(C) Common Dreams
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Stop persecuting polygamists [1]
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Date: 2006-11-28
For most Americans, the persecution of religious minorities is something found in foreign lands like China or Sudan. Indeed, the protection of the right to live and worship within a faith has long been a rallying cry for the American religious right, including its most vocal ally: President Bush. Yet tens of thousands of Americans face criminal punishment, their children seized, and their assets forfeited for the practice of a religious faith that goes back to the very beginning of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. They are America's polygamists, and they meet every common definition of a persecuted religious minority.
Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts the right of people "to manifest [their] religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." This article is the foundation for the United States Commission for Religious Freedom, which meets regularly with President Bush and lists various countries as violators of religious rights - though not our own.
The Commission has apparently never addressed the criminalisation of American polygamy in its own backyard, despite the fact that polygamy is an ancient and bona fide religious practice. Indeed, according to some studies, polygamy is found in 78% of the world's culture and was part of the Native American culture in the United States. It is openly practiced by tens of millions around the world.
The only exposure that most citizens have to polygamists in America is in the criminal docket and on sensational cable programs. Indeed, this month the news is filled with the standard image of the polygamist that has sustained hundreds of years of prejudice in the United States: in St George, Utah, Warren Jeffs has appeared in court charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice for his alleged role in arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old first cousin. In Washington, DC, another polygamist, Rodney Hans Holm, is asking the Supreme Court to review his conviction for bigamy. One of Holm's wives was only 16 when he married her.
Since polygamy is a crime, polygamists remain hidden from view, often living in the most inhospitable places to avoid detection and prosecution. The result is that the only polygamists who attract public attention tend to be people like Jeffs, who allegedly prey on underage girls. It is, therefore, understandable that for most Americans polygamy could just as well be a synonym for pedophilia. It would be as if the only Catholic priests known to the public were those who have molested young boys.
Like many persecuted religious minorities around the world, polygamists in the United States are dismissed as unhinged, antisocial nuts who deserve neither pity nor protection. Of course, people who persecute religious minorities never view themselves as persecutors and always dismiss their victims as either not truly religious or motivated by some dark or criminal purpose. Ask the Chinese about Falun Gong or the Iranians about the Bahai, they will often respond in the same fashion: that this is not a legitimate question of faith, but one of criminal conduct.
The fact is that many consenting adults believe in plural marriage as an article of faith, and do not marry underage children. It is also a fact that polygamy is a practice that crosses all of the major religions. Shared religious icons like Abraham (a figure of reverence for Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike) engaged in this practice, and would be viewed today as habitual felons. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and Mohammed had 10 wives.
It is not just religious people who adopt plural relationships. Indeed, in the United States, many secular Americans have adopted plural relationships as an alternative lifestyle. The great irony is that such citizens are only threatened with prosecution if they attempt to assume any responsibility for their partners. For example, if three people live with one another for purely sexual or hedonistic reasons, the Constitution protects them from prosecution as a matter of privacy. However, if they make a commitment to one another as spouses, they are immediately transformed from protected libertines to prosecuted felons.
Of course, polygamists do not seek marriage licenses; they know that if they attempted such an act, they would incriminate themselves. But even privately sanctioning a plural marriage is enough to trigger a prosecution. State officials have used common law marriage to legally declare people "married" and then prosecuted them for being polygamists.
This is not to say that polygamy prosecutions are common. Prosecutors have adopted a type of "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Unless polygamists become open and notorious, like Jeffs, they are left alone to their isolated compounds. Indeed, Utah's Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, has decided not to prosecute bigamy between consenting adults - a hopeless task in a state with an estimated 40,000 polygamists.
Yet, this still leaves polygamists as presumptive criminals and subject to various penalties short of incarceration. Polygamists have had their children taken by the state; have been denied social security benefits; and have even been removed from public office.
Even for those of us who disapprove of polygamy, there is no denying that it is a practice with deep and good-faith religious meaning. The fact that is used by abusers and pedophiles is no more reason to prohibit polygamy than spousal abuse is a reason to prohibit monogamy. Indeed, if the primary purpose of criminalising polygamy is to prevent the abuse of children, then legalisation would be a far better option. Criminalisation has forced polygamists into secret and closed societies, making monitoring far more difficult.
It is hardly necessary for the Commission on Religious Freedom to tramp across the globe to find a persecuted religious minority. Stripped of the unsupportable claim that polygamy is inevitably linked to pedophilia, the criminalization of polygamy comes down to a sectarian definition of sin and a political judgment as to legitimate relationships. What is left is prejudice masquerading as principle and religious advocacy that is little more than religious bigotry.
It is time to guarantee the free exercise of religion in America. It is time to decriminalise polygamy.
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[1] Url:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/nov/28/stoppersecutingpolygamists
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