HBO’s New Polygamy Show

Thanks to William for alerting me to HBO’s new series called Big Love, which stars Bill Paxton as a polygamist in Utah married to three women. The show is actually set in the real Utah town where I spent more than a decade of my growing up years. Oy vey.

Big Love is apparently going to be a high-profile venture, given that it is produced by Tom Hanks and is premiering March 12th after The Sopranos. In the show, Paxton plays a businessman who owns three homes that sit side-by-side; each home contains one of his wives and the kids she has produced. Watch a preview here.

Not surprisingly, given that this is HBO, the show seems to be one big sex romp. The main joke is that Paxton’s character has to take tons of Viagara. HAHAHAHAHA! I swear, you cannot pay these Hollywood scribes enough. I mean, polygamist…taking…Viagara! Hot damn, that’s some cutting edge programming.

The Mormon Church and some conservative groups have condemned the show and have asked HBO to run a disclaimer stating that "plural marriage" is no longer an official practice of the LDS church. Perhaps HBO, privy to the news events of this week, will decide it’s wise to run the disclaimer. After all, they don’t want Bill Paxton taken hostage and beheaded by an angry mob. God-fearing people are the scariest kind.

I have mixed feelings about this show. Well, that’s not entirely true. I think it’s stupid and I wish it didn’t exist. But since it does, I’m glad that the Mormon Church and the people of Utah will once again be shamed on the international stage for the disgusting and degrading practice of polygamy. Despite being outlawed by the Church over a century ago (ahem), it is still practiced by tens of thousands of people in Utah and the Colorado/Arizona border towns. Church leaders and government officials have done virtually nothing to put a stop to a practice that often sees very young girls (we’re talking 12-year-olds) “married” to 60-year-old men. The whole state deserves to suffer from the stigma and ridicule that continues to be heaped upon them.

I am disturbed, however, that the show is making polygamy seem sexy. Yes, I realize that this is HBO, whose idea of realism is Sex and the City. But the general public is for the most part completely ignorant of Mormon practices and life in Utah. I hope that Big Love does not lead uninformed couch potatoes to think that polygamy is just another lifestyle choice. It’s not.

Having lived in Utah, a place that probably has more polygamists than anywhere outside of the Middle East, I know a few things about polygamy. I’ve known polygamists, including a family with a living situation similar to the one portrayed in Big Love. From my knowledge and experience, polygamists are:

1) Desperate losers who no one else would marry
2) Crazy
3) Religious fanatics
4) Wife beaters and child rapists
5) Butt ugly
6) Violent thugs
7) Uneducated, inbred freaks who make the average Jerry Springer Show guest look like Albert Einstein

I am not exaggerating. Polygamous families operate like cults. Extremely violent cults. Think Waco and David Koresh. That’s the kind of mentality that exists. Most of the women in polygamous relationships grew up in this cult-like environment and were “married” as very young girls to old men. These women are uneducated and disempowered. There are privately-run shelters in Salt Lake City (like the one operated by Tapestry) for women and girls trying to escape from polygamy. These women fear for their lives and rightly so. Polygamy in Utah has a long history of murder and violence. There are small towns in Utah, Colorado and Arizona that are by run by polygamous cult leaders, Colorado City being the most famous example. In these towns, even the police are polygamists, meaning that widespread crimes like child rape and domestic violence go unpunished. I know it’s hard to believe that such things are happening right now in America, but I assure you that they are. Click here for more info. With rare exceptions, the authorities in Utah stand by and do nothing. They claim it’s impossible to prove charges of polygamy, given that the participants are not legally married. My theory is that state officials, almost all of them Mormon, cannot condemn these modern-day polygamists without also condemning their own lineage and the church founders.

You may be wondering how a man can support seven wives and 40 children. Well, he’s not supporting them. The American taxpayer is. Polygamists drain the welfare system. Because the wives are not legally married to the husband, they are considered single mothers. The few prosecutions of polygamists that I’ve seen involve welfare fraud.

So HBO can show Bill Paxton sleeping with three different glamorous women, popping his Viagara and having a grand old time. Meanwhile, thousands of innocent victims caught up in the web of polygamy will continue to suffer because no one will help them. They’re an embarrassing secret and it’s just easier to pretend they don’t exist.