A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
Polygamy: the Red State Answer to Family Values. Arizona and Utah Attorney Generals Won’t Prosecute Males with Multiple Wives. Orrin Hatch Counts Polygamists as Good Buddies and Fine Men.
When doing a high school term paper on Mormonism, we recalled that Utah was admitted as a state in the 1890s only after it prohibited the practice of polygamy.
Then, a couple of years back, we reported on BuzzFlash that in a town meeting in Utah, Orrin Hatch rebuffed complaints about polygamists [1] who married underage girls and abused their wives. As much as Hatch has left little room to astonish us with his unctuous hypocrisy, we were indeed taken aback when Hatch was quoted as responding something like, "Show me the evidence. All the polygamists I know are good people." (No, we are not making this up.)So maybe we should have been prepared for a Reuters story on June 12th that indicated that polygamists will not be prosecuted in the states of Utah and Arizona.
"We are not going to go out there and persecute people for their beliefs," said Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard.
Adds Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff: "We determined six or seven years ago that there was no way we could prosecute 10,000 polygamists and put the kids into foster care. There's no way that we have the money or the resources to do that."
Okay, Utah became a state under the condition it prohibit men from marrying multiple wives – and now the Republican Attorney General of Utah says that polygamy is de facto legalized. In a bi-partisan nod to an odd interpretation of the law and family values, the Democratic Attorney General of neighboring Arizona regards the practice as a religious belief, not subject to prosecution.
Of course, bowing to child abuse concerns, both Attorneys General claim that they would indict polygamists who force underage brides to become wives in their harems. The problem with this concession to the rule of law by Goddard and Shurtleff is that polygamists tend to live in very closed communities – and it is extremely difficult – short of aggressive prosecutorial action – to prevent young girls from becoming wives against their will.
As Orrin Hatch, a GOP hypocrite extraordinaire indicated a couple of years ago, "hear no evil, see no evil."
We don’t hear George W. Bush or anyone in his hierarchy of radical family value appointees discussing the illegal promiscuous practice of polygamy in the Mormon West. The Reuters article [2] noted that about 40,000 "fundamentalist Mormons" in Utah and nearby states live in polygamous relationships.
That’s enough polygamy going on to fill a nice size rural city.
But you don’t find any Republicans making this a "red meat" issue for their right wing echo chamber. Could it be that most polygamists, who are Mormons, are good reliable Republican voters?
Maybe we are just too cynical.
But then again, we don’t see Utah and Arizona rushing to overlook gay marriages. God forbid gays should marry in those two states.
Maybe, the secret is if you are gay in Utah and Arizona and want to get married, make sure one "top" marries "ten" bottoms.
Gay polygamy would surely be considered a "belief" then and be perfectly acceptable to the Attorneys General of Utah and Arizona.
Somehow we don’t think so.
So, let’s hear it for polygamy.
Red State family values at their finest.
Just ask Orrin Hatch. Some of his best buddies are polygamists. Just fine men, real fine men, you see.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
Technorati Tags: Editorials [3] polygamy [4] Mormons [5] Orrin Hatch [6]
