Re: Texas Polygamists--sf in real life?

In article <fujdi1$9sf$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> David Friedman <ddfr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > I've been following the Texas polygamy case with interest and
> > commenting on it on my blog.  The first comparison that occurred to
> > me was with the 19th century Oneida community, which practiced an
> > much more bizarre marriage system--everyone married to everyone.
> > The FLDS is accused of matching up young women with older men;
> > Oneida not only did it (and young men with older women) but openly
> > described and advocated their system. ...
> 
> > One possibility is that the 21st century is less tolerant, at least
> > in some dimensions, than the 19th.
> 
> My understanding is that numerous young women in FLDS are saying their
> marriages are not consensual -- in other words, that FLDS is basically
> a criminal gang specializing in rape.  If these accusations are borne
> out, people are right to be intolerant of FLDS.

So far as I can tell, none of the young women in the Texas compound have 
made such claims. Also, as far as I can tell, there is nothing to keep 
women from leaving the FLDS, aside from their unwillingness to leave 
everything familiar and plunge into a strange world. 

Note that the phone call that started the raid was pretty clearly a 
fake--made by a 33 year old woman in Colorado who had repeatedly called 
anti-polygamy activists pretending to be a pregnant girl about sixteen 
in the FLDS named Sarah. She had actually been arrested earlier for a 
different set of bogus phone calls along vaguely similar lines.

The case which resulted in Jeffs, the head of the sect, being convicted 
of being an accessory to rape involved a woman who, some noticeable 
while after she was married, decided she had been pressured into it. So 
far as I could tell, there was no claim of rape in any literal sense of 
the term.
> 
> > On the other hand, the original LDS were also a 19th century odd
> > group and got chased out of town, I think repeatedly, until they
> > finally created their own society in Utah.
> 
> Correct.  Note that at the time Utah was outside the United States.
> And that the Mormons' problems didn't end after they arrived in
> Utah.  They were basically given an ultimatum:  Give up polygamy or be
> destroyed.  

After they had fought the matter through the courts, which, so far as I 
can tell, reached the wrong legal result.

> Fortunately, God changed His mind about polygamy and gave
> their leader a revelation that polygamy had suddenly become a bad
> thing.  (Many years later, God also changed His mind about racism,
> and gave the Mormon leader a revelation that racism had also suddenly
> become a bad thing.)
> 
> As the existence of FLDS shows, some Mormons believed that the leader
> was fibbing about the new revelations.

Yes. I've wondered if the LDS is to some extent behind attacks on the 
FLDS. The latter is a double threat to the former. From the standpoint 
of the outside world, the LDS may get identified with the practices of 
the FLDS. From inside the LDS, the FLDS is a standing reproach to the 
willingness of the LDS to abandon its religious principles under 
pressure.

-- 
 http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
 Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
 Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now