In April of this year, 400 children from a Texas polygamist sect were removed from their homes because of allegations of sexual abuse.

This week, a judge in Texas as overturned the ruling, allowing for the children to be returned to their parents on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints compound.

Also, FLDS has agreed to no longer arrange marriages for young girls if they are not of legal consenting age.

I didn’t really understand what the whole concept of polygamy. All I understood was that one guy has several wives and so on. Recently, I just finished watching season one of HBO’s Big Love, so a feel a little more familiar with what polygamy is. That’s right, HBO taught me something – deal with it.

In the pictures I saw of the kids in Texas were being escorted off the FLDS compound, all of them were dressed in very conservative, uniformed outfits. I started to wonder what it must be like for a young person to be in that sort of situation – not only being separated from their parents, but just to live in that particular environment.

Polygamy doesn’t get a very pleasant representation in the media; polygamist compounds get even less positive response. Being the outside spectators, we have moral and media constructed feels about groups like these. Personally, I imagine really old guys getting married to sixteen old girls.

But after watching Big Love I’m not really sure how to feel about the ending to this conflict. On the one hand, this community is probably the only sense of family these kids know and being pulled away from that is probably one of the most painfully emotional experiences. On the other hand, their current living environment could be very harmful to them emotionally and or physically if the abuse claims rule out.

I’ll admit, Big Love made me feel a little compassion for polygamists. But the idea of really, really young girls getting hitched with old men three times their ages? I honestly don’t think random government drop-ins and the promise to stop underage marriages from taking place will make any difference. A tradition hundreds of years in the making like this doesn’t just faze out over night.
—Eming Piansay