Take My Wives– Please! Why Polygamy Scares Me

As the world becomes smaller, our nation’s polygamous societies become more visible in their shrouded compounds in Colorado and Utah. I’ve read articles in magazines and on the Web and as my curiosity increases, I’ve thought more than once that I need to purchase the first season of Big Love. Though it’s still drenched in mystique, one thing has become clear: it’s happening and it is big business.

My first impulse is to joke about it. When I recall my days as a bartender, I remember the sheet-metal workers and the plumbers talking about the wife and kids. Part of the routine was that they got to kvetch to one another about how their wives’ over-spending and their kids’ over-screaming drove them crazy. It was clear that they wouldn’t have it any other way; these were family men in every sense of the word. But it was also clear that one wife and maybe two or three kids was more than enough to prevent them from escaping to Wisconsin for a little bass fishing and maybe a clandestine trip to a Northwoods strip club.

When I imagine a man with more than one wife, I can’t help but imagine him hen-pecked to the nth degree. That’s because I’m used to the contemporary Midwestern concept of marriage: one or both spouses work; one or both spouses wrangle the kids; one or both spouses bitch about money, sex and free time. I’m used to women being in a position of equal social standing.

I don’t think that’s how it goes in polygamous marriages. Let’s start from a position of total ignorance. When I consider the possibility of one man working to support his family and a group of women working cooperatively at home (on the compound), I can imagine an idyllic scene almost reminiscent of some kind of hippie commune in Vermont. Cherubic children; home-made fruit preserves and a life-giving heap of compost to spread over the family’s vegetable garden. There’s no jealousy! It’s a big old love fest, and there is one happy guy in the midst of all that.

Nowhere in that imagining is the vision of Warren Jeffs conducting a pageant of fourteen year old girls to parade before middle-aged men hoping to pick their latest wife.

While, in theory, I’m tempted to say live and let live! Let the polygamists do what they want! I’ve come to understand that, especially from the perspective of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints heavy-hitters, polygamy means money.

Polygamy is illegal in all fifty states, but it’s usually tolerated by the state because the man is typically legally married to only one woman. The other marriages are of a “spiritual” nature, therefore do not impinge on any laws. In my research, I’ve come to understand exactly why much of mainstream society feels such anger and intolerance towards these plural families, and it’s not simply because many of the marriages are arranged with minor females, because women are treated as chattel or because women and children are often subjected to mental and physical abuse.

The reason is because, according to the Apologetics Index, polygamists often use the abundant production of children to “obtain social security benefits.” This is a practice Carolyn Jessop, a polygamy escapee, calls “bleeding the beast.” Apparently, it’s good fun for the powerful men in the upper echelons of the FLDS to laugh at the rest of us poor schmucks laying out tax dollars to line their church coffers. All they need to do is keep the machine moving. That is to say, all they need to do is continue to keep women powerless and pregnant. One almost has to respect the subversion and decidedly un-Christly finagling of the system. Somehow I don’t think spirituality is priority number one in the highest levels of the FLDS.

Carolyn Jessop has been working hard to expose the frightening underbelly of the FLDS. I saw her today on another morning show, but I don’t feel like plugging this particular hostess. Instead, I shall refer to the Time magazine interview where she reveals that at age eighteen she was told she was going to marry a middle aged leader of the church. She wasn’t happy, but she was young and powerless. To refuse would be excommunication at best, physical and emotional torture at worst. She declined to describe in detail what happened to her sister when she tried to escape, but she did say that it successfully discouraged her from the idea of running away for many years.

“Your salvation, basically, depends on whether your husband wants you in his life or not.” She goes on to explain how the wife that the husband favors most sexually is the dominant wife, which should surprise no one. Also unsurprising is how that dynamic creates often untenable jealousy amongst the wives. How does that kind of tension translate into child-rearing? The favored wife’s children have better shoes and clothes? The ill-favored wife’s children look on in envy and bitterness as the head of the house gives and takes as he sees fit?

Dominance and control. Money. Sex. Power. Violence. These are the recurring themes in all of the literature I’ve read on the subject. While I have seen and read polygamous or plural families extol the virtues and claim that their family works for them, I don’t buy it. Not for a second. This is a construct that seems born to breed dissent and unhappiness.

I don’t claim to know much about anything, but I know I don’t want to share my husband with another woman. Sometimes the men even choose to marry sisters, you know, keep it in the family. I think if my sister and I were married to and breeding children with the same man, there might be some psychological shrapnel, even if he weren’t abusive or domineering.

Please read Carolyn Jessop’s interview in Time:

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1675126,00.html

I respect and admire her for succeeding in escaping such a powerful and frightening world. She’s lucky. As I sit here typing, not afraid that my husband will bitch-slap me for my lackadaisical housekeeping, there are twelve, thirteen and fourteen year old girls being groomed to breed for men old enough to be their grandfathers. There are young women being forced to marry their own family members. There are women in our own country who are enslaved and see no way out. Women like Carolyn Jessop deserve to be heard. Maybe then we can help those who can’t raise their voice.