Mitt Romney and the FLDS Polygamists
09 May 2006 4:07 pm by Taylor Marsh
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Big love can be hazardous to your health. It can also curtail your freedoms.
As for what it does for women, it's nothing good.
Maybe HBO's provocative peek into an FLDS community is the inspiration, because
before now it's been the scandal no on has wanted to take on. Governor
Mitt Romney, a presidential hopeful for 2008, makes jokes about Mormon polygamy.
I'm glad he finds it so hilarious, because the last time I looked underage sex
with minor girls is called pedophilia. The person committing the act a pedophile.
Wife abuse nothing to laugh about. Wonder why the press never pressed that point with the
Massachusetts Republican with the Hollywood good looks? Oh, right, they were
too busy laughing at the handsome, smooth talking political charmer. Beware
of this man, my fellow Democrats. There's danger ahead for us here.
But Mitt Romney isn't John F. Kennedy, and LDS isn't Catholicism. If Mitt thinks
it is he's even dumber than his shtick.
If you haven't seen “Big Love” you're really missing a revealing
look into the outlaw sect of FLDS.
I've become intimately familiar with some of the legitimate elements of LDS
because my husband was once a devout member. But that was so yesterday, because
long before I met him he walked away from the Mormon Church, because he labels
most organized religion as hypocritical. George W. Bush is exhibit A. After
all, Bush doesn't even belong to a church in Washington D.C., with reports saying
he doesn't always attend. He wouldn't be the first president to not go to church,
however, his protestations of faith present a different picture, thus the hypocrisy.
My husband even had his name taken off the Mormon roles, which precipitated
multiple knocks on our door, complete with baked goods, so the elders could
talk my husband to coming to his senses. He had, so they failed.
Not all Mormons are created equal. There are the Fundamentalist
LDS or FLDS, who embrace polygamy, and the Mormons who abjectly reject polygamy
and have for decades. I've met many different types of Mormons, some I adore,
others I find just plain frightening. It's like any other fundamentalist religious
sect, which is dangerous to women, children and our society. But the negligence
of the LDS hierarchy to rein in their FLDS
counterparts is shameful. It's not enough to disavow them.
Republican Mitt Romney makes jokes about his religion, talking
about marriage being between one man and one woman, emphasis on one woman. Yuck-yuck.
Nice try, but that's not going to make you president or vice president. Why isn't Romney actually doing something about it? Calling attention to the crimnal behavior behind FLDS? You and I both know the answer. But can you imagine the White House Correspondents' dinner with Romney in the mix? You can actually hear the lines someone like Colbert would deliver in return. It wouldn't be pretty.
The Bush administration and Republicans are supposed to be for “family
values.” What family value is being supported by looking the other way?
Why all the furor over porn on the web without a look into the polygamist communities
that are flourishing out here in the west? What is Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales doing about the crime of polygamy and the pedophilia inherent in the
lifestyle, not to mention the wife abuse?
Utah has launched an organized-crime investigation into a polygamist sect
and its fugitive
leader Warren Jeffs, now on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.Jeffs is already wanted on Utah and Arizona charges alleging he arranged
plural marriages of underage girls. Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said Monday
that his office is also looking at Jeffs and his church for “double books,
cooking books, offshore accounts and fraud.”“I believe Warren Jeffs ran the FLDS church and the UEP as an organized
crime-type setup,” Shurtleff said. “We just have to get the evidence
to prove it.”The UEP is the United Effort Plan trust, the $110 million financial arm of
the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which owns
businesses and property in the Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., where
the church is based.Shurtleff has contended Jeffs used the UEP to reward or punish followers.
The attorney general petitioned last year to take control of the trust, and
a special fiduciary was appointed to oversee it.“We've been following closely what the special fiduciary is uncovering
from records and so forth,” Shurtleff said. “It has been very informative,
we'll say.”The FLDS church is one of a number of polygamist sects in and near Utah.
Followers believe The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon
church, went the wrong direction when it abandoned polygamy more than a century
ago as Utah was seeking statehood. Estimates of the number of polygamists
range from 30,000 to 100,000.Jeffs has been on the run for years. On Saturday, he was added to the FBI's
Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, and the federal reward for him was boosted
to $100,000.
This criminal probe is a long time coming. Why didn't President Bush and Attorney
General Gonzales act earlier? More importantly, why is Governor Mitt Romney's response a punch
line? Shouldn't a good Mormon care?
