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Well, Gosh.

zuzu

Polygamist Utah judge gets the boot for violating state anti-bigamy law.

Unsurprisingly, godbag judge is pissed:

Steed said he was disappointed with the decision.

“I had hoped that the court would see my case as an opportunity to correct the injustices that are caused by the criminalization of my religious beliefs and lifestyle,” Steed said in a statement.

Steed has served for 25 years on the Justice Court in the polygamist community of Hildale in southern Utah, where he ruled on misdemeanor crimes such as drunken driving and domestic violence cases.

Now, if I’m not mistaken, Hildale is one of those communities in southern Utah, near (IIRC) Colorado City, Arizona, where a godforsaken community has been left to the tender mercies of the religious leaders of the fundamentalist Mormon church, which basically allows any old man to decide that God told him to marry any given 13-year-old girl. It all worked out great for a while, at least until the young men who were shut out of the marriage thing started getting thrown out of town lest they present a threat to the older guys on claiming the wimmins. If anyone questioned the status quo, they were shunned completely.

According to Under The Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer, these FLDS communities have been openly defying Utah law and gleefully committing welfare fraud for decades. That it has taken the Utah state government 25 years to wise up and boot out a judge who’d been openly flouting the law shows that they haven’t really had the best interests of the young women who get sucked into early marriages with these men at heart.

15 thoughts on Well, Gosh.

  1. I just finished reading Under the Banner of Heaven a few weeks ago. Really scary stuff. It surprises me that polygamist communities aren’t more or less crushed immediately: the mainline LDS church is so violently opposed to plural marriage now, and seems to have so much power.

  2. I live pretty close to Colorado City, AZ and the rumors one hears about that town are pretty odd. I’m not exactly sure what is true or false, but I do know that there are some people trying to help underage victims of polygamy.

    Most people I know think of these Mormon communities, pretty much as a joke. The truth of the matter is actually very sad. You can see it in the eyes of the brainwashed children that knock on peoples doors looking for converts.

  3. As a native Utahn and recovering Mormon, I’m happy to hear this news, but not at all surprised it took so long to get rid of this guy. Yes, the modern day mormon church who runs most of the state is very VERY against polygamy. But they have to be very careful about the ways they put themselves in opposition to it. If they call non-incestuous polygamy between adults something inherently cruel, they attack the very foundation of their church. The founders of their religion practiced polygamy, so it’s impossible for them to openly attack the institution of polygamy.

    This comment is not intended to justify the lack of action taken by the Utah government, but only to explain it a little. We all know politics are always wrapped up in historical and social context…polygamy in the west is no exception.

  4. I don’t recall precisely what the modern mainline LDS line against polygamy is, but haven’t they more or less come out against it as vehemently as they can? I mean, the whole instant excommunication thing leaves very little doubt.

    Of course, you’re right, in that they really don’t have a leg to stand on: if Joseph Smith was wrong about plural marriage (he was a lech), then he could be wrong about anything.

    I’m glad to hear that you’re no longer hoodwinked by what amounts to a mainstream cult, Vandy. Welcome to the reality-based community.

  5. We’ve had a polygamist sect move here to Texas recently. I find it scary that ANY polygamist would find my home state an ideal place to live out their lifestyle. Then again, I guess we do have a pretty high teen-pregnancy rate. Maybe THAT is what raised their eyebrows at us.

  6. The Elder of the fundie Mormon sect in Colorado City (last name is Jeffs as I recall) is currently on the FBI’s most wanted list. The allegations, and at this point they seem pretty solid, are generally handing out underage girls for marriage, fraud of state and federal gov’t programs, possibly embezzlement.

    Frankly, it is not the polygamy that is the problem but the fact that there was literally a tyrant in Colorado City. Jeffs was accountable to no one, not the members of his sect, not the local law enforcement (I think most if not all were members of his sect), same with local gov’t, not to the church leadership in Salt Lake, not to the state governments of AZ or UT, nor the Federal Government.

    An example of what can happen when fundamentalists have too much power and a lack of separation of church and state.

  7. They can justify the Joseph Smith polygamy due to the nature of revelations from God. Smith was correct in practicing it at the time he did because a revelation from God told him to do so. Likewise, another revelation from God, in more modern times, told the church elders that they should not practice polygamy anymore. Bascially, they save face by saing that nothing was misinterpreted, God merely changed his mind about the matter.

    The LDS church has taken a strong stance against polygamy, and will excommunicate anyone they find practicing it. But this was only to get the government off it’s back. There doesn’t appear to be a moral issue with it, because, interestingly enough, although they claim to abhor it, polygamy is still practiced in the “afterlife”.

    A Mormon male who remarries after the death of his spouse or a divorce will be reunited with both wives, old and new, in the afterlife, and both women will be his eternal celestial spouses and bear him his “spirit children”.

    Women, on the other hand, only get one celestial marriage. If a woman’s spouse dies and she remarries, she will only be reunited with the original spouse in the afterlife. If she is divorced, she has to beg the church elders to “unseal” her original marriage so that she can be with her next husband for eternity instead of the original one.

    Sorry, I used to debate with a guy that belonged to the LDS, so I have a ton of useless Mormon trivia. Some of it can’t help but be intereseting, being it’s so twisted.

    Personally, I feel that as long as it doesn’t deal with the coercion and abuse of minors, I really couldn’t care any less if people want multiple spouses. I don’t think it’s the government’s place to dictate whose morals people are to follow. If you don’t agree with polygamy, don’t marry someone that has other spouses.

  8. “…until the young men who were shut out of the marriage thing started getting thrown out of town lest they present a threat to the older guys on claiming the wimmins.”

    I’d say this was the original downfall of polygamy–it wasn’t because women rose up and demanded equality, but the younger sons were tired of not gettin’ none and the old farts haveing it all and not able to use it.

    And it wouldn’t surprize me if it was instigated by younger wives who were tired of being the brunt of the senior wife’s animosity, and had eyes for their husband’s oldest son.

  9. but the younger sons were tired of not gettin’ none and the old farts haveing it all and not able to use it.

    And it wouldn’t surprize me if it was instigated by younger wives who were tired of being the brunt of the senior wife’s animosity, and had eyes for their husband’s oldest son.

    Yes to the fact that it’s shameful (if predictable) that action wasn’t taken until males became the topic of discussion. However, as I understand it (I kinda got obsessed when they moved to my state) the boys basically get thrown out not because they’re not getting any, but because they’re about to be old enough to think about it.

    It’s simple math. Warren Jeffs teaches that each man must have at least three wives to get into heaven. Just to make that work, you have to eliminate two out of three males. So the story that you hear over and over again is some 12 or 13 year-old boy found wandering on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere. He was accused of some heinous offense like showing his forearms or watching TV, summarily excomunicated, driven to the highway and dumped like an unwanted dog. Their parents won’t even talk to them on the phone because they know they’ll get excommunicated, too.

    They have absolutely no fucking idea how to survive in modern society, they’re absolutely terrified because they’ve gone from a very tightly-knit and pathologically controlling family atmosphere to being a 12 year-old on their own in Salt Lake City or somesuch. They’ve been told their entire lives that Satan walks freely everywhere outside their community (and some of them have literally never been outside the community) and they know that they are going to burn in the literal eternal hell they’ve believed in fervently their entire lives. They often end up as prostitutes.

    Jeffs also pulls this shit with adult men–you piss him off, fail to show enough respect, balk at letting some 73 year-old lech marry your 12 year-old daughter (Jeffs approves all marriages, and arranges many of them), or even look like you might be a threat to his power, and elders show up at your house the next day, tell you that you’ve been excommunicated, your wives and children have been “re-assigned” (seriously–that’s their word for it) to another man, and you have 12 hours to get the fuck out of town.

    None of this is to say that the boys and men have it anywhere nearly as bad as the girls and women. They still come out way ahead–fuck, at least they get out of the abuse factory. But I know waaay too much about this shit so I thought I’d share a piece that might not be common knowlege and could shed a little light on this particular sector of the Patriarchotron.

  11. So what is the crux of the problem here – is it polygamy or is it underage girls being forced into marriages with lechorous old goats?

    If it is polygamy that is the issue, then why should society intervene in mutually consensual adult relationships?

    What is worrying people here?

  13. Yup. I have no (legal) beef with polyamory (of any form). It’s the child molestation that I have a problem with.

  14. Personally, I take umbrage at the idea of forced polygamy. The concept of polyamory doesn’t bother me; it’s the patriarchical system of belief that says that men deserve more than one wife; it’s the system of ownership, almost, that goes on in these fundamentalist Mormon societies that bothers me.

    Although the child molestation certainly doesn’t help.

  15. Sounds like it’s about time to send in the Army again.

    You know, the current conservative swing in this country could work for us here.

    A cult.. and ungodly cult… Spread the word, call the Churches!

    On the second thought, maybe there’s a less evil solution.

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