Competition

I was at a park one day and noticed a game of softball being played. I walked over closer to the athletes and noticed that some of them were in wheelchairs. They were children - special-needs children. I noticed that the coaches were cheering each play enthusiastically. Some kids had to swing a dozen times before connecting with the ball. Some stumbled their way from base to base. Others needed to be wheeled by a loving parent. As the game drew to a close, I realized that it wasn't very clear which team, if any, had won the game. I'm pretty sure that each player felt that he or she had won, while eating the post-game treats.

I thought about Lance Armstrong. I remember that he won seven successive Tour-de-France championships. I remembered that I like to ride my bicycle. I realized, also, that I don't like to ride my bicycle as much as Lance likes to ride his. I wondered (only momentarily) if I would have the drive and passion to ride a bicycle as vigorously as Lance does. . . . . . . . . Naahh!

I thought about all those other riders - hundreds of them - over a seven(-plus)-year stretch. I realized that most of them probably HATE Lance Armstrong (while a few sincerely respect him). The French anti-doping organization hates him too - and tried (unsuccessfully) to take away his trophies.

I thought about the traffic on the I-10 freeway when I drive home from work during rush-hour. I realized that the evening commute is a race. Some of these motorists hate the other ones. Every one wants to get home soon. The other motorists are in my way. I am competing with them for speed and asphalt. In some parts of the world, millions are competing just for the next meal.

I wondered if all of life was like that - a competition. I remembered our miserable U.S. economy and the declining dollar. I thought about the millions of unemployed people who are all competing for the same handful of job openings. I thought about Obama and his argument that we should tax rich people more, and how the Democrats and Republicans are competing over how those public dollars will be spent. I realized that, when God put us on this planet, He knew we would all be competing.

The famous daytime TV life coach, Dr. Phil (McGraw) talks about a phenomenon called "leveling". This occurs after a person achieves success in a certain aspect of life - money, adulation, physical fitness, popularity, offspring, etc. Often, a close friend or family member will express thinly-veiled resentment and try to trivialize the person's success - or even endeavor to take it away from him or her. This is human nature - dragging another person back down to one's own "level". It is natural to feel disappointment when another person achieves a desirable thing when we ourselves could not.

Are we competing to get to heaven? If we succeed in emulating God and building a family according to His divine model, does there have to be a "runner-up?". Does one guy win the race at the expense of all the begrudging losers who look on in disappointment and resentment? Will there be too few good women left in the world?

I watch the progress of the Canadian polygamy reference case (S.293) and wonder if certain men just don't want other men to be successful polygamists and to walk in our Father's footsteps. That idiot A.G., Craig Jones, seems to be arguing that all kinds of orgiastic promiscuity constitute healthy, "good" polygamy, and that the law should carefully, "surgically" protect them. He goes on to argue that the men who build up righteous plural families (according to the doctrines and precepts of the holy scriptures) are "bad" polygamists and must be prosecuted. Perhaps Jones (in concert with others) sees all this as a competition. He knows he is not cut out to win the race, so he is already trying to puncture Lance Armstrong's tires - to keep him from winning, too (like a "re-distribution" of wealth and success).

Does he not realize that God loves him, too? Does he not understand that, in the divine system of progress, all of God's children can win? Not everyone can win the Tour de France, and, in truth, only a few people really want to. They have other, even more rewarding things to do with their lives. Does he forget that, just because he cannot and will not enter the New and Everlasting Covenant, he does not need to persecute those who do enter it? Does he not realize that, despite his handicaps and natural disabilities, his Heavenly Father still loves him and works every day to help him to magnify his potential and receive rich blessings in the hereafter? Or, is he a pouty, sulky, Lost Boy who is convinced that this is a universe of austerity, where there will never be "enough to go round"?

I think you understand the several points I am trying to make, the most important of which, perhaps, is that the widespread resentment of polygamists, the desire to curtail them and eradicate them seems to be a function of jealousy, of leveling, of competition. I know a man who has four wives. He is a good man. His monogamous friends naturally look up to him. I know they are quietly jealous, but they don't want to take his wives away from him. Then again, I know some guys who don't really even want ONE wife. So, to each his own - live and let live. Some people want to excel in the bike-riding world. Some want to excel in the family-building realm. It is no more realistic to outlaw polygamy than it is to outlaw competitive sports (despite the fact that, in both, there will inevitably be some who fall down).

Perhaps we would be better off looking at the race for eternal rewards as a "team" sport rather than as an individual one. Is that not how the Divine Champion did it? Shall we not cheer that He vanquished death and hell?

Dirty Pool

Today in West Jordan's Third District Court, Warren Jeffs' attorney, Walter F. Bugden argued before Judge Terry Christiansen that his client should be protected from extradition for the following three reasons:

1. The two states' (Utah's and Texas') governors made an extradition agreement which was unconstitutional on its face (it promised to deny Jeffs bail forever).

2. The Utah ("rape-as-an-accomplice") case is still hanging over Jeffs' head as prosecutors waffle around over whether they will seek to re-try him (you know they won't, because Elissa Wall has been found out as a liar and a fraud). Jeffs is entitled to a speedy trial and an opportunity to clear his name.

3. Jeffs has already served 50 months in jail for alleged crimes for which he has not been found to be guilty. Those alleged crimes are now a decade old and, if Jeffs is whisked off to Texas, then his defense team will be foreclosed from using the power of the litigation process to investigate the deceit perpetrated on the court by Elissa Wall - and who knows how many more years will pass by before he can return to Utah to have his day in court?

Judge Christiansen ruled against Jeffs, saying that it was not his province to overrule the discretion of the two Governors. Bugden told the judge that, if he did not reverse the extradition or at least grant a stay, Bugden would file an appeal to the Utah Supreme Court court to prevent the state from putting Jeffs on a plane tonight.

Reports just came in that (before the state could whisk Jeffs to Barbieland) the Utah Supreme Court instructed the (lower) appellate court to address the appeal. Apparently the appeals court has just ruled that the extradition must be stayed, so that it can hear the case against extradition - which case (I believe) is a strong one. We'll see.

This whole deal smells rotten to me. The hatred for Jeffs is so pervasive in some quarters that the prosecutors are resorting to dirty pool. It will be interesting to see what will happen if the appeals court rules against Jeffs. Would the Utah Supreme Court then review it? I hope so.

Thank God the goons were not able to stick him on a plane. Who knows how much more difficult it would have been for even the Utah Supreme Court to force Texas to fly him back here?

"The best laid plans . . . . . "

Hobson's Choice

I'm turning blue holding my breath and waiting for the outcome of the British Columbia polygamy reference case. Yes, I think it's stupid, but I am fascinated to watch the jousting and learn the eventual outcome.

As I thought some more about the impact of this charade, I realized a couple of interesting things. If the Court ultimately rules to retain the anti-polygamy law (S.293), how will it get implemented? First, will all the existing polygamists get a free pass, a "grandfather clause"? Will the law apply only to new polygamists, or will the Mounties swoop in and arrest all the polygamists who, for a hundred years, have witnessed the law NEVER being used? I mean, didn't they have a reasonable expectation of safety and protection? Will the police throw all of the women in prison, too, because they willfully flouted Craig Jones' distorted interpretation of the law? - the interpretation that says that women who CHOOSE plural marriage are just as much perpetrators as the husband they chose? Can B.C. afford to orphan and raise all those bright little kids?

Secondly, if the law were to be enforced immediately, how would the current polygamists regain their innocence? Would they have to meet with a representative of social services and state which wives they are going to abandon? I am reminded of the Church's insanity (circa 1910) when it actively encouraged heads of household to dump the "extra" wives in order to please the government.

I think the people arguing for the eradication of polygamy in Canada are either barbarians or they have not thought through the consequences of their hubris. It is reminiscent of those bastards who stormed into the YFZ Ranch and smugly confiscated those 439 children under the guise of "saving" them from harm. If there are that many Nazi socialists in both countries, our future is grim. Again, I pray that they will see reason and common sense, and remember the principles of liberty which drove so many to sail westward across the Atlantic.

Double Standard

I just learned that the LDS Church has modified language in its Handbook of Instructions (see this link).

The thrust of the changes appears to be an acceptance of gay people as members of the Church, provided that they can refrain from acting on their gay inclinations. Language condemning gay thoughts and feelings (and recommending counseling) has been stricken.

I pray that the long-awaited day will eventually come when I will not be looked upon as a criminal, a sinner and an adulterer for having polygamous thoughts and feelings.

For a list of the women for whom Joseph Smith harbored polygamous thoughts and feelings, go HERE.

Irony? ( - or capitulation to public pressure?)

No Legs

I get more excited every day to watch the three-ring circus coming to the little hamlet of Vancouver B.C.

Ontario just legalized decriminalized prostitution. Saskatchewan recently decriminalized polygamy (or having one civil and one common-law marriage). Homosexual marriages have been permitted for years across the nation.

I was driving home one day listening to NPR public radio. That day's show was about birds - dying birds. The guest was being interviewed about her organization and its passionate mission - a mission to save birds from death. Apparently, every year, thousands of innocent birds fly blithely into the glass windows of tall, urban skyscraper buildings (and die swiftly as a result), and this has some bird-lovers' knickers in a twist. "It's not right," they complain, "something must be done about it."

I thought perhaps I had a leak in my manifold and was hallucinating from the inhalation of exhaust fumes in my car. I think the organization wanted to ban the use of glass for windows on tall buildings. It reminded me of the people who want polygamy to stop. I think you'd make more progress trying to prohibit grass from growing.

The rather amateurish lawyers and advocates who are crying for the preservation of Canada's anti-polygamy law (S.293) have a similarly steep hill to climb. It appears they have two possible angles of attack when challenging the practice of polygamy:

1. Attack the individuals who are and have been polygamists.
2. Attack the concept of polygamy.

Let's look at the first one. I know some very bad polygamist people. I know some very bad monogamist people. I know some very bad homosexual people. I know some very bad single people. Perhaps we should ban polygamy, monogamy, homosexuality, and celibacy, then there would be no bad people anymore. Just because a polygamous guy raped his ten-year-old daughter (this is a hypothetical) last year, should we say that empirical and anecdotal data demonstrate that polygamists are child-molesters? The causal, logical relationship is not there. If that kind of pathetic, whiner logic held any water, then the moment a Catholic priest molests a young boy, the Catholic Church must be dissolved. So this argument has NO LEGS.

Now let's examine number two. Polygamy is often a deeply resented idea. Some people deeply resent the "idea" of firearms. If you cannot justifiably attack the practitioners of polygamy, maybe you will attack the concept of polygamy. "Polygamy is inherently bad" they say. "Polygamy injures infants' brains." "Polygamy weakens society." "Polygamy harms the institution of holy matrimony." Perhaps polygamy should be arrested and put in prison, along with all those rifles and handguns that have murdered innocent humans.

If you cannot arrest a gun and sentence it to prison for the killing of a victim, how then can you convict polygamy and incarcerate it? Surely we are not that stupid. I think you have to be a bleeding-heart liberal to entertain such crap-thinking in your brain. You have to seriously want to distort truth in order to seize control over other people's lives. You have to believe that you know best how to run other people's families. If the motivation has no basis in common logic, then it must spring from political socialism. This argument has NO LEGS either!

They won't be calling me (li'l ol' Renn) to testify at that Reference trial but, if they did, I would keep repeating the same simple questions:

"How will you enforce this stupid law if it gets upheld?"

"Won't you have to interrogate all the copulators in Canada?"

"What line of questioning will you adopt? - 'Are you a Fundamentalist Mormon or a mere polyamorist? Are you trying to take this hooker as a plural wife? How many different women did you penetrate this month? When you became involved with your secretary, were you hoping your wife would let her join your family? Do you live within a 35-mile radius of Bountiful, B.C.? Was this a recreational orgy or was a pastor there to officiate?'"

A corrupt people will end up with a corrupt government. It was decided no later than 1865 that the united states of America would no longer be a Christian Republic, rather it would become a secular corporation renamed the "United States of America". You cannot have it both ways, folks. If you are going to kick God out of government, then you cannot allow religious partisanship to control legislation, and the same is true in Canada. It is the people's inability to understand this simple concept that causes so much friction and chaos.

I pray that both nations will rectify at least this problem with their dying breaths.

Manipulation

Years ago, when Tom Green was convicted of bigamy, I was struck by a couple of things.

First, Tom Green was SINGLE. He was legally married to NO ONE. Judge (I believe it was) Donald Eyre needed to find a way to get Tom Green to be guilty, so he declared Linda Kunz legally married to Tom. Linda didn't want that, so she told the judge she wanted an immediate divorce. Judge Eyre refused.

When it came time for the jury verdict, the Provo, Utah, jury had to decide the following: Was Tom married to someone? (Judge Eyre had guaranteed that); and Did Tom have children by another lady? (that was a given). So, what could the jury decide? Unless they understood the important principle of Jury Nullification, it was inevitable that Tom would have to be judged GUILTY. It wasn't right, but the careful manipulation of the legal system achieved the desired result.

Yesterday, Keith Dutson (now 25) was found guilty of sexual assault of a fifteen-year-old.

Keith was twenty (20) when he married his wife. Basically teenage sweethearts. They are monogamists. Both sets of parents were supportive of the marriage (a religious marriage). The couple is still together. The wife became pregnant after she turned sixteen.

Keith is about to be sentenced by a San Angelo jury. The term could be 20 years.

So, again you see a manipulation of the legal system by the judge, prosecutor, sheriff, and a pack of hater-nasties including Becky Musser and Dr. Larry Beall. Tell me the name of the last 20-year-old Texan who went to prison for impregnating his 16-year-old wife.

This young couple - this kid - is completely innocent, but will likely go to prison because of political agendas, religious prejudice, and manipulations of the legal system.

"Two Forms Of Polygamy"

The forces of good and evil are amassing on either side of the simmering polygamy war in Canada. You know I'm already cracking up about some aspects of this "reference" case, aspects like:

1. You are guilty of polygamy if merely accused. The law itself is SO POORLY written and so constitutionally defective, it ought to fall - on its face.
2. The polyamorists are saying that their kind of multiple partnerships is more healthy than that of polygamists. They want to be exempt from the law.
3. If the STUPID polygamy law is upheld in the reference's decision, it will inevitably be challenged again and tested very shortly afterwards.
4. There are so few polygamists in Canada, the vast majority of the amici and affiants are from south of the border.
5. Even gays ridicule the law - see this post.

Anyway, in my browsing around on this topic, I discovered the following statement from British Columbia's Attorney General, Craig Jones.

Jones's (unenviable) job is to defend the anti-polygamy law. Defending it is such a fantastical exercise, he clearly had to cook up some very creative reasoning. Let me quote some of Jones's lunatic contortions of logic:

'At one extreme, "polygamous" in the zoological sense describes an organism that will engage in mating behaviour with more than one partner in the course of its reproductive life. By this standard, most Canadians are "polygamous" and most "polygamy" is innocent.'

OKAY, JONES, WE ARE WITH YOU SO FAR! Let's read on as he argues . . .

'. . . the prohibition in s. 293 should be interpreted as follows:
. . . Section 293 prohibits . . . marriage-like relationships involving more than two persons that purport to be sanctioned by an authority having power or influence over the participants . . '

. . . WHAT? "AN AUTHORITY" LIKE GOD ?????????? Are you grasping this tortured hairsplit? Let's hear his punchline . . .

'8. The Criminal Code prohibition was and is addressed to the overwhelmingly dominant form of polygamy, [he's talking about Fundamentalist Mormons and Muslims] and the one most closely associated with demonstrable and apprehended social harms: that is, a patriarchal polygyny that is intergenerationally normalized and enforced through more or less coercive rules and norms of non-state social institutions. Section 293 leaves the balance of multi-partner human sexual behaviour, that which is unrelated to the harms the prohibitions seek to address, unaffected.'

I get it now - promiscuity in the form of casual polygamous behaviour is healthy, innocent and worthy of Canada's full legal protections (like prostitution now is), whereas informal plural marriages inspired by deeply-held religious beliefs and Biblical doctrines are reprehensible and "criminal".

So, here is where I get horribly confused - if "most Canadians are polygamous" (at least approx. 18 million of the 33.5 million Canadians), then how can Winston's and Jimmy's form of polygamy (practiced by scores of people) be the "overwhelmingly dominant form" ??? (Canadian math?)

Moreover, if the bad "form" of the two forms of polygamy is the one that purportedly involves higher "authority" and "patriarchy", shouldn't all religious, monogamous marriages also be outlawed; - AND, shouldn't all monogamous partnerships (legally-solemnized or not) - where the male is thought of as the "head-of-household" - be prohibited, too?

Message to A.G. Craig Jones - - - GO BACK TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND RE-TAKE ALL THOSE CLASSES YOU SLEPT THROUGH !!!! Only then will you be able to competently teach all those year-long classes to the Mounties, where you will try to explain all of the convoluted nuances of figuring out which polygamists are the good, innocent ones, and which ones are the bad, incarcerable ones.