Editorial: The invisible population

Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2006 | 7:17 a.m.

Monday's arrest of a polygamist community leader who was one of the FBI's most-wanted fugitives laid bare to the nation a lifestyle that has been the target of controversy since the 19th century.

The Nevada Highway Patrol arrested Warren Steed Jeffs, leader of a sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as he was driving on Interstate 15 just north of Las Vegas. Jeffs, formerly of Colorado City, Ariz., was wanted on sexual abuse charges stemming from marriages that authorities say he arranged among minors, including one between a 16-year-old girl and an already-married 28-year-old man. Eight other members of the sect, based in a community that sits on the Utah-Arizona border, also face charges.

Jeffs' arrest shines the public spotlight on a lifestyle that was denounced and discontinued by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the late 1800s, but continues, experts say, among 30,000 to 50,000 people in the United States. Many of these families live in Nevada, Utah and Arizona.

Polygamy has been dogged by law enforcement and child protection officials, portrayed on television through the HBO series "Big Love" and defended by its practitioners as a religious freedom issue. Children from four polygamous groups - including the sect run by Jeffs - defended the lifestyle during an Aug. 19 news conference in Salt Lake City.

Jeffs' sect and at least one other large Utah-based polygamous group have businesses in Las Vegas.

Polygamy is all around those who live in the West, yet it remains virtually invisible until someone like Jeffs is sought and captured. Jeffs is not the first polygamist to face charges for his actions, nor should he be the last. Those who force minors into marriagelike or otherwise adult relationships should be pursued and prosecuted. Such a practice is not religious freedom, but human bondage of a most despicable kind.