Polygamy pros and cons: Getting to the heart of the conflict

In the late 1980s, I wrote Lion’s Pride, an historical mystery about Mormons who practiced polygamy years after Latter-Day Saints banned it. Though my writing was praised, the premise was considered fantastic.

When Warren Jeffs’ iron rule in Colorado City, AZ, and Hildale, UT, hit the headlines, I published the book myself. Now readers know what I understood as a curious nine-year-old reading about federal arrests in the high-desert haven of Short Creek.

Polygamy is a complicated arrangement that’s been practiced throughout history. Most people believe it’s a religious practice, but it was usually done for pragmatic reasons. In sparsely populated areas with more females than males, men married multiple women to produce many children. Soon small groups generated large tribes and, eventually, great nations. While polygamy was practiced for that reason in biblical times, it was merely tolerated among Jews, not required by religious law.

Requiring polygamy for religious reasons began with Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion. Since his teachings attracted more female than male converts, it was a practical arrangement after Smith’s death and the Mormons’ removal to Utah under Brigham Young’s leadership.

Tens of thousands of their descendants still practice religious polygamy. Sadly, laws outlawing their lifestyle provide cover while men like Warren Jeffs take advantage of their followers. Among known abuses are:

• Girls are forced to marry older men, while boys are expelled so leaders can have girls for themselves.
• Mothers, considered single by law, collect state benefits and give them to the leaders.
• Members must give their income to the leaders.
• The church owns all property, so anyone can be evicted without notice.
• Anyone who questions the leaders can lose homes, jobs, and families.

Crimes committed by Jeffs and his followers dominated headlines for a decade, but recently, Kody Brown and his wives, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn, show a different side of polygamy in their TLC reality series, “Sister Wives.” Among the rules they follow are:

• Only consenting adults can enter a polygamous relationship.
• Men need approval from current wives before they take new wives.
• Girls and boys are encouraged to get an education.
• Children choose whether they want to be polygamists as adults.

The Browns are open about both the problems and benefits of their lifestyle. They agree polygamy isn’t for everyone. One situation demonstrates they don’t take unfair advantage of government benefits. When he started working for his employer, Kody listed one wife and her children on his medical insurance plan. Then a daughter by another wife needed an appendectomy, but she wasn’t covered.

Instead of claiming the girl’s mother was a single mother, they set up a payment plan. Then Kody bared his soul to his employer and arranged for his family to be covered. The fact that they’re still paying for that surgery proves the Browns are nothing like members of Jeffs’ clan, who call their illegal abuse of the welfare system “bleeding the beast.”

The Browns are doing the show to lift the veil and remove the fear that overwhelms polygamists who are otherwise exemplary citizens. As a result of their public declarations, authorities began looking for a reason to interfere with their peaceful family life.

Knowing Kody could be arrested, the Browns moved to Las Vegas. Now Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Law School professor, has filed suit on their behalf against the State of Utah. Since Kody only legally married Meri and the others are spiritual, not legal, wives, they’re breaking no other law besides polygamy.

Now the haters are coming out of the woodwork. These activists rightly exposed abuses of the Jeffs cult, but they mistakenly paint the Browns with the same tarred brush. They claim that since some polygamists commit crimes, all polygamists must be criminals. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The fact that some priests abuse children doesn’t make all priests guilty. On the other hand, it’s legal for a man to marry one woman and have a secret affair with another (adultery), but it’s still a crime for a man to marry one woman and support another with the full knowledge and approval from the first (polygamy). Where is the logic?

It would be wiser to repeal statutes against polygamy and remove the veil that protects abusers like Warren Jeffs. Then the law could go after real criminals and leave people like Kody Brown and his clan to enjoy their rich family life together in peace.

Disability: Reality vs. the one-legged runner

Note: I promised to post the following article a couple of months ago, but medical issues, both mine and my husband’s, slowed things down for a while. We’re both doing better now, so now I’m back to the grind, and you’ll hear a lot more from me for a while.



In my previous articles on Disability in the Media, I discussed the ways in which artistic productions focus on disability. Now, let me reveal another side of it with a couple of examples that have been covered by virtually all the news outlets, one recent and another from 1980. First, the 30-year-old case:

As a person disabled by chronic illness, I must confess what I think about the fantastic image of the “one-legged runner.” Many people are familiar with media images of Terry Fox, the young man who lost his leg to cancer before he tried running all the way across Canada. He had a two-fold purpose for his marathon-a-day journey: focus more attention on the need for cancer research and raise money for that research.

While his efforts at bringing attention and cash to the cause were successful, few people are aware that Fox had to end his journey well before he reached the halfway point, and nine months later he died of his disease. At the time, I appreciated the need to focus more attention on the need to spend more money fighting disease, cancer and any other type of illness. But like many others with various types of disabilities, I wasn’t completely thrilled by the image of the “hero” amputee that most people saw in the media.

That’s why I was delighted to read Cheri Register’s reaction to the one-legged runner in her book, Living with Chronic Illness: Days of Patience and Passion (Bantam, 1992). Ms. Register and I share a history of dealing with the ups and downs of the unpredictable nature of different kinds of chronic illness. I knew exactly how she felt about the one-legged runner, especially when she revealed that she’d heard the same reaction from others who suffer from chronic illness.

People with different types of chronic illness rarely have the capacity to run around the block, much less cross-country. We don’t have much opportunity to gain media attention and focus people’s minds on donating to research for our particular medical conditions. Thus, reports of the one-legged runner made many sick people fantasize about sneaking onto the sidelines along the course he was running and, when he passes by, sticking out a crutch to trip the “heroic symbol” that gets all the media attention.

Granted, it’s not a very charitable reaction. But it does help us sick people relieve a lot of our frustrations at being shut out of the media loop when the cameras focus on all the unbelievable heroes with different types of disability.

As if the decades-old image of the one-legged runner weren’t bad enough, now we hear about the quadruple amputee who recently swam the English Channel. The angel on my right shoulder reminds me that I must congratulate Philippe Croizon, who completed the crossing in 13 ½ hours. On the other hand, that impish fellow on my other shoulder keeps whispering bad thoughts in my left ear: “Next time he tries something like that, maybe an anchor would slow him down just a wee bit.”

Okay, I’m really trying to be a good girl here. But the reality is, on the rare occasions that I try to explain something about the reasons for my disability, many people will counter with a claim that they know someone with [whatever detail I’ve just shared], and that person is doing just fine. I bite my tongue before I dare to ask if they know everything about that person’s life, such as the many hours, days, or longer, when that person hides the bad times because they only want to come out in public for the “up” times. I’m pretty sure the answer will almost always be “no.”

Then there are the many people who ignore everything I say about limitations I face daily. Instead, they insist I push myself beyond my capacity to do things for them. In recent years, my answer to such abusive demands is always “no.” Because of this, I end up being the one that’s called “selfish.” But I believe that focusing my limited energy in an attempt to help make this a better world, while they’re trying to manipulate me into satisfying some selfish demand of theirs, demonstrates the real difference between us.

Meanwhile, people who really need help don’t have the strength to do the spectacular things those unreal disabled “heroes” use to get all that media attention focused on their conditions. There are plenty of sick people who need help too. We need to find out how to get the media to pay attention to our situations.

The time has come for everyone to rethink their attitudes toward disability. The most important thing disabled people really want is help to break out of the disability “closet” and just be useful, productive, contributing members of society. That’s all I’m trying to do with this work.

Here’s my entire series on Disability in the Media:

Time to end “blackface” practices toward disabled actors and characters

Disabled performers prove capable of filling various roles

Finding the middle ground when casting disabled characters

Disabled performers fight discrimination in the entertainment industry

Media images of disability: Reflecting negative social attitudes

Disability: The media picture vs. reality

Disability in the media: Time to change attitudes

Terry Fox (1958-1981), Canadian cancer fund-raiser,

during his 1980 “Marathon of Hope” fund-raising run across Canada.

July 12, 1980, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

courtesy Photographer Jeremy Gilbert)