My Five Wives: The Push to Normalize, and then Legalize, Polygamy is On

My Five Wives: The Push to Normalize, and then Legalize, Polygamy is On March 6, 2014

First it was Big Love and its top tier talent. Then it was Sister Wives.

Now, we’ve got My Five Wives from TLC.

The commentary that I’ve seen on this show so far has been unalloyed promotion of polygamy. There are no complicating questions or even allusions to hint at a darker side of the misogynist practice of polygamy. It’s sell job, flat out.

I also haven’t heard a nay-saying word from the sisters in the feminist tier. All is silent on the feminist front as the mainlining of uncritical acceptance of polygamy to the American public moves forward.

The polygamous My Five Wives is being hyped as “about love” and “freedom” and, well, as normal and attractive as apple pie and Fourth of July fireworks.

We are treated to beautiful white bread kids with million dollar smiles, lisping “we just love one another,” while the American-Girl-grown-up wives assure us that this is just another alternative lifestyle. There is, if they are to believed, no misogyny roiling beneath this unctuous elevation of polygamy to a new norm, and certainly no sick or destructive agenda.

Remember a few eye blinks of time ago when anyone who said that redefining marriage to allow two men or two women to “marry” would lead to polygamy was called an idiot/bigot/homophobe/hater?

Now, it seems that anyone who dares to say a critical word about polygamy is an idiot/bigot/hater. I’ve got the insults in my delete file to prove it.

Meanwhile, those earlier idiot/bigot/homophobe/haters who said that redefining marriage would open the gates to who knows what — including polygamy — are looking more and more like prophets.

The legalization of gay marriage is still moving and the sell job on polygamy is already well along.

You do remember how this works, don’t you?

These entertainment series are a softening-up process that the media pus the American people through. This process makes the case that polygamists lead Ozzie and Harriet lives, and objections to polygamy are all in the minds and mouths of narrow-minded and backward-looking Christian zealots. There is, of course, no corresponding “case” from the other side of the question allowed. It all goes one way, and it the drum beat in favor of gay marriage and now polygamy never stops or slows.

The arguments that the “stars” of My Five Wives make in interviews fit the template we’ve had used on us before.

We’re “normal times five” they tell us. The man and his harem are not looking backwards to some old-school polygamy. Not at all. They consider themselves “progressive” and “independent.” Rather than being part of an evil right-wing religious sect, they are “spiritually driven.”

“We want to dispel all those, you know, myths about rumors about polygamist families,” they tell us. “We’re healthy, our kids are amazing, you know, and good citizens, good students, and you know, we’ve got a good family.”

Or, as it says on the TLC website, “love keeps us grounded.”

They are, in short, Ozzie and Harriet on steroids; the next new normal in cultural implosion of post Christian America.

From the Mail Online:

Just because he has five wives and 24 children doesn’t mean Brady Williams isn’t normal.


Or at least that’s the message he wanted America to receive during an interview with the Huffington Post in which the polygamist stars of TLC’s ‘My Five Wives’ spoke candidly about hopes to dispel the myths surrounding their unconventional lifestyle. 


‘All of America’s having sex,’ Brady said. ‘And it’s no big deal to just answer it and to just say ‘Duh no we’re not perverted, we’re not twisted, we’re just normal.’

‘Normal times five.’

The family, which belongs to no church, considers itself progressive and independent.

Williams and his wives slowly withdrew from the fundamentalist Mormon church in their rural community outside of Salt Lake City during the mid-2000s after re-evaluating their core beliefs.

The family no longer teaches the tenets of fundamental Mormonism to their children at home, opting instead to take from other teachings such as Buddhism to instill good, morale values in their two dozen children, who range in age from 2-20.

Brady now calls the family ‘spiritually driven.’

‘We want to dispel all those, you know, myths and rumors about polygamist families,’ Robyn said.

‘The ones that have been in the spotlight, there’s things like abuse and stuff that go on but not every polygamist family is like that. We wanted to show that we’re normal, we’re healthy, our kids are amazing, you know, and good citizens, good students, and you know we’ve got a good family.’


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2572599/Were-normal-times-five-Polygamist-stars-My-Five-Wives-ask-people-not-judge-unconventional-family.html#ixzz2vDmjBraz
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