Jason Unger

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FLDS followers: Barlow's marriage to Arizona 16-year-old was 'natural and proper':

Dale Evans Barlow, the man who remains at the heart of the FLDS ranch raid in Texas, was defended by the polygamous community as a victim of religious intolerance when he was convicted of a similar crime last year.

A Texas judge signed an arrest warrant for Barlow last Thursday after a 16-year-old girl accused him of marrying and impregnating her. Barlow, 50, is on probation in Arizona for a conviction stemming from his marriage to a different 16-year-old girl, with whom he has a son.

I'm as a big a believer in the freedom to practice your religion as you can get (hell, I was defending Mitt Romney), but at some point you cross the line from a religious practice to pedophilia.

I'm guessing this guy falls in the second category.

Do you watch Big Love? Even if you don't, you've probably heard about it.

The two-line recap: a family of polygamists in Utah try to live the normal, American life in the suburbs while keeping their beliefs and practices underwraps from their neighbors and the patriarch's business customers.

It's a really well done show (another hit for HBO), tackling a topic that apparently is really interesting to people. The stories are interesting, the characters are well-written and played, and, despite the oddities of polygamy, there's something that nearly every viewer can relate to.

The show has become pretty popular, even getting positive reviews from real polygamists (reg. required).

While the women said "Big Love" had too much skin and not enough religion or humor for their taste, they agreed that it portrayed the Henricksons like any other American family, especially in an era of mixed marriages of all sorts, gay partnerships, single parents and serial monogamy.

Presumably in response to the show's popularity, ABC's Primetime did a whole episode on polygamy, interviewing a polygamist family on camera, even though they could have been arrested.

And if you've been watching the new season of House, you know that one of the characters vying for a job — Cole, a Mormon — was dubbed "Big Love" by House.

Recently, Law & Order SVU highlighted polygamy (watch the video) through a Nigerian family.

Big Love's influence is everywhere.

This isn't the first TV show to affect many aspects of popular culture, and it certainly won't be the last, but given the subject matter, it's certainly interesting to follow.

Of course, Big Love's subject matter is also highlighted in the political world, as Mitt Romney, a leading Republican candidate for president, has had to address religion's influence in culture and his own Mormon faith.

Now, no legitimate critic would suggest that Romney is a proponent or at all in favor of polygamy, but for many Americans, that's what they know of Mormonism (however inaccurate it may be.) Romney had to give a speech just to address religion because it's a factor that hangs over him.

It's a really interesting phenomenon, at lot of it thanks to this one TV show.