Montana vs Mormons?

From The Daily Beast (Apr 19, 2012 7:05 PM EDT) we have Reporter Ben Jacobs talking about  Governor Mitt Romney's polygamist heritage.  It seems that Montana's Governor, Brian Schweitzer, has made a public issue of the fact that Mr Romney's Grandparents were living in a Polygamist Commune in Mexico.  The fact that those Grandparents were monogamist seems to be in smaller type.

Romney’s father, George—who served as governor of Michigan and was a member of the Nixon cabinet and also a presidential candidate—was born in Mexico in 1907 to a family of American Mormons who fled to Mexico when the United States government cracked down on the practice of polygamy.  George Romney’s parents were in a monogamous marriage, but Mexico was the last bastion for the practice of plural marriage in the Church of Latter Day Saints.  (The church has since expressly prohibited the practice.)

Born in 1907?   A century ago.  A monogamous marriage?  The Governor of the Great State of Montana is really reaching here.

But, it is really worse than that.  Governor Schweitzer is from the "Party of Choice", except when it isn't.  Does he not remember reading about, in school, the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882?  People of faith were arrested and imprisoned for doing what they thought was right.  Some went into exile rather than submit to the tyranny of the Federal Government.

The Governor thinks most women in the United States find polygamy an abomination, and I think he is correct in his judgement.   Personally, I am against the practice.   That said, out across the Globe hundreds of millions of people agree with the practice.   But, here in these United States the practice only exists underground or on TV shows.

In sum, this is ancient news, about a way of life (Mormon Mexican Colonies) that died with the Mexican Revolution—a way of life created, in part, by persistent hostility to a new idea by the people of the Northeastern quarter of our nation.

It is time to move on.

Regards  —  Cliff