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There Are 85 Responses So Far. »

1. 1 Comment by D Simmons on 23 May 2008:

   The self proclaimed “feminist” Hugh Hefner and his girls, enter that as evidence as well.

2. 2 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 23 May 2008:

   Very sound, TJF.

   May I add that we are in the throes of a moral panic about “child abuse” that has given rise to an industry that, once created, has taken on a life of its own.

   True, there are horror stories about parental abuse that would curl your hair, and no doubt justify state intervention even in libertarian eyes. But we have created a system that requires tale-bearing to the authorities, endows them with arbitrary power, and is constantly abused.

   It is always the horror stories that support Leviathan’s power grabs, whether it’s drugs, child abuse, money laundering, global warming or human rights violations. We Americans are suckers for “There oughta be a law . . . ”

   If people begin to think there oughta be, there will be, and by the time Leviathan is done, you won’t like the results.

3. 3 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 23 May 2008:

   A great essay – Dr. Fleming nails it!

4. 4 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 23 May 2008:

   Great post, and thanks for saying what many have been thinking.

   I too find it disturbing that some want to place polygamy and gay marriage on the same level. “Gay marriage” is a product of the modern Left set on destroying our ancestral institutions; polygamy has been around since the beginning of time. The Greeks and Romans, for example, acknowledged the institution of polygamy (as they witnessed it among the Macedonians, et al.), although they, rightly, generally chose not to follow it. But they never would have dreamed of acknowledging the legitimacy of a self-contradictory notion like “gay marriage,” even though they were tolerant of certain homosexual practices.

5. 5 Comment by CPR on 23 May 2008:

   “Let us cut the hypocrisy. America, as a society, is dedicated to the sexual exploitation of women. The only “crime ” committed by the Fundamentalist Mormons is their commitment to marriage.” -CPR

   That’s what the attack is on covertly marriage, agreed. I suspect the Greco-Roman one man one woman marriage standard adopted or underscored by St. Paul is failing so miserably today with the astronomical divorce rates on account of unintelligent (at best half-baked) modernism that really only sees one side of the coin and expecting that 1/2 is the whole coin. Sort of what the educational system has become today in viewing boys in co-ed classrooms more as defective females, rather than who they are as males and what their needs are.

   I doubt a female instructor’s classroom demonstration of how to unfold a condom over a banana for all to see covers what the boys need educationally. In my opinion an authority figure like a teacher doing that in front of young teens or even older teenagers in a co-ed classroom is disgusting and demeaning and probably even traumatic and thus ‘abusive.’ (I hope they don’t but I’m also wondering do they also demonstrate sponge insertion?)

   And marriage is best when respected be the tradition monogamy or whether it is polygamy. People forget marriage is about the children and what is in their interest until their brains and nervous systems have fully formed and matured, which by the way doesn’t happen in either gender until around 20. What that means is that experience is still writing in a child’s not yet hardened cement (physiology) what will remain there once it has hardened. That can be a very sad (on account of trauma) or a happy fact (on account of peace in the formative years.)

   I have read that most men in the middle east have two wives their first and thirty-odd years later their second and the marriage unit inclusive of both wives and the subsequent additional children remains happily intact. I think the issue is respecting marriage as the vehicle for the protection of children first and foremost and ought to be our conscious focus. There was no evidence that these LDS marriages did not do that even if the brides were still teenagers.

   Once the female begins her menstrual cycle mother Nature seems to be saying as long as it is not traumatic you are now capable of bearing children. If she or we care about our children that means, we also care about marriage.

6. 6 Comment by TJF on 23 May 2008:

   On the subject of polygamy:

   In America today, I do not see that there is any basis for outlawing polygamy. It certainly cannot be Christian moral law: Christianity can scarcely be mentioned in a public school or government building, and there is hardly any aspect of Christian morality that is enforced by law, even if there are still statutes on the books that retain the impress of the Christians who passed the law. When is the last time that adultery or fornication were punished as such? Prostitution is illegal in most places–with what justification I cannot imagine–but two consenting adults can do pretty much anything in the privacy of one of their homes. Military officers are occasionally punished for adultery, usually with someone under their command or at least in the same service,but that is a question of military discipline . A Michigan court has ruled that the penalty for adultery could be a life sentence, but I know of no one in Michigan serving time for seducing his neighbor’s wife. After the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, upholding a right to privacy, adultery became a dead letter. Then, if adultery is not a crime, how can polygamy be punished? A bigamist who lies to his wives is one thing; he may well be regarded as having tricked his second wife into a contractual relationship. But a man who lives openly with two women has, in the eyes of American law today, committed no crime. With the support of a few more Muslim immigrants, the LDS itself might well end its temporary prohibition on polygamy.

7. 7 Comment by A Mormon on 23 May 2008:

   Dr. Fleming

   I appreciate your acknowledgement that the greater issue here is the encroachment of the state. The comparison to homosexuality is ridiculous, but it is all too common especially with homosexual marriage being discussed so often.

   A couple of small points. I don’t know if there are many Mormons on welfare in Utah, but if they are it is contrary to the teachings of the church. The welfare system of the church is designed to promote self sufficiency–job training etc.–while keeping members off the government dole.

   And while there are always exceptions in any large organization, I don’t think you would find many Warren Jeffs types in leadership positons in the LDS church. He and some of the others strike me as individuals who got kicked around their whole lives and have created a situation where they can finally wield power over those who have a limited ability to resist. Brigham Young had no sympathy for these types. He was much more sympathetic to women who had limited means to change their circumstance, than to reprobate men who would not honor their priesthood and provide for their families.

8. 8 Comment by A Mormon on 23 May 2008:

   Dr. Fleming

   Some comments concerning your last post. Even if it were legal, I don’t know if it would be reinstituted in the church. There are a couple of issues here. We believe that polygamy has to be commanded of the Lord to be licit. Otherwise the commandment is one wife. (This is similar to the prohibition of alcohol. We have been commanded to not drink alcohol, but do not maintain that this has been the Lord’s standard at all times for all people.)

   There is also a principle of restoration, that is we believe that all rites and ordinances that the Lord has commanded since Adam will be present for at least some period during this dispensation of the fulness of times. Whether the practice of polygamy in the 19th century was sufficient or whether it is to be reinstituted, we do not know. As an example, we believe that the economic principle of having all things in common practiced by the early church is of the Lord. Yet, we still live a lesser law–tithing–at the present time. Bottom line, we believe the Lord in His wisdom will command His church.

9. 9 Comment by TJF on 23 May 2008:

   I fully agree with “A Mormon” that most Mormons are hard-working and self-reliant people and that these habits are encouraged by the LDS church. Not every Mormon, however, follows this teaching. One of my informants was an intelligent Mormon lady who played an important role in Utah education. She was horrified to learn, for example, how many comparatively affluent families, because of their size, were able to take advantage of free school lunch programs. This is more a matter, I think, of human nature and the depravity of modern times, than of any particular religious group, and I heartily endorse the statement that there are few Warren Jeffs in the LDS leadership.

   Having defended polygamy as a natural and not depraved institution, I would not at all endorse it either from the Christian or the natural point of view. When I was doing a lot of comparative study of social institutions, I discovered that in Africa and the Middle East, polygynous households had many problems. In many African societies, the man is caught on the horns of a dilemma: If his wives do not get along, his life is made miserable by their quarreling, and if they do get along, they often conspire against their husband, and may administer non-lethal doses of poison if he beats one of them. Polygamy does not encourage the sort of loyalty and intimacy that many monogamous couples develop. Finally, the authority of Christ, St. Paul, and the practice of the early Church are against it. Having said all that, I do believe it is possible for polygamous families to be quite close and to lead decent lives, and I have no doubt that as kooky as they may seem, the women in 19th century Mormon families and even the wives of Warren Jeffs are far better off than the girls who grow up learning their moral lessons from Sex in the City. (A young woman on Long Island is now alleging that she was led into early promiscuity after watching the show.)

   The comparison of polygamy with homosexuality is not only ridiculous but disgusting. It is like saying that, because eating too much meat may be as dangerous as eating excrement, meat-eating is on par with coprophilia. Most natural men, if left to their inclinations, would either take a second or third wife or, at least, take a mistress. According to the rule often known as the “Coolidge effect” (after a famous anecdote told of Silent Cal), men are more sexually active when they have a variety of partners. While it may be impractical or immoral to act on this impulse, it is perfectly natural. In nature, males seek power primarily to have more access to the food and females that enable them to pass on more of their genes to future generations. That insight is at the basis of sociobiology.

10. 10 Comment by Edward on 23 May 2008:

    The only thing polygamy and ‘gay marriage’ have in common is that both are not traditional marriage in the Christian sense. What I don’t understand is why liberals can exhibit more moral outrage than Jonathan Edwards towards polygamists while simultaneously clamoring for ‘gay marriage.’ I have never heard an argument for ‘gay marriage’ that does not also justify polygamy or even incest. People just can’t seem to understand that if the language ‘one man and one woman’ is discriminatory then so is limiting the union to only two people. If the norm in this country is that everything is okay as long as the parties involved are consenting adults, which it seems to be, then I agree with TJF that there is certainly no modern justification for outlawing polygamy in America. People today, modern conservatives and libertarians included, will probably not invoke any Christian moral law because once you do, a plethora of other popular practices come into question. So the day I see a popular movement to outlaw divorce in this country, especially no-fault divorce, or maybe even cohabitation, fornication, and adultery if we’re really trying to be serious, then I will be perfectly content with the condemnation of polygamy.

11. 11 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 23 May 2008:

    By the way, I wasn’t endorsing polygamy – Christianity and 2,000 years of occidental tradition forbid it – but only agreeing with Dr. Fleming that it shouldn’t be grouped with “gay marriage.”

12. 12 Comment by TJF on 23 May 2008:

    Yes, I understood that. My response was directed in fact to CPR whose remarks suggested enthusiasm for polygamy. And, I should add a hearty Amen to Edward.

13. 13 Comment by A Mormon on 23 May 2008:

    Dr. Fleming

    Believe it or not we are in almost perfect agreement. All the things you mentioned can be the result of polygamy. Most–I don’t know about the poisoning–had examples in the 19th century church. This is why it appears that the practice is tied to the priesthood, and practiced only then by commandment of the Lord. It was never to be the Lord’s law for all people at all times. But with the attributes that a humble servant of the Lord demonstrates, polygamy can somehow serve the Lord’s purposes for man. Again I’m not saying that it was always practiced as such in the 19th century, but this was the object.

14. 14 Comment by Rublev's Dog on 23 May 2008:

    One of the myriad beauties of Christianity is how it returns the natural order back to God’s original design. In the beginning, “a man shall cleave to his wife (singular) and the twain shall be one flesh.” Jesus quoted this to the Pharisees, and Paul cites it again as depicting the mystical relationship between Christ and His Church.

    The polygymous practice of many men including the Old Testament Patriarchs was not sinful per se, but was less than God’s ideal and, as Scripture testified on more than one occasion, wrought with many attendant problems. Christ and His Apostles have restored order, so to speak, for those who will obey it.

    That said, Dr. Fleming’s point is accurate: anti-polygymy laws are baseless and, in this particular empire, plumb silly.

15. 15 Pingback by ADF Alliance Alert » Texas schizophrenia: “married” children seized while condoms are promoted in schools - go figure on 23 May 2008:

    [...] Fleming has this commentary titled, Texas: Exes and Sexes, at Chronicles Magazine that is sure to raise eyebrows. But, it is certainly provocative.  Here is [...]

16. 16 Comment by Tom Piatak on 23 May 2008:

    An excellent essay.

17. 17 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 23 May 2008:

    I have long suspected that many of the smarter advocates of gay marriage relish the fact that their opponents group gay marriage in with polygamy. Unlike the idea of gay marriage, polygamy has been around and institutionalized (albeit on a small scale) since the beginning of time, and, by associating gay marriage with it, gay marriage gains an implicit historical legitimacy it would not otherwise have.

18. 18 Comment by R. Cort Kirkwood on 23 May 2008:

    Very good point, Mr. Roberts.

19. 19 Comment by J. Roberts on 23 May 2008:

    Interesting article but I have to voice a little protest here to some of the posters. The notion that Texas Child Protective Services is full of “radical feminists” is a hoot. Also, the notion that public school teachers in San Angelo, Texas are teaching kids to put condoms on bananas is so far fetched that it is ludicrous. I don’t believe for one minute that pregnant 13 and 14 year old girls is something that we should disregard and it is a little shocking that supposed “conservatives” are A-OK with it. It’s disgusting. Perhaps you are unaware that the Third Court of Appeals is based in Austin, Texas and is in fact well staffed with feminists and left wingers. So the people you believe are behind this great conspiracy are actually the ones that are sending the kids back to the ranch. Interesting strategy.

    No, the real problem is this. Tex. CPS is a government agency. It has certain policies and procedures defined by law. It has a very inflexible government agency mentality. It is used to dealing with abuse and neglect in single family (more or less) homes and dealing with one set of kids and parents at a time. It has no rules, procedures, guidelines for dealing with allegations of abuse in group, communal, multiple family type situations. The cookie cutter one size fits all mentality has run up against a brick wall of multiple families, cult-style brainwashing and discipline, 400 plus kids, a lot of money and an army of highly paid lawyers, some of the best in Texas. This case was doomed from the beginning.

20. 20 Comment by Scotsbard on 23 May 2008:

    All you say, Mr. Devin, is right, but ultimately women get hurt far worse than men in these matters. Real hurt, not merely with legal stupidities, costly as they may become, but in their natures. Feminism is an attack on the feminine by using the vulnerability of women to make them try to act as if they were men; the thought of women functioning as bullies would not so long ago have sounded bizarre. I believe that was what Dr. Fleming was implying.

21. 21 Comment by CPR on 23 May 2008:

    “Yes, I understood that. My response was directed in fact to CPR whose remarks suggested enthusiasm for polygamy.” TJF @ # 12

    My thanks for your reply. I have heard it said that in harmonious, principled and religious polygamy there is no bond stronger than between women who actually do marry and actually do love the same man. And that also the women have other female company and thus friends at hand in a communal setting. Thus she is not hungry for “him” to have to be or become another woman as in the monongamous marriage unless and until she needs him to be a man. That probably puts too much of a burden then on both parties, UNLESS Christ and the Holy Ghost have deemed it preferable and doable possibly for those very reasons? It can’t very easily and naturally be done without the divine involved?

    But I also agree with the Mormons (whom I respect) the commands and presencing of the divine albeit absolute in and of itself in relationship with the temporal and human in meeting us wherein we are in a given time tend to be kind and adjust in spirit via the Holy Ghost to what is correspondingly best. I think all of Christianity is terrific and wonderful but so far I tend toward the Catholicism in which I was raised with a number two preference for the Mormon.

    I think they ‘rock’ when they’re doing their thing under God or divine, at their best. They’re good people. It’s the one thing I actually liked about Romney. I figured he couldn’t be ‘all’ bad. (humor)

22. 22 Comment by raven on 23 May 2008:

    Any female posters here?

23. 23 Comment by Jon W. on 23 May 2008:

    Thomas Fleming’s article should be in every American newspaper this Sunday, but you’ll know they would remove his last, and most poignant sentence: “The only “crime ” committed by the Fundamentalist Mormons is their commitment to marriage.”

    This is a case about “juvenile” code, where the feminazi’s (the term first shouted by Limblow, it launched him to mega rich talk show blabber) operate in full, without shame. Can any women as a public official be shamed? Not possible, but I digress.

    The Appellate court case of Texas (3rd) illustrates the collusion of feminazism that is the hall mark of the entire Judicial branch. The case was brought on behalf of mothers. Cases involving more constitutional and relevent violations of law were not heard. This is by design. The ruling only dealt with 25% of the total children seized. Husbands-Fathers are the natural guardians of children. Mothers obtain the title of “natural guardian” only upon the death of the natural guardian, or, he has been stripped of his natural guardianship for having abandoned the family, abused or neglected his family. Even unmarried fathers are the “natural guardians”, and they obtain that title by “upholding his child”.

    This is why all modern day landmark decisions, the Federal and State superior courts, by their desire to decieve the public, take on cases only when a mother’s role in marriage is represented, and in particular, when the “natural guardian” is dead. The only reason this case was taken and announced to the media is because it has little to do with facts, but is has everything to do with protecting the State actions.

    Troxelle v Granville was the last U.S. Supreme Court case dealing with “parental rights”. The only reason the Washington Supreme Court declared their legislature’s statute for “grandparents visitation rights” unconstitutional, and the only reason the Federal feminazi’s guided this case to the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal system, was because the “natural guardian” (father) was dead. The case involved a mother, who was exercising her new found authority by defying the State of Washington’s law to grant visitation to the children’s paternal grandparents. Mother rules!

    The appellate court decision in Texas is shaky on numerous grounds. It doesn’t order Texas to do anything, really. The decision was clever, in that it contained ‘no decision’ in law that I could find. If any “vermin” (lawyers were given the title “vermin” by the original colony of Massachusets) wishes to refute my claim, then explain why it did not order the immediate return of the children. I know the answer, the vermin do as well. It had everything to do with Texas law and nothing to do with their Constitution.

    If it were a family court case, this court would have ordered the father to “visit” the property of the State (children), would have redistributed his property, removed him at gun point from his home, seized his bank account to pay for the “mother’s” lawyers and the court ordered “guardian ad litum”, parenting expeditor and other court appointed child snatchers, garnished half of his post-taxed income, and would kill him if he approached the bench without counsel.

    In every state in the “union”, one only need locate the first instance when the phrase “in the best interests of children” in a divorce action was used to document when the judicial branch, in violation of the seperation of powers, made law abolishing the natural guardianship of fathers in direct conflict with their state’s law.

    I’m a believer in Christ Jesus and the whole Bible. Though I’m not a Catholic, I recognize that animous toward Catholic fathers by egaltarianists/socialists of the late 19th century was used to blame them for the poverty of children in America’s first economic depression. The persecution of “Catholic” fathers in New York began in earnest in the 1880s. With the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935, AFDC, Tanf and the fraudulent Republican “welfare reform” by Newt “the heretic” Gingrich, police power’s developed by the modern Empire enforces the new world order, where children are the property of the State. Texas painted U.S. Army vehicles to surround the compoud, snipers were posted, SWAT teams in place, armored vehicles circling the “compound” and helicopters circling above, the nations legal system was on display. The Texas attorney Genderal had one purpose and only one purpose. It was a message to fathers, most particularly “believers in christ”, those Catholic men and protestant men who might claim a right of parenthood, if you please, as Gays are elevated in law above the natural guardian in law, social welfare policy and status.

    The message to every American father was clear. If you even think that you have rule of law protecting your inaliable and fundamental liberty right to the care and custody of children, you will be annihilated. Janet Reno, America’s most infamous feminazi totalitarian chose to use Federal troops to burn resisters, and their families alive. The polygamists were chosen so ALL american slaves could get the image “burned” in their minds.

    I know of one resister, of many thousands, who appears before a magistrate feminazi on each and every occasion and crumples up the “court order” and tosses it at their feet. He has served more time in jail and prison than most if not all women found guilty of murdering children. He has served the equivelant of several years in “jail” on trumped up “civil constructive contempt” charges alone. He has been dragged to prison to serve a two year sentence on trumped up felony charges for failing to pay his court ordered “child support”, where a pettyfogger under contract with the State IV-D scheme obtains his “intervenor” status by fraud, legal deception in violation of several Constitutional prohibitions obtaining his “authority”. Upon claiming to find him guilty of “felony” non-support, and after having served his time in a state penetentary, the appellate court found him “not guilty”, thanks to a non-lawyers who must go to great lengths, including tazor and gun toting provacatours, to educate the “legal profession” on the law. The Appellate court ruled in favor of us “non-lawyers”, but only after he had served his time in prison. They reversed his conviction without reaching any of the merits of his appeal. This was done to “hide” their practice of child trafficking. This man, with several others, are prominantly displayed on the “brown shirt’s” “most wanted” list in the county in which they live. Rapists, murderers and drug dealers are outnumbered by “obligors” on the S.S. website’s most wanted page. The media paints the Court as child savers, the custodial parent designated by a robed pharisee is a “victim” and the natural guardian is painted as a vial human being, far worse than any polygamist who drags young girls to his “rape chambers” (Bill O’Reilly).

    Vicious, cruel government of this kind must, I think, be under the judgement and providence of God. I now appreciate the gruesome scenes of Revelation awaiting Christ’s justice and judgement. I used to believe that Revelation was more fiction, than fact. That childish belief has been stamped out of my soul.

    I have no doubt where the grapes of wrath are stored.

    The “organized” church is silent. Protestant and Catholic leadership…. DEAD (spiritually) silent. “babes and women” will rule over you…….

    Domestic violence statutes are defined in my state code under “family law”, because in order to throw men in prison or control their movement without a shred of criminal procedure to protect liberty and the innocent, you merely claim a “fear of child or family harm” in order to deny him “visitation” with State children. The right to face your accuser is “archaic law”, to quote a prosecutor. The judge, a useful idiot, nods in approval. (He doesn’t want to be on “record”, of course).

    Socio-fascism has it’s roots in “public policy”. It was Nazi Germany’s public policy to “Preserve the German culture, and promote the Aryan Race”, that gave legal authority for courts to assign yellow Stars on a select group of german citizenship. Designated persons could then be identified to request that they provide information about their children and property. The “final solution” was implemented under colour of law. At Nuremburg, the Judges on trial had only one defense: “Everthing we did was legal, and you (his American prosecutor) knew exactly what we were doing.”

    The only defense I have heard from an esteemed, Honorable District Court judge to explain their authority in these matters was lifted from the defense statements by their brethren at Nuremberg, “everything we did (do) is legal”.

    Christ will be the judge of that, my friends.

    Mark my words, the State of Texas will solidify their authority and power to kill anyone who defies their definition of a “parent”, no matter what the final outcome of this case will be. The demons who control the legal system are in complete, total control.

    There are judges and a few lawyers who know what is going on. If you knew what they do to fathers in family court, you’ll grasp the peril any ABA member who defies the “demon”. They will place “child porn” in their desks and wisk them away. They have good reason to bow to their master, Satan. They will be treated far worse than a father asserting his Constitutional, God given rights. With no one in the community to back him up, the “christian”, he is left without any protection. I don’t blame them entirely. In chambers or in court, they reveal themselves by the language and tenor of their words. I had a criminal court judge in a civil constructive contempt hearing of a pro se litigant we coached go to great lengths to lecture (we in the audience) of his knowledge of “criminal law”, and his concern about his knowledge of “welfare law”. He had everyone removed from his court to be frisked after his opening lecture. They are not looking for weapons, my friends. They are looking for “recording devices”. He did not find any, but his crime was recorded nonetheless.

    When they see proper legal defense, without “state” designated representation, to county actions against innocents, the court room is filled with plain clothes policemen, FBI agents and retired officers armed to the teeth. The “believers” are armed with something far more dangerous, “the truth” and the law. The court record is altered, in nearly every case, by order of the Judge to their “clerks” (transcriptionists, tape recording directors).

    If you desire to restore America, and devolve it’s “empire” to within it’s lawful borders, physical and constitutional, I suggest you pray that the “natural family” be restored. No area of constitutional malfeasance and non-feasance in “federalisms” misguided power can be diminished and reigned in until the family is recognized as an institution worth defending.

    This will be my last post so this forum can return to the Chronicle’s primary purpose. I’ll enjoy reading it, a safe haven from internet news magazine garbage. I apologise for the diversion from it’s purpose. The restoration of the natural family is the only beacon, dim as it is, that will establish a proper order of civil society to thwart and slow down the march toward global tyranny. We have very little time. In fact, I would argue it’s over…. but that is a waste of time.

    Mr. Fleming’s words are a testimony to wisdom. The Appellate Court decision of Texas in Austin is judicial corruption. It did not contain much in the way of law or guidence that I could find.
    This demonstration of tyranny by the State of Texas is a long way from being settled, and I’ll bet any Senator’s federal pension plan that 1), the right to the State to seize children will not be changed 2) some “perverted” interpretation of “due process of law” that Justice O’Conner developed will be used to dilute law and excuse the District Court Judge’s actions if the seizure is argued on “procedural” grounds (but it won’t get there) 3) the “guardianship” of children will be reserved for women only in all subsequent decisions, because any legal action by a father will be dismissed 4) all appeals by the fathers of these children will be dismissed in some form or another 5) Any Federal case that arises from this mess will not include the word “father” anywhere in their decision, and 6) the case will focus on what constitutes “imminent harm”, terms of art only a feminist can dream and define. Terms of art are changable, as frequent and predictable as hot flashes and menstrual cycles of the womyn who rule 7) Any references to allegations of “criminal” activity by the State will be burned the ABA will make sure all media information is filtered to reflect “opinion”, but not law 9) the state police is well rehearsed for use in Denver and St. Paul for the summer political conventions 10) the “petition for habeous corpus” in another case of the poly’s pending in court was either dismissed, ignored, I have not heard nor seen the disposition of that “petition”, and the reason for the Appellate court to snuff it out, it was a writ that contained law that damned the State.. The feminist lawyers case was the ONLY one that was publicized or published. They silenced “legal appeals”, or appeals that contained actual law with this hasty, pathetic decision….

24. 24 Comment by lemon on 23 May 2008:

    I don’t think there are female posters here. But here’s one. I think that Mr. Fleming is right about this.

    I have an anecdote. One of my great grandmothers was 16yrs when she married my great grandfather. He was 36yrs. They weren’t mormons or polygamists. They were Epicopalians.

    I think it actually would be much better if many or most women married and had children at a younger age than now. But I’m not in favor of cutting a young woman’s youth short altogether, either.

25. 25 Comment by roho on 23 May 2008:

    First they came for the insane. Then they came for the Gypsies. Then they came for the Jews. Then they came for anyone!

    Seizing children was called building the “Hitler Youth Corps”. What does Bush call it?

    I want even drive through Texas after Waco and this!

26. 26 Comment by David Collins on 24 May 2008:

    I’m mystified by Mr. Wilson’s comment in #25. Are you being ironic? Is this an inside joke? Did somebody else take the name of Clyde Wilson?

27. 27 Comment by Hans Lundahl on 24 May 2008:

    When King David was dying, they tried to heat him with a young virgin.

    In pagan Athens, 14 – 15 year old virgins marrying was common, 12 – 13 year old not common, but far from regarded as abnormal.

    Puberty (in the physical sense, not to be confounded with adolescence crisis) IS a natural limit for marital age. 25 or something is a natural limit for running a farm on your own, but most married couples don’t have to do that.

    In Russian grammar, the word dyevoushka is used for unmarried virgins between 12 and 30 … at the latter age limit a virgin becomes a stara dyeva, a spinster. 12 is a pretty avergae age for female puberty.

    In Spain, one hundred years ago, the marital ages were 12 and 14. This seems to go back to Roman legislation, at least in so far that Roman law accepted 14 year old husbands.

    I seem to recall that the future Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were 16 and 14 when married. And that Hedvig/Iadviga of Poland(Pol. spelling Jadwiga) was 12 when marrying Lithuanian prince Iagiello.

    As for raising large families on welfare money … well, if everyone did it, wellfare might run out, but would it be a necessarily disastrous loss? As a matter of fact, everyone is not doing it, and why not people from the ethnic majority? After all, declaring the young wives illigitimate mothers and taxing people for welfare distribution might not have been their idea, and if they bear the burden, why not let them take the advantages too?

28. 28 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 24 May 2008:

    No 25 is obviously an impostor. My old and honoured friend Tom Fleming is not at all pompous.

29. 29 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 24 May 2008:

    No. 26. Don’t blame Texas. Waco was done by the FBI and BATF.
    Had the sheriff or Texas Rangers been left in charge, it would not have happened. I dare say that if the compound had been in New Jersey or Ohio the feds would never have attacked it, but they have always felt free to kill people in the South (with media approval). As far as the state “child protecftion” bureaucracy goes, all these things were created by and under the orders of the federal Congress, bureaucracy, and courts.

30. 30 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 24 May 2008:

    If Barack Obama is elected president, after he sets up his PC regime in DC (or rather, expands the already existing one) and begins his liberal quest to slay the dragons of inequality and social injustice, Waco, I’m afraid, will seem like the quaint good old days. (Not that McCain is any better; his dragons will just be overseas.)

31. 31 Comment by JMB on 24 May 2008:

    “And yet, here we have a state agency seizing a large group of children on the grounds that teenage girls are having sex with a man they regard as their husband and to whom they have promised fidelity.”

    It is an open question as to whether these girls willingly regard these men as their respective husband/s. A young girl, who has been pressured and conditioned to believe a man thrice her age is the man to whom she is divinely betrothed, is not in a position to make a sound decision at the wee age of 13 years old.

    To all but justify the continued existence of an environment that is coercive and prejudicial to the development of young girls into healthy and well-balanced women on the grounds that polygamy furthers the cause of marriage and the family, is well, astounding. If polygamy were a healthy union, perhaps, but history (ancient and recent) shows that polygamy gives rise to all sorts of headaches and problems for not only the individuals and children involved but the society in which it exists. Indeed, there is a reason why polygamy exists, even in the arab muslim world, on the fringes of society–it is normally practiced and maintained by controlling men and generations of brainwashed women, the sorts of people who can not get along with everyone else, for all their wife-stealing and such.

    Remember that Mormon polygamy, the same sort practiced by this “sect” is only in line with the sort of sexual incontinence practiced and magically, “divinely” sanctioned by the bumpkin Joseph Smith. The historical record demonstrates that polygamy was his ruse to bed wives and daughters of other men. He was a sheister, a controlling and sexually consumed meglomaniac, not unlike that illiterate moon-god worshipping buffoon who raped and pillaged and wed something like 15 wives, all while founding the great scourge of humanity, Islam. Mohammad and Joseph Smith, and probably at least some of today’s polygamist remnant, are all about control and sexual power over women; they are certainly not driven by some enlightened desire to see marriage and the family “win the victory”.

32. 32 Comment by Bot on 24 May 2008:

    Check the county records. None of the FLDS received welfare. They are completely self-supporting. They even home-school their children.
    They paid over $100,000 in real estate taxes, receiving virtually no (other than the roads) benefit.

    Think of what our taxes would be if the welfare queens in Dallas and Houston would be self-supporting.

33. 33 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 24 May 2008:

    One doesn’t have to find the FLDS way of life endearing to question the righteousness of government thugs descending on a community and seizing all its children. If you empower the gummint to right every wrong, perceived or real, by force, expect the SWAT Team at your door sooner rather than later.

34. 34 Comment by Allen Wilson on 24 May 2008:

    You have a point, JMB, but polygamy goes way back before the butcher and child molester Mohammed. It wasn’t originally about sexual control or sexual power over women in the ancient middle east.

    Certainly, there are real problems with it, but it was part of stable and civilised cultures for many centuries. That’s not to say that it’s desirable, but it’s not necessarilt illegitimate.

    Of course, when fifty or sixty year old men are in the habit of marrying young girls, and even the parents have little or no say in the matter, then there is a big problem, but that’s more of an aspect of general domination of society by a repressive elite than anything else.

35. 35 Comment by TJF on 24 May 2008:

    I think most respondents have firmly grasped the point: We are not justifying polygamy in general or the FLDS in particular but trying to put their weirdness in a context that includes American mores and the predatory behavior of government agencies. Child protection agencies have repeatedly attempted to take children away from families whose only “crimes” were being Christian and teaching the children at home.

36. 36 Comment by TJF on 24 May 2008:

    PS, the idea that these marriages are invalid because teenage girls cannot consent to sex or marriage requires a good deal of justification or rather ignorance. Yes, a girl can be socially pressured into marrying at 15, but she can also be pressured into having sex with someone when she is 12. She can also be pressured, socially, into rejecting her family’s religion and moral values. Most Americans, indeed, are pressured into thinking they have to vote for either Barack Obama or John McCain or think the latest Lucas/Spielberg garbage is great entertainment, or watch American Idol? American culture is an infinite regression to moronic vulgarity. Do these people actually choose their “lifestyles”? Better to be a good Muslim’s third wife than a gangbanger’s “Ho’”

37. 37 Comment by MAR on 24 May 2008:

    Fleming: “… the predatory behavior of government agencies.”

    On a related note, I was looking at the sexual predators database recently in my area, and I was surprised to find many young men in it around the ages of 18 – 20 who had intercourse with girls around the ages of 15 – 16. Sure, these guys should have found something more productive to be doing with their time – in more civilized times, they would have had a father or uncle to beat some sense into them – but their futures now are completely ruined. They have been labeled with one of the most damning condemnations in American society: sexual predator. It’s perfectly legal to walk down the street and murder one’s unborn child, but if a 19 year old guy sleeps with a 16 year old girl, well, he’s going to be stigmatized for the rest of his life. Crazy.

38. 38 Comment by robert m. peters on 24 May 2008:

    Dr. Fleming,

    Your post number 33 summarizes this issue and much more. The last line of post 33 says more than an entire treatise on the subject.

39. 39 Comment by CPR on 24 May 2008:

    I hate to say this – just delete – if off point. Remember when Clinton balanced the budget BECAUSE he was juxtapositioned with a Republican Congress. (I pointed that out when posting on the old SF site.) … Then, especially if McWar chooses Romney as a running ‘mate’ – I may do the unthinkable and vote [period] & for the Republican in order to juxtaposition a Republican AGAINST the ensuing Democratic Congress. It may be the last meaningful since effective form of checks & balances. Right? If the politicians keep printing the money unchecked to get elected, you might as well just start wallpapering your walls with $100 paper bills for all they’ll be worth – anyway. I hope Senator Rockefeller in hugging Barak is also whispering a bit of reality into his Ear? Pat’s being a gold & silver bug may have come of age, even if some the married young girls haven’t yet. At least they’re married and not Ho’s. Sorry if this was off the wall.

40. 40 Comment by Jon W. on 24 May 2008:

    Again, TJF wisdom prevails when making the point about valid and invalid marriages. The State of Texas did not enforce their laws regarding marriage, where the states have taken it upon themselves to regulate who can marry. These laws are quite old in legislative history, where the states regulated who could marry for health reasons, and limiting the age of consent to marry by young people to protect the parent’s children from male predators who lured their young daughters to the barn loft to consumate the relationship without parental consent or knowledge. It used to be that if a young “daughter” was lured away from a father by a 50 year old man, the father would impose his familial marshal law by escorting the man to the end of the property by shotgun, or simply blowing the man away if his pants were pulled down. It was not the best of times, but it was far better times than what society represents today. Fathers, particularly when dragged from their homes and children by tyrannical legal systems, are not present in the home to protect their children from anyone, or anything. Matriarchy is regressive, not progressive. Matriarchy creates barbaric societies. Even a dog knows this.

    Arizona, a state that enforces it’s laws, had a man from the Texas compound in their jurisdiction and under probation for violating their child sexual predator laws when he was found guilty for attempting to lure young girls into his marital den (I think that was the related charge). Texas CPS and police created a “false” police report, naming the man in residence and on court supervision in another state to give the court the impression he was in Texas violating someone or some thing, in order to stage their “endangerment” claim to seize the children. The man was “interviewed” by the police by phone from the perps probationary residence. They also had been in contact with his parole officer in Arizona. These actions do not give police, CPS or the Judge immunity, for they knowingly lied in order to justify their “takings”. But you will never find law applied to the law. CPS, local cops, prosecutors and Judges operate near completely outside the law, because all of their actions are “secret”.

    I was arrested, beaten and detained for simply requesting to review my “child support record” to obtain some facts for an upcoming hearing in family court. How could this be, you ask? The police had been told that I had threatened the person behind the bullet proof glass. They came, and they operated, without asking a question. I was sitting alone, reading an NRA magazine found on the table of the Hennepin County child support system office. Courts claim that my “children’s right to privacy” would be violated if their father, designated by a black robed devil as “joint legal guardian” in a no-fault dissolution order, would see his records for child support. Be it family law or juvenile law, the actions of CPS, police, county sherriff or court are “secret”. The most prolific law being shoved through your state legislature today is records and privacy law. All of it is designed to protect public officials, to keep all records away from the public, so the Judicial branch and members of the executive branch who seize and control children can conceal their actions upon “their” children from being known to the public, and more importantly, they share only that information with the media and public so as to denigrate anyone who apposes them.

    A group of friends and I requested from the Minn DOT a list of the names and addresses of all persons whose “driver’s licenses” were suspended for failing to pay child support, or failed to comply with a judicial child support order. The Commissoner of DOT suddenly pulled the request claiming that revealing the names of persons who have had their licenses suspended administratively, without due process of law, or a simple right to be heard, would be a violation of “privacy”. The suspension of driver’s licenses is a violation of the State Constitution and our Supreme Court case law. Due process is only reserved for Saudi suspicious terrorists held in a compound nearer Havana, than Miami. The DOT commissioner was a high school classmate, a fellow boyscout in my troop as a child, a member of my child hood Lutheran church, republican and a pettyfogging lawyer.

    As in the polygamy case, they released information to the public to justify their actions. They never attacked the women, and I’m not claiming they should have. They only denigrated the fathers. The women were always “victims” and the men were all child rapists. Listen to Michael Savage who exposed the media’s role of character assasination on behalf of the State of Texas.

    Every correspondence, letter, phone record, memo, email of every Judge, judicial officer, CPS lawyer, case worker, State attorney general, and governor should be seized by the FBI. You will not be able to house all the criminals operating in the State of Texas if you did. They should erect a “prison tent city” to hold all the public officials who colluded to break several hundred laws and most of the state’s Constitution to carry out this very carefully planned charade. The purpose of the charade was to let Texan’s know that you don’t mess with Texas’s children. The children are property of the State, and if you educate them in your home, if you defy the educational establishment or the secular humanist state religion doctrines of any kind, you will be rounded up, your children shall be redistributed to the “government-private” partnerships in the adotion/child trafficking trade. Good Catholic and Protestant adoption agencies are willing, waiting and taxpayor funded to assist the State Feminazi regime. Hitler did it, Texas, with it’s billions in tax revenue and the banks that finance it SHALL demonstrate it.

    Women, it has been declared in this recent ruling, were violated. The appellate court ruling was simply a statement to the their masters (citizenry) to not rush to judgement and hang all the public officials without a trial. This is very evident by the immediacy of the decision and it’s absence of any legal substance. It was to protect the public authority from the mob. They are working overtime to keep the public at bay, and to retrench and return to child kidnapping and trafficking that they so richly wish to preserve.

    They will not stop until a State rises up, it’s citizen’s come out of their sleepy, drug induced coma, and hold these agents and agencies responsible. The Judicial and executive branch persons in charge should be put on trial, something they would not recognize. They should be put on trial, their crimes revealed, and they should be prosecuted and jailed to the fullest extent of the law. I would consider charges of “sedition”, with the death penalty as fit and proper. They are purposely undermining the Constitution, and colluding to circumvent law. These crimes against the Constituton and law are crimes against ALL texas persons, this outrage against the wackjob polygamists is done against fit parents is done thousands of times a day in this country. When it’s done to one family at a time, it cannot be an outrage, and it’s not reported or recorded anywhere for the public to see.

    Stalin was not this brazen, in many ways. Read about Alex Solzeneitzen’s (sp?) travails. Stalin’s version was to wipe out a single village who resisted state seizure of “private” farm lands. This was all he needed to obtain “compliance” to collectivism in land and farm production.

    CPS and the courts make a living in seizing children. Their operation is continual. It cannot be a “one-time” cleansing for all the locals to see. State governments, financed by the Fed’s greenback printing machine, have corporatized the child seizing business, and they are fed by the number of children and families they destroy. Divorce, child custody and child abuse industries are the “food” that sustains the beast.

    Until we put the beast away and send them to their meeting place in hell, this system will not diminish or disappear. It will grow. The Fed’s corporatized child business is a living, breathing beast, and it only is satisfied, by it’s nature, by consuming families, children and “inaliable rights”.

    If you study “family law”, you’ll see the legal foundation, long ago set in place in “international law” for the “new world order”. If you owe child support, there are only a handful of countries in which you can escape jurisdiction. A cuban communist was the only father on the planet who used International law and American courts to obtain his child from the clutches of Florida CPS. Illian Gonzalas. So, if you wish to practice your religion and assert your “natural guardianship”, it appears from this boy that being a slave to Fidel has it’s advantages. At least parental rights are recognized in Cuba. They are commies. Fascism is American family law, and this is the “new world order”. The first group to enter Russia after it’s fall was the feministas of the ABA. They were there to instruct them on creating American fascism in “juvenile” and family law. (imposing “child support systems”)
    The NCCUSL started it, and now the new “internationalists” are spreading their evil gospel. All children are property of the state, it’s in their best interest!

41. 41 Comment by Edward on 24 May 2008:

    Better to be a good Muslim’s third wife than a gangbanger’s “Ho’”

    Quote of the year, I think?

42. 42 Comment by Edward on 24 May 2008:

    Actually, a relative of mine is a family lawyer in the Bronx. She regularly has clients (poor, uneducated, minority) whose children are removed illegally and for illegal reasons. They are kept from their parents and given to the disgraceful and horrible foster care system, which absolutely ruins children’s lives. The parents are routinely maligned as unfit and, eventually, they have their rights terminated and never see their children again. I could write a book about the abuse. Most people are shocked wen they hear about a particular case. Then, when I tell them that it happens all the time, they cease to believe me.

43. 43 Comment by M.A. Roberts on 24 May 2008:

    “”Better to be a good Muslim’s third wife than a gangbanger’s “Ho’””
    Quote of the year, I think?”

    I got a good chuckle out of it.

44. 44 Comment by CPR on 24 May 2008:

    Prediction: lawsuits over the abducted kids who were abused by ‘child protective custody.’ -?-

    Are the ‘legal’ abductors learning from the masters – hide behind the humanitarian ‘cover’ story to do the dirtiest deeds? It could be the next script on the program Law & Order?

    solution: marriage is about and For children… they’re innocent. Go from there, always as our truth.

    My humble opinion is IF it’s not about kids – why on earth are you getting married? It’s probably why I have not yet been married – besides being turned down. And I’m glad I was. I wasn’t even thinking at that time about kids. Good.

    Now that I am thinking about them, I’m still not getting married.

    I’m more like a W.C. Fields. … Everyone women and kids alike are lucky they don’t have to deal with me. … At least I’m honest.

45. 45 Pingback by The Southern Avenger » Sex and the State, Mormons and Marriage in Texas and Modern America on 24 May 2008:

    [...] Read Fleming’s entire article « Charley Reese: Bush and McCain’s Iran Insanity [...]

46. 46 Comment by roho on 24 May 2008:

    Maybe?………I’m not giving that much credit yet. They still gave us LBJ, Bush Sr, Bush Jr, The Waco Incident, and absolute rejection of the “Southern Manifesto”…………I’m not convinced that they are not an extention of Conneticut!, and their actions are those of a Rockefeller Republican!…..”OIL”, their claim to fame has blinded them!

47. 47 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 25 May 2008:

    #33. Dr. Fleming’s antepenultimate sentence shows us why he is one of the greatest voices of our day.

48. 48 Comment by JMB on 25 May 2008:

    I’m certainly not justifying the state of texas’ invasion of this compound. I’m also well aware that polygamy long predates Islam and certainly Mormonism. My point is that the type of polygamy practised by Mormons and by Muslims is by and large about control and/or sexual gratification and not about adhering to any sort of biblical or ancient practise of taking multiple wives for the purpose of promoting stability and virtue in a community. It is a mistake to let these orthodox Mormons off the hook because of the state’s pretext for invading the compound was false. If there is anything that we should support as Christians it is the investigation of this polygamist compound, if not the seizure of these children and young “brides” from the men here who are not about forwarding family and virtue but about control.

    This brings me to a final point: If we could somehow regulate polygamy to ensure the nutjobs do not use it as a guise to control and subjugate, then it ought to be allowed. But, how to regulate it? If you do not regulate it, but instead allow the same sorts to continue to practise it, then how moral or virtuous is that?

49. 49 Comment by robert m. peters on 25 May 2008:

    I cannot speak to polygamy through personal experience, but I can speak to young brides, the age of thirteen, to be exact.

    My paternal grandmother was farmed out at the age of six. Her mother had died giving birth to a sibling. My great grandfather had remarried a widow who brought five children into the marriage, one being a girl just older than my grandmother. The yeoman farm of north Louisiana could not sustain everyone, and their was conflict between my grandmother on the one hand and her stepsister and stepmother on the other; so, as a solution, my great grandfather farmed my grandmother out to a farmer just over one day (by horse) away. There is lived for seven years until she was thirteen. She had a moss bed in the corner of the barn. During her seven years, she did all of the work that one might encounter on a farm: helped with cooking and cleaning, helped plow the fields, helped kill and process the hogs, and helped with the birthing of the children. My grandmother told me that as her father prepared to ride away after having initially brought her there, he told the farmer that anything untoward happened to his daughter that he would hold him responsible and kill him.

    It is very obvious that my great grandfather knew that men might want to molest, sexually assault, rape or seduce a young girl. He was also quite fell and grim in his willingness to do his duty as a father to protect her. He had a reputation. My grandmother told me that he had ridden “with those tough Confederates in Missouri.”

    She got to go home twice a year: once at Christmas and once at Easter. Her father always picked her up by horse.

    In the middle of her thirteenth year, at Easter, he picked her up, took her home, and presented her with a new print dress which he had bought in Campti, Louisiana, with money received from hog tallow. He told her to freshen up and put it on because she was marrying my great grandfather’s friend, a man who would become my grandfather. He was twenty-six, twice her age. My grandmother had known of him and had seen him a few times. Their marriage lasted sixty years and brought eight children into the world, the last of which being my father.

    My great grandfather was willing to kill a man who might have molested, assaulted, raped or seduced his daughter; but he was also willing to “marry her off” at thirteen to a man twice her age. Marriage was for him, among other things, a security arrangement: he had protected my grandmother, and now he was entrusting her protection to another man whom he trusted. He was meeting a need of his daughter and a need of his friend. He was bringing harmony to his family, in that he was no longer worrying about his daughter being farmed out. He fostering the founding of a new family to two people who had the skills to rear one.

    Given the promiscuity of young girls today, fornicating and pregnant by age twelve (a choice), and the divorce rate today (a choice), I would say that girls would be better off to have a man like my great grandfather make their choices for them. Of course, finding a “man” like my great grandfather in the 21st century would be the problem.

50. 50 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 25 May 2008:

    I’m not sure if Mr. Peters (#49) intended to answer JMB (#48) but there is certainly an answer implied in the anecdote. If the problem is not polygamy per se, but subjugation and control, then clearly monogamous marriages must be subject to the same intense scrutiny and regulation which JMB advocates for polygamy. And this in fact is exactly what the feminists and Planned Parenthood and the government CPS bureaucracies want. Of course if marriage is not involved or if no control whatever is exercised by parents over their children, especially their daughters, this suits the ruling establishment just fine. What they really object to is any familial control which might interfere with their own.

51. 51 Comment by CPR on 25 May 2008:

    Ditto Clyde in his # 47 about TJF. Here’s my take on why TJF is refreshing and such a valuable voice. We all by studying the Greeks should thereby elevate their foundation of the West up to consciousness. Since we are moved around in our daily comportments in the context of this civilization by them anyway.

    However their contribution was meant to be built upon and it has been and must continue to be. Because their notion of truth remained largely propositional and so their exploration of the essence (or totality) of truth largely sort of hovered around it in discussions of derivative essences of truth. It’s as difficult a subject as touching a nerve. Remember Pilate allegedly washing his hands of it in exasperation: ‘what is truth?’

    So what we have as a result of the Greeks in effect (and this is wherein we all struggle culturally) is two kinds of truth. The established truth culturally which is propositional truth and thus is the one which can be judged subsequently for its ‘correctness’. Is why one form of political correctness tends to replace another according to the times and the fashion. And the other truth even when not established culturally, that by its very nature can nonetheless never go away – truth itself.

    And I’ve noticed for about 14 years since I discovered Chronicles TJF like Sam Francis did and others do, they tend to discerningly and appropriately speak the truth itself regardless of its adjudged (by anyone) correctness or not propositionally speaking. And I find that refreshing always. I attempt to do so myself but sometimes I get off the wall demonstrating my immaturity and just wanting to have fun and wanting to spoof, it is difficult not to write satire. But I am trying to be as responsible and discerning in speaking the truth as those whom I admire and who do it probably better. But regardless it’s always going to touch someone’s nerve, that’s its very nature even when it is responsibly done. And is probably why the Greeks themselves felt hazed by their own efforts, so subsequently and probably instinctively kept it propositional where truth was concerned with only rare flashes of the thing itself.

    We are a sign that is not read,
    We feel no pain, we almost have
    Lost our tongue in foreign lands. -Holderlin

    I have noticed those over-enamoured of the propositional and often mistaking it for truth itself can tend to be very as it were judgemental.

52. 52 Comment by cipher on 25 May 2008:

    “America, as a society, is dedicated to the sexual exploitation of women.”

    Sorry, Dr. Fleming, but you’re grossly mistaken. Laughably so.

    What we have is a society (law, government, education systems, mass media, marketing) dedicated to maximizing – in both number and intensity – the choices available to women while at the same time mitigating any and all negative consequences that would otherwise accrue to a woman pursuing one or more said choices.

53. 53 Comment by NGPM on 26 May 2008:

    “In other words, all this yelling and screaming about the marriage of 16-year old girls is a complete canard.”

    It should also be born in mind that the onset of puberty came a bit later in life in centuries past, and that post-adolescence college frat idealism did not exist: thus marrying shortly after attaining a certain milestone of physical maturity was conceivable. I will yell and scream about a 20-year-old American of either sex marrying today, because in my experience nearly one hundred percent of them are still children.

    “May I add that we are in the throes of a moral panic about “child abuse” that has given rise to an industry that, once created, has taken on a life of its own.”

    “Janet Reno, America’s most infamous feminazi totalitarian chose to use Federal troops to burn resisters, and their families alive. The polygamists were chosen so ALL american slaves could get the image “burned” in their minds.”

    The example of Janet Reno is particularly salient. When I lived in Miami, Florida my landlady educated me in Janet Reno’s history as a county prosecutor and one of the pioneers in the Day Care Sex Abuse Hysteria that saw numerous babysitters falsely accused of and locked up for years for child molestation. There is an excellent article in the Miami New Times archives detailing the sordid story of the agonization of Bobby Finje, a thirteen-year-old who lost two years of his life because her subordinates determined to try him as an adult on the most dubious of cases. The children in question were harangued for hours by psychotherapists who queried them in what, in the words of a criminal defense lawyer describing a related case involving Reno, would have passed for a brainwashing session.

    Suddenly the ghastly spectacles of the Branch Davidian massacre and the armed seizure of Elian Gonzales (however justified in principle, completely wanting in form) make sense. Her appointment as Attorney General was a reward for her draconian fist, and since power tends to augment both one’s best and worst features, it should not surprise that she should have taken to bloodlusting.

    Folks, these are the sorts of people running our country. It is a tyranny of sex and bloodshed. See Donatien de Sade’s “Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome ou l’École du libertinage” (but only if your mind is already warped beyond repair) for a slight exxaggeration of contemporary American institutions.

54. 54 Comment by NGPM on 26 May 2008:

    “It is a tyranny of sex and bloodshed. See Donatien de Sade’s “Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome ou l’École du libertinage””

    I would add “kidnapping” to the list, although kidnapping is usually related to rape and bloodshed.

55. 55 Comment by CPR on 26 May 2008:

    cipher’s post # 52 above can be a good example of utilization of the humanitarian ‘cover’ story behind which to accomplish the dirtiest of deeds.

    Quote of #52: “What we have is a society (law, government, education systems, mass media, marketing) dedicated to maximizing – in both number and intensity – the choices available to women while at the same time mitigating any and all negative consequences that would otherwise accrue to a woman pursuing one or more said choices.” (end quote of ciper’s.)

    That is also an example of propositional truth, meaning in this case the proposition is put forward that a.) government actually ‘can’ accomplish the good and what is best for either gender. And not merely be allegedly ‘dedicated’ to it. & b.) Even if it can favor effectively a special group then that is what is best for the essence of society meaning the totality or whole of society.

    Thus the proposition is set up and believed-in ‘as if’ it were the truth itself. Then the a priori assumption is equated with truth and takes on the aspect of the unassailable. This sort of shabby or lose way of doing business as it pertains to our personal daily comportments and worse elevated up to government and so enforced at the level of the collective is not merely American but European as well; because it is at the heart of the Greek foundation of our civilization and so remains one of our invisible ‘givens.’

    Let’s be clear there are far many more positives or those inheritances close to being whole involved with our Greek heritage upon which Western Civilization is founded. Although, the Greeks themselves left the issue of truth undeveloped and profoundly – (because they didn’t realize it either, for the most part, with the exception of Aristotle and some of the earlier Greeks) – imbalanced toward propositional truth as if truth. And so to this day without our realizing it and in that regard understandably, we remain too sloppy about it at our own peril *ourselves. I won’t go into Iraq and the propositional truths we subscribed to automatically in assuming truth in our entering into that debacle.

    Somtimes the propositional is salutary and comforting and why the Greeks for the most part settled into that zone as it were, more than less as a synonym for truth.

    However it is not at all ’safe’ as the real human beings at Waco found out-remebered by NGPM in his post #53 above-unless and until it is elevated up to consciousness as primarily propositional, and great pains and efforts are made both personally and collectively to get as close to the actual truth in tandem with the proposition as humanly possible. … That is only possible once we first and foremost become aware of what all of our predispositional inclinations are as a result of the *culture we inherited and subsequent civilization which both nurtures us, as well as in some instances deceives without our even being aware of that fact.

    We are conceptual creatures and when we pause at the conceptual level prior to making decisions, we are inevitably and profoundly informed by our culture for which in our case we should be mostly grateful while at the same time wary.

56. 56 Comment by TJF on 26 May 2008:

    Two small points. 1) The subjugation of women is almost always carried out by tyrannical rulers who wish to eliminate the authority of rivals by elevating the weak and pretending to protect them (a point made in the ancient world by Herodotus and Aristotle) and advocated by males who wish to prey upon them, e.h. J.S. Mill and Hugh Hefner. Anyone who thinks women are liberated in our society has never read George Orwell. If service of /slavery to God is, in the Prayerbook’s language echoing centuries of Christian thought, “perfect freedom,” then the liberation of the individual from his family, society, and religion is perfect slavery.

    2) I have no idea of what goes on in a Muslim or FCLS polygamous household today, apart from what I have read. It is morally perilous to pronounce judgments on other peoples sinful manners of living without having a word or two to say about one’s own. For example, there was a time when Christians condemned divorce except under very restricted circumstances and even then remarriage was a problem. Today, American Catholics run around seeking annulments as if they were building permits–or rather, demolition permits–and some Evangelical Churches treat divorce as a casual matter. I have no interest in defending Fundamentalist Mormons and, God knows, the Muslims, but I wonder why American Christians spend so much time pointing out the mote in the polygamist’s eye and have so little time to condemn the beam in our own. Of all the institutions that might be trusted to protect women and children or safeguard marriage, the governments of these United States should be put somewhere between the National Organization of Women and the ACLU.

57. 57 Comment by cipher on 26 May 2008:

    Dr. Fleming,

    Thank you for your two small points. Especially the first.

    So then our society (law, government, education systems, mass media, marketing) is not dedicated to women’s exploitation nor the maintenance/expansion of their “liberation” per se, but to the eventual destruction of us all by first destroying our families and traditions via tempting our women while distracting/confusing our men.

    We’re losing the Garden. Again.

58. 58 Comment by John Willson on 26 May 2008:

    Tom, the motes in our own eyes should nonetheless not stop us from saying what moral outrage it is to subject thirteen year-olds to the sexual pleasure of dirty old men. And if we can hold also that homosexual men can be “married,” then what is to prevent us from recognizing marriage between men and their daughters,or…fill in the blank? I know that you agree with me about this, and I agree that the Texas authorities had no constitutional jurisdiction in the Mormon case. I just don’t want anybody to think that either you or I in any measure sympathizes with the weird Mormons who, however protected they are by our Constitution, practice such disgusting things.

59. 59 Comment by TJF on 27 May 2008:

    I entirely agree with John Wilson on the principle, and I am the last person on earth who could claim to be non-judgmental. I hold no brief for any sort of polygamy–quite the contrary. My point, as I am sure you understand, John, is a general one. As much as we prefer our own institutions and customs, we should beware of measuring all other societies by the perfect vision we have of our own. I have only met a few polygamists, all Muslim, and I do not know enough of their lives to pass judgment. I do not think polygamy or marriage with teenage girls is always a case of dirty old men exploiting young women, though that seems often to be the case with renegade Mormons.

    I no longer care too much about marriage law in this country, because the ruling class and its ideology hates the whole idea of marriage. A man cannot marry a man, he cannot even truly have sex with a man, because intercourse is something that happens between not within the sexes. Nor can a man marry his daughter or sister or mother and Christians, whatever a law might say. Note can, not may. These extreme cases are outside the norms of human experience as known to historians and anthropologists. Polygyny, however, is a well-known phenomenon and is not confined to savages. I am completely and utterly opposed to the practice, but it should not be put on the same level with child molestation and homosexuality.

    As a matter of fact, I don’t know the average age of marriage for these FCLDS women and their husbands. The cases I have read of usually involve a 16 year old girl and a man from 25-35, not the sort of arrangement I should like for my daughter, but not inherently evil.

60. 60 Comment by John Willson on 27 May 2008:

    Yes, good points, all of them. A friend recently suggested to me that perhaps marriage ought not to be a matter of legal sanction at all, but (what it was for much of the history of the west) for families and the Church to control. Another friend’s daughter was recently married, by her brother-in-law who was “ordained” by the state of Florida for $25.

61. 61 Pingback by Around the Web « Brave New World Watch on 27 May 2008:

    [...] Further discussion of the FLDS is at Chronicles, with an unusually good post by Thomas Fleming. [...]

62. 62 Comment by Mormon Paleo on 27 May 2008:

    Dr. Fleming,

    You hit a home run with this article. Excellent!

63. 63 Comment by Sean Scallon on 27 May 2008:

    Yes indeed an excellent article Dr. Fleming. One may very well be opposed to polygamy but one also cannot helped to be heartbroken and outraged at young children being ripped away from their families by the total state as exists in Texas, bewildered mothers being imprisoned inside a local county arena having no clue as to what’s going on with their families. Truly a Kafkaeque nightmare to people who just wished to be left alone. If there are crimes being committed then punish the guilty, not the innocent with them at the same time. It seems as though some in Texas prefer hunting with buckshot rather than a rifle bullet.

    I’m a little suprised many Mormons haven’t been screaming religious persecution and bigotry at some of the Texas state officials (especially the state’s crooked governor) and the powers that be in Austin. Certainly the whole raid itself smells of a set-up and the the whole FLDS compound seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere, hardly a problem unless one wished to be a do-gooder.

    Yet polygamy is the next to last frontier society is crossing into (the legalization of cosnentual child-sex is still a ways away when Mary Ruwart was beaten by Bob Barr for the Libertarian Party nomination) when it comes to sexual law. This is not just because of the odd fundementalist Mormon colony here and there or HBO docudramas, but because some of the immigrants coming into the U.S. come from cultures that sanction polygamy (along with child marriage and pre-arranged marriages). If we are a multicultural society, do we not then allow such practices to take place? After all, some communties allow ritualistc animal slaughter in controlled circumtances? Do we tell the polygamous immigrant when he arrives to the U.S. he has to pick and choose which one he wants? Perhaps controlling immigration maybe a better solution and a Supreme Court ruling that legalizes polygamy for every state, every county and every township in the U.S.

64. 64 Comment by Theodore Van Oosbree on 27 May 2008:

    If the State of Texas cannot enforce its reasonable, humane marriage laws against these wackos, then it might as well throw them all out and we can go back to the jungle we left thousands of years ago.

65. 65 Comment by TJF on 27 May 2008:

    The trouble with comments like #64 is that it is content-free. Which marriage laws, precisely, are being enforced when children are taken away from their mothers without a hearing on the mere allegation, bogus it turns out, from an unnamed informant? While I would not wish to overemphasize the arbitrary distinction between fact and value, one can distinguish, I should think, between such statements as a) the temperature is 78 degrees today, and b) it’s too hot, or a) Texas permits the marriage of 16 year old girls who have their mothers’ permission and b) any older man who marries a teenage girl is a depraved wacko who belongs in the jungle.

66. 66 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 27 May 2008:

    That people keep writing as though “Texas” is somehow particularly at fault here, is an indication of the depth of unconscious South-blaming that perrvades discourse, even among the good people here. What happened in Texas could have happened anywhere, indeed would have happened anywhere where the same people were gathered. The bureaucracies complained of exist in all the States, essentially as demanded and regulated by the federal government at the behest of Northern politicians and pressure groups. Such bureaucracies in my state and I suspect throughout the South are essentially staffed and run by carpetbaggers. What has happened does not reflect traditional Texas, but what its government has become under generations of carpetbaggers.

67. 67 Comment by John Willson on 27 May 2008:

    In my state we have carpetbaggers from the south and from Canada, both groups of which have driven most of our jobs out–the former by being the bulwark of unions and the latter by importing Canadian socialism to the governor’s office. Actually, of course, Dr. Wilson’s point is correct. The state is so pervasive everywhere that the family is without much ability to defend itself. Unless it tries to fool with mine–and listen to me, a Yankee sounding like an up-country South Carolinian!

68. 68 Comment by Sean Scallon on 27 May 2008:

    It was far from my intention to single out Southerners and Texans in my crtiticism of the actions of Texas state officials. Yes, Dr. Wilson is right this could have happened anywhere in the country and outrage would have appiled if there were officials from Oregon or New Hampshire. No doubt there are a lot of ordinary Texanss who are probably upset at their state’s action as I am.

69. 69 Comment by Allen Wilson on 27 May 2008:

    We may discuss whether even thirty year old ‘men’ today are really adults psychologically, but that’s a sign of social and cultural decay in a society which doesn’t raise boys to be real men or girls to be real women.

    The next thing we need to set aside for a moment is the immorality of fornication, etc., and just look at what can be called the ‘natural’ aspect of the issue.

    Many times over the years, I have heard people talk about fourteen year old girls as being ‘just about grown’. Sometimes it was their own parents saying this to them.

    Where do these media idiots on TV get the idea that sixteen year old girls or boys are ‘children’? They are not.

    Back when I used ‘run around’, I had more fourteen and sixteen year old girls chasing me around when I was in my early twenties than I ever did when I was in my teens. I didn’t ‘mess around’ with them, but that’s not the point. They go for older guys and always have. I was not surprised to be pursued like that because I had known a girl my age who had dated boys in their early twenties when she was fourteen, and she wasn’t unique in this.

    When I was twenty-one, I got shanghaied into a blind date with a sixteen year old girl. I’ll never forget having to go pick her up with her extended family there at her house having a family reunion of sorts. They still let me take her out on a date after seeing hold old I was. Nothing happened because her mother laid the law down to her, and I was too terrified after meeting her extended family.

    It’s nature for younger girls to go after older guys, and all the CPS propaganda and government intervention, all the stigmatising of nineteen year old boys for having sex with sixteen year old girls wont change a thing. Dating between boys in their early twenties and teenage girls goes on all the time. I goes on all across the country, every night, and especially on weekends. As I said, we can discuss the immorailty of fornication, but there is nothing abusive about all this, nor is there anything inherently unnatural to it, and what was going on in that Mormon community was in some ways less immoral.

    These TV media idiots need a big dose of reality.

70. 70 Comment by NGPM on 28 May 2008:

    “That people keep writing as though “Texas” is somehow particularly at fault here, is an indication of the depth of unconscious South-blaming that perrvades discourse, even among the good people here.”

    Dr. Wilson, while I think that’s reading a bit too much into things, you’ve got to admit that since the South fell under the delusion of having a “Texan” in the White House many Southerners have become most enthusiastic supporters of the bloodthirsty libertine tyranny now represented by a presumptive “conservative.” This is not an indictment of traditional Southern culture, just an indicator of how the South, like the North, has been conquered and colonised by an inhuman and unchristian ideology. This seems especially true of Texas; I’ve known Southerners from elsewhere who consider that state “unrecognisable” compared to its historic self.

71. 71 Comment by Bill Wilder on 28 May 2008:

    Dr. Fleming,
    I agree with your revulsion at Mormonism (polygamous or not) and also that the Texas circus is a farcical example of anarcho-tyranny. (Texas would have been better served were all those buses used to round illegal aliens and ship them out of the country.)

    Your characterization of polygamism and Christianity, however, is inadequately stated. While it is true that Jacob, David, Solomon, etc., had multiple wives (Abraham, too, I suppose, depending on how you wish to view Hagar), polygamy is always disfavored in both the OT and NT. In Deut. 17, God proclaimed that the future kings in Israel should not “multiply wives.” Moreover, in each instance, men who were polygamous has disaster and conflict in their families. By contrast, men who were monogamous (Moses, Joseph, Josiah) were, in most instances, happy domestically. (Admittedly, Adam was monogamous, but had his son kill his brother.) And, of course, our Lord proclaimed in Matthew 19 that “from the beginning” that man was to join to “his wife” and “they two would become one flesh.” That necessarily excluded polygamy.

    So, it’s true that the Lord tolerated polygamy by David and others, such practice brought only ruin and sorrow to their lives.

    But, as you trenchantly observe, as the Faith has been run out of our laws, the instruction of scripture hardly seems a relevant basis for the courts to outlaw polygamy. (And if those same courts can impose the oxymoronic homosexual “marriage”, then polygamy would certainly seem within bounds.)

72. 72 Comment by TJF on 28 May 2008:

    Let us be careful not to extrapolate and not to read into Scriptures our own interpretations. A great many men come to a bad end in the OT, and since it was, like its neighbors, a polygamous society, the bulk of the men coming to a bad end are polygamists. There is nothing explicit in the OT or the Jewish tradition condemning polygamy. As for Deuteronomy 17, the preceding verse tells future rulers not to multiply horses, but I scarcely think that would prevent a man from driving a two-horse chariot. The point to these passages is not to monopolize resources–horses, women, precious metals–at the expense of other men.

    I fear you have more seriously misread Matthew 19. Firstly, the topic is divorce, as you know, and not polygamy or even adultery. The word order in Greek makes it quite clear that “in the beginning” refers to the creation of the male and female sexes. The passage is mostly borrowed from Genesis. “Because of this (the division into sexes) a man shall leave his father and mother and be annealed to his wife., and they two shall be one flesh” and cannot be unyoked. Now, it is certainly possible that our Lord intended this passage to be a sly reference to monogamy, but it is certain that the Jews who had been reading Genesis for a thousand years did not at all take it in that sense. Indeed, a man might be yoked to one woman but also to another. What is to prevent him from being one flesh with several women in the same way that he might have an ownership relationship with several horses.

    Christians are certainly entitled to read into this passage an approbation of monogamy and disapproval of polygamy, and it is certain that the early Church borrowed Greco-Roman monogamy, but we are not permitted to declare definitively that any of these passages, including Matthew 19 means more than it appears to say and then impose that interpretation. Perhaps this strict kind of reading may be too fundamentalist for some sects, but I do not believe in putting my own words or ideas into the text. I do believe that the Church, whether because Christ taught this to the Apostles or because they were informed by the Holy Ghost, condemned polygamy from almost the beginning–though an outright condemnation at the very beginning might have done harm to second and third wives. I think this is obviously implied as one of the reasons that church leaders were permitted only one wife (and not simply a prohibition on divorced men.)

73. 73 Comment by Bill Wilder on 28 May 2008:

    Dr. Fleming,

    I don’t really disagree with your points on expositiony. Certainly the text must be left to speak for itself. And it is true that various OT characters came a proper irrespective of marriage practices (Samson, for example, although not, it would appear polygamous.) Still, it is interesting that the various types of our Lord identified in scripture–Isaac, Joseph, Moses, even Boaz as the redeemer of Ruth–were all monogamous. But, of course, David is also a type and the man after God’s heart, so my argument can be carried too far. It is also true that Deut. 17 is referencing the aggrandizing of power at the expense of dependence on God. I was inartful in presenting those citations as containing absolute prohibitions on polygamy. My point, rather, was that there is not an example given of polygamy in a favorable context of which I’m aware (contra the rationalizations made by the polygamist Mormons in the 19th cent. before their convenient new revelation) and that would seem to imply a negative connotation from the Lord.

    As for Mt 19, while the question asked of our Lord is on divorce, I think his answer is more directed to marriage and proper duties within it. But, again, that is not a necessary conclusion. (It is more a conclusion drawn from how frequently the Lord turned self-serving or ensnaring questions into statements that exposed the hypocrisy of his inquisitors.) And I understand your point in terms of what the statement on its face implies viz what we might infer from it. But I do believe a necessary inference from his statement would be to exclude polygamy. I don’t think the “one flesh” statement could reasonably apply to polygamy–for example, Jacob “loving” Rachel and “hating” (loving less) Leah–but I may be wrong. I recognize one could disagree with this inference as it’s just that. And the apparent practice in Jewish culture would seem to approve of polygamy–indicating that my inference isn’t a necessary one. (As opposed to one that would be inarguable from the statement, such as that it necessarily excluded homosexuality.)

    Your reference to Greco-Roman culture is helpful as it would be easy for one unlearned to think the Greeks and Romans practice polygamy (which I understood, and you confirmed, they did not.) But I think NT revelation (for example, Eph 5) also necessarily taught monogamy as God’s ordained practice–Paul’s allusion to marriage as an illustration to Christ’s relationship to the Church could not work if polygamy were are an accepted Christian practice. The Lord has only one bride. (But I think you may well be right about what “husband of one wife” referred to in regards elders.)

    I recognize a disquisition on the theological basis (or lack of same) for polygamy wasn’t the point. And it is rather the abysmal irony of our gov’t on the one hand mandating through the courts the absurdity of homosexual marriage while on the other hand condemning a practice (while long out of favor in Christian cultures) at least has historical precedent. But then, are we really surprised to see such contradictions. Only post-Christian ideology (about which you and others here write so well) could produce them.

    All the best

74. 74 Comment by Bill Wilder on 29 May 2008:

    “as it would be easy for one unlearned to think the Greeks and Romans practice polygamy”

    That was poorly stated. I meant only that one who did not know Greco-Roman culture might assume paganism involved polygamy (given the carnality often attributed to paganism–Corinth, for example).

75. 75 Comment by TJF on 29 May 2008:

    Bill Wilder, I think we are somewhat talking at cross purposes. I completely agree with you that the Christian view of marriage has always been monogamous. This was taught explicitly in the early Church and, I strongly believe, is implied by Christ’s teachings on marriage, despite the curious fact that in the texts we have he nowhere mentions polygamy. I also agree with you that it is a logical conclusion to be drawn from Genesis. Unfortunately, the Jews did not so interpret it at all, and for that reason we cannot be certain of what Our Lord is telling us on this subject in Matthew.

    As for the ill fate of OT polygamists, consider this: men who desire women, in a simple society, are often men with large amounts of testosterone thus also eager for power and likely to run amuck. Even OT men who of whom no second wife is recorded may have and in some cases certainly did take concubines. I agree, also, with you on this question of forerunners or “types,” especially those types that are acknowledged in the early Church. In this connection the most interesting forerunner and the most virtuous man in the OT is the gentile Job, who is tortured by the one wife he has and is grief-stricken over the loss of his children. Some day look up Gregory the Great’s wonderful moral and spiritual commentary on Job, the Magna Moralia, of which there is an unedited but pretty accurate translation on the internet.

    I’ll be getting into the topic of marriage and divorce in the early church on the booklog and welcome your participation. Early Greek and Roman wedding and marital customs were pretty good. I don’t know when the Greeks began getting divorced but even in the 5th Century, it was pretty infrequent. Naturally, they did not have our sense of chastity or purity, and it was not regarded as wrong for a man to seek companionship outside of marriage, though it was quite wrong to become a figure of fun or to squander family resources. Aristophanes is quite a bawdy writer who incessantly makes sex jokes of every kind, and yet he expects his audience to believe, in the Lysistrata, that the women of Athens and Sparta could end the war simply by withholding their favors from their husbands. If they were all buggers and adulterers, where is the humor. The customs associated with Christian weddings and marriages have many sources, but a primary source is the Roman wedding, which includes a bride dress in a festal color (for the Romans it was red), exchange of rings and vows, carrying the bride over threshold, etc. Most interesting is the statement of the wife, “Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia”–Gaius being among the most common first names. It is hard to render in English because we don’t have many such pairs in common names. But where you are John, I am Jane comes close, meaning we are now two sides of the same person.

    Christians believe that the second person of the Trinity, the Logos, took part in the creation of the world and His truth was therefore accessible not just to the Jews but to everyone–as Paul suggests, for example, in his address to the Athenians on the Areopagus. There are many aspects of life and civilization in which the Greeks exceeded the Jews. Greek logic and philosophy became an indispensable tool for refuting heretics (though it also gave weapons to the heretics themselves), and Greek ideals of respecting all human beings as human (despite their own ethnic pride) are far loftier than the parochial Jewish teachings that distinguished between how to treat a Jew and how to treat a gentile. In their marriage customs as well, Greeks and Romans come closer to a Christian understanding, though as their civilization developed, they were all too prone to fornication and adultery. Nonetheless, Greek and Roman literature give us wonderful examples of marital love: Hector and Andromache, Odysseus and Penelope, and both Homer and Aeschylus treat Clytaemnestra’s adultery and murder of her husband as a primal crime.

76. 76 Comment by Bill Wilder on 29 May 2008:

    Dr. Fleming,

    Quite interesting. Thank you very much.

    Thank you also for the reference to Gregory. I am slated to teach a bible class on Job this Summer and will doubtless find that an interesting and helpful reference.

    To the extent I deviated the discussion from the central purpose of your writing, my apologies. The spectacle in Texas borders on the absurd with likely welfare cheats lusting after teenagers on one side and Marxists parading as the saviors of children (while confiscating them based on lies) on the other.

    I suppose it fits their slogan, perhaps, “It’s a whole other country.”

77. 77 Comment by James Kabala on 29 May 2008:

    If Dr. Fleming is still reading this thread, I wonder if he would be so kind as to answer the question: What were the common Jewish marriage practices of Jesus’s day? Was polygamy still routine among the wealthy?

    I can’t offhand think of any New Testament character who is explicitly said to be polygamous. I would be particularly curious, for example, about two characters at the top of the social heap who clearly could have had multiple wives if they had wanted to and whose marital status is mentioned: Herod Antipas (who displayed sexual immorality by stealing his brother’s wife, but is never mentioned as having any other wives) and the high priest Caiaphas (who is said to have a close relationship with his father-in-law Annas. I confess I don’t know the underlying Greek word; does this imply a sole father-in-law, or could Caiaphas have had other fathers-in-law for other wives?). If polygamy had become rarer, why would that have been? Was it Greco-Roman influence? Or was polygamy still routine but, for whatever reason, no clear record of this appears in the Gospel text?

    At the other end of the chronological spectrum, when did polygamy become routine among the Jews? Mr. Wilder is right that most of the figures in Genesis and Exodus seem monogamous – Adam, Noah, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Aaron. One could also include Job, who seems to date from remote antiquity. The two major exceptions, Abraham and Jacob, were naturally monogamous and forced into polygamy by adverse circumstances. Any thoughts?

78. 78 Pingback by “Don’t Bunch”: FLDS and Intentional Communities « Stony Creek Digest on 29 May 2008:

    [...] called – will not be tolerated by our new masters. Dr. Thomas Fleming, a Catholic, surmised that the underlying hostility of the state towards the FLDS was the latter’s commitment to marriage. The teen pregnancy rate on the YFZ Ranch was no higher than an average American neighborhood: the [...]

79. 79 Comment by James Kabala on 29 May 2008:

    “The two major exceptions, Abraham and Jacob.”

    Of course, in addition to them there are some shadier polygamists, notably Lamech (apparently the first polygamist) and Esau. (Cain, however, seems to have been monogamous.)

80. 80 Comment by Bill Wilder on 29 May 2008:

    It’’s certainly true that, particularly the OT, while an account of God’s dealings with mankind, relates that through His dealing with particular men. It is not intended as a history of the various societies generally except to the extent it relates history of the national of Israel in Canaan. It’s also true that none of the prophets condemn polygamy, although they do condemn the taking of foreign wives (particularly after the return from exile.) But it was the foreignness of the wives that was condemned. The text is simply silent on the matter of polygamy other than to relate that some men engaged in it. (An exception may be Exodus 21:10 which references a man taking another woman without diminishing a maidservant betrothed to him, but it’s not clear to me if the first wife was kept as a wife.)

    On balance, I suppose the most we can answer is that monogamy is the Lord’s intended ideal (and obviously the law in the Christian West for many centuries), but He has, for whatever reason, refrained from expressly condemning the practice (although as I’ve related I think one could draw inferences critical of the practice.)

    Still we are left with the spectacle of secularists who in one breath would likely uphold the right of homosexuals to “marry”, inveighing against polygamy as an affront to monogamy. Funny.

81. 81 Comment by Bill Wilder on 29 May 2008:

    Also for reference, here’s the link to the section on marriage (beginning with polygamy/monogamy) of Roland de Vaux’s Ancient Israel: its life and institutions.

    http://books.google.com/books?id=A42yVk8kj8kC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=ancient+israel+polygamy&source=web&ots=Fl9B71mnrV&sig=yguQf56fztkG3eTsOtGNPTClszk&hl=en#PPA25,M1

    He contends that “It is clear that the most common form of marriage in Ancient Israel was monogamy”; although he notes both examples of polygamy in Israel and the Talmudic rule permitting four wives to a common man and up to eighteen to the king.

    (I cannot speak to de Vaux’s credentials. Perhaps Dr. Fleming or another knows.)

    (Courtesy of Google Books)

82. 82 Comment by TJF on 30 May 2008:

    I’d like to transfer and slightly postpone the discussion of marriage to next week, when we’ll be discussing this question in connection with the Apostolic Church, especially in connection with the Shepherd of Hermas. Roland de Vaux was a competent Middle Eastern scholar who wrote popular books, rather useful on ancient Iraq, though not exactly up to date. I am no expert here, despite some attempts to study the ancient Middle East. The statement that monogamy was the most common form of marriage is undoubtedly true, because it is true of virtually all polygynous societies. What would happen if every man tried to have four wives and six concubines? A revolution of womanless young men. In Muslim countries, only comparatively well-off men can afford to take a second or third wife. Thus, while what he says is true, it is also trivial, if it is intended to distinguish Jewish polygamy from other forms. Complicating the issue is the nature of the evidence. The historical texts of the OT are not primarily concerned with domestic life, and often the allusions to marriage are only significant when the wives represent a foreign alliance or practice an alien religion or are otherwise mixed up in politics.

83. 83 Comment by Bill Wilder on 30 May 2008:

    “The historical texts of the OT are not primarily concerned with domestic life, and often the allusions to marriage are only significant when the wives represent a foreign alliance or practice an alien religion or are otherwise mixed up in politics.”

    The comparatively greater focus on Queen Jezebel is likely an illustration of Dr. Fleming’s point as the point of the extended discussion of her was to show the corruption of Israel by the foreign Baals. As well as reflecting her seemingly greater influence over her husband than that held by other wives of kings.

84. 84 Comment by Bill Wilder on 10 June 2008:

    Dr. Fleming,

    This is likely not to be read, but I was wondering if this site is the one you were referring to for Gregory’s Moralia:

    http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/gregory.html

    The author indicates it is an unrevised translation. I found another site that does not have a complete translation (only up to v. 21 of Chapter 28.) Thanks for any assistance.

    Regards

85. 85 Comment by DaveM on 19 June 2008:

    Excerpts below are taken verbatim from Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
    by Jon Krakauer

    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    If the expansion of the LDS faith continues at its current pace, within sixty years governing the United States will become “impossible without Mormon cooperation,” according to the eminent scholar Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University – and an unabashed admirer of Joseph Smith and the Mormons. In 1992, in his influential book The American Religion, Bloom wrote:

    Two aspects of the Saints’ vision seem starkly central to me; no other American religious movement is so ambitious and no rival even remotely approaches the spiritual audacity that drives endlessly toward accomplishing a titanic design.
    The Mormons fully intend to convert the nation and the world, to go from some ten million souls to six billion.

    Later in the same book, Bloom made a bold prediction about what the LDS leadership will do when it gains sufficient political leverage:

    And who can believe that the Mormons ever would have turned away from the practice of Celestial Marriage, if it were not for federal pressure? . . . I cheerfully do prophesy that some day, not too far on in the twenty-first century, the Mormons will have enough political and financial power to sanction polygamy again. Without it, in some form or other, the complete vision of Joseph Smith never can be fulfilled.

    – – Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer, pages 321-322.