The Final Showdown

In one of my recent posts I erred.  I wrote that I did not think it was likely that a Circuit Court would uphold state same-sex marriage bans.  Surprise, surprise - in a two-to-one split decision, the Sixth Circuit overturned lower-court rulings (granting gay marriage) in cases from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.  Read this article.  This is delicious.  Now, with contrasting rulings from different Circuits, the matter must inevitably escalate to the Supreme Court.

Despite the laments of those who insist that the decision whether to allow same-sex marriages must remain with the People of the respective states, it is clear that there is a powerful Popular trend in the U.S. to let gay people marry, and the courts are rapidly getting in step behind it.

I am reminded of the bizarre Reynolds decision.  In 1879, most Americans were enthusiastic over having a federal court barge in and dictate to the little ol' territory of Utah regarding its marriage practices.  We have short memories.

Let us not forget the breathtaking ambiguity in Canada, where gay marriages have been legally solemnized since 2005, and it is a crime to be a polygamist - even an informal one.

I express my thanks again to Judge Clark Waddoups (and Justice Christine Durham) who saw through the exquisite hypocrisies of Utah's anti-bigamy statute and obliterated it even before the Supreme Court has a chance to bless universal gay marriage.

GO TED AND DAVID !!!

Slippery Slope

Sexiest Girl Alive

Who started it ???  Was it Antonin Scalia or Sick Rantorum?  Somebody started it.  Scalia told us (in Romer v. Evans) that we should harbor spiteful feelings against polygamists because they are comparable to murderers or animal abusers.  Rick Scrotorum (then Pennsylvania senator) carried on the slippery slope lament perpetuated by James Dobson in 2004 (read here).

Dobson premonished the day when, as a result of Lawrence v. Texas, "daddies" would freely molest their little girls, and men will copulate with their donkeys.  One thing would lead to another. 

This argument is at best confused.  Lawrence simply made it no longer criminal for gays to breathe and walk free.  Remember that some states (post-Bowers) required people who discovered themselves to be gay to go the police station and register themselves as sex offenders.

Remember that, until last week, Utah's polygamists were de facto felons, criminal for their mere existence.  So, if you follow the Santorum slope, we will devolve irreversibly into bEstiality (NOT BEASTiality !!) as soon as gays can wed, and polygs can avoid prison. 

What these slippery slope exponents forget is that if there truly are people out there who ardently crave sex with their donkey or pet goat, they have probably been steaming up the barn for years already, irrespective of obscure SCOTUS decisions (e.g. DOMA, Prop' 8).  Understanding this, Santorum had better join the farm vice squad and focus on rigorous enforcement of man/beast chastity.

The "slippery slope" argument appeals to the low IQ voter - the person who thinks that if a gay person gets a marriage license, his neighbors will conduct orgies in their basements, and naive Christians will start dating ewes.

The LDS Church spent millions (of its members' contributions) on preventing gay marriage licenses in Hawaii and California - - petrified of the slippery slope.  Its ensuing, ill-fated victories are now coming back to haunt the Mormons.  The Church's PR machine has the foresight of a small goldfish or Chicken Little.

Rest assured, at least 76 countries criminalize homosexuality.  In Iran, it will cost you your life.  If that feels better for you, go live there!  In Iran, prostitution is a crime, so johns "marry" the hookers for the duration of the trick, and then get a "divorce" on the way out of the brothel. Legislating morality is at best a waste of energy and at worst a political deception.

For more on the slippery mind of Santorum, read this.

Newsflashes: - the New Mexico supreme court just ruled in favor of gay marriage, and Canada just legalized prostitution nationwide.  If you want to fix a country's problems, focus on outlawing usury banking.  That way, people will be free and rich and mind their own business.

Breitbart Agrees

I have been saying for some time that the 14th Amendment doctrine of equal protection spawned the current arguments in favor of gay marriage.  All states are now on a slippery slope to approving it.  The Supreme Court may soon insist.

I have also long been saying that the arguments endorsing gay marriage must equally be applied to American polygamists (see my THREE TIERS post -  http://fallofreynolds.blogspot.com/2011/08/three-tiers.html).

Recent Supreme Court decisions have prompted more commentators to acknowledge these realities.  I quote in full below a brilliant article from Breitbart.com.
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http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/30/The-road-to-polygamy

The road to polygamy

by John Hayward 30 Jun 2013

Proponents of gay marriage often make light of the slippery-slope argument that same-sex marriage will lead to legalized polygamy.  I can see why they want to dismiss that argument, but they're being silly.  Of course same-sex marriage will lead to polygamy.  It is inevitable.  It'll take a little while, but it's coming.

Simple common sense tells us that every argument deployed in support of same-sex marriage is readily available to the polygamy activists.  Who are we to tell three women and one man that they can't be in love?  Who are we to deny official recognition, and government benefits, to their loving union?

This isn't just a rhetorical trick.  The essence of the gay marriage argument is that the sex of the participants is absolutely irrelevant.  If that's the case, then how can the number of participants be essential?  Everything except the exchange of vows between legal adults in a committed relationship is being stripped from marriage.  The sense that society has a deep and abiding interest in promotion the union between a man and a woman has been lost.  The question is now framed purely as one of unfair exclusion: hidebound traditionalists, religious zealots, and generally mean people are trying to keep gay people from getting married, but the forces of enlightened tolerance are riding to the rescue.  Read Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in the Defense of Marriage Act decision; he spends a great deal of time thundering that no person of good will could possibly advance a logical reason to prevent the federal government from extending benefits to same-sex couples.  The polygamists will simply take him at his word, and read his decision right back to the Supreme Court, when it's their turn to make a bid for "tolerance."

I don't think the legal concept of "consenting adults" is necessarily voided by same-sex marriage, although it's under attack from other directions.  For that reason, slippery-slope warnings about legalized bestiality and pedophilia are going too far.  But polygamists are consenting adults.  And, as a report at BuzzFeed indicates, they were very, very pleased with the Supreme Court's DOMA decison:

The Supreme Court’s rulings in favor of same-sex marriage Wednesday were greeted with excitement by polygamists across the country, who viewed the gay rights victory as a crucial step toward the country’s inevitable acceptance of plural marriage.

Anne Wilde, a vocal advocate for polygamist rights who practiced the lifestyle herself until her husband died in 2003, praised the court’s decision as a sign that society’s stringent attachment to traditional “family values” is evolving.

“I was very glad… The nuclear family, with a dad and a mom and two or three kids, is not the majority anymore,” said Wilde. “Now it’s grandparents taking care of kids, single parents, gay parents. I think people are more and more understanding that as consenting adults, we should be able to raise a family however we choose.”

“We’re very happy with it,” said Joe Darger, a Utah-based polygamist who has three wives. “I think [the court] has taken a step in correcting some inequality, and that’s certainly something that’s going to trickle down and impact us.”

Noting that the court found the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional because the law denied marriage rights to a specific class of people, Darger said, “Our very existence has been classified as criminal… and I think the government needs to now recognize that we have a right to live free as much as anyone else.”

There's nothing illogical about what Darger is saying.  The same-sex marriage movement is predicated on the notion that nuclear families are nothing special - they're just one of many alternative lifestyle arrangements, worthy of no special recognition from government or society.  And the argument has indeed been framed as "denying marriage rights" to classes of people, rather than insisting upon the unique value of "traditional" marriage.  (I find myself using that phrase when I write on this topic, to distinguish the traditionally understood definition of marriage from the same-sex variety, but I've heard it said that qualifying the term "marriage" in any way is conceding vital intellectual ground to those who wish to re-define it.)  Why should the polygamist "class of people" be "denied" these "rights?"

It might be a forlorn hope at this point in the discussion, but I think we should re-examine the vital importance of marriage between men and women to society.  We never should have stopped emphasizing this unique value, and assumed the defensive crouch that lets activist Supreme Court judges sneer that no one can make a reasoned argument against gay marriage any longer.  It won't be much of a consolation watching the polygamists bludgeon Justice Kennedy with his own words in a few years.

Dear Judge Waddoups

Dear Judge Waddoups,

Did you notice today that the Supreme Court (ten years to the day after the June 26, 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas) just struck down DOMA (the federal defense of marriage act)?

I know you have been working for some months now on your decision in the Kody Brown bigamy crime case.  I wonder if you have been waiting for the Supreme Court to share its wisdom regarding gay marriage prohibitions with you.

In a 5-4 decision today, the Court told you that DOMA must fall because government must not single out a specific class of people for favorable or unfavorable treatment.  In his 1996 dissent in Romer v. Evans, Justice Antonin Scalia noted that the polygamists in Utah are singled out for unfavorable treatment.  Three-tiered framework be damned, polygamists do fall into a discrete minority class.  They ARE treated as second-class citizens.  Their EXISTENCE is seen as a crime (as was gay people's existence before 2003).

What is the appropriate prison term for a polygamous person?

 - - - Life in prison.

Why? - - - Because he will still be a polygamist when you let him out of prison.

Clearly, today, the Supreme Court acknowledged the absurdity of this, and now so must you, Judge Waddoups.

Jonathan Turley told you that Utah's ridiculous bigamy statute violates no fewer than six of Kody Brown's Constitutional protections - more than enough justification for strictly scrutinizing this dumb law.  Now you can finish your master-work. If gay people can now marry and enjoy all of the benefits accorded to heterosexual spouses, will you let us thrive and walk the streets without fearing imprisonment?

I am holding my breath now, waiting for you to rule that Utah's bigamy statute constitutes IMPERMISSIBLE TARGETING of a religious minority.  Can you have the ruling finished by 5 pm this afternoon?

Sincerely,

Renn Oldsbuster

DELIBERATE STUPIDITY

I used to wonder why entertainers, newspeople and politicians spoke to the American people as if they were all 12 years old.  Now I think I am understanding why.  A friend of mine from India asked me yesterday if I knew where one can find the best Indian food in the the world.  I figured - - Calcutta, New Delhi, Mumbai .........  "No", he said, "England".

You see, just because the obvious conclusions come easily, does not mean that they are right.  Surely each of us is smart enough to see past the dumb, reflexive responses of a simpleton. BUT NO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I look at the big furor raging right now over the comments of Dan Cathy, the president of the Chick-Fil-A fast food chain.  This guy is a southern Christian who disapproves of homosexuality.  His beliefs are based on his interpretations of Bible scriptures.   This is all fine and dandy.  He can believe what he wants.  He goes on to say that God will punish America for embracing gay marriage.  This is where the controversy starts to get more complex.  What is gay marriage?  Is it when a gay couple goes to the local parish church, and the pastor or vicar or priest solemnizes the ordinance of holy matrimony for the couple?

Come on folks !!!  Are we all so stupid that we do not know the difference between an ecclesiastical rite and a government licensing contract?  If I had Cathy's views on homosexuality, I would definitely not officiate in a ceremony marrying two same-gender people.  He shouldn't either.  This whole argument has become so fogged up that it is no wonder that ordinarily, intelligent people cannot see through it.

Let me reiterate - this 14th Amendment, maritime, de facto government to which we are all subject has no business dictating religious compliance to anyone.  It cannot offer a state marriage contract to two heterosexuals while not offering it to two homosexuals.  Plain and simple !!!  Various states are beginning to grasp this, and have allowed gay LEGAL marriages.  Soon all states will.  There is no argument (other than the petulant religious one) that can challenge this change.  The government is not, and should not be, in the business of administering the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, despite decades of appearances to the contrary.  I guess the ignorance comes from multiple generations of people who regularly conflated their faith-based nuptials with the signing of a state contract.  These are TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BEASTS !!!  Do you understand the distinction?

People are lining up by the thousands to defend Cathy by buying more of his chicken sandwiches, while others are excoriating him for supposedly hating gay people.  Both sides are confused.  If states grant marriage licenses to gays, this is simply in harmony with the tenets of the 14th Amendment (the legal system which replaced the Constitution).  This shift in no way suggests that the states have repudiated the Bible (they did that in the 1860s).  The people who hate Cathy for his pontifications are wrong to assail him.  If our people went and attacked the businesses of all the folks in Arizona and Utah who despise polygamists, there would be few places left to shop at.

I am ranting about this because there is an eerie similarity between this stupid confusion and the confusion over the decriminalization of plural families.  Some observers (Sanctorum) have lamented that the acceptance of legal gay marriages will be the start of a "slippery slope" down which society will slide into an abyss of polygamous and animal marriages (??).

Just like the animals, we polygamists are not fighting for a marriage license from the state.  We just want to be left alone and not be classed as criminals.  The gays won this battle in 2003.  Just like with the gays, the eradication of all polygamists is not feasible.  The wall is cracking.

Are you still confused?

Three Tiers

In the seventies, the United States Supreme Court was feeling the need to bolster the civil rights protections craved by certain groups.  If a state legislature got a wild hair to pass a dumb law - like "Negroes must not sing on street corners", then the high court could overturn the law and void it.  As various classes or groups then clamored for similar protections, the Court was then faced with a dilemma.  The question was - how far could the Court go to intervene in state statutes?  By what standards could the Court review the state's laws when someone complained that they were unfair or biased?

There were people who were poor and people who were old.  The Court had sympathy for them, too, so it had to formulate a way of preventing bad laws targeting them.  But surely poor or old people weren't discriminated against as badly as were colored people, were they?

Ultimately, it was decided that the Court would use a "Three-Tiered" framework of review to scrutinize the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of certain legislation.  Thus, if a law impacted people according to race (or even religion), then the Court could apply the strictest standard of scrutiny ("Strict Scrutiny") to that law.  The impacted class was termed a "Suspect Class".  See this article.

The second tier - the one affecting poor or old people - would trigger "heightened (or intermediate) scrutiny".  These people fell into what was called the "Quasi-Suspect Class".  This also came to include people discriminated against because of gender.

The final, and lowest standard of review is the least demanding.  The term often used is "rational basis".  This means that, if the state can show that it had at least a "rational basis" for enacting a law, then that would satisfy the Court - the Court would just look away, basically.

So, in short, if you (as a member of a particular class of individuals) want to be protected from unreasonable laws, you had better be at least poor or old, or, better still - have dark skin.

This process signaled the need to define what a "class" of people was.  I quote from Wikipedia -

"Some of the criteria that have been cited include:

• The group has historically been discriminated against, and/or have been subject to prejudice, hostility, and/or stigma, perhaps due, at least in part, to stereotypes.^[1]
• They possess an immutable^[2] and/or highly visible trait.
• They are powerless^[2] to protect themselves via the political process. (The group is a "discrete" and "insular" minority.^[3])
• The group's distinguishing characteristic does not inhibit it from contributing meaningfully to society."

Certain types of people fell neatly into a class - for example - albinos (or amputees).  Albinos don't get to choose to stop being albinos.  Blacks do not have the ability to choose to be Caucasian.  Old people cannot decide to become young again (except for Joan Rivers).  These classifications are permanent and easy to define.

Other, less easily definable classes include Catholics, felons, homosexuals, polygamists, etc.  In the 1990's, gay Coloradoans fought hard to be viewed as a distinct class (in order to merit "protected status") (see Romer v. Evans).  After all, virtually all gay people feel that their sexual orientation is NOT a choice.  They are unable to experience sexual attraction to people of the opposite sex.

The Supreme Court disagreed and decided that the three-tiered framework would be final.  No new groups could be added to the Suspect and Quasi-Suspect classes.  This was brought to my mind again yesterday when I read a blogpost from a gentleman who insisted that homosexuality is an involuntary condition, while polygamy is a choice.  WOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Think about that!  Gay people are drawn to same-gender partners.  They cannot get excited about the opposite sex.  Still, when they bond with one or more individuals, it is a CHOICE.  They select a partner through free choice.  They reject the partners they find unappealing.  Why is this different from polygamists?  The fact that polygamists are a "class" of people who have not been accorded any special kind of status (suspect or quasi-suspect) is the reason why the state of Utah can get away with arguing that its asinine bigamy law is worthy of only "rational-basis" review - that it need only argue that it has a "compelling interest" in protecting the sacred sacrament of holy matrimony within its borders.  With such a low standard of scrutiny, the Supreme Court is at best complacent.  The argument, however, is as flawed as the one promoted by the Prop 8 supporters in California who insisted that if Tim and Jeremy next door got a marriage license, then the neighborhood children would grow up to be murderers - - there simply is NO causal relationship.

If you think about it, there are thousands of polygamous families in Arizona and Utah.  If Reynolds were overturned, what would change?  NOTHING !!!  Their numbers would remain the same.  The only difference would be that perhaps they would be persecuted less, and they would live more in the open, and the Mormon Church would feel a little bit more self-conscious.

I am attracted to Beatrice.  I love Beatrice.  I want to have children with Beatrice.  Beatrice is my wife.  I choose not to leave her.  I love Violet. I can't make myself stop loving her.  She is physically attractive to me.  I am not attracted to Fred.  I cannot make myself be attracted to Fred.  Intimacy with Fred would disgust me.  I love Cecilia and Phoebe.  They love me too.  They trust that I will never leave them or our children.  I cannot make myself stop loving and supporting my plural family.

Tell me how polygamy is a choice.  I could say I choose not to be attracted to Marilyn Monroe, but it would be a lie.  No course of therapy could get me to find her ugly.

I think this is the fundamental logical disconnect in society's view of polygamy.  Society feels that polygamy is a sin, a crime, and that its practitioners should just choose to stop committing this "sin", this "crime".  There is confusion over what is inherent nature and what is moral choice.  Serial killers may be born with psychopathy or may have acquired it.  Therapy does not fix them. The inclinations are permanent.  Their crimes are a combination of nature and personal decision making.  Nature does not excuse accountability. 

I am a polygamist - it's hardwired into my DNA.  You cannot change that.  You can kill me, but, like Ogden Kraut, I will still be a polygamist.  By nature, I am attracted to a significant number of women.  I choose not to commit adultery.  By nature I am not attracted to children.  I choose not to marry nasty women.  I choose to pay my bills.  Most guys I have met seem to have an innate tendency to be attracted to multiple women.  That is biological or genetic or something like that.  The "choice" part comes in when the guy "chooses" to be loyal or not.  Fidelity is a conscious choice.  Polygamous attraction is no less hard-wired than same-gender attraction - - - - PROVE ME WRONG !!!!

I believe that gay people are incapable of undoing their homosexuality.  That is not a choice.  Whom they choose to marry is entirely free will.  I cannot undo my polygamousness - it is a permanent part of my biology.  I do, however, freely choose whom I marry.

My point is that, when the Supreme Court starts down the pathway of defining classes of people, it should remember that I can no more choose to stop being a polygamist (by nature) than a person with Down syndrome can choose not to have Trisomy 21.  My conduct is, however, pursuant to my choice.  No argument defending the rights of gays to marry does not also prove that polygamists should have the right to marry.  If legal marriage can be inflected by gender, why can it not also inflect by number?
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The Protection of Marriage

Today brought us yet another pathetic piece of political propaganda. A coalition of religious organizations from across the country united to create a document titled, "The Protection of Marriage: A Shared Commitment".

In each of its three paragraphs, the statement reiterates the definition of marriage as being between "one man and one woman". So, do you think this is calculated to address homosexuality, polygamy or both? Bishop Burton of the LDS Church is one of the signers of the document.

If marriage is about permanency and offspring, where do great patriarchs like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Brigham fit in? How do our mothers in Heaven feel about this declaration? Are their marriages to our Father now terminated?

If monogamous marriage is so wildly successful, why then do more than half of those marriages fail? Why insist on forcing a marriage model upon us that has such a terrible track record?

Plus, if those 26 religions are really that smart about stuff, how come they can't spell the word "indispensAble"?