The XX Factor: What women really think.

Polygamists in Court

This week, I am attending the trial of Raymond Merrill Jessop, a member of a polygamous Mormon sect in West Texas, accused of sexually assaulting a child. You will no doubt remember the photos from 2008 of Texas Rangers storming the compound and carting off hundreds of children, from toddlers to teenagers. Since then, the members of Yearning for Zion have allowed select photographers onto the compound to capture innocent moments – feeding babies, slicing bananas and being generally wholesome, as a way to win over public opinion. Today, the trial created another opportunity to contemplate the power of images to manufacture a truth ... (Read more in DoubleX.)

“Out of Ashes Growing Lilies”

The whole Yearning for Zion case left me creeped out. The feminist in me finds polygamy in general a little creepy, but even more so when young women—girls even—are married off to more powerful older men. The mother in me hates the way they kick out the boys to make the numbers work, and I'm saddened by stories that the children apparently grow up without toys or anything else that might inspire their imagination. But the civil libertarian in me also gets creeped out when the state oversteps its bounds and removes children from loving homes on grounds of child abuse wherein the "abuse," it turns out, is largely having a weird religion.

So this story from the Salt Lake Tribune (via the Drudge Report) brought a smile to my face. The hundreds of children who were taken from the YFZ ranch have been returned to their mothers, but the mothers have been advised not to return to the ranch. They are renting apartments and trying to feed their families, and—contrary to one of the arguments against polygamy, that it increases the welfare roles—the women are trying to make it on their own. So some of them have launched a Web site to sell the modest garb that their sect requires. One of the mothers is quoted in the story thusly: "They accuse us of [relying] on welfare, but that's untrue. We like to be busy and learn to meet our needs—out of ashes growing lilies."

I'm still creeped out by the FLDS, and I probably will stick to Old Navy when I need to stock up on kids' clothes, but I admire the heck out of these women for trying to make a go of it in a way that allows them to be true to themselves.