Feminists For Choice

I never thought I’d see the day when I would defend a leader of the FLDS. Jail officials in Kingman, Arizona are force feeding polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs because he has been on prolonged fasts as he awaits trial for marrying underage girls to older male members of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Jeffs has been suffering ailing health as a result of not eating for prolonged periods, and jail officials are force feeding him in order to keep him healthy enough to stand trial.

When I heard this story on NPR yesterday, I immediately thought of Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. This isn’t the most logical connection – what do two suffragists and a polygamist have in common, right? Well, I was horrified by the scenes in “Iron Jawed Angels” where they showed Alice Paul being force fed after she started a hunger strike among the women who were jailed for picketing the White House. I’m sure that the techniques that the jail officials are using with Jeffs are probably more humane than what Alice Paul had to endure, but I’m still opposed to the force feedings on principal. Fasting is a religious practice. If Mr. Jeffs wants to fast, that’s his right. He knows the risk it poses to his health. I think he is probably suicidal and most likely doesn’t want to be convicted in another court (the state of Utah has already convicted him of similar charges, as well as being an accessory to rape). I think it’s a chicken shit way to go out, but it’s still his right to choose.

Please don’t take this as a defense of polygamy or the FLDS church. The biographies that I’ve read about women who have left Colorado City are absolutely devastating. Women have no power within the FLDS culture, and young girls are being forced to marry men who are old enough to be their grandfathers. Women aren’t allowed to use birth control within the FLDS culture, and many of them have numerous pregnancies, even when it’s a danger to their health. I think that Carolyn Jessop (the author of Escape), and Elissa Wall (the author of Stolen Innocence and the person responsible for putting Warren Jeffs in prison as an accessory to rape) are very brave for speaking out about what life is like within the FLDS culture. I hope that more women find the courage to leave Colorado City. It’s not as glamorous as the polygamist family you see on HBO’s “Big Love.” I think Warren Jeffs deserves to be in prison for forcing young girls to be married and then raped by their husbands. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the same rights that any other prisoner has.