Disingenuousness

Those of you who read my hyperbolic posts must by now be somewhat numb to my ranting and pontificating.  I don't want to be a windbag or a broken record, but I have to follow up my last post with another indictment of Utah's Attorney General's office.

I went back and re-read Jeryold Jensen's cringing reply in the Kody Brown bigamy statute challenge, and I noted that he quoted liberally from the book God's Brothel by Andrea Moore Emmett (a rabid anti-Mormon).  Moore-Emmett trots out the trumped-up sob-sob stories of her harpie Tapestry cronies.  Deputy AG, Jeryold Jensen, dredges the litany of exaggerated horribles in his reply to the court . . . . . Polygamy hurts women . . . . Polygamy hurts children . . . . . Polygamy brought down the Twin Towers . . . .  on and on and on.

You know, Jerry, if polygamy and its practitioners are truly that despicable, and you are so hell-bent on proving the constitutionality of the bigamy statute, why won't you prosecute polygamists?  You had David Kingston for unlawful sex with a minor.  You had John Daniel Kingston for allegedly roughing up his daughter.  You had Jeremy Kingston for marrying his aunt.  You had Addam Swapp for bombing a church building.  Every one of them was assumed to have two or more wives.  You prosecuted none of them for bigamy.  What's more, you had Warren Jeffs!  You had pictures of him with DOZENS of wives.  Oops, wait - - -  nobody thought of charging him with bigamy.  Is it because you know that your stupid statute is UNCONSTITUTIONAL ???!!!!!

I saw a banner at a polygamy rally once which read:

"LAWRENCE TRUMPS REYNOLDS - ARREST US OR SHUT UP !!!".

No kidding!  Utah will soon watch its departing AG slither into oblivion, and be replaced by Mormon bishop, John Swallow.  Will Swallow swallow his Church pride and usher in a new era of liberty and oversee the end of the discrimination against Utah's most traditional families?

Based on the signals being given off by Judge Waddoups, I believe he will allow the evidentiary hearing to proceed, AND he will rule that the Browns have been harmed and that the bigamy statute violates the U.S. Constitution.  Then what?  Swallow's role will require him to appeal the district court's ruling to the 10th Circuit in Denver.  If that is unsuccessful, he will have to hope for help from the U.S. Supreme Court - the court that wrote the Lawrence decision (6 to 3) decriminalizing ALL adult intimacy.

On the other hand, he could save the State millions of dollars in legal fees and embarrassment simply by getting the legislature to remove the offending words in the bigamy statute - or would that be too easy?  You decide.

Topsy-Turvy

I have made this point before in my post: "THOUGHT vs. DEED".  Jerryold Jensen's motion and recent reply in the Kody Brown case seeking a ruling on the constitutionality of Utah's farcical bigamy statute prompted me to make it once again.

The First Amendment forbids government to burden Americans' exercise of their religious beliefs. The Reynolds court came along and eviscerated this liberty.  It said that states could itemize a list of religious activities which can be believed in but NOT practiced.  Thus, Utah (and some neighboring states) could include polygamy as a conduct which could be criminalized.

So, in the wake of Reynolds, you could believe in polygamy to your heart's content (as Mormons do), but you could not practice it.  The thoughts were just fine - the ACTIONS were not.

So, there are tens of thousands of Fundamentalist Mormons in the Intermountain West who eagerly embrace plural marriage in their minds.  Utah residents who proceed to take a plural wife are presumptive felons (although the current Attorney General's office insists on NOT prosecuting them).

The prohibited actions (contemplated in Reynolds) occur when a man is married to one person and goes to bed with a different person (male or female).  That makes you a felony bigamist.  The 2003 Lawrence decision overruled that legislation, otherwise tens of thousands of Utahns would be in prison now for bigamy.  So they can't prosecute the SEX.  They have to rely on the other prong of the bigamy statute - the "purport" prong.  You are guilty of bigamy if you are married to one person, and assert (believe) that you are married to another.  Kody Brown has ONE legal wife.  He THINKS of the other three ladies as "wives" in a religious sense, but the State has already said that having additional spouses is legally VOID and impossible.  Legally, the other three women are girl-friends, mistresses, or just partners in an affair.  So, Brown can call them "wives", but wives they are not.

As Jerryold Jensen points out in his reply, Kody's sexual activities with the various ladies are utterly shielded by Lawrence.  It is the fact that Brown THINKS of them as "wives" that makes him a felon.

So now we have the unintended consequences of the Reynolds insanity.  We have a state that REFUSES to prosecute the prohibited exercise (actions) of the believers, while it insists on criminalizing  . . . . . . . . . . . .

THEIR THOUGHTS !!!!!!!!!!

Wait though!  It criminalizes their lifestyle (existence and mindset) as did Bowers to homosexuals (until 2003), but the chief Mormon law enforcement officers of the state dare not prosecute it now for fear that someone like Kody Brown will come along and TEST the statute in the courts.  The Church wrote the statute.  Is it not the Church now who is frantically trying to salvage it?  I wouldn't be surprised if those Lehi Keystone Kops have already been excommunicated for the biggest tactical blunder in modern Church history.

Topsy-Turvy.

The following YouTube video is a Monty Python skit about church police.  Skip to 00.36.