That Ten-Foot Pole

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, broken away from the more mainstream and certainly respectable Mormon Church which has long since foresworn its original patriarchal embrace of polygamy, remains a hugely socially destructive force in British Columbia, albeit in the geographically limited boundaries of Bountiful.

The powerful clique of elite Church men who make all the rules - in particular those rules that emanate from their prophet Warren Jeffs, jailed in Texas for life plus 20 years for the sexual assault of young girls - has always winnowed out male competition, deciding that it will be they, not young, virile men who are entitled to deflower virgins and 'marry' their own coterie of women to sire countless children.

The girls become victimized by this system of covetous old men seeking to broaden their harems and scatter their seed as widely as possible, while the boys become social outcasts because there are never too many girls and young women to go around in this odious system of social structuring.  New news out of Bountiful reveals that the alpha mating males are more than ever entitled.  In the process many other men who are fathers are being de-entitled by the church hierarchy.

These biological fathers are being deprived of their children, the children taken in by other, assigned 'fathers' on orders of the leaders of the Fundamentalist Church.  Of the total number of men now in Bountiful, twelve to fifteen are now deemed worthy of the honour of impregnating the women and girls living within the Bountiful enclave.  Mothers have been ordered to close off physical contact with their own children.

Fathers are forbidden from physical contact with their children, given warning they will be considered to be "adulterers" for any physical contact even with a toddler.  Play is now forbidden for children; toys, games, sports and all recreational activities banned.  And the Bountiful Elementary-Secondary School has been closed to classes.  The 250 children who attend kindergarten to Grade 10 no longer have access to formal schooling.

There have been no official complaints lodged outside the community.  Those mothers and fathers who have been impacted and whose lives have been altered in such a draconian manner remain silent about what has occurred, keeping it within the community.  It is their prerogative as adults to do so.  It is an entirely different matter for the hundreds of children whose lives are conducted in a societally bizarre movement that victimizes them.

Although Chief Justice Robert Baumann determined that polygamy is inherently harmful to children, women and society, to the extent that limiting religious freedom and freedom of association is justified in this instance, the province itself has taken no steps to investigate further or to exert its responsibility on behalf of the children of Bountiful.