Was it all just a big lie?

LYLE JEFFS (polygamist)

PARKER DOUGLAS

SEAN REYES (UTAH A.G.)

Rep. MIKE NOEL (Rules Chair)

Was it all just a big lie?

Lyle Jeffs, Warren’s brother and stand-in leader of the FLDS, just pleaded guilty to the crime of Food Stamp (SNAP) fraud, and will serve years of prison time.  Like his brother Warren Jeffs, Lyle is a notorious polygamist with some 60 children (children who could not have been born to just one woman).  Warren was never charged with polyga-bigamy.

Utah has a law in place (at least since 1976) making polygamous cohabitation (bigamy) a third degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.  Since 1976, two defendants, Thomas Green and Rodney Holm, have been convicted under the law and served time.  In 2003 (Lawrence v. Texas) the Supreme Court decriminalized all adult consensual (non-commercial) sexual cohabitation and intimacy.  

In 2013, Federal District Court Judge Clark Waddoups (in Brown v. Herbert) affirmed that polygamous cohabitation (in Utah) fell within the ambit of the Lawrence decision’s protections.  Despite the 10^th Circuit’s later overruling of Waddoups in 2016, Utah’s Attorney General, Sean Reyes, fought to protect the language of the now-reaffirmed bigamy statute by more tightly defining the elements of the crime of bigamy (falsely purporting to marry, and cohabitating).  He also convinced the Utah (2017) legislature to add an enhancement (second degree) to the crime, so that bad polygamous actors who ALSO commit abuse (upon wives or children) or tax- (or other types of financial) fraud can face up to 15 years in prison.

When asked by the Utah House Law Enforcement committee (on February 7, 2017) if, once the new statutory language were signed into law, the A.G. would proceed with immediate enforcement, the A.G.’s chief-of-staff, Parker Douglas, testified, “Yes”.  Douglas has since left his post at the Attorney General's office.

I have to wonder if during the years-long prosecution of the very-polygamous Lyle Jeffs, Utah's distinguished law enforcement community inadvertently forgot that Lyle practice(s)(d) polygamy (i.e. had/has multiple pretend wives) throughout the period of time when he appeared before Judge Ted Stewart and complied with Stewart’s order for him to be a Salt Lake County resident.

Did the A.G. overlook Jeffs’s continued bigamy, or did Reyes elect to break his promise to the Utah legislature because he is afraid of yet another polygamy law test case (see Green, Holm, Bronson,and Brown)?  

Did Representative Mike Noel and Parker Douglas argue so passionately for the preservation of the felony penalties for “good” AND “bad” polygamists out of a sincere commitment to begin prosecuting them, OR - was it because representatives of the LDS Church were breathing hotly down their necks to keep the felony penalty in place so that the Church can continue its frantic P.R. repudiation of “criminal” fundamentalist Mormon polygamists?

Hundreds of sincere plural families and their children held a protest rally in the rain at the Utah Capitol on February 10, 2017, pleading with their legislators to see through the disingenuousness of the Attorney General and his surrogates in the House.  On the last night of the session, A.G. Reyes held an urgent, dinner-time meeting with the State Senators to urge them to pass Mike Noel’s bigamy enhancement bill (HB-99).  He argued that he was pursuing a group of polygamous human traffickers, and that this amendment would give him the tools he needed to prosecute them.  At the midnight hour, the bill passed by one reluctant vote.  

Utah has tens of thousands of polygamists practicing their deeply-held religious beliefs and lifestyles in the open.  One has to wonder if A.G. Sean Reyes has simply forgotten all of his pre- and post-election promises to prosecute all (or even ONE) of them.

Was it all just a big lie?  If you are unsure, watch these brief clips from the last legislative session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewuaMMTMg3Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLx5oE0e7Xg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMNNu5ag5gY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesOr5PO2vw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLu-5SLLFSw

Rep. Mike Noel campaigns to Sen. Kevin Van Tassell

Rep. Mike E. Noel

Sen. Kevin Van Tassell

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPTION OF A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO UTAH STATE LEGISLATORS JUST LEAKED (out of my brain).
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HOW SAUSAGE IS MADE ................

Rep. Noel:-  Kevin, we have only four days left in the legislative session.  What are we going to do to get this anti-polygamy bill pushed through?
Sen. Van Tassell:-  Hey, Mike, I'm doing everything I can, but it's YOUR bill, and I'm getting a lot of blow-back.  Did you think this was gonna be easier than last year?
Rep. Noel:-  Look, I'm up here every day threatening the other Senators with every weapon I've got.  Don't you have some influence with leadership?
Sen. Van Tassell:- Yes, but they've got dozens of polygamists up here every day beating their doors down in opposition to this bill.  Haven't you seen the thousands of emails we're getting from polygamous families protesting the problems with HB-99?  Plus, I'm sure the Minority Caucus is voting as a bloc against it, so you're wasting your time with them.  This could come down to a very close vote.  Do you even want to risk losing on the floor?  It's out of Rules now, so do you seriously want me to run it if we don't have the votes?
Rep. Noel:-  I don't understand what your reluctance is.  Aren't you still angry about what that polygamist group did to your daughter?
Sen. Van Tassell:-  Yes, but I don't see what the connection is between her experience and what you've got in this bill.  How's this gonna help her?
Rep. Noel:-  What do you mean?
Sen. Van Tassell:-   I mean that this amendment focuses on all of the polygamists who cohabitate and say they are "married".  Doesn't that blanket all of the 30,000 or so polygamists in Utah?  How is that going to help my daughter?  Are you willing to build 30 new prisons to put them all in?  And what about all the kids left behind to burden the state with public assistance costs?  I don't think your buddy Parker has any intention of arresting even one of them.  What is Sean Reyes trying to achieve with this thing?  How come you are so driven by it?  You're like a man possessed!  Plus, you guys can't even get your story straight.  First you say it makes prosecution harder; now you say it makes prosecution easier.  Which is it?
Rep. Noel:-  Well, I've got the Church breathing down my neck.  This is my "swan song".  I'm not running again, so I feel obligated to the Church to do what it's asking me to do.  I almost got it done last year, so they are pushing hard.  They even told me to kill it if there is any hint of it being reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Sen. Van Tassell:-  So why are they so worked up about it?
Rep. Noel:-  They're having a public relations problem.  They're out there trying to convert people, and the first question people ask the missionaries is "how many wives do you have?".  People can't seem to draw a distinction between the damned polygamists and the TRUE church.  We need to be able to keep up the story that these polygamists are apostates and criminals, and we haven't been like them since my grandfather's time. He was a good polygamist.
Sen. Van Tassell:- Yeah, but do you think it's our role as a legislature to fix the Mormon Church's P.R. problems around the globe?  Polygamy is already a felony, isn't it?
Rep. Noel:-  Well, yeah, but Judge Waddoups struck it down because we can't go after simple cohabitation any more, so we have to change the "OR" to an "AND", and tighten up the definition so it won't be subject to a constitutional challenge.
Sen. Van Tassell:-  Mike, do you seriously think that singling out just the polygamists is going to shield this thing from a challenge?  I think Parker's game is to avoid a challenge simply by NEVER using it to go after anyone.  Look at Kody Brown!  They twisted themselves in knots trying to get out of prosecuting him.  If he had been arrested, the bigamy statute would have been overturned (along with Reynolds for that matter).  You guys are walking a very fine line here!
Rep. Noel:-  Look, the Church is very determined on this.  They told me that they didn't care how it was written, it just absolutely MUST stay a felony.  I'm just doing what I'm told, and I think the change we got from Snow gives this thing more teeth to get the real bad guys.
Sen. Van Tassell:- Yeah, but look - you've got articles now coming out in the paper pretty much saying the Church is the one pushing for the bill, and then you and Stratton get up there on the house floor with all your "apostates", and "hijack-my-religion" lingo.  How is anyone supposed to think that the Church isn't all over this and isn't trying to tell us what to do?  I don't like being bullied like this, Mike.
Rep. Noel:-  Can't you just be loyal to me and the Church?  Just having these people in Utah is offensive to you and me and our religion.  I did take a page from Diedre's book and I put safe harbor language in there, so at least now we can sell it as a gesture of compassion.
Sen. Van Tassell:- I think you're going one bridge too far.  My daughter had a really bad experience, but I don't think having a purely symbolic law in place that demonizes thousands of innocent families - but is completely unenforceable - is gonna do anything to make her life better.  In fact, it seems like it will just force the bad guys to go deeper into hiding.  Where's the compassion in that?  Who really benefits from this?
Rep. Noel:-  You're forgetting that we have a duty to uphold the constitution's Enabling Act and forbid these polygamist marriages.
Sen. Van Tassell:-  Oh, come on, Mike, you know better than that.  You heard Representative Nelson. These people don't get multiple marriages - that's precluded by 30-1-2. The constitution says nothing about plural "relationships".  Don't these people have civil rights or whatever?  You know - like freedom of association, freedom of speech, equal protection, et cetera?  Their relationships are a private lifestyle decision, and we can't go after that any more.  Wasn't Holm the last polygamy prosecution in 2001?
Rep. Noel:- Well, Parker told the Judiciary Committee that he's gonna start again once this passes.
Sen. Van Tassell:- Yeah, and you told the Judiciary Committee that there's a bunch of people sitting in prison for polygamy right now.  If you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you.  No, Mike, I think we should kill this bill, and if you won't kill it, then I think you should expect a bloodbath when it hits the Senate floor, AND you should think about the many unintended consequences if it does pass.  This thing is likely to turn into Utah's version of Prop 8, and you'll go down in history as the guy that got Reynolds overturned and ruined the Church's chances of escaping from past AND future polygamy.
Rep. Noel:-  Damn!  You're no help!
Sen. Van Tassell:-  Look, I've got a better idea.  Let's talk to these Church lobbyists of yours and arrange to have a round table meeting with this Joe Darger guy.  He seems to have contacts in all the fundamentalist communities.  If we get everyone to the table, we can maybe hammer out some sort of compromise.  If that can't work, then I think we see the writing on the wall.  If this is your last gasp, you may be wasting bullets. Remember Governor Pyle.
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What Are They Sniffing?

Today is January 6, 2016.  In two weeks (January 21), the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver will hear arguments in the Kody Brown polygamy case appeal.  Utah Attorney General, Sean Reyes, is following through on his promise to try to preserve Utah's ridiculous anti-bigamy statute.

Watch or read this:

http://fox13now.com/2016/01/06/utah-says-it-wouldnt-prosecute-sister-wives-for-polygamy/

I'm confused again.  Clearly one of the three-member panel of justices questioned Utah's attorneys to ask if it would be (or would have been their intention) to prosecute the Browns for their conspicuous violation of the bigamy statute.  Utah's attorneys said "No."

They coughed up the old excuse that they would not charge people for their mere practice of plural cohabitation, unless it was coupled with some other crime (ostensibly those crimes attributed to polygamist clans).  That sounds awfully selective, because I don't think they would add a bigamy charge to a drug dealer's prosecution if he had two concurrent girl friends.  I have to think that the justices are confused, too.

I can hear it now ------- ........

".......  Mr. Douglas, am I understanding correctly that the state of Utah has NO INTENTION of prosecuting polygamists like the Browns?"

"Yes, your honor."

"........  and you are asking this Court to uphold a law that Judge Waddoups overturned - a law that you virtually never intend to enforce?"

"Yes, your honor."
------------------------------------------
The other excuse the state is straining at is the "lack of standing" excuse.  It is arguing that the Browns have no business coming before the courts because they were not hurt by the bigamy statute (since they were never prosecuted).  I get it now - make a law that menaces 30,000 citizens with the threat of prosecution for their religion, then never enforce it - so that none of them can ever claim harm or standing before the courts to challenge the legitimacy of the law.

I have news for Utah.  Tom Green got five years for his polygamy, and he still lives with several wives.  Why in the Dickens did you let him out?  He is re-offending (as are the ladies).  You CAN'T let polygamists out of prison.  You have to keep them in until they die - LIFE SENTENCES !!!!

Maybe that's the TRUE reason Utah wants to refrain from prosecuting polygamists - there simply aren't enough prison cells.  Maybe there are powerful people in the Church who need polygamy to remain a crime so they can call me a sinner for emulating the Church's founders.

Here's the thing - homosexuals get to marry in all 50 states.  Back in the dark ages between 1986 and 2003 when it was a crime to be homosexual, states had a similar dilemma - how do you put 10 million gays in prison?  Silly, right?  If a pedophile molested a young boy, nobody thought of adding the charge of HOMOSEXUALITY to the pedophilia prosecution as an enhancement.

We poor polygs have inherited the curse.  We are not allowed to be.  We are not allowed to breathe, speak or think. If you are a polyg in Utah, you are a de facto felon, your thoughts are forbidden, your religion is criminal, and you have to live in the shadows and shame.

What is Utah sniffing?  What lawyer in his right mind would stand before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and beseech the justices to restore a statute that criminalizes people for their thoughts, religion, and sexual orientation/lifestyle, when the state government has repeatedly proclaimed its commitment to never enforce the law against them (except selectively)? 

Seriously folks, these public officials are in FRICKING LA-LA LAND !!!  They remind me of the goons who marched into the AUB's church meeting in 1944 and arrested two of Rulon Allred's wives for playing the piano and teaching Sunday School.  Rosa Parks highlighted the lunacy of such bigoted statutes by insisting on sitting in the forbidden part of the bus.  Is it finally our time to prove the absurdity of the persecution of our culture?

Go Jonathan !!!  Show the Court what losers, liars and fools these officials are.

This Is It

This is it.  This is the moment (one of them, anyway) that I have been waiting for.  Today the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal from Utah (and several other states) asking it to restore bans on same sex marriage.  Read this article.  Though it came as a surprise to some, the gesture upholds the earlier decisions from several Circuit Courts, and tells the appealing states that the argument is dead.  Technically, if a different Circuit Court later rules in favor of a gay marriage ban, then the matter may have to be adjudicated by the Supremes, but that is not a likely event.

You see - Sean Reyes, Utah's Attorney General, is stuck now.  He can do nothing.  His hands (and the Church's hands) are completely tied. Those gays who have already married can move on with their lives, and, presumably, those gays who now want to marry can move ahead with their legal nuptials.

Just last week, Sean Reyes notified the 10th Circuit Court of his intention to appeal the Brown decision (of 12/13/2013) which decriminalized Utah's polygamists. Reyes wants the Court to preserve a law that makes it a crime for polygamists to exist.  In light of today's Supreme Court action, I think he is wasting his time.

I mean, since Lawrence v. Texas (June 26, 2003), gay people have been permitted to exist and breathe air outside of prisons.  They eat, sleep, drink, walk, work, drive, gather, and share intimacy all without being incarcerated.  Now, not only are they permitted to exist, but they can get married like heterosexuals have done for decades.  If gay people, (whom many Mormons despise) can now marry, why cannot polygamists now exist without the threat of being sent to prison for their criminal religious thoughts?

I have said this before, but I always salivate at the prospect of reading the pleadings conjured up by those who want to imprison polygamists while absolving adulterers and fornicators.  I say that because the arguments they contrive are so laughable and stupid:

1. Polygamists threaten the sanctity of holy matrimony in Utah.
2. Polygamists hijack the official legal marriage system.
3. Polygamists are adulterous and sinful.
4. Polygamists burden the welfare system.
5. Polygamists have retarded and substandard children.
6. Polygamists monopolize the pool of available single women.

Seriously, though, there is not one single argument in favor of criminalizing plural relationships that makes any sense when a state is not willing to incarcerate all of its fornicators. You can't not eat your cake and not eat it too. 

I can't close this post without also commenting on Canada.  British Columbia has decided now to move ahead with the prosecutions of Winston Blackmore and Jimmy Oler for polygamy.  Justice Bauman's decision to uphold Canada's anti-polygamy law seems equally laughable in a country that legalized gay marriages in 2005 and recently permitted prostitution nationwide.  Blackmore and Oler should assert that they pay their women, and that the wives are serving as prostitutes.  I only wish Lewis Carroll had been able to include this stuff in his Alice In Wonderland story - it would have made a lot of sense.

The Stuff of Movies

This is the stuff of a good John Grisham novel.  A few months ago, Sim Gill, the Salt Lake County district attorney decided to file formal charges against former Utah Attorney General, Mark Shurtleff, and disgraced (former) Attorney General, John Swallow.  The charges, both felony and misdemeanor, were for various crimes:- accepting bribes, interfering with criminal investigations, and various other acts of corruption.  For a list of the charges go to this article.

I met Bishop Swallow once.  He seemed like a nice guy.  He said he came from polygamous stock and would never intentionally harm polygamists.  I guess it doesn't matter any more.  He's likely to go to prison.

Shurtleff is another proposition.  He has always seemed to me to be a bit imperious and self-serving.  You always want to assume the best of your political representatives (unless they are Harry Reid [a relative of mine] or Nancy Pelosi).  I guess when you are an ambitious Mormon attorney and politician, it is easy to get tempted into corruption.  Shurtleff has had his share of adversity - months in an Ilizarov frame, colon cancer, heart attacks, a troubled daughter, and more.  I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but I am wondering what the mystical meaning is in this grand story.

Shurtleff was the one who, in 2005, executed the takeover of the (FLDS's) UEP trust, handing over day-to-day control of the trust to his corrupt crony, Bruce Wisan.  Wisan has recently quit his law firm job and his role as UEP Trust fiduciary in the wake of his public shaming for getting caught with a prostitute and lying about it. 

This is the stuff of movies.  I would cast Russell Crowe and Alec Baldwin.

I think the irony of it is the hypocrisy - the fact that Shurtleff championed his holy war on the Fundamentalist Mormons (for their alleged criminality), shopping Utah's stupid anti-bigamy statute to Texas, feigning good will towards us, all the while thinking only of his own personal advancement and political career.  Now, as I predicted, Shurtleff's is the fate of Governor Pyle, only worse.  He is likely to go to prison, hopefully among the felons he put away.

One of Shurtleff's errands for the blue suits at 50 E. North Temple was to keep the polygamists under control.  Thankfully the Church has no use for him any more.

Shurtleff's and Swallow's successor, AG Sean Reyes, has a few more days left to announce whether he intends to appeal Judge Waddoups' recent final ruling in favor of the Kody Brown family and the voiding of Utah's bigamy statute's unenforceable anti-cohabitation clause.  Let's hope that Reyes has some political corruption skeletons in his closet so that he too can be shamed for making war on the saints.

The drama continues.

When Kody Comes Home

Today it was reported by the Associated Press that Jeff Buhman, the Utah County prosecutor has FINALLY made up his mind what to do about the Browns' bigamy case.  He has completed his "investigation".  He has decided that, though guilty of bigamy, the Browns will not be charged, and that his policy (like that of the Attorney General) will be to prosecute bigamy only when there is a "victim" or fraud.

So what now? Do we all sigh a big sigh of relief?

Buhman is asking that Kody Brown's civil rights lawsuit against him be dropped because, now that the county's policy is to not prosecute polygamists, the case is "moot".  This is ridiculous.  It's much like saying, "I'm not hitting you any more, so you shouldn't complain about my hitting you."  One element of 'standing' in a Constitutional challenge is that the parties need to have been harmed or threatened with harm.  Clearly the Browns felt sufficiently threatened that they relocated to Sin City.  The judge (Waddoups) agrees.

The other silliness in this situation is that, however sincere Buhman is in his determination not to prosecute Kody and the four wives, the stupid bigamy statute is still firmly in place and still threatens most Utah families.

OKAY !!! - you and I both know that these idiots are smart enough to absolutely never use this lame statute on consenting adult polygamists, because that would do exactly what Jonathan Turley is doing right now - it would create a watertight test case to challenge the statute on the basis of Lawrence v. Texas (June 2003). The Church dreads this. When the Lawrence decision thoroughly decriminalized gay sex ("sodomy"), Utah did not instantly repeal its sodomy statutes, yet they are VOID nonetheless.  Well, the language of  Lawrence did not confine itself solely to homosexuality - it in fact decriminalized ALL consensual adult intimacies.  This (as Snortleff so eloquently argued in his Amicus brief in Lawrence) reaches all such conduct and inevitably VOIDS Utah's anti-polygamy codes.

Truth is, in spite of Lawrence, Sharkleff and Buhman have for a very long time preferred to "menace" the Browns and their fellow polygamists with the specter of prosecution.  If you are always flinching and cringing under the threat of incarceration, maybe you'll cloister yourself away somewhere in a dark, isolated corner of the state and keep your mouth relatively shut. As a stigmatized, marginalized minority, you can be more easily trampled on, and all the supercilious, pious Church-folk can go to bed at night peacefully knowing that those filthy polygs are second-class citizens - outlaws - lepers - nothing like our brave polygamous pioneer ancestors.

So here's the problem - if the Browns take Buhman at face value, they could perhaps venture back across the state line and resume residence in Lehi, reassured that arrests are now not imminent.  How does this protect them however from the prosecutors in the other counties they might visit?  Two other county prosecutors have charged polygamists in recent years. You get my point.

Let's cut through the fluff.  If no self-respecting prosecutor (besides Sean Reyes) will seriously pursue consenting adult polygamists, why is it SO DOGGONED important to keep that dumb, utterly-unenforceable bigamy statute in force?

Because the Church DREADS this one simple question:

Elder Soandso, now that polygamy is no longer a crime in the United States, will the Church resume its once suspended solemnization of plural marriages and stop excommunicating members who embrace it?