Two sisters married off to one man in Bihar

Calcutta News.Net
Monday 28th January, 2008 (IANS)
http://www.calcuttanews.net/story/322507

A soothsayer's prediction led a father in a Bihar village to marry off his two daughters to a man at a village temple.

The groom, Sailendra Kumar alias Pintu, married two sisters - Aarti Kumari and Puja Kumari - at a Shiva temple in Phulwarisharif near Patna, on Saturday.

Sailendra, in his early 30s, walked around the holy fire seven times with both his brides simultaneously as priests chanted from the scriptures. He also applied vermilion on their foreheads, a Hindu mark of marriage.

The groom then signed an official document of the temple, declaring that he married the two sisters and would take care of them.

Polygamy is to marriage what the free market is to the economy. Which can only mean one thing: If you oppose legalizing polygamy, well, you are a Communist.

By Steven Alderman
12/10/2007, 6:09 AM

Polygamy -- a topic you can't avoid these days (e.g., Warren Jeffs, Big Love, Mitt Romney) -- is easy to disparage. But frankly the antipolygamy arguments just don't seem convincing. Let's run through them:

Polygamists marry underage women. True, some do. But these are the fundamentalist megalomaniacs. Polygamy isn't any more inherently oppressive to women than monogamous male-female marriage. Should we abolish booze because Lindsay Lohan can't hold her Jack Daniel's?

Please follow this link: http://www.esquire.com/features/man-at-his-best/polygamy1207

Polygamy Story in December Issue of Marie Claire

Christmas with my polygamous family was usually chaotic — sometimes we were on the run from the Feds. But it was beautiful, too.
http://lifestyle.msn.com/familyandparenting/raisingkids/articlemc.aspx?cp-documentid=5835851&page=2

By Dorothy Allred Solomon

It was the night before Christmas. We children ate popcorn balls while two of the mothers strung a clothesline from the west wall by the front door through the parlor, living room, and dining room to the east wall. Then they gave each of us a clean white knee-high stocking to hang on the line with a clothespin. "In the morning it will be filled with goodies and presents," one mother said, her eyes sparkling. "If you've been good enough," another teased. "Yes," said another, smiling mischievously. "There have been times this year when you definitely deserved coal instead of candy!"


Earlier that night, we gathered in the parlor while the mothers, their arms laced around each other's waists, sang hymns. Then our tall, slender father, wavy platinum hair framing his high forehead, leaned forward and caught each of us with his intense blue eyes and spoke of his love for us. He also spoke of his devotion to the Gospel and the Principle of Plural Marriage to which we all — each of his 35 children — owed our lives. He spoke of treading in the footsteps of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, and of the first modern-day Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith Jr., keeping the same covenant God made with Abraham, to make his seed righteous and as numerous as the sands of the seashore.

Review by Anne Wilde

This book is well written, keeps your interest, and in fact is a real page-turner. With an engaging and descriptive writing style, it’s hard to put it down. You want to learn first if she decides to enter plural marriage and then how it will work for her on both a day-to-day and long-term basis. Irene’s personal story is very compelling and draws in the reader with her vivid and heart-breaking descriptions of life as a second wife in a plural family residing in Mexico.

Letter to the Daily Herald (Provo, Utah)
http://www.thespectrum.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071002/OPINION03/710020314

I am glad that Warren Jeffs was convicted on two felony counts. However, I am frustrated over the imbalance with the charges he was pinned on as an "accomplice to a rape" versus the lack of charges against the man who was the actual "rapist." Was justice done? I think this hodge-podge of a discrepancy is what gives our legal system a black-eye.

By Rebecca Walsh
Tribune Columnist
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 09/27/2007 02:20:23

I don't feel sorry for Warren Jeffs. I do feel sorry for Allen Steed.

Fresh from winning their case against Jeffs, the empty-eyed megalomaniac of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Washington County prosecutors filed a rape charge against Steed on Wednesday based almost entirely on his court testimony and that of his one-time spiritual wife, Elissa Wall.

It's almost like they set him up.

Steed was Wall's 19-year-old first-cousin and bridegroom in 2001. Like 14-year-old Wall, Steed's marriage was arranged for him by Jeffs. Like Wall, he followed Jeffs' orders without question. Like Wall, he believed success in his marriage - specifically, multiplying and replenishing the Earth - would determine his eternal salvation. But Wall eventually bucked those teachings while Steed tried to follow them.

Now Steed is on trial and Wall is a feminist heroine.

Please follow this link for the rest of this article: http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_7011992

By Lee Benson
Deseret Morning News
Published: Sept. 24, 2007 12:09 a.m. MDT

In July of 1953, Howard Pyle, then the governor of Arizona, ordered a massive police raid on the border town of Short Creek to crack down on polygamist activity there.

"Here is a community," the governor said, "dedicated to the wicked theory that every maturing girl child should be forced into the bondage of multiple wifehood with men of all ages for the sole purpose of producing more children ... ."

Fast forward 54 years.

Deja vu anyone?

As we wait for the jury in St. George to conclude its deliberations on rape accomplice charges against polygamist leader Warren Jeffs one verdict is easy to read: "the wicked theory that every maturing girl child should be forced" is still on trial.

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,5143,695212642,00.html

Follow this link

Mary Batchelor's blog entry: Warren Jeffs Trial

By Rebecca Walsh
Tribune Columnist
Article Last Updated: 09/18/2007 02:12:58 AM MDT

It's a strange rape case when the attacker hasn't been put on trial.

But that's not the only thing that's weird about the Warren Jeffs court saga.

Just the facts are bizarre. She was 14; he was 19. First cousins, they were ordered by Jeffs - their prophet, mind-bender and godfather - to marry in 2001, procreate and "stay sweet."

Weeks later, she cried in a bathroom after her "husband" pressed his advances; she swallowed bottles of Tylenol and ibuprofen, threw up and then went on with her spiritual marriage. She complained to Jeffs, but not to police. She had a series of miscarriages. After three years, she slept in her truck to avoid her husband and started a relationship with another man. Jeffs kicked her out of the fold. In 2005, she sued Jeffs in a civil case that still is pending. And then she finally called investigators.

Please follow this link for this article: http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_6924892?source=email

The Last Word with Jami Floyd

http://blog.courttv.com/jami_floyd/2007/09/prosecution-or-.html