Whatever you may have heard, the case of Winston Blackmore and James Oler, the fundamentalist Mormon preachers from Bountiful, B.C. whose polygamy case goes to trial next week, is not about religious freedom. Nor is it about gay marriage, or child abuse, or any of the other extraneous issues with which partisans of one stripe or another would like to festoon the debate.

It certainly isn’t about whether the two men are guilty of the crime of polygamy under Section 293 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits “any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage.” The defence does not contest the charges, but rather intends to argue the law is a violation of their freedom of religion as guaranteed under the Charter of Rights.

They’re free to argue their case as they please, of course, but the argument for removing polygamy from the Criminal Code does not depend on appeals to religious freedom. It would make no more sense to charge an atheist with the crime than a backwoods preacher, if the law were not capable of defence on its own merits, nor would the harm to religious freedom be enough to invalidate the law if it were. We should consider the matter, rather, in light of what the criminal law is for: what sorts of things the state may rightly prohibit, and what it may not, mindful that the burden of proof is always on the state, not merely to prove that a crime has been committed, but that it should be considered a crime at all.

It isn’t the discriminatory impact of Sect. 293 that condemns it, but simply that it is overkill. We don’t need to criminalize polygamy, not because we think it’s right or even acceptable, but because it is not the sort of behaviour properly addressed by the criminal law, and because we have other, less intrusive means of registering society’s abhorrence. And if we don’t need to criminalize a thing, we probably shouldn’t.

Consider first that most of those involved (we’ll deal with the exceptions in a minute) are adults who freely entered into these relationships. The criminal law does not normally concern itself with acts between consenting adults, except where these result in some harm to another. Now consider the kinds of things that are not prohibited between consenting adults. A man may have sex with as many women (or men) as he likes, serially or coincidentally, individually or all at once. He may father children with any or all of them. He can marry one of them, and have sex with the rest. He can live together with all of them and their children, so long as they don’t marry or have sex. All of these things he can do without being charged with a crime. The only thing the law prohibits him from doing is marrying (or living in “conjugal union” with) more than one woman at the same time. (Well, not only that: it also includes anyone who “celebrates, assists or is party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction” such a relationship. It’s the 21st century, and we’re prosecuting rites and ceremonies.)

If the harm arising from polygamy were of a kind that required sending a man to prison, it could surely as easily be traced to one of its component acts: the sex, the multiple partners, the living together. Or if there is evidence that some of the wives were forced into marriage, or were underage—neither consenting, that is, nor adults—then prosecute these crimes under the relevant statutes. In neither case is there any need for a separate, additional charge of polygamy.

If we don’t like polygamous marriages, we don’t have to throw people in jail for performing them: we can just refuse to recognize them. Reserve the legal recognition of marriage to monogamous couples, as we do now, and leave consenting adults to work out the rest in private.

Isn’t this still discrimination? Wouldn’t the definition of marriage in monogamous terms be vulnerable to the same constitutional challenges by polygamy advocates that earlier overturned the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman? Aren’t we on that slippery slope that opponents of gay marriage warned us about?

Well, no. Yes, it’s discrimination. And yes, polygamists might challenge it in court. That doesn’t mean they’d win. The Charter does not prohibit all discrimination. It prohibits only those forms of discrimination that cannot be justified as “reasonable.” The reason the old heterosexual definition of marriage did not survive scrutiny was that its defenders could not convincingly identify the harm that would result if it were expanded to include homosexuals. But nothing in that implies that a reasonable case could not be made as to the harm—to the equality of women, to the raising of children, to the stability of marriage in general—that would arise from conferring legal status on polygamous marriages, with all of the rights that would accrue thereto.

And if we couldn’t? If we can’t show evidence of harm? If we don’t have a good reason to discriminate, then we probably shouldn’t.

EDITORIAL – Christopher Ratte, professor in the department of classics at the University of Michigan, was recently turned into a jailbird and had his son taken away from him, all in the name of protecting the child from the father. He had taken his 7-year-old son to a baseball game in Detroit and ordered him lemonade. What was served up was a “Mike’s Hard Lemonade,” which his son prepared to drink. Suddenly security arrived.

“You know this is an alcoholic beverage?” the security guard asked.

“You have got to be kidding,” responded the professor. And before the professor could examine the bottle, the guard snatched it away, and the boy was taken to the hospital where no traces of alcohol were found in him. The boy was then promptly put in foster care. It was two days before the mother, a professor of architecture, was allowed to take him home, and a full week before the father was allowed to come back into the home again.

The case provides a remarkable look at the workings of bureaucracy. The Detroit Free Press interviewed all the people involved. It turns out that no one was happy about what happened, but the gears of the bureaucracy ground away, ruining peoples’ lives for no good reason.

The cop on duty thought it was a mistake, but his supervisor was insisting that he act. When Child Protective Services came to take the child away into their cruel foster care, the police objected. But CPS was just doing its duty. It had no choice but to take the child since the police had requested a court order – also triggered by events – to remove the child. Observers who know the system say that the only surprising aspect to this case is that child was returned so quickly. Had the couple been poor, uneducated, and unconnected, the case might still be tied up in the courts.

The lesson many people draw from this is that social workers are being given too much authority, that governments need to be reformed so that they do not take extreme measures too hastily, that cops need to use good sense before busting up families, etc. The problem is that all of these reforms ultimately depend on the state to use its discretionary power judiciously.

The real issue concerns the locus of control. Does it belong to the family or the state? When there is a dispute, to whom does the presumption of innocence belong? It is not enough to say: here is a bad family environment, so of course the state should control the outcome. When it comes to the power of the state over the family, there is no such thing as a judicious use. The state has every reason to invent reasons to destroy families – and all other independent centers of authority – and the families themselves have no choice but to crawl and beg.

State campaigns for the welfare of children have always been a major justification for the expansion of leviathan. This is the primary basis for the war on drugs, which has robbed us of so many civil liberties. It is the basis for the nationalization of education that is taking place, administration by administration, in the name of preventing any child from being left behind. If the internet is ever regulated in the US the way it is in China and parts of Europe, it will be in the name of protecting the children. Indeed, it is possible to erect a totalitarian state in the name of helping the children.

So it was in Texas, when the state swept in to remove 437 children from their mothers. The police were responding to a call claiming abuse, but there was no other basis for this incredible action than the desire to crush a religion completely. The state decided the dissident church shouldn’t exist, and so it claimed all power in the interest of the children. The state could count on sympathy from mainstream American culture, which rightly disapproves of polygamy and underage marriages. And that is precisely why the group separated themselves completely from the rest of the culture.

Should people be free to set up cults, to live undisturbed to practice their religion, to deviate from mainstream ethical codes? Certainly if we believe in freedom, people should be able to do this. In fact, the group was already under a great deal of pressure to reform from the outside and inside, with former members of the group reporting despotic control by the leader and many men who had been excommunicated putting pressure on those inside to leave. We don’t know whether the entire matter – if indeed abuse was taking place – might have been handled in this way, because the state intervened to impose the cruelest possible solution: namely, taking children from their mothers’ arms and putting them in the hands of government social workers.

In the name of protecting children, the state already runs a huge program with government officials posing as teenagers seeking sex and arresting those who fall for the scam. By itself, this is very strange, with government becoming a source for the very problem that government is trying to correct. Meanwhile, a Feb-March 2008 report from the American Psychologist reports that the fears about internet predation are wildly exaggerated and do not reflect the facts. This is hardly a surprise, since the state has incentive to exaggerate the pathologies of society as a means of getting a clawhold over every independent sector.

The goal of the state is to find some practice that is universally reviled and pose as the one and only way of expunging it from society. The best example today is child pornography, a grim and ghastly industry that every decent person would like to see eradicated from the earth. But in the name of doing so, the state invades everyone’s privacy, controls speech, interferes with families, and otherwise uses the issue as a wedge to undermine every freedom.

Thus do we see what is wrong with statements such as the following: “We have an obligation to protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse, and we can do this by increasing communication between state and federal agencies to help combat this repulsive industry. While privacy rights should always be respected in the pursuit of child pornographers, more needs to be done to track down and prosecute the twisted individuals who exploit innocent children.”

Do we really want to unleash the state to solve this problem? Not if we understand the dynamics of statism. The power will not be used to solve the problem, but rather to intimidate the population in ways to which people will find it difficult to object. The trouble is that the above words were not written by the typically naïve do-gooder, social worker, or Justice Department bureaucrat. They were penned by spokesmen for the Libertarian Party.

Thus can we see the power of propaganda, and its uses. Not even self-identified libertarians can see that state authority over the family is a basis for the loss of liberty in our time, and that the state always poses the greater threat to society than whatever problem it purports to solve. There is a further problem: a concession that the state can indeed solve social problems that cannot be corrected without the state, is to give up the entire argument over the future of liberty itself.

http://www.smallgovtimes.com/story/08may02.children/

One theme I encounter over and over again in the poly world (both polygamy and polyamory) is turmoil from the heterosexual, monogamous first wife or primary partner.

What is in it for the heterosexual woman? Perhaps this is where the turmoil comes from. Especially with poly novices, who have yet to experience a poly relationship, the fear of sharing a husband and not reaping the benefits can be scary. It may seem that you, as a heterosexual woman, are sacrificing a part of yourself and your relationship and not receiving anything in return.

Bisexual women get a lover, reap the fruits of romantic love, receive intimacy and love someone as deeply as they do their husband. The husband gets another wife, gets to feel love for two women and experiences twice as much intimacy. Whereas straight women don’t share romantic sentiments and don’t bond through intimacy. Bonding between two straight women is often hindered by jealousies and insecurities because they lack a huge common factor that generally quells jealousies and the “I’m not enough” blues. That common factor is romantic love for each other.

I see a lot of primary/first wives run into the inevitable slump of “suffering in silence” because they agreed to the lifestyle and might of even been excited about it in theory. But once it comes to life they are plagued with numerous negative feelings and sacrifices that eat them alive.

In such a fluid lifestyle, the straight woman in a polygamous dynamic has to sit back and ask, “What am I getting from this?”

I asked myself this question constantly when I decided I wasn’t bisexual and reworked my polyfidelious MFF triad into a FMF V. What was I getting from a married man that I was monogamous to, that I couldn’t get from a single man within an exclusively monogamous relationship?

Dating a single, monogamous man would of made my life a lot easier. I wouldn’t of had to deal with all of the hardships and endure explosive reactions caused by jealousies and insecurities surrounded by the “sharing” principle in a poly relationship between two women who lack romantic love for each other.

So why did I continue to date a married man?

Why have I sought out a polygamous relationship with a heterosexual sister wife and a married man?

One word: Compersion.

The definition of compersion is:  “The feeling of joy associated with seeing a loved one love another; contrasted with jealousy.”

Compersion is a feeling I can’t have in an exclusive monogamous relationship. Being that I’m not bisexual and have very traditional views on marriage, this limits me to being strictly monogamous to my husband and having no interest in other women.

To me, the pros of polygamy are having a big family, multiple parents, multiple incomes to weather hard economic times, a husband and a best friend.

But I can’t be best friends with my sister wife if I am disgusted, jealous or spiteful whenever our husband pays attention to her. Jealousy counteracts everything that I gain from a polygamous marriage as a heterosexual woman.

The cons starkly contrast the pros and most often outweigh them. Because polygamy is illegal, the issues that arise from such a marriage would send someone running for the hills.

In the world of the straight woman who practices polygamy, there is nothing else to gain other than compersion from your sister wife. For the straight woman, there is less incentive to share a husband. Without compersion, polygamy would not be worth the uphill battle for me. It would be a relationship full of competition, feelings of inadequacies, insecurities and jealousies. I go into any poly relationship with the ultimate goal of compersion because I refuse to be eaten alive in a lifestyle that I have chosen to be in.

It’s not nice to see a great man like Tiger caught with his trousers down. It’s even worse to see how low girls will go to snatch a sexy slice of one of the world’s sporting greats, offering the kiss ‘n’ tell details to anyone willing to dip into the sleaze bucket.

And poor, beautiful, cuckolded Elin? She did her thing with a golf club – and who could blame her?

The smutty details have been handed to us on a plate. The news boomeranged so fast – after hitting the fire hydrant, that is – that we didn’t have time to delve in the usual places for the edgy bits of gossip.

Who would have thought the elegant, suave, never-a-hair-out-of-place Tiger would have been one to swan off the 18th green with his head held high, diving for his cellphone to ask one of his girlfriends to do provocative things in the bathroom and then send the evidence via SMS? Who would have thought that our squeakier-than-clean hero, the darling of Nike and every upstanding sportsman, would have spent his spare time under cover with the likes of the curvaceous, ultra-seductive cocktail waitress Rachel, plus Jaimee, Kalika, et al.

Don’t tell me that every bloke on the planet would not have liked to have had Tiger’s luck? Okay, they’re sorry for Elin – I mean she looks so angelically hurt – but I don’t hear much tutt-tutting, just plenty of hole-in-one type jokes. In the closet cupboards of most men’s minds, Tiger’s one hell of a chap, to hell with the golf.

So, I ask the question: Why are we all so coy about the thought of men having other women in their lives? That’s the way they’re designed.

Wouldn’t it be better to accept that the male of the species should be allowed to have several wives? Jacob Zuma has done it very well and as far as I can gather, the ladies in his bedroom – be it, I would imagine, one at a time – all seem quite content with the arrangement. He may take on more, but when it comes to sleaze, gossip, tabloid frenzy, there is none – simply because the extra-mural factor is already built in.

Clinton should have been allowed to marry Monica and enjoy his polygamy. Pavarotti could have done the same, so could have Berlusconi, Shane Warne, Nick Faldo, Boris Becker, our own Joost, Beckham (well sort of) – and all the other testosterone-rich males that have fallen by the wayside.

It wouldn’t have been good for newspapers – I give you that, but hey, it would have saved a lot of trees.

As I researched my book Stepmonster over the last several years, I was struck by just how large ex-wives loomed in the lives of women married to men with kids–and vice versa. I didn’t conduct a single interview where it didn’t come up, and usually the topic was not a happy one for the women I spoke to. Indeed, they found these relationships with their husband’s exes uniquely aggravating–and often all-consuming. “She’s awful”; “She lives for conflict”; “She’s a drama queen and a rotten mother” were common refrains.

As I reviewed the anthropological literature on stepmothering, I realized there wasn’t much of it–but that studies of certain polygynous societies had plenty of lessons to impart. Whether among the Dogon of Mali, the Kako people of Cameroon, the !Kung of the Kalahari Desert, or the Yanomano of the Amazon, cultures where men take more than one wife are characterized by co-wife conflict that simmers, rages, even boils over into homicide.

Wait right there, you’re thinking. Men in the contemporary U.S. and Western Europe aren’t exactly polygynous. It’s not like they have several wives. They divorce and remarry. Or they have wives-and girlfriends on the side. That’s not polygyny. Is it?

Yes, it is, according to anthropologists like Steven Josephson, who studied co-wife conflict among a cohort of Mormons, but also takes an interest in more mainstream goings-on. He suggests that our widely-accepted practice of “serial monogamy”–marriage, childbearing, divorce and remarriage or repartnership, and subsequent childbearing–”is really just slow-motion polygyny.”

Certainly we don’t all live together, but there is increasing pressure for the adults, particularly ex-wives and wives, to “get along,” to form cooperative parenting coalitions, and to help step-siblings and half-siblings feel like “true brothers and sisters” in recent years. In such a family form, men do in fact have “two families”–it’s just that they’re divorced from one wife and married to another.

This is all separate from what Josephson calls “polygyny in all but name,” in which men in the contemporary Western world–where we explicitly condemn polygyny but pass no laws against men cheating–secretly have two families or two long-term partners. Francois Mitterand, U.S. congressman Vito Fossella, and South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, like high-ranking males in many cultures and tribes world-wide, are particularly prone to this type of polygyny.

And what about the women? Why do they put up with it? Either because they have to, human behavioral ecologists and anthropologists like Josephson and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy tell us, or because it might benefit them in some way. In traditional hunter-gatherer cultures like the !Kung for example, where women bring in most of the calories, they have sufficient clout to tell their husband’s they’d better not take another wife–and make their lives hell if they do. In other societies, a man might marry his wife’s cousin or sister when she is widowed. This arrangement–called “sororal polygyny”–benefits the woman, who can get household help from a kin member with whom she can likely form a coalition, retaining significant power in her own household.

But pity the women of the Dogon Country of Mali, where men live among their kin and pass land down to their eldest sons, and polygyny is a strategy for keeping women oppressed. Men are prohibited from marrying even distantly related women, which in effect divides and conquers co-wives, who turn on each other with creative malice. Newspapers and court records are full of accounts of co-wives actually attempting to poison each other’s children–particularly the eldest boys–in the hope that their own sons will inherit the onion and millet fields of their shared fathers.

Whether women are in polygynous relationships because they have no choice, or because they might benefit from it in some way, Josephson says, “when it comes to polygyny and our evolutionary history, the software is still in there.”

And so is the impulse to resist it if it undercuts our own access to resources like a partner’s (or ex-partner’s) investment–be it money, time or both. And that brings me back to conflict between wives and ex-wives. These rivalries, many anthropologists tell us, are ancient, fundamental, and very real. So whenever a woman is confronting the relatively new pressure to “get along really well” with her husband’s ex or “do the holidays together for the sake of the kids,” I am always quick to remind her that this is an option, not an obligation, and that it is not easy to pull of, or even necessarily worth the effort. Civility and friendliness are enough–friendship may be elusive.

Check out Dr. Phil on Tuesday December 1st if you want to see a wife and ex-wife discuss their own personal journey from rivals to friends. Jennifer Newcomb Marine and Carol Marine co-authored No One’s the Bitch: A Ten-Step Plan for the Mother and Stepmother Relationship, which documents their successful struggle to form a parenting coalition of sorts. It might not be for many or even most of us, but it is interesting and important reading. If the right factors are in place, these cooperative, friendly-enough coalitions can make all the difference for everyone in the step/family system.

Who needs the government to be involved?

Following the California Supreme Court’s decision this week to uphold a ban on gay marriage, the U.S. looks headed into a long, resource-sucking legal slog over whether same-sex couples may marry. Here’s an idea that could end the debate once and for all, and trim government spending to boot: Get government out of the marriage business altogether.

Currently in all but four states, a gay couple may not walk into city hall and demand the same right granted every day to drunks, madmen and teenagers: a government-licensed marriage. For anyone who believes that citizens should be treated equally under the law, this is a problem.

If states stop marrying people, they stop discriminating. At the same time, social conservatives score a coup: They no longer have to witness same-sex couples getting government approval for use of the word “marriage.” (There seems to be an irony here on both sides: Hands-off-our-religion conservatives and stick-it-to-the-man liberals are both obsessed with having the state’s OK.)

What about heterosexual marriage, you might ask? Well, the religious faithful could still get married in their houses of worship. Same-sex marriage advocates are not, after all, trying to force churches to expand their definition of marriage. Indeed, the U.S. tolerates all sorts of discriminatory practices in the name of religious freedom: You may pull kids from public schools and send them to a madrassah, ordain only men and not women, or even live in de facto polygamy. (Bans on polygamy are not well-enforced.) Americans hold freedom of religion in such regard that if you want to, say, rob banks, you’d do well to consider founding a bank-robbing religion.

As for the rest of us, no one is stopping us from throwing a party to declare undying love. Gay couples have been having commitment ceremonies for decades, celebrations that might look familiar to 18th century Britons. Until England’s 1753 Marriage Act, a marriage was recognized as legal if both parties had simply declared their consent. Afterward, more hoop-jumping was required, in the form of licenses and public announcements, and the state declared that liaisons outside its new rules were null. One benefit to the gentlemen who passed the law was that no women they might have impregnated following careless promises could now come around demanding child support.

Today, marriage licenses represent a different kind of government self-interest: They are, in effect, a tax. In Minnesota, the state legislature-set price for a marriage license is a rapacious $110. (Less, though, if you undergo “premarital education.”)

Abolishing state marriage would raise a number of questions of the who-gets-what-when variety. Throughout much of history, marriage was a business contract, and though we eschew that notion in our romantic times, money is still pretty much what the legal paperwork is about: Who inherits, who gets dental benefits, who gets what when a relationship is dissolved.

These things, though, aren’t that hard to work out. We already legally recognize next of kin, and write wills to determine inheritance. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to allow every person to declare a benefits-receiving partner of his or her choice–who could be a romantic partner, an elderly relative or an ailing friend.

This sort of arrangement might become, in effect, a one-size-fits-all nationwide civil union status, without the specter of the “marriage” appellation that gets some people’s bridal veils in such a twist. We could close marriage licensing offices nationwide and put an end to bruising legal wars. We could put a parasitic army of pre-nuptial and divorce lawyers out of business, though the wedding industry itself would probably survive. It doesn’t matter what you call it or what the government says: The desire to mate will find a way.

The voyeur and keen observer of human nature in me could not resist when I was invited to attend a friend’s wedding in the Eastern Cape.

The initial astonishment at the fact that she was entering into a polygamous marriage had by now worn off, having sparked furious and fiery debates within our social circles. The highly emotive reactions had ranged from “what the %$#&#@?” to “well, at least she’s getting married”.

What struck me was that this was something completely out of my frame of reference. I had never imagined that in my lifetime I would entertain such a discussion about a modern, professional city woman. Surely this was a practice only the rural and royal indulged in. Any deliberations on polygamy had been looked at only through the prism of ANC president Jacob Zuma’s penchant for multiple wives and the often derisory comments from the chattering classes about the ruling party leader that one has grown accustomed to at dinner parties. Suddenly we were faced with the real implications of such a partnership as our friend’s impending nuptials drew near.

Attending the wedding was never seen as condoning our friend’s decision, but was simply a matter of being supportive of her on her big day. Admittedly we were curious to witness and observe the mechanics of such a ceremony. So off we traipsed to the Eastern Cape in a 10-hour-long and arduous yet wickedly fun road trip. We attended the wedding dressed in our finest traditional Xhosa regalia.

Initially there was a festive affair with all the hallmarks of a wedding of people of high standing in that community — we were thoroughly enjoying ourselves and pleased that we could be there to wish our friend well. But the fetid rancour of what it actually meant was brought sharply into focus when a few hours into the festivities a freak storm struck the village and destroyed all the marquees that had been set up for the lavish affair. We cut a most undignified sight as we fled the tents for dear life, clutching our long skirts as our plates of delicious samp and tripe flew in all directions. Had it not been so terrifying, it would’ve been quite hilarious.

Once people had made it to safety and gathered their composure, dishevelled weaves, extensions and wigs now firmly back in place, the hushed murmurs from the swanky city crowd and loud exclamations from the rural peasants alike were the same: it was a sign that the first wife was not happy!

Oh to be black: everything can always be attributed to witchcraft, even the weather.

Now it seems that another young, modern and affluent person is contemplating polygamy. If the tabs are to be believed, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, Chief Mandla Mandela is on the lookout for a second wife and he may be searching in that bastion of polygamy itself — Swaziland.

These two incidents have since got me wondering whether polygamy — often spurned by the middle classes as boorish and backward behaviour — is gaining currency in urban life?

Sadly, I suspect it might be. The reasons for this I believe are quite clinical. It all boils down to numbers. As has been well documented, black South Africans have the lowest marriage rates on the continent. A closer look at the figures reveals an even more dismal picture. According to the AMPS 2005 research, 67% of all white people between the ages of 25 and 34 were married or living together whereas the corresponding proportion of black people is at a mere 31%. Given that blacks are by far the majority in the country, this shows a very lopsided interest in marriage. I’ve been poring over reams of research recently, none of which seems to give clear answers about why this is the case.

An article in the Washington Post two years ago found the same state of affairs among the African-American community and the writer Joy Jones lamented the same issue. In her observations she found that men generally want to settle down much later in life and would rather spend their 20s and 30s fancy free and footloose. By the time they decide they want to commit, women of the same age group have become so accustomed to their independence and financial security, they don’t want to compromise this so often they choose to be alone.

So with marriage rates on the decline in the black community, the likelihood is that those women who desperately want to tie the knot will find themselves not being “the one”, but the second or the third.

Without disrespecting what is a perfectly legal and acceptable cultural practice, I despair, not only because of the widely held concerns over HIV infection in the country, but also because I don’t think this is a practice that bears the hallmarks of the kind of progressive and equitable democracy that we all dreamed of or that our forebears fought so hard for.

There’s a song I absolutely love at the moment by neo-soul artist Jasmine Sullivan. I belt it out at the top of my lungs every time I hear it.

I’m not scared of lions and tigers and bears, but I’m scared of loving you …

Why do we love love, when love seems to hate us so much?

It’s the raw honesty of the lyrics and the heart-breaking angst in Sullivan’s raspy, soulful voice that appeals to me. I don’t know about you, but I would rather ride a tiger any day than deal with the bleak story these statistics portray.

I just finished watching this season’s second to last episode of HBO’s Big Love soap opera, and I believe there may be another hidden reason that the show makes Mormons uneasy. Much of the media’s attention has been on the fact that this episode portrayed a scene in a Mormon temple, however, the show did have one line that caught me: the main character expressly claimed that the Mormon church was just as corrupt as the show’s main antagonists who are practicing polygamy and generally in trouble with the law.

This theme has underlined the entire season of the show. Without giving away the details of the show, it is fair to say that the Mormon Church is not portrayed favorably. The Church noted as much in their non-statement regarding the temple portrayal. And true to form, the show continues to portray the main characters as sincere individuals who truly belief their faith and way of life (polygamy) will lead them to eternal salvation.

As many of the comments noted, the Mormon Church has officially said they were disappointed by the show’s attempt to portray a temple scene, along with this season’s general theme involving the Mormon church, but have not officially opposed or boycotted the show.

It would be interesting to see less focus on the temple scene and more focus on the veracity of the show’s attempt to portray the Mormon Church as somehow corrupt and sinister. There has hardly been any noise on this issue as compared to the controversy surrounding films such as The Da Vinci Code and The Last Temptation of Christ. That seems to be the deliberate strategy of the Mormon Church, but that doesn’t mean journalists can’t look into it.

True to form, much of the media’s discussion involves the portrayal of plural marriages. Here is The Chicago Tribune’s The Seeker blog:

Wilde can relate to much of the show, which often illustrates how plural wives usually get along.

“One thing I have especially liked about the show so far is the family solidarity; even though the three wives have disagreements, they usually support each other in the long run,” she said. “I also like the fact that the Hendrickson family lives in a relatively upscale community, is not in an isolated area, is able to support themselves … dispelling the stereotypes that all polygamous wives are controlled and uneducated, dress in different styles, depend on government assistance.” …

But Wilde hopes more people do watch the show and realize that all Americans (including polygamists) should be granted equal civil rights. She said plural marriage between consenting adults should be a constitutional guarantee.

“By learning more about this lifestyle, they hopefully can see that a polygamous family is very similar to a monogamous family in many ways,” Wilde said. “Except there are usually more members of the family, thus more people to love and more people to love you.”

The show certainly has a significant element that is about polygamy, but there are questions that journalists aren’t asking about the portrayal of polygamy.

For instance, earlier this season the show briefly considered why the polygamous family only has multiple wives, and not multiple husbands in a relationship. The beliefs of the show’s protagonists only allow for a solo man to marry a plural number of women, not the other way around.

Under the current constitutional scheme for determining due process rights such as marriage, if the Supreme Court were to declare state bans on polygamy as unconstitutional, it would be almost certain that the restriction would apply equally to both genders. In other words, any number of people, regardless of their gender, could marry any number of other people. Not that there are cases at this point that would come close to advocating for this, but an interesting question for plural marriage advocates would be whether they are comfortable with that sort of interpretation of constitutional guarantees.

If The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had not uttered a single word about this Sunday’s episode of “Big Love,” it wouldn’t have exploded into the hotbed of controversy it has become. Now, a lot more people are sure to watch Sunday night’s episode.

In a statement released on Monday, the Church criticized an upcoming scene inside an LDS temple that shows sacred practices, rooms and garb. “Certainly Church members are offended when their most sacred practices are misrepresented or presented without context or understanding,” officials said.

No one outside of the network has seen the episode, including myself as of this writing. So how does anyone know that these practices will be “misrepresented or presented without context or understanding?”

For three years, the writers of “Big Love” have been nothing but responsible and accurate in their portrayal of Mormon characters, including a sympathetic teen-age church member who befriends one of the polygamist’s daughters and a not-so complimentary characterization of a self-righteous brother-in-law who is at odds with the polygamist. After all, who hasn’t met at least one self-righteous member of the Church — or any church, for that matter?

Which leads me to the second point of re-enacting sacred ceremonies in a fictional program for mass consumption.

I can never pretend to understand the sanctity of divine LDS temple ceremonies. As my mother-in-law, who is a devout Mormon, told me: “It’s like trying to explain to someone who’s been blind from birth how beautiful the sunrise is.”

But while I respect the sacred nature of these practices, I also believe nothing — no church, religion, idea, government entity, or leader — is above parody, satire, criticism and open discussion. Just because one group deems a subject too sacrosanct to discuss doesn’t mean it becomes off limits to everyone else for inspection and debate.

That includes a cartoon depicting Muhammad, which Muslims deemed sacrilegious, or a re-enactment of the JFK assassination, which our film critic wrongly opined should be off limits in the movie “Watchmen.”

Some of our contemporary culture’s most meaningful and worthy commentary has arisen from TV shows that don’t worry about offense, such as “The Daily Show” and “South Park.”

HBO has no reason to apologize for offending anyone and is under no obligation to make its series the way the LDS Church wants it to. Its only responsibility is to make the most entertaining, thought-provoking and artistic series it can. So far, it has.

Bill proposes to his fourth wife, Barb says, “I second the motion.”  Then I squeal me too when Margene says, “Me too.”  I’d love to live like the Hendrickson’s on HBO’s Big Love.  Raising kids, being a stay at-home mom can be so isolating.  Imagine having Margene around to go to the mall with.

Tonight’s edition with Roman going on trial is a topical twist that program developers and people who market TV shows could not have dreamed up themselves, with current news stories of Warren Jeffs and the obtuse religious cults that thrive deep in the Rocky Mountain states

But also I just think it would be cool to be polygamous. At least the way it is portrayed on Big Love.  Bill is so decent as played by Bill Paxton.  Men like Bill marrying all the single moms and raising the children would solve a lot of cultural and economic problems.

My friends say, I could not stand it if my husband was sleeping with someone else.   It does not seem it would bother me, especially if the result was financial security for my kids. . . .

Meanwhile the devious behind the scenes family maneuverings are developing into great drama.  Big Love keeps me from canceling HBO no matter how broke I get.