(This info courtesy of my daughter who lives in Salt Lake City.)

Hint: it wasn’t the FLD.

I am curious as to the basis for your opinion. First, as I understand it, you believe that there are those who claim that a 12 year old marrying a 50 year old is a matter of religious freedom. I am sorry, but I am not aware of anyone (other than the perps) who takes that position.

I believe there are those who consider the not so recent Texas raid to have “issues” regarding the basis for the raid. [Side note: much of this comes from the way that Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has developed over the last 50 years or so; that is, we went down a pro-defendant path, and now some unpopular defendants are using that against us.] There may be some question about the actual “marital” status of several of those girls, and also about some of the girls’ ages, that is, some may have been 18, not 14. There are also a considerable number of people who take the position that polygamy ought not be illegal, claiming that it is a fundamental right to marry whomever you would like (as I understand their position).

However, to my knowledge, no one (again, other than the perps) takes the position that marrying an underage girl is anything other than a crime, polygamous marriage or not. Are you aware of an exception to this? Because I interpret your statement as indicating you may be aware of such people or organizations.

Nobody here defends the practice. It’s your point that we ignore it. Hardly the case, but we do expect that the law be applied equally and within the rules of evidence, etc. If there is something illegal going on with the case of forced marriages, then the leaders of the group should be prosecuted.

‘Moral Equivalency’? When, in any comment, did I attempt to defend child marriage,etc.? Quite the opposite.’

Again, no commenter here that I have seen has ever defended child marriage. It is your insistence that we need to look at our ‘sins’ here in the US (by ‘ignoring and ‘supporting’ child marriage.) if we are going to criticize common practice in Islamic countries, which is supported by influential Muslim clerics. I haven’t read where any US relgious institution of any great size and influence has come out in favor of child marriages.

I really don’t get why everyone is so appalled here. All I’m saying is that we have alleged examples of aspects of Sharia taking place on U.S. soil right, only under a different name. It’s an opportunity to legallly and socially address these issues.

What does the ‘minor group’ charge have to do with anything? Are you saying that if there are few enough people, it’s ok for them to break the law with child marriages and polygamy? That if the alleged oppression is small it doesn’t count?

Stop calling me ‘leftist’ and telling me to be ashamed and explain to me why it’s ok for just a few people to do these things and not ok for a larger group. Child marriage is child marriage no matter who does it. What in the world is your problem with me saying that somethings are wrong for everybody, not just Islam?

‘Moral Equivalency’? When, in any comment, did I attempt to defend child marriage,etc.? Quite the opposite.

And when in the world did I mention Mr. Simon? I mentioned commenters. Period.

Well, whatever. Enjoy your hissy fits.

Well,there’s the question. Women who had left the group and written about their experiences (there had been a number of books and articles well before this) claimed there were abuses, etc. But now the current FLDs leadership is trying to block all possible evidence of this by saying anything taken in the raid must be declared inadmissable.

So you just got to what I’m trying to bring up: We in this country need to have an urgent, detailed discussion about how claims and counterclaims of underage marriage and abuse are handled wrt religious enclaves. All kinds of things went wrong technically with this raid, things that point to unsolved problems in law and society.

There are groups now campaigning for the legalization of polygamy and pointing to this raid as proof that legalization is the only solution. How we as a country handle this debate *now* will determine a lot of what happens with other relgious groups in the future.

Oprah sensationalizes what she thinks is the ‘hot button’ topic, like a lot of tv shows. If she would’ve had shows on this group in previous years, then you might have a point about them not being obscure. Nobody really knew about them until after the raid, which has been rightly debated as possible overreach by the state.