With all the focus being on the religious of people overseas, sometimes it’s good to be reminded of the really weird shit that happens in America. Utah is home to more than 50,000 practicing polygamists, and not all of them are as media-friendly and unassuming as the Sister Wives. Tom Green has a compound in the desert of Utah called Greenhaven, where he lives with his six current wives and 26 children under the age of 12. His wives, whom he married between the ages of 35 and 51, had an age range of only 14 to 16 when he courted and married them. Tom admits that “a lot of people have criticized me for marrying such young girls…but these girls were [ready for marriage].” Hmmm – the kid is “mature enough” to enter into an adult relationship with a grown man? Heard that one before. Not only did he marry creepily young girls, he met at least two of them after marrying their mothers. In fact, the mother and daughter who are two of his current wives had kids on the same day, making their sons both brothers and uncle and nephew – and brother to one mother, grandson to the other. Mind blown. “I think most people when they see plural marriage, they see this horny old man that wants to have sex with young girls – but that’s not Tom,” says one of his young wives, who insists that it is the woman’s decision to have sex with him, not his. Clearly, these women don’t see their fundamentalist Mormon upbringing as a from-birth grooming scheme, which is what makes it work so well for men like Tom. So what happens when you’ve been having kids for decades, and your choices of wife are suspiciously young? It means that one of your older sons might have a thing for the same woman, making your quest for her teenage hand a bit weirder and more difficult – which is what unfolds in this surreal documentary.
