This atrocity, shocking in its initial sweep, hugely overbroad, of children and their parents, gets worse day by day.

I do not favor polygamy. In most of the polygamous communities I have come to know over several decades, child abuse is prohibited by their own rules.

When a people are driven into the desert, into retreat from a persecuting majority culture, a people may remain frozen in time just as if they were caught in ice and frozen, to appear later in a radically changed culture, during some thaw. In the 19th century, and every century before that, ages of marriage were much younger than now.

I offer no excuse for the patriarchal distinction between genders though, sadly, it exists in many cultures. This I have long opposed in every dimension of society, polygamous and mainstream. But these deeply held traditions die hard. The only effective and compassionate way for this to happen is over time with example set by leaders.

Criminal law is a vicious thing that possesses no subtlety. We need it for protection and as a last resort. But Jesus' admonition against going to the law in all but the last most desperate alternative is simply the recognition of the law's savagery.

The perpetrator of any crime of abuse upon any young boy or girl must be punished. But this massive war against polygamy is unconstitutional, savage, and utterly self-defeating.

This is a tragic example of the misuse of criminal law, made much worse by the idiotic reporting by CNN, Fox, and all the feeding frenzy inclinations of 24/7 news media, with blood, the blood of all the victims of abuse in this tragedy, in the water. Have we no shame?

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* ED FIRMAGE is a Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law, emeritus, at the University of Utah College of Law.