In a harrowing Vancouver Sun article, Daphne Bramham reports allegations that Fred King, prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ Restored, married and had sex with a ten-year-old and an eleven-year-old girl. Click here to read Bramham’s article.
We’re not for criminalizing polygamy provided it takes place among informed, consenting adults. Crimes that happen to be coincident with polygamy should be prosecuted on their own merits.
Where child abuse is involved, we are all for throwing the book at the goddammed perverts. The bigger, heavier, and harder the book, the better.
Members of the mainstream Mormon Church shouldn’t be smug. Early Mormon polygamist history is rife with child brides. Founder Joseph Smith took Fannie Alger, his first “plural wife,” when she was 14 or 15. And, no, that was not the customary marriage age at the time, and no, Smith did not take merely “spiritual” wives.