Position Statement on Polygamy Legislation
Position Statement on Polygamy Legislation
Principle Voices, July 2009
PRINCIPLE VOICES PRAISES all efforts to support the assistance of victims of crimes, abuse and domestic violence, particularly the allocation of funding to VAWA and VOCA. Abuse and domestic violence cross all socio-economic lines. Victims from all walks of society are equally deserving of resources and assistance. However, the “Victims of Polygamy Assistance Act” (introduced in 2008) concerns us for the following reasons:
1) The bill erroneously presupposes that there are large numbers of women and children who are “desperate” to be “rescued” from polygamy.
· The 37,000 men, women and children who form the “Fundamentalist Mormon” segment of America’s polygamous population cannot be ignored, swept aside or eradicated. They are deeply committed to their religious beliefs and lifestyle.
· Most polygamous families are loving and nurturing, and are dedicated to each other. As with any marriage or family, there are challenges, struggles, and dysfunctional periods. Polygamous families are no different.
· Occasionally there are men, women or children in the polygamous culture who become victims of abuse or of crimes that have nothing to do with “polygamy”. Their family arrangement should not be a hindrance to their accessing resources or victims’ services, nor should services and resources be held hostage or made contingent upon a woman’s abandonment of her faith or family.
· When there are legitimate cases of abuse, or where there are women who may wish to leave a particular family or community, there are qualified organizations already in place to provide assistance and resources.
2) The bill focuses on an abstract family arrangement rather than on real offenses perpetrated by individuals.
· The bill defines polygamous families as “organized crime families” and polygamous communities as “criminal organizations” based on the fact that some members in these communities are polygamous. It is impractical, and unprecedented, to prosecute a family or an organization, or even to prohibit members of this culture from forming commercial, secular or religious organizations.
· Utah and Arizona have pledged to focus their prosecutorial efforts on welfare fraud, crimes against children, and on abuse, NOT on consenting adult relationships and healthy plural families where no such crimes exist.
· Aggressive state and federal action against this lifestyle in the past has served only to force plural families underground, which further alienates them from larger society and deprives them of the benefits of societal interaction, public education, social services, and equal citizenship.
· Imputing “corruption” to family members, business associates, fellow believers and social service providers (merely by association) might well expose innocent people to the regrettable and unrestrained abuses of power as has been evidenced in the past.
Principle Voices strenuously objects to any effort to characterize our families as anything but what they are:- FAMILIES. Societal acceptance, openness and collaborative interaction are the only avenues to cultivating healthy families, and to reaching victims where abuse occurs.
