Epoch on 21 January 2009
| superchunk said: The problem isn't generally that a person has many wives, its that many times their daughters are forced into this life and it all becomes more of a slave-master issue more than a wife-husband relationship. It more or less boils down to women's rights. |
You've touched upon the heart of the issue there. In Bountiful the older men had the power and often ran the teenage boys out of town so they wouldn't have a problem controlling the younger girls. It was not uncommon for girls of around 14-16 to be married off to older men who already had 2-3 "wives".
In essence the community was a totalitarian society where older men ruled supreme and no one went against their wishes. The part where it gets tricky is that some of the girls didn't think it was wrong, while others tried to flee the community.
If a society brainwashes (using religion in this case) the younger generation into thinking these living conditions are the norm, is it still wrong ?
