History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

386 MORMONISM AND POLYGAMY.
A large class of men refuse to take upon themselves the
cost and cares of matrimony, preferring more free and
cheaper indulgence. Of very many of these five millions
thus left to themselves, unmated, unsupported,
forbidden to become plural wives, Christian civilization
makes prostitutes or paupers. And this is the
orthodox idea of the elevation of woman ! Make angels
of light and happiness of one portion, while dooming
the rest, under the hard heel of social despotism, to
the depths of misery and despair. Nay, more : while
the men are thus busied working upon the affections
of women, taking advantage of their loneliness and
poverty,, and constantly adding to the numbers of
the lost by seducing the pure from the paths of respectability,
their sisters, mothers, wives, and daugh-
ters are applying the scourge with all their might to
these unfortunates, hoping thereby to gain further
favor with the men by showing how much better are
they than their most foully wronged sisters.
Such are the men, such the society, in which the
foulest wrongs to women are so universally and constantly
committed—wrongs which would put to blush
savages, yea, and all the devils of darkness; such are
the men who wage war on the plural-wife system,
which would give to this class and all classes of women
home and honorable alliance.
Further than all this, polygamy claims that men or
governments have no natural or moral right to forbid
the practice, pass laws against it, and inflict punishments.
Inherent human rights are above statutory
law. Governments have no right to pass laws against
gambling, prostitution, drunkenness, or any act of the
individual resulting in injury only to himself. He
who harms another may be punished, not he who
harms himself; otherwise, who is to determine what
is or what is not harmful? All men and women are
every day doing things harmful to themselves, but
which no one thinks of checking by legislation. By
no line of logic can polygamy be rightly placed in the