Opinion: Polygamy ain’t what it used to be

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Strange how much the Texas raid of a polygamist ranch resembles the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Just as American leaders seemed certain that Iraqis would gratefully embrace us for deposing Saddam Hussein, the Texas authorities seemed to expect dozens of newly freed girls to come forward complaining that they had been forced into sex and detained against their wills. In the weeks after the raid, the Texas officials seemed to launch their own search for weapons of mass destruction — or in this case, mass molestation of young girls — that were never found. Instead they’d trumpet whatever else they could find — oh, here’s an underage mother. Except, as it turned out, many of those weren’t underage. Even if they had been, teen mothers hold little shock value for society these days.

Now they’ve got a problem. Not the reunion of kids with their parents — investigators will still have access to interview the children one by one, which is how it should have been done in the first place. But in the absence of open, desperate complaints from Yearning for Zion’s women, how will they prove anything against the ranch, if indeed laws were broken?

They could file charges against men who had sexual relations with minors, but given the amount of teen sex that goes on in this country, if the sexual relations were consensual, they’d look like they were picking on one religious sect. This leaves them with underage marriage and polygamy as their legal aces.

Problem is, what exactly are marriage and polygamy these days? The men don’t appear to have been marrying girls in the legal sense of the word; the group calls the multiple relationships ‘spiritual marriages,’ and certainly we all know of such spiritual marriages by different words in ordinary society. How many men have children by multiple women, never marrying any of them? The only polygamists these days are the few who hide their marital status from a woman and take out a second marriage license. They’re so rare, they’re almost quaint.

It would be different, of course, if there were records of girls as young as 12 to 14 being married, spiritually or otherwise, as sect leader Warren Jeffs is alleged to have done. Few would find that defensible. Given the creepy stories that have come out about Jeffs, Texas authorities are right to continue their investigation. It’s just that the changes in societal mores outside the ranch will make anything less than the most egregious misdeeds inside difficult to prosecute.