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Why Polygamy should be prosecuted

By: Flora Jessop executive director at The Child Protection Project,and K. Dee Ignatin, executive director at Americans Against Abuses of Polygamy

Polygamy is unconstitutional because it is a human rights violationagainst women and children. Polygamy is a Felony.

Polygamy has been studied in multiple countries around the world.The results of dozens of studies by medical and mental healthprofessionals all reflect the negative impact polygamy has worldwide.Polygamy statistically leads to higher incidences of poverty,molestation, child and spouse abandonment, incest, child brides,depression, welfare fraud and divorce.

Polygamy is the largest gateway to the Islamic practice of Sharia lawin our country. Legally recognizing one religious right to abuse willnaturally lead to others. If Muslims have the right to plural marriage,because of culture or religion, why are they not also entitled tosubject their children to molestation and child marriages because ofit?

Allowing polygamy to remain in practice without prosecution sends apowerful message to those within polygamy that our laws only apply if

they want to abide by them. Fundamentalist Mormons say, We arelaw abiding citizens except for this one felony we are committing.

Mormon Fundamentalist as well as Muslim polygamists show aflagrant disregard for U.S. law in favor of their own culture of abuse,

justified by their religion. As a free nation governed by laws, wecannot allow small groups of people to form independent operationaltheocracies where the rights of women and children are trampled inthe name of religious freedom. America should not encourageimmigrant cultures to hold on to, rather than let go of traditions whichinfringe on the human rights of women and children.

70% of Muslim women who are first wives say their spouse took thesecond wife without their knowledge or consent, even though that isnever supposed to happen in Islam. How can we as Americans lookat the women coming to our shores from countries where they never

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dreamed of the right even to uncover their faces and say, "Here too,when your husband wants to bring another woman home, there isnothing you can do but live with it, because we are such a tolerantpeople.

American Muslim polygamy has only started to grow and yet italready exceeds the estimated 38,000 fundamentalist Mormonsengaging in the practice today. It took the fundamentalist Mormons100 years to get here, yet it has taken Muslims in America less than asingle generation to overtake them.

Refusing to prosecute polygamy will open the floodgates for Shariabased Muslim polygamy to grow to European levels here in theUnited States, quickly.

The Attorney General has a duty to prosecute crime and yet in Utahand Arizona both have conspired with law breakers to better facilitatetheir criminal practices. The insult to law-abiding citizens of thesestates by this stance is egregious and only furthers the pattern andpractice of abuse within polygamy.

Should polygamy be prosecuted? Yes. To do anything else opensPandora's Box, and the results will be vast and disastrous toAmerican culture, as well as childrens and womens rights.