Texas Polygamy Case
For the last week or so there have been a whole series of stories about a police raid on a community of polygamists in Texas. The most recent story from the New York Times is here, but there’s a ton of coverage anywhere. The police have focused on allegations of child abuse which are apparently grounded in allegations that a number of young women under 17 have given birth in this community.
I’m not particularly a fan of teen-age pregnancy, but it’s not extraordinary in this day and age for women who are 16 to have children. And many times in our history it would have been entirely unremarkable. But of course, there is much more going on in this case than simple teen pregnancy. One concern is that the men who fathered these children were significantly older than the women–perhaps as much as 30 years. A second concern is that the religious sect involved was quite hierarchical. Both of these factors might suggest that the women did not truly consent to sex/marriage.
Now I don’t actually know very much about what it might have been like to live in the community involved here, so I pass no judgment on the conditions there. But it is striking to me that there is such care over the women’s capacity for true consent in this setting. There are so many instances in which we seem much more willing to assume consent, even when confronted with ambiguous circumstances.
I’d guess the different reactions have to do with a couple of factors. There’s a lot about the sect that seems alien to us. In particular, it is a polygamous sect. I wonder whether a general uneasiness about differentness in general and polygamy in particular leads us to be particularly skeptical about assertions of consent and free will.
Tags: adolescent sexuality, youth, marriage, polygamy
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