Current events often raise the question whether art imitates life or vice versa. That’s not the case with the popular HBO series “Big Love,” which chronicles the lives of a family that struggles to lead a normal existence in the framework of an abnormal, pluralist-marriage lifestyle.

The fictional husband and his three wives create a compelling drama, but not as much so as the all-too-real exposure of a Texas polygamist retreat raided by authorities recently. Law enforcement officers descended on the Eldorado, Texas, enclave after reports that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints were marrying off young girls to older men.

A bed was found in one of the sanctuary buildings, presumably so the marriages could be consummated immediately. The more information that flows out of the polygamist ranch, the more mundane HBO’s Henrickson family appears — “Big Love” doesn’t hold a candle to the weirdness of life at the polygamy enclave.

Perhaps what is most compelling — as is often the case among members of extremist cult-like factions along the fringe — is that the polygamists accused of child abuse see themselves as victims. “It just feels like someone is trying to hurt us,” said a sect member identified only as Paula who complained that the children of the compound had been separated from the mothers and taken into protective custody.

Considering that the last government raid on a religious cult’s Texas compound ended in a fusillade of bullets and four deaths outside Waco, the extraction of the polygamists’ children was virtually painless.