Polygamy and the FDLS: American Sacred Prostitution

About a decade ago, there was widespread press coverage of a purported phenomenon in the Orthodox Jewish community whereby the practice of taking a concubine in addition to one’s current wife had been revived in some circles for the first time in nearly a millennium. After further research it had been determined that the gentlemen in said circles were likely having enough trouble procuring one wife, let alone multiples. That they refused to identify themselves, or that their proclamations had no credible basis in any Jewish legal framework, was anticlimactic. In more ways than one.

Recently, the FDLS/Yearning for Zion ranchers seem to have garnered an inexplicable level of sympathy for their obviously self-inflicted plight. Last week, the New York Times Magazine published a photo essay of its residents, and John Stossel ran a very sympathetic, if not outright supportive, op-ed in the Sun.  Stossel quotes “polygamy activist” (!) Mark Henkel: “Someone like a Hugh Hefner will have a successful television show with three live-in girlfriends! …But suddenly, if that man was to marry them, then suddenly he's a criminal. That's insane!”

First of all, the women in Hefner’s life can walk out at any time (though that’s obviously easier said than done). The “liberating” aspects of the Playboy Mansion lifestyle for women are eminently debatable; the flexibility of their relationship with Hef, as opposed to any woman in a bigamist marriage, is not.

Second, there is no doubt at all that Hef and the Playmates are either NOT trying to have children, or trying to NOT have children. Consequently, familial collateral damage is nonexistent. This is obviously not the case in polygamy, where the “wives” are often children themselves.

During the Tom Green bigamy trial in 2002, Nat Hentoff wrote in the Village Voice that he was surprised that more liberal groups (read: ACLU) were not rushing to Green’s defense. Hentoff thought that a parallel could be drawn from polygamy to other cases of “unconventional” relationships (read: gay marriage). Hentoff seemed to be ignoring the fact that the level of consent between parties in polygamous relationships was not a factor in play the way it was in the other ones, as can be proven by the dynamics of the marriages, not to mention the behaviors of its most prominent practitioners.

A stark illustration of such lack of consent was provided in the August 4 New Yorker story by William Dalrymple about the persistence of sacred prostitution in some Indian states, from which two strong analogs to the practice of modern-day polygamy can be drawn. One, the obvious lack of consent involved in contracting underage polygamous marriages—whether the consent of the underage bride or “consent” of the original wife—and the analog in contracting a sale of one’s daughter or sister into prostitution. Two, the familial collateral damage incurred on the part of any children locked into either of these systems should be obvious.

Stossel should be ashamed of himself.  Henkel should be investigated and prosecuted. And all FDLS men in bigamist marriages should be jailed for decades, lose all parental rights to their children, have all their marriages annulled retroactively, and suffer the stigma of being labeled sex offenders in public for life.