I don't have a link for this yet, but Fox News is reporting this morning that the family profiled in "Sister Wives" is suing the state of Utah claiming its anti-bigamy (I'm assuming anti-polygamy) law is unconstitutional.

I suspected somebody was going to try this sooner or later...

Okay, here's a link for this story from the Washington Times.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/12/sister-wives-family-challenge-utah-bigamy-law/print/

Note that the conservative paper, once funded by the Rev. Sung-yung Moon (the Moonies' cult) makes no attempt to hide the past polygamous practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And yes, it's Utah's anti-bigamy law that's in question--apparently, that's the law the state has used when forced to go after polygamous families who go public.

It will be interesting to see how this case goes.

I wouldn't mind seeing this law knocked down. Its not like they are asking their polygamous marriages to be legally recognized. As long as they are consenting adults, what they do is their business. I'm interested in how the lds church reacts if polygamy is no longer a crime. They would no longer have an excuse not to reinstate polygamy

I would support the "knocking down" of Utah's anti-bigamy law *only* if it applied to both sexes. In other words, if women were allowed to marry as many husbands as they wanted as well as men being allowed to marry as many wives as they wanted, then I would support this law being thrown to the wolves. The issue should be squarely faced: what's good enough for the gander is also good enough for the hen! (and I apologize if that last sentence sounds sexist--I didn't intend it that way.)

That those favoring removing anti-polygamy statutes amount to little more than lobbyists for a number of cults of child abusers.

Not that it will ever make it out of the Utah Courts, but the same reasoning used in Brown vs. the Board ("Separation is inherently inequal") applies to polygamy. It is inherently exploitive of children, denies them the opportunity for an equal education, creates a surplus of males (the so-called "Lost Boys") who are "ejected" from the community and places a burden on other communities--such as Las Vegas that have to cope with the problems of assimilating them. Finally, welfare fraud is rampant among the impoverished families where multiple wives and children must compete for the resources of one provider (who often enjoys a higher standard of living because some wives will enter the work force and provide him with additional income).

You folks feel free to hang onto that denial, but don't be getting angry at those of us who try to shine a light through your perceptual walls. A couple of former regular posters, "Grandpa Jim" and Troy Bowles detailed the excesses of the fundamentalist splinter sects, and it's never been a pretty picture despite attempts to romanticize it...

With this article, the Washington Times proves the old adage that even a stopped clock is right once in a while...

SLC
In memory of his great-great grandmother, of whom it was said,
The happiest day of her life was the day her husband's first wife died

nice

Check it out:

http://youtu.be/dNkUtBa3_RI

Timothy

That was downright rude and patronizing.

If you'd read blindguy's post a bit more carefully, you would have seen that he was supporting polyamory, not fundamentalist polygamy.

There are many, many different arrangements that those practicing polyamory in America practice, often with the reverse of what you claim, with a woman or women as the "hinge" binding others together.

Claiming that any sort of poly arrangement causes the same sort of problems as polygamist cults, especially abuse of children, is on par with claiming all gay men are sexual predators. You are describing as "the only way" one, very selective and abuse-ridden way of doing it.

In addition, it seems rather obvious to me that legalizing the cult marriages would force the whole thing above ground. It would make it 5 times as hard for women to lie in order to receive additional government aid, make child marriages more easily prevented, and decrease the "us vs. them" attitude which has led to these people hiding away in corners, keeping their children uneducated.

Item: About that perceptual distortion that has me going after "blindguy." That didn't happen; he's simply reporting something, and I have no quarrel with that...

So you're apparently reading something into what I wrote that isn't there... There's nothing unreasonable in what he wrote saying he wasn't surprised that this hadn't been tried before.

Edit: Now that I've read that he would support removing these laws under certain conditions (I missed it on my first reading), I'll just suggest, as politely as I can, that he's unfamiliar with all of the realities of the problem and overly-idealistic as a result

Given what is known the incidence of sexual abuse within polygamist cults, vasalissasdoll is clearly unaware of the problem and minimizes the problem; Linda Walker and Flora Jessop presented on that subject at an ex-Mormon Conference a few years back, and the picture was not a pretty one.

Gays don't molest children as a rule; polygamists do (I'll yield the floor to a poster I e-mailed earlier today who may or may not choose to elaborate since they are even more familiar with the issue than I am), or at best, they create a closed cultural environment that shields and protects the perpetrators.

And seriously, anyone who doesn't believe that this crap hasn't been going on since the early days of Mormonism is in for some rocky revelations. Read the thread about Levi Savage that was recently topped.

As for vasalissasdoll's solutions, permitting people to continue to do what they've always done illegally doesn't strike me as anything but a stupid cop-out. There's no reason--given that the practices still face strong social sanctions--that these inviduals would modify their entrenched behaviors.

Now knock off the "board mother act": I still have my own mother, but I'm old enough to I generally don't listen to her, either.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2011 10:39PM by SL Cabbie.

Always and forever.

Here's my question: If the USC strikes down the Anti-polygamy law, will there suddenly be a revelation that polygamy is okay again and should be practised?

Doubt it...to many modern mormons are disgusted by it. They'd lose a lot of members of old families who have decided it was simply cultural and don't want to hear anything to the contrary.

At least the football players have more money and the WAGS don't wear prairie smocks and Evita Peron-esque up-dos...

http://www.wagrankings.com/


The Marquess of Bath is looking for his seventy-sixth wife:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-445516/The-Marquess-Bath--prowl-wifelet-76.html


NOTE: I am not referring to children or under-age girls -- they are not consenting adults.

And to rewrite the other 1000s of laws regulating marriage - all of which assume 2 equal partners?

This is a legal morass from which we will never recover.

Polygamy leads to child abuse and rape. It always has, it always will. There aren't enough women to go around. It's just math.

The Utah law does not allow people to even cohabit with additional partners if they are married. And does not allow them to represent themselves as "married" in any way shape or form.
That is what the law says and what they want struck down.
there would still be only one legal wife.
No need to re-write any marriage laws.

AND "polygamy" does not just refer to "polygyny". It also includes "polyandry". Women can and do have multiple male partners.
Striking down this law would allow people to live in polyamourous situations -- menage a trois -- without being prosecuted for it. I'm all for that. It's none of the government's business.

Don't they all work? Don't they all have some sort of medical insurance? Is it any of our business as long as they aren't on welfare?
Actually, it's NOT being married that gets people welfare benefits -- if that's the kind of benefits you're talking about.

BadGirl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Don't they all work? Don't they all have some
> sort of medical insurance?

They don't all work outside the home; first wife Meri says she was fired from her job when they came out as polygamous. Kody works outside of the home (I don't know if he's self-employed, though I've heard him talk about "sales"), I think second wife Janelle works outside of the home, I know Christine (third wife) takes care of all of the kids at home; not sure what fourth wife Robyn does.

I suspect that if they all have medical coverage, it's not through his job.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2011 09:45PM by nevermo-beck.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8633651/Polygamous-family-in-reality-TV-show-challenge-Utah-law.html

Sez their lawyer: "We are only challenging the right of the state to prosecute people for their private relations, and demanding equal treatment with other citizens in living their lives according to their own beliefs."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._United_States

>Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878), was a Supreme Court of the United States case that held that religious duty was not a suitable defense to a criminal indictment. George Reynolds was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, charged with bigamy under the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act after marrying Amelia Jane Schofield while still married to Mary Ann Tuddenham in Utah Territory.

Edit: And a honk of my horn to my friend "lulu" who said some nice things about me on another thread. My plate is pretty full these days, but I am in regular contact with some really special friends I made on RFM... Thank you for thinking of me...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2011 10:26PM by SL Cabbie.

Umm, since when have all the marriage laws in the United States assumed 2 equal partners? Only recently if true...

The way the bigamy law is worded in Utah considers "common law" arrangements (cohabitation) as the 3rd-degree Felony. This guy is legally married to one woman, but lives with three others, and they have a hojillion kids and stuff.

But I do think, as a support of same-sex marriages, that eventually "consenting adults" is going to have to include "two men and a woman; three women, two dudes; one dude, fourteen women" and all kinds of stuff. For those who champion traditional marriages, only marry one person and stay married 'till you're dead - but I think the arc of history is going to lean in this direction of more personal freedoms, which is part of the American tension - liberty and individualism versus our "house on a hill" - our Puritan roots.

I'll be drinking whiskey sours on the sidelines either way

Just to clarify I don't support legalizing polygamous marriage. All the lawsuit will do is deciminalize it. Carolyn jessop, I believe, made the argument that decriminalizing polygamy would open up polygamous communities so that abuse could be more easily reported and dealt with

Can't avoid the pressure that it puts on youth:

-nubile females to 'grow up' (faster than males do anyway)
-young males trying to form healthy male-female relationships with their peers.

I agree that this is a case of codifying Values, and that "Basic Rights" shouldn't be at the whim of voters....
However, I believe that Polygamy is a THREAT TO SOCIETY,

U can bet: ChurchCo will FIGHT AGAINST THIS WITH EVERYTHING THEY HAVE;

if found unconstitutional, this will be an opportunity for ChurchCo to go Out Front proposing - supporting an Amendment banning polyg... I Doubt They'd pass it up.

LDS, Inc. doesn't want Polygamy, NOT AT ALL.