife potentially powerless in this aspect of the relationship, once again with the potential for stress, unhappiness, and feelings of helplessness.

Some may argue that these pressures, limitations and harms are centered solely in Mormon Fundamentalist polygamy, and are atypical of other forms, but it should be noted that in Islam many women also view polygamy as a religious duty against which objections are “haram (not lawful)”(Polygamy). Alia Hogben, Executive Director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women states that some women are sometimes fearful of repercussions, including “bodily harm” for shaming their husbands by non compliance (qtd. in Dhillon). They too are subject to radical changes within their marriages that do not require their consent. Dr. Susan Stickevers, expert witness in the Canadian polygamy hearings writes to me, “Too many Moslem women I have known had their husbands arrive home from trips to Pakistan, only to be informed that there was a new wife in the picture...” As a doctor in New York she was able to witness firsthand the negative mental and physical symptoms presenting in women subjected to such stresses, as was Professor Dena Hassouneh (736-737) a Moslem who studied the effects of polygamy on women.

It may be difficult to quantify the percentage of women who feel pressured into entering polygamy against their will, since repression of what is deemed to be negative emotion is expected (Beall par 9). Within the FLDS the dictum is to “keep sweet” (FLDS Beliefs) and for wives in the AUB, it is to be “in harmony.” Additionally, a woman’s “worthiness” is measured by her outward expressions of approval for the lifestyle, and women are “strongly dissuade[d} …from having or expressing alternative perspectives on plural marriage… creating the appearance of unanimous satisfaction with the polygamous lifestyle, regardless of any internal disagreements…” (D’Onofrio 391-392). Moslem women also face similar pressures not to shame their husbands by open dissent (Hogben qtd in Dhillon).

Although the pro polygamy lobby is attempting to appropriate the “consenting adults” argument in order to win support from liberal elements of society as a stepping stone to legalization, the consent problems discussed here are clearly not paralleled within gay relationships, where there are no external forces such as threats of “destruction” pressuring either party to be involved, no expectation of other individuals being introduced against the will of either partner, (with the accompanying potential for emotional distress, loss of time with a partner, or reduction of financial resources) and no pressure to give outward approval to an inwardly galling arrangement. A society that prides itself on the defense of the freedom of the individual to choose should also be intensely committed to ensuring that it does not condone practices and institutions that violate accepted norms of consent. Despite some outward protestations to the contrary, polygamy hurts many women, and for this reason liberals should not be seduced into confusing support for same sex marriage with support for a practice that embodies such inherent harms.

Works Cited

Ambutter, Cassie. "On Religious Subject Formation and the Limits of Liberalism: A Case Study of the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints." All Academic Inc. (Abstract Management, Conference Management and Research Search Engine). Web. 07 Mar. 2011. <http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p360251_index.html>.

Appleyard, Bryan. “Church of the Child Brides.” The Sunday Times Magazine. London. 22 Jun.2008. LexisNexis. 12 Apr. 2011

Arneson, Richard J. “Mill versus paternalism.” Ethics 90. Jul. 1980.

Beall, Larry. “The Impact of Modern-Day Polygamy on Women & Children. “ TATC: Trauma Awareness. Web. 27 Feb. 2011. <http://www.traumaawareness.org/id19.html>.

Dhillon, Sunny. “Polygamy Court Case will examine Muslims.” The Canadian Press, updated 5 Aug. 2010. Web 7 Apr. 2011. <http://news.ca.msn.com/canada/cp-article.aspx?cp- documentid=25346982>.

Doctrine and Covenants. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Web. 06 Mar. 2011. <http://lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc?lang=eng>.

D’Onofrio, Eve. "Child Brides, Inegalitarianism, and the Fundamentalist Polygamous Family in the United States." International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family. Oxford. Dec 2005. Vol. 19(3): 373- 394 doi:10.1093/lawfam/ebi028. Heinonline. Web. 06 Mar. 2011.

FLDS Beliefs 101. FLDS Beliefs 101 – “Keep Sweet.” Web 7 Apr. 2011. <http://flds101.blogspot.com/2008/05/flds-101-keep-sweet.html>.

Hassouneh-Phillips, Dena. "Polygamy and Wife Abuse: A Qualitative Study of Muslim Women in America." Health Care for Women International 22.8 (2001): 735- 748. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 7 Apr. 2011.

Lawrence v Texas. 539 U.S., 123 S.Ct. 2472, 156 L.Ed.2d 508 (2003).

Nolo. Dictionary. Web 7 Apr. 2011.

Pratt, Orson. Journal Discourses of the General Authorities of the LDS Church. Vol 17: 224- 225. Web. 4 Apr. 2011. <http://www.journalofdiscourses.org/>.

Richards, Jacob. "Autonomy, Imperfect Consent, and Polygamist Sex Rights Claims." California Law Review 98.1 (2010): 197-242. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 2 Mar. 2011."

Smith, Joseph F. Reed Smoot Hearings Volume 1 page 197. 56th Congress Hearings Document No. 486 . Proceedings before the Committee on Privileges and Elections of the United States Senate, In the Matter of the Protests against the Rights of the Hon Reed Smoot, A senator from the Stat e of Utah, to hold his seat. Washington, Government Printing Office. 1906. Web 7 Apr 2011. <http://nboman.people.wm.edu/smoot.php>.

Stickevers, Susan. Email to the author. 18 Mar. 2010.

Valsiner, J. “Organization of children’s social development in polygamic families.” In J Valsiner (ed.), Child Development in cultural context. Toronto:Hogrefe and Huber. 1989. Print.

Wetzstein, Cheryl. “ Anti-polygamy law challenged in Canada court. “ The Washington Times 5 Jan. 2011:5. LexisNexis. Web 12 Apr 2011.

Young, Cathy. "Opening Marriage." Reason 35.10 (2004): 18-19. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 2 Mar. 2011.

Texas Heroes

Howdy Warren,

And, "Wel-come-to-the- great- state- of -Tex-as! If you didn't grow up going to the State Fair of Texas at Fair Park in Dallas, to stand at the feet of Big Tex every year, to be fair, you may not get that one.

I had an interesting meeting with a writer from Austin yesterday, who has written a book on religious maltreatment. We do not agree on all of her hypothesis, which I found broad. What we have in common are some core understandings of what constitutes an abuse of religious authority in a child's life. Or even the abuse of adults, spiritually.

Texas, although many people will never even know it, is full of heroes. The local abuse hotline staff, Schleicher County Sheriff's Office, Texas Rangers, and Child Protective Services, right down to ordinary citizens, including churches, on the ground made heroic efforts to save 400 children from the abuse, which was occurring on the grounds of the YFZ Ranch, in Schleicher County, Texas, in April of 2008.

Although those of us in the media have come to call this 'a raid,' the truth is, it was a rescue mission. Right up until someone in Austin decided to throw their hands in the air and say 'We give up! Take them all back.'

Since the trial for Warren Jeffs begins on Monday, I thought we could perhaps review some of the heroes of this story that will probably never get the attention and admiration they really deserve.

The FLDS had been in these good Texas people's backyard in tiny Eldorado, Texas for around five years when the call came into the hotline. There had been plenty of time, and plenty of warning given to the citizens of the area regarding the ritual sex practices of the FLDS, which include incest, regular child marriage and regular child rape. Little girls are born only to become future concubines for powerful men.

These men have money and plenty of it. They own and operate businesses from Utah to Texas, and Mexico. They even have lucrative government contracts, at both the federal and local levels, as well as multiple businesses devoted to the construction industry. Within years of locating their giant houses designed for communal living, instituting massive infrastructure improvements including a sewage treatment plant, a cement plant, a brand new religious temple along with manned and armed guard towers overlooking Schleicher County, one of their concrete companies had the contract to lay the pad for every new wind turbine in West Texas.

This FLDS is the same one Flora Jessop remembers as a child in Colorado City, Arizona, when Senator Orin Hatch used to come and play the organ in the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints services. Senator Hatch, typical for a Utah politician, is for ignoring the felony crime of polygamy, and he personally knows "many fine polygamist people."

Needless to say, these are the kinds of forces our heroes knew nothing about. The heroes simply set out to do a job, and that was to be prepared. So they were very prepared for the abuse they saw. Nothing, however, could have ever prepared them to understand or account for the inexplicable actions of top ranking state employees, who shut them down after they had done nothing but their job, and document it.

Top ranking heads rolled in Austin for taking the position that someone like Warren Jeffs, and other parents on that ranch, had no business having any legal parental rights to any child in the state of Texas. The position from the top was clear, 'It doesn't matter how much abuse you have documented, we're giving them all back.'

The heroes of our story kept working. They did things like push children across the floor as they cried and begged not to be made to go back to their abusers. They handed over a toddler with bone scans showing multiple fractures through his tiny body. They gave girls back to mothers, who they knew had willingly turned their child over for sex, with a man on the YFZ Ranch. They handed a young girl back that spent 3 days in labor on the ranch, without any pain medication or a doctor.

They hugged them. They told them they could always call, no matter what.

But the real story of our unsung Texas heroes is even deeper. These social workers had something happen to them when they started working with the FLDS children. The children were racists. They were raised that way. In the early days of the rescue many of the children, who had most likely never even laid their eyes on anyone who was not also Caucasian, hurled racial insults at some of the social workers.

I think, because of that, I was unsure what the emotional reaction of the minority social workers might have been. That was all put to rest when me and Flora took to the road in the summer of 2009 and we met them, these heroes. They didn't just come to buy Flora's book, they needed to meet her, viscerally.

I could give multiple accounts of meeting social workers across the state who expressed the same feelings, but I never saw anything like I saw when we got to San Antonio. That was special. Flora's appearance, signing, speaking and question and answer periods were clear and concise. The event was at the San Antonio Public Library, where there was a crowd.

At some point, while answering a question about the abuses common in the group that Flora grew up in, a woman from the back of the room spoke out and challenged Flora, and told her she was exaggerating the abuse found on the YFZ Ranch. She then actually said there was no abuse found on the ranch, and that she was an attorney who represented one of the FLDS women in the case.

Incensed, I grabbed my satchel and whipped out the final CPS report. I shook it at her and said, "Excuse me, ma'am, but I have the final report here and it identifies victims, lots of them. Don't you dare come in here to Texas and think you can sell anyone on the idea that it's okay to rape little Texas girls, just as long as you call it your religion."

It's one of those moments in life, where things could take any old turn, and for a moment you wait to see if a crowd turns on you or stands with you. Two women jumped up from the crowd, like lions and started blurting out that they were CPS caseworkers, and had worked with the FLDS children. Before we knew it, the room went rather wild with people turning on the woman identifying herself to be an FLDS woman's attorney in the case. It was a CPS room, and they had all worked with FLDS children taken in the 2008 Texas rescue mission at the YFZ.

They started shouting out about their cases, especially the idea that the FLDS women on the YFZ were in some significant part just as legally guilty as the men. The caseworkers understood the children's abuse, much of it ritual, racist and full of hate, had to have required the enthusiastic participation of the children's mothers as the girls were traded, inside the fences of the YFZ Ranch, across the country to Mohave County, Arizona, up to Bountiful B.C., and down to old Mexico. Nobody's little girl just leaves for Canada one day and never comes home again, right?

No one could possibly be a capable and responsible parent if when you wake up, and you're told by your husband or maybe even one of his other concubines, that your 13-year-old-daughter has gone to live in another country, you don't demand her return, and then immediately notify the law.

If you don't pick up the phone and call the police to report your 13-year-old is missing, aren't you a criminal participating in the disappearance and sex trafficking of your baby?

Imagine, if you will, you are the young idealistic graduate who decided to go into social work, because you deeply cared about people and truly wanted to help protect them. Imagine you carry within you, this noble desire to protect the innocent from harm and to provide hope to the hopeless, so with your life, you serve. It's not hard to imagine what must be in the hearts of lots of people who go into social work or law enforcement.

Now imagine having all of this in your heart and then being a minority faced with pure racism, up close and personal, so blatant that it takes your breath away?

What I discovered is that these ordinary Texas folks were so taken back with the evil of it, that the only weapon with any chance of working was love. So they did that.

They grabbed these kids by the scruff and loved on them. With a white-hot-fierce sort of love they overcame their own distaste and repulsion, and just loved them. They prayed for them. They rocked some of them. They hugged some of them. And when they had to give them back, to whatever force that had shoved so much hatred and evil at those little souls to begin with, they cried, like babies.

After the FLDS attorney had been put in her place, it was like Oprah entered the room. Suddenly, it was alive with people talking to each other, sharing their grief at what happened to the FLDS children, how they were terrified Texas was making a mistake in giving them back to an institutionalized abusive society, run by sex predators, and using fundamentalist Mormon religion to protect themselves from prosecution of their crimes.

The trouble is, our constitution does not allow religious individuals or organizations to commit crimes and then declare immunity from prosecution, just for being who they are, that is to say: religious.

"Before the Supreme Court, Reynolds argued that his conviction for bigamy should be overturned on four issues. These included that his grand jury had not been legal; that challenges of certain jurors were improperly overruled; that testimony by Amelia Jane Schofield was not permissible as it was under another indictment; and, most importantly, that it was his religious duty to marry multiple times."

Among other findings one from the court wrote, ""to permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself."


These Texas heroes loved the hate right out of those kids, and in return they got kicked in the teeth. My new friend, the writer from Austin, has a chance soon to speak to a lot of these heroes. I hope she tells them what I think of them, and that someone out there still knows.

In my mind's eye I see every one of these Texans wearing a white hat. In case, in this strange world we live in these days, you don't know what that means; in Texas it just means they are the 'good guys.'

The CPS workers who jumped out of those chairs, like lions, reminded me of the goddess of Liberty on the San Jacinto Battle Flag. These weren't women or government workers who didn't give a damn about what was happening, these were heroes. These people had been wounded in the heart by the hate and abuse they saw perpetrated against the FLDS children.

I hope someday, some of them will feel safe to come forward and share their stories. That is my brightest hope. I'd like all Texans to know about these real life Texas, good guy, heroes.

Have you ever held anger, racism and hate to your breast and rocked it to sleep with a sweet song, praying that while you did it the hate was being rubbed right off and away? That's a true Texas kind of love.

I know heroes who have.

I know lions of love.

I know the kind of people Dr. Martin Luther King dreamed about.

I have a good life.

G-d Bless Texas

How Many Children Did Polygamist Kody Brown Have in 2005

2005 Bankruptcy filing for polygamists Kody and Meri Brown Here.


I suppose the rest of the kids are only "spiritual children," so they don't count?

Whoopsie!

Polygamy Works Great With OPM

The Browns make polygamy work by using OPM. It can be the money of a creditor or the government's money, they don't much care. Everyone knows that the easiest way to support any venture, while cutting your own risk, is to use Other People's Money.

One of the very last questions asked by host Oprah Winfrey in an interview with the Browns was how they managed financially and Meri answered, "We just have to learn how to stretch our dollars just like any other American family." That is quite obviously a lie. I know very few American families who have filed 3 different bankruptcies in 13 years. I do know how nice it might have been for those families who were forced to file for it, if they had a third party they could have transferred any real property to, before they filed it. How convenient, for Kody Brown, who has just taken concubine [potential bankruptcy] #4.

These are the bankruptcy filings of two of Kody's concubines. Kody himself, along with his legal wife, Meri filed another bankruptcy in 2005. This was the perfect polygamist family, shoved out for all the world to see, hand picked by the Safety Net Committee? So Kody has three “wives” and they have all had to file bankruptcy.

We have said, over and over, that polygamy leads to poverty. Even if the Browns are all completely honest people, they have obviously been bankrupted by this "lifestyle choice," multiple times.

They say on their TV show that they are "married" to Kody and that he is their "husband." Really? On every one of these documents the women claim to be "single-unmarried" women. Where is your husband, Christine? Where is your husband, Janelle?

As you look at Christine's filing [in 2010] I'd like to point out a few things. There is space for the name of a spouse/joint debtor on the filing but it is blank. She does, however, list 5 children ranging in age from 8 through 11-years-old. Where was your "husband," Christine?

In the space for other monthly income Christine says, "Companion pays rent, utilities and auto insurance: $1,2000." Did you mean your "husband," Christine? Or, did one of your co-concubines pay that? Who is this mystery companion? In the filing, Christine says her assets total $1,550 and her liabilities at $25,712.14.

So after spending about $20,000 on credit cards, her lifetime assets total less than $2,000? Who got the goods, Christine? It looks like you are just a typical concubine who totes your meager belongings into whatever tent your master is providing for the harem right now.

con·cu·bine

n.

1. Law A woman who cohabits with a man without being legally married to him.

2. In certain societies, such as imperial China, a woman contracted to a man as a secondary wife, often having few legal rights and low social status.
   
   

   On page 23, Christine, it lists your main source of income in 2009 and 2010 as Food Stamps [pg. 23]! One the old standbys used by virtually every polygamist man is, 'I don't see how in a society where men dump women all the time you can look at this as bad when a man is actually caring for and taking responsibility for the women and children.'
   I have a newsflash for you, Kody Brown, letting taxpayers feed the children you make is not exactly caring for them.

The Browns of TLC: Back to the Future of Polygamy

In 2005 I arrived in Mohave County to find the largest decriminalized polygamy experiment in the United States well underway in Colorado City and Centennial Park, Arizona. This was the reality of how polygamy worked. Once I saw this spread sheet, provided to me by a Mohave County elected official, I no longer had to wonder how polygamy worked. It obviously works, because we pay them to keep working it.

The government's generous subsidies, provided to women who file as 'single unmarried mothers,' makes sure the children of polygamy, who are guaranteed to be thrown into a lifestyle of poverty, will never go hungry, and the men of polygamy will not have to invest too much of their earnings into the actual care and feeding of the hordes of children they create but rather can divert those funds back into their businesses and then their "church."

Is it any wonder that FLDS owned, Colorado City based, companies can secure multiple city, county and even federal contracts, when they are able to submit the lowest bid for those jobs, time after time? People have long scratched their heads, wondering how can they complete a job for less money than any other company, even when an honest contractor has repeatedly cut their profit margin to the bare bone on the bid for a job.

Ah, the poor suckers only think they have cut it to the bone. The poor suckers are not only losing business to the polygamists but are actually paying for the food and health care of their concubines and children, as well as actually paying the same for the workers who do the job! You can click here for more information. While the honest poor sucker is paying for his home, wife and children, feeding them, clothing them, caring for them by providing medical care, the polygamists have none of those silly expenses!

The polygamists do not have to bother themselves with such frivolous expenditures. The tax payers feed their children and cover the health care expenses of their extra concubines and children. Their labor costs on the job are much lower than the poor monogamous contractor's as well.

You see, since the FLDS is run on a communal system, every employee working on that job is indeed provided a 'pay check' but to stay in good standing in the "church" he then simply signs it right back over to the boss, who turns it all over to the prophet, who then decides what each worker 'really needs.' Of course, since you and I are paying to feed all the children and provide medical care for the concubines and children, obviously they need less to live on than those of us who have to pay for those things. Since they all live in a home owned by the church, well, that does also save them some money, now doesn't it? That, my friends, is how you consistently underbid all those poor monogamous suckers, who are obviously too dumb to let the system take care of their baby mamas [read: concubines] and children.

It's all based on fraud. Look at that chart up there. Now, because of privacy laws, none of us can be sure who was on that assistance, however, we know no one but polygamists live in that zip code. We also know there are less than 6,000 of them there! And we know from women who have left polygamy that many of them, who were the concubines of highly successful men, were indeed accepting government benefits for themselves and their children. Ask Carolyn Jessop!

This pattern is now repeating itself in Schleicher County, Texas, especially in San Angelo.

Perfectly decent human beings, who make their decisions about business based on costs, are now turning to FLDS owned businesses in Texas, to build their homes, build their roads, even lay the pads for almost every new wind turbine in West Texas. That's a big contract! It could have gone to a company owned by a decent, tax paying, family supporting Texan. Instead, those jobs have now been awarded to polygamists who laugh all the way to the baby mama welfare line. These FLDS polygamist owned and operated companies are now all over the Lone Star State; you can find them in places like Kerrville, Boerne and Amarillo. They use the system against all of us, and call it "bleeding the beast."

What does all of this have to do with the Browns of TLC's "Sister Wives"? Simple, it is called a pattern.

In my next post I'll publish some documents, so you can see exactly how the "Sister Wives," of TLC's smash reality show, are in fact no different from their counterparts in the FLDS.

Polygamy is abuse.