Roy Maynard: Early Returns

Among the responses to last week’s column — the one on polygamy co-authored by Religion Editor Patrick Butler — was a letter with a set of what seems, at first, to be a list of reasonable questions.

But they’re not. And I’ll explain why.

We’re still well within Early Returns territory here, because this is an issue of public policy — whether the state of Texas was right to remove 463 children from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in West Texas.

The letter writer said he found our column “very interesting,” but added that it failed to explore many issues. He follows with three questions:

1. Does the state have the right to remove children who have been loved by their mothers and where no child abuse can be found, even if polygamy is present?

2. Can (a wife) be prosecuted for polygamy if one’s “husband” is a spiritual husband rather than a legal one?

3. If it’s right to remove children because a husband has been sleeping with more than one woman (his plural wives), should that apply in “normal” society when a man sleeps around with other women?

But these aren’t actually questions — they’re the seeds of three arguments in favor of polygamy — or at least arguments against state interference at the FLDS compound in Eldorado.

If recast as statements, the letter writer’s questions would read:

1. Polygamist mothers love their children. If there’s no evidence of child abuse, polygamy alone should not be grounds for separating them.

2. Plural marriage is a spiritual status, not a legal one, and therefore the state has no standing to prosecute polygamy.

3. Polygamy is no worse than adultery and serial marriages, both of which are found within mainstream society.

Each of these three arguments is deeply flawed, logically and dare I say morally. I’ll take them separately.

The first argument is that in and of itself, polygamy is no grounds for state intervention. This argument is flawed because as practiced by the FLDS, polygamy is inseparable from child abuse. The group’s practice, now clearly documented, is to force underage girls into very early marriages, and to subject them to sexual assault and early childbirth. Officials now report that 60 percent of the girls ages 14 through 17 are either pregnant or already have children.

There are now questions about the sexual and physical abuse of young boys at the compound, as well. And the Department of Family and Protective Services told lawmakers on Wednesday that at least 41 of the children had evidence of broken bones.

No one has yet been charged with abuse, much less convicted. But there’s plenty of evidence of child abuse, and unless prosecutors lose their nerve amid mushy arguments and pathetic photo ops, some people will be joining sect leader Warren Jeffs in jail.

So the argument is specious. Polygamy involving underage brides and possibly other forms of abuse is, by definition, child abuse.

Even without abuse, polygamy is against the law. In Texas, the official violation is “bigamy,” and it’s a third-degree felony.

The second argument is that polygamous marriages are spiritual, not legal, so the state has no grounds to interfere.

The flaw here is that marriage itself is, in fact, a legal status. And as proponents of a “marriage amendment” continue to assert, any change or challenge to the “one man, one woman” form has broad implications across both law and society.

Polygamy has demonstrable harms. Last week, we cited the rampant welfare fraud present among polygamists. Second, third, fourth and subsequent wives become a serious drain on the public by signing up for benefits as unemployed single mothers with lots of children.

And there’s the documented phenomenon of the “Lost Boys” — the young boys thrown out of polygamist groups so that other males (particularly older males) can have all the young wives they want. They are simply dropped off on the streets of Salt Lake City and Las Vegas, and left to fend for themselves with no money and no family. Some turn to prostitution. Many wind up in jail.

But even more fundamentally, the state has an interest in preserving marriage as we know it. My friend Matt Daniels now leads the Virginia-based Alliance for Marriage.

“The time has come to recognize that marriage is a public social good,” Daniels says. “The health of American families built upon marriage affects us all… No man is an island. The same is true for women and children. We all rise or fall collectively with the health of our social infrastructure built upon the foundation of the family.”

Polygamy cannot be equated or substituted for traditional marriage without consequences. And from a public policy standpoint, those consequences are negative.

The third argument is the worst — it claims that monogamists are just as bad.

This is the classical “tu quoque” fallacy (that’s Latin for “you, also”). We can dismiss this easily; it is, in fact, no defense of polygamy at all. It’s just an accusation that monogamy is equally (or even more) flawed.

That’s a red herring, an attempt to distract. The issue here is polygamy, and for all the reasons stated earlier (and many more), it’s a bad thing.

The writer of this letter may or may not have already formulated these arguments for himself. But be watching; they’ll be the basis of a defense by the FLDS and its spokespersons in coming weeks.

Roy Maynard
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