This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2008, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Don't wait for Gloria Allred to step into the mess in Texas.
She's watching Larry King, the news conferences. Over the years, she has been asked to represent some of the FLDS women. But she's waiting for the right case.
So far, this one doesn't seem to be it.
For a feminist attorney who has made a career out of representing some of the most maligned, powerless women in America - Rob Lowe's nanny, Scott Peterson's mistress, Orem water scofflaw Betty Perry - polygamous wives are not easy victims.
"We're so used to thinking of the individual rights of each woman. Here, it's all turned on its head. In polygamy, all women must be subordinated," Allred says. "Women are obviously treated like property. They're prizes for men who obey the rules."
On its face, polygamy treats women as a commodity - good only for breeding and child-rearing. No matter how progressive some polygamists claim to be, the notion that one man should have several women is inherently sexist.
And Warren Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints interpretation of polygamy is particularly controlling - women are uneducated, financially dependent and impregnated at a young age to keep them that way. They look and sound like Stepford Wives on the Prairie.
They're not much different from domestic violence victims who never leave their abusers.
But while feminists will defend battered women every time, they have been strangely silent since Texas child welfare agents first yanked 460 children from their mothers.
I don't expect feminists to defend prostitution, pornography or the latest round of YouTube junior high catfights. So I'm not really surprised advocates for women's rights are reluctant to defend polygamy - certainly not the patriarchs and their complicitous wives, who teach their daughters to sweetly obey.
In my mind, a feminist defends every other woman's right to choose, no matter how repugnant the choice - posing for Playboy, sleeping with New York's governor for money or joining the WWF. At the very least, I hoped feminists would defend the FLDS women's right to keep their children while the state investigated.
But polygamy leaves feminists conflicted.
During Utah's fight for statehood, the feminists of the day were split. Mormon women were among the first in the nation to vote, but the federal government yanked the right, condescendingly assuming polygamous wives were casting their ballots as proxies for their husbands. Some suffragists defended the women's right to vote; others supported the government.
University of Maryland law professor Martha Ertman says there are as many feminist reactions to polygamy as there are women. Right now, with this particular sect, many feminists are resorting to stereotype.
Most follow Allred's lead, outraged about Jeff's reported abuse of women and children.
But others flip theory on its head. They point out that some polygamous wives find the lifestyle empowering. Polygamy may in fact be the perfect relationship for a heterosexual feminist.
"I see how some women can access ironic ascendancy in their polygynous lifestyle. Mormon fundamentalist women have an informal power that many of us do not see or understand," says Janet Bennion, a Lyndon State College anthropology professor who studied Utah's Apostolic United Brethren.
"They manipulate their husbands to make decisions that work to their advantage," Bennion adds. "They manage the budget and rotation schedule. They form a strong female networking bond to acquire resources and take care of their children."
They sound a lot like the three wives of Bill Paxton's character in "Big Love."
"We should be suspicious of knee-jerk responses that assume monogamous marriage is so perfect and polygamous marriage is so terrible," says Ertman, who interviewed polygamous wives as a University of Utah law professor. "There's a lot of hierarchy within monogamous marriage as well."
In the end, the job of defending the rights of Yearning For Zion's mothers was left to two workaday Legal Aid attorneys - Julie Balovich and Amanda Chisholm. The appeals court justices ruled that Texas Child Protective Services (CPS) had "simply no evidence" of imminent abuse, certainly not enough to remove all the children at once.
"I just pulled over on the road to Eldorado and started crying," Balovich said.
Predictably, CPS has appealed to the state Supreme Court, trying to keep the children from their mothers indefinitely.
Feminists, now is your chance to speak up.
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Correction: Former Envirocare of Utah owner Khosrow Semnani was not convicted of fraud and tax evasion in a 1996 bribery case, as was stated in Rebecca Walsh's May 18 column in The Salt Lake Tribune. He plead guilty to the misdemeanor of aiding and abetting the delivery of a false tax return in the mail to the IRS. Semnani lives in Salt Lake County, not California. He sold the company in 2004.