LETTER FROM THE EDITOR 4/15/08
IT'S JUST ABOUT SEX AFTER ALL
The whole FLDS raid in Texas is just a fantastic story. Barely pubescent girls coerced into having sex with middle aged men! A temple with a secret sex bed in it! Young girls used as breeders, forced to be servants to their husbands!
Wow! It's as good as the reality show, "To Catch A Predator," and it builds even better ratings. Every fascinating detail is, er, detailed---in excruciating detail. But there's one thing missing from this headline screaming story, something that has not been addressed by any reporter or, for that matter, any official of Texas, Utah or anywhere else.
Where are the women past childbearing age?
We see photos and video of young girls covered in billowing pastel multi-yards of fabric, photos and video of children also swathed in this Taliban lite fashion, with nothing but heads and hands showing. But there's no video, no photos, of any woman who looks anywhere near the age of menopause. Where are those women? What place do they have in the fundamentalist Mormon FLDS culture?
The whole raid-on-the-ranch story has been presented as serious concern about the children, not as titillation about sex. We have been told that over 400 of these religiously indoctrinated children were taken into custody by the state of Texas because they were considered "at risk." Some of the children were born to mothers under the age of 16, mothers who are legally children themselves. It's all about the young girls and the children, we are told.
But what about the old girls? There hasn't been so much as a mention of the middle aged women. Are there any there at that place in Texas? Are there middle aged women in the FLDS home site on the border of Arizona and Utah? Those who would now be middle aged FLDS women were young teenagers when they were married off to older men to be obedient breeders in their turn. Many of those men, 25 or 30 years older than their young brides at the time of those 'spiritual marriages,' must have already died of old age. What rights do their widows have? Are they allowed to inherit any money or property from their marriage? Did they get to keep their home? Do they live in a family, honored for their contribution to the growth of their religion? Or are they considered useless and more or less ignored because they can no longer bear children or work in the fields?
We don't know. No one has reported on their situation. Old ladies are not sexy. They don't bring in newspaper readers or television viewers. But if young girls are being physically abused---and the one whose phone call set off the raid allegedly had her ribs broken by her "husband"---what is happening to the older women, who may not be as naive and obedient as an innocent child bride?
No one knows. Even the County Attorney's office that oversees the secretive FLDS community on the Arizona/Utah border doesn't investigate the possible sad plight of women who are no longer sexy, no longer young.
Because, you see, no matter how we believe that our interest in the polygamist communities is based on concern for the children, it's really based on our interest in the sex. More than one wife? Wow! What do they do?
It wouldn't even be a headline story if it was about something like tax evasion or welfare fraud, which are also part of what goes on in the FLDS enclaves. No, not much interest in that. But sex with young girls? Old guys with their own harems? Tell us all about it! Tell us more!
Wina Sturgeon, Editor