"The Sister Wife" author has something to say

[MikeWaters]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/09/14....html?hpt=Sbin

My book is about polygamy. There, I've said it. I've spent over a dozen years studying and writing about the beginnings of the Latter-day Saints movement. I've scrutinized its leaders -- warts, flaws, and heroic deeds. I've studied the horrific acts committed against this group in the 19th century, and the horrific acts committed by them in the same century.
I've studied yesterday's polygamists, and today's, as appalled as anyone about the treatment of women and children in fundamentalist offshoots of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Mormons are just as appalled as the rest of us, I might add.) More than that, I am sickened by the practice of marrying child brides to men old enough to be their grandfathers. In my opinion, this practice has nothing to do with religion; it has everything to do with pedophilia.
I'm also concerned that HBO's popular "Big Love" and TLC's upcoming reality show "Sister Wives," for the sake of entertainment and palatability, can't give us the whole truth about life in polygamous families. I'm concerned that both shows are essentially promoting a lifestyle that is illegal in the U.S.
In the 19th century, however, polygamy was first practiced as a means to take care of widows and orphans on the rough and dangerous frontier. Mormons had been tortured and killed and chased from their settlements. Mothers with young children were left without homes or husbands to care for them. Was the practice of polygamy humane? I believe it was. Was it easy? Ask any woman who's known jealousy and she would probably say no.

Indignant shameless promotion. My favorite kind of essay.