Get Your Story Straight!

I am pasting the entire text of this Salt Lake Tribune article below, so that you can fathom for yourself what makes sense.  I have also highlighted the link to the LDS Church's recent announcement.

What I find interesting is the strategy.  The Church has faced immense criticism for its prior ban on ordaining blacks.  The current position must inevitably be that the ban was wrong and not directed by God.  Choosing to repudiate its earlier doctrine, the Church must blame somebody - Joseph Smith or someone else.  Joseph Smith followed the teachings of the Old Testament which indisputably forbade blacks to hold priesthood or enter the temples, but once the Church pulls the rug out from under its polygamous founder, the Book of Mormon will doubtless be the next thing to go.

So, for now the Church is indicting polygamist, pioneer and governor, Brigham Young, asserting that he was imperfect and misguided (along with all of his successors through Harold B. Lee).  Denouncing a vast body of its own theological underpinnings, I suppose the Church must now rename itself - "The Community of Christ", or "The Church of Latter-day Lemmings", and rename BYU: "Thomas S. Monson University".

Let me tell you what, I believe, is the pathetic fallacy of this latest step.  Brigham Young was not perfect.  Jesus was/is perfect.  Nevertheless, Brigham Young did a great job of preserving and growing the Church.  Without Brigham Young, Salt Lake City and the modern Church would not exist.  This new message says, 

"People, don't put any faith in anything Brigham Young said.  He was a kook - - polygamy, Adam-God, blood atonement, denying the priesthood to blacks, preaching against miscegenation, etc., etc. !!  Put your trust in the modern, current leaders and in the doctrinal revisions they make.  The members of the Church in Brigham Young's day were sorely misguided.  They saw him as a 'prophet', and a prophet he wasn't.  Contrastingly, you modern-day members are utterly safe.  Just follow the utterances of the Kimballs, Hinckleys and Monsons, and you will go straight to the Celestial Kingdom.  Thomas S. Monson is a more legitimate prophet than Brigham Young [even though he has never claimed or published a single revelation]."

 Renn.

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Mormon church traces black priesthood ban to Brigham Young

Religion • Black LDS praise the move; historian calls it another step in the “maturation” of the Utah-based faith.

By peggy fletcher Stack

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published: December 10, 2013 09:39AM

In the past, the LDS Church has said history isn’t clear on why blacks were banned from its all-male priesthood for more than a century.

Apparently, it now is.

The reason, according to a newly released explanation from the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is rooted more in racism than revelation.

“Race and the Priesthood,” posted Friday on the church’s website, lds.org, also jettisons any beliefs developed through the years to defend the prohibition. And those findings are drawing praise from black Mormons and historians.

“Hallelujah,” says Catherine Stokes, a black Mormon who joined the LDS Church in Chicago and now lives in Utah. “I view this as a Christmas gift to each and every member of the church — black, white or whatever ethnicity.”

The ban began under Brigham Young, second LDS president, who was influenced by common beliefs of the time, reports the article. It did not exist during the tenure of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, who opposed slavery and personally ordained several African-Americans.

The essay is part of an ongoing series of “gospel topics pages” published by the LDS Church to give Mormons resources for understanding complex issues such as whether Mormons are Christians and differing, sometimes-contradictory accounts of Smith’s early visionary experiences.

The church-produced article on race argues that “there is no evidence that any black men were denied the priesthood during Joseph Smith’s lifetime.”

But the record clearly shows that, in 1852, Young — Smith’s immediate successor — “publicly announced that men of black African descent could no longer be ordained to the priesthood, though thereafter blacks continued to join the church.”

More than 125 years later, in 1978, the LDS Church, under then-President Spencer W. Kimball, lifted the ban, but some Mormons have continued to promote theories used to defend the former exclusion — “that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects actions in a premortal life; that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else.”

The new statement says the LDS Church “disavows the theories advanced in the past ... [and that ] church leaders today unequivocally condemn all racism, past and present, in any form.”

Margaret Young, who teaches English at LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University, believes all Mormons should carry a copy of the statement with them.

“Make three-by-five cards of Friday’s church statement on race. Edit carefully if you need to. Laminate it, and keep it handy —in a purse or wallet,” Young, who co-produced a documentary on blacks in the church, wrote to her Facebook friends. “We are now empowered to answer folks who perpetuate old justifications for the priesthood restriction in ways they won’t argue with. We are the messengers to give wings to the statement.”

What is most important about the statement on race to Mormon historian Richard Bushman is its perspective.

“It is written as a historian might tell the story,” Bushman says from his home in New York, “not as a theological piece, trying to justify the practice.”

By depicting the exclusion as fitting with the common practices of the day, says Bushman, who wrote “Rough Stone Rolling,” a critically acclaimed biography of Smith, “it drains the ban of revelatory significance, makes it something that just grew up and, in time, had to be eliminated.”

But accepting that, Bushman says, “requires a deep reorientation of Mormon thinking.”

Mormons believe that their leaders are in regular communication with God, so if you say Young could make a serious error, he says, “it brings into question all of the prophet’s inspiration.”

Members need to recognize that God can “work through imperfect instruments,” Bushman says. “For many Latter-day Saints, that is going to be a difficult transition. But it is part of our maturation as a church.”

Some top Mormon leaders are already pushing in that direction.

“And, to be perfectly frank, there have been times when members or leaders in the church have simply made mistakes. There may have been things said or done that were not in harmony with our values, principles or doctrine,” Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the faith’s governing First Presidency, said in October’s LDS General Conference. “I suppose the church would be perfect only if it were run by perfect beings. God is perfect, and his doctrine is pure. But he works through us — his imperfect children — and imperfect people make mistakes.”

While Mormons applaud the statement on race, some believe the church needs to go much further. Some want an apology; some just want wider awareness.

“The disavowal says to the church and to the world, ‘Everything we taught you justifying the restriction is wrong,’ ” says Marvin Perkins, a Los Angeles-based Mormon co-author of the DVD series, “Blacks in the Scriptures.” “But what would be ideal would be for every member to be as well-versed regarding the truths of the priesthood ban and scriptural truths regarding skin color and curses as they are with the Joseph Smith story and the First Vision. We need it repeated over and over in church curriculum in manuals and over the pulpit. That’s the way this will be resolved.”

Stokes, though, believes this latest step is worth celebrating.

Indeed, the website states, “in theology and practice, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints embraces the universal human family. Latter-day Saint scripture and teachings affirm that God loves all of his children and makes salvation available to all.”

This essay, Stokes says, “should enable people to move forward in concert with the second great commandment to “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

After all, she says, echoing Mormon scripture, “all are alike unto God.”

pstack@sltrib.com

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.

No Happy Polygamists

NEWSFLASH !!!

There are no happy polygamists.

At a conference (NOVA, I think) last week, Utah deputy Attorney General Turd Korgensen gave a speech with his little buddy, Snarolyn Jessop. Between the two of them, they formally announced that there are no happy polygamists. I'm so mad that I wasn't there, because I could have introduced them to one - me!

The Salt Lake Tribune's polygamy "beat" reporter, Brooke Adams, posted on this event in her blog here.

The Utah Attorney General's office has maintained a tenuous love-hate relationship with Rocky Mountain polygs. I think "love-hate" and "tenuous" because, despite the "Primer" and the "Safety Net" and all of the private and public dialogue, the role of the AG is to "enforce the law". WHAT LAW? - you know, the one that says you are a felon if you believe in D&C 132.

The thinly-veiled hatred of us plygs could not have been more evident than in Deputy Smorgensen's rant last week. He acted like a sarcastic, insolent bully, not unlike those Arizona jailer thugs who brutalized Warren for being "religious". When the "good ol' boys" are in power, they tend to flex it. He universally vilified men in plural marriages. He mocked the FLDS community. Of Eliarsa Wall's falsehood-riddled tabloid rag book, Snarkenson said it was "marvelous". He said that Fundamentalist people have lost the ability to think for themselves (look at me - somebody else dictates every word I write in this blog). He said that Carolyn had changed his life (WHAT !!! = taught him how to stand up in front of hundreds of people and twist the truth for political and/or financial gain?).

Just like her prevaricating predecessor, Hyena Erickson, Jessflop has trumpeted the battle-cry that all polygamous women are brainwashed into thinking they are happy when they are not. Isn't thinking you are happy the very definition of happiness? I guess her rather anecdotal observation could be plausible if she had personally interviewed the tens of thousands of polygamous wives and learned that not one is happy.

A man once told me that he was sure that ALL Indians walk in single file - after all, the one he saw walking was walking in single file.

This stupid crap argument that polygamy is inherently harmful is an insult to the intelligence of even middle school kids. You cannot arrest "polygamy" and sentence it to prison time any more than you can convict a dagger for murder.

Stupid people do stupid things. Idiot people try to argue that polygamy should simply not be permitted. Well, damn it! - based on its miserable record of failure, MONOGAMY should be prohibited. Try arguing that homosexuality is inherently harmful to society. Many people feel that pornography is harmful to individuals and communities, but America has NO INTENTION of outlawing it. Immorality, fornication and adultery are easily implicated as causes for bad marriages and divorces, but nobody EVER tries to argue that they should be criminalized (even before Lawrence [2003]).

It's really all about politics, and I've decided that politics is dirty. These AG folk have sold their souls to the devil or the Church or both. They don't care about the state's sincere minority citizens. They strike dirty secret deals in backrooms with other crony, opportunistic lawyers. For them the end justifies the means. They elicit false testimony and cover their tracks when the lies threaten to blow up in their faces.

Bruce R. McConkie once wrote that the day of the Lord's second coming is foreknown and fixed. Nothing on mankind's part can hasten or delay it. (I cracked up because, not long after that) Spencer W. Kimball wrote that the timing of the Lord's return is hinged entirely on our conduct - if we are righteous, He will come quickly; if we are wicked, He will punish us by postponing (confusing, huh ??).

I'm tempted to wonder if Lord Obama (along with Reid, Pelosi, Geithner, Bernanke, Greenspan and Volcker) is rapidly accelerating the dramatic Second Coming, at which point these politician frauds will be faced with some uncomfortable choices and accountability. My recommendation - MAKE BETTER CHOICES NOW !!! Things will go better for you at the last day.

HUMAN NATURE

Sorry I haven't posted for a couple of moons. Life has been wacky at best.

I am careful not to bash human nature. People are driven by many motives. However, I can't accept the "Devil made me do it" excuse either. I know some people just hate other groups of people. After all, I hate smokers. I hate hypocrites, too.

When I lived in Utah in 1998, I hated the Lakers. I hated Shaq and Kobe. I went to NBA playoff games and I hated Laker fans. I probably wouldn't have killed one of them, though. I would have checked my hatred just short of stabbing. Like all humans, I have passions - strong ones. I just try to govern them with common sense, and I realize that killing Laker fans would have no reasonable defense in a courtroom.

In Utah it is fashionable to hate polygamists. It is the state sport. Some people know exactly why they hate polygamists; others have no clue why - they just hate them. It might be hereditary, because people have been hating polygamists for hundreds of years. It's also a doctrinal thing. Church leaders make public statements that polygamists are adulterers and criminals, and everyone can scurry behind the excuse that hating plyg's is ecclesiastically endorsed. What could make you feel more clean and sanitized than falling asleep at night knowing that there are polygamists in Utah, and you aren't one?

Problem is - it's all based on a big lie - the lie of monogamy. Now, it's none of my business to tell people not to get into monogamous marriages; it's just important for most women to realize that, just because their husband does not have another wife, he still usually spends his entire life wishing he could have one (or a cute mistress). Monogamous men are forced to lie to keep the peace.

Last night (in Chihuahua, Mexico), some Mexican drug thugs shot two young American fathers in the head and threw them in a cemetery. I don't think they were murdered because they live somewhere near a Fundamentalist Mormon community. The perpetrators had more venal motives - like reprisals for the imprisonment of some fellow gang-members. I did, however, notice some blog commenters saying that it "served them right" for committing crimes (polygamy) and having to leave the safety of the U.S. as outlaws (?!). Sadly, these cartels are "equal-opportunity" terrorists, having recently also kidnapped a former LDS temple president.

Human nature can get us to say and do a lot of low-down, dirty-rotten things.

I like the bumper sticker that reads "Jesus is coming, and boy, is He p!$$@d !!" I have a pamphlet authored by the august former LDS Church president, Ezra Taft Benson. It is titled "This Nation Shall Endure". I get a kick out of this every time I think of it. I mean, he was the Church prophet, right? It just seems so silly that he forgot to read the words in the 87th section of the Doctrine and Covenants - especially verse 6, which promises:

6. And thus, with the sword and by bloodshed the inhabitants of the earth shall mourn; and with famine, and plague, and earthquake, and the thunder of heaven, and the fierce and vivid lightning also, shall the inhabitants of the earth be made to feel the wrath, and indignation, and chastening hand of an Almighty God, until the consumption decreed hath made a full end of all nations;

You can't have it both ways. Truth is - this land, America, is Jesus's footstool. When the pilgrims arrived, they dedicated it to the 13 tribes of Israel as stewards till Christ came back. Sadly, we tribes have abdicated our destiny and contaminated the land. The currency/interest manipulators have a gameplan - to enslave us all - and soon. Jesus has a gameplan for them, and for any who cater to them ( " . . because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication" [Revelation 14:8]).

I think we just need to be careful when we point the finger of condemnation at other folks. Clearly, God has had a gutful of our waywardness, and it won't be long before He sends someone to clean things up and settle the score. Sectarian divisions and religious elitism only make matters worse.

I pray for the families in Colonia LeBaron who lost their loved ones in such a horrifying way. Their lives are not worth less because they might have embraced the fullness of the Restored Gospel. It is time for the saints to unite - not divide. We should set aside our biases and stand up for correct principle.

FAMILIES OR FELONS?

IS POLYGAMY A CRIME IN UTAH?

Do you believe that Utah’s polygamists are criminals? Let us hear from Utah Senator Orrin Hatch. In May of 2006, he said, "Polygamy is against the law. It's that simple." In an interview on the “Larry King Live” show, LDS Church president Gordon B. Hinckley said of polygamy, “I think I leave that entirely in the hands of the civil officers. It's a civil offense. It's in violation of the law . . . . . . . I condemn it, yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal.

Do you know where to find the text of a Utah statute prohibiting polygamy? – Probably not. The truth is – There is no law against polygamy in Utah. Now, it is true that there are statutes prohibiting sodomy, adultery, fornication and bigamy, but the word “polygamy” is found nowhere in Utah’s criminal codes. Polygamy is not defined as a crime in Utah’s laws, and it has been many years since any Utahn has been prosecuted for polygamy. Why, then, is there such a pervasive belief that Utah’s polygamists are criminals?

Everybody knows that it was the Mormons who brought polygamy to the Rocky Mountains. It was a fundamental tenet of Latter-day Saint theology. When the federal government decided to crack down on Mormon polygamy in the 1800’s, it was a direct attack on a purely religious practice. Little attention was directed at adulterers and fornicators. Polygamy was dubbed one of the “twin relics of barbarism”. The government confiscated Mormon Church property in order to persuade it to renounce this controversial practice.

When the Church put forth George Reynolds as a polygamy test case in the 1870’s, the argument was that polygamy was protected under the First Amendment’s “establishment” clause. The Reynolds court summarily scoffed at George Reynolds’ claims, insisting that, “Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people.” This decision was an example of reprehensible bigotry, and it gave the federal and state governments unfettered power to attack almost any religious practice, even if it could not be shown to cause harm.

The reason why Utah has no law directly prohibiting plural marriages or polygamy is because there is no way to write such a statute without blatantly violating the facial neutrality guidelines invoked by the 1992 Supreme Court decision in Lukumi. It would be as flagrant as writing a law that forbids Mexicans to dance on Sundays. The sneaky way to get around this is to simply write a law that forbids all dancing on Sundays and then prosecute nobody but Mexicans for violating it. That is exactly what happens here in Utah, and it is a clear violation of operational or as-applied neutrality.

The way the legal establishment craftily targets Utah’s polygamists is by way of the bigamy statute. Nationally, bigamy statutes are designed to catch the con-man who legally marries one woman, then secretly and fraudulently obtains one or more additional marriage licenses in an effort to bilk the women out of their money and property. Polygamists do not commit such bigamy because there is no secrecy, and only the first wife has a legal marriage.

A hundred years ago, federal marshals employed numerous tactics to ensnare persistent polygamists. Laws were enacted which made it a crime to solemnize a plural marriage ceremony; to impregnate a plural wife; to spend the night in different homes on different nights of the week; to eat dinner with more than one woman, to say that you had more than one wife; and even to teach the doctrine of plural marriage. No effort was spared to twist the law to cast so broad a net that one could be imprisoned almost for believing in polygamy. In 1942, one of Rulon C. Allred’s wives was jailed for playing the piano for a Mormon fundamentalist church Sunday School class. Such violations of simple due process might cause even Stalin to shudder.

Today, the trickery continues. Utah’s bigamy statute is cleverly crafted. It says essentially two things:

You are guilty of bigamy (a felony) if you are married to one spouse and then you purport (claim) that you have a second or third.
You are guilty of bigamy if you are married to one spouse and then you “cohabit” with another person to whom you are not really “married”.

On the surface these statutes may seem innocuous and rational, but I will prove to you that they are not. First, it is absurd to prosecute someone in every case for purporting something inaccurate. Every Sunday, Latter-day Saints attend church meetings and address each other as “brother” or “sister”. More often than not, these churchgoers are not true siblings, so the claim of being brothers and sisters is inaccurate, yet I can remember no instance of a Mormon being arrested for such assertions. Now if I am married and I begin a relationship with another woman, and I decide to call her my “plural wife” (and not my “mistress”), the State of Utah will of course categorically refuse to acknowledge her as a real wife. Second marriages are automatically void and have no legal value. Nevertheless, I have now committed a felony for “purporting” that I have a second wife. This would be somewhat like my falsely claiming to have robbed a bank when, in fact, no bank was robbed, and then having the police demand that I return the money!

The second “prong” of the bigamy statute is equally absurd. First, the term “cohabit” has not been defined in Utah Code, so we are left to guess what it might mean. However, let us not split hairs. Cohabit can only mean one of two likely things. It either means “sharing the same dwelling with”, or “having sexual intercourse with”. Let us look at the first meaning. This meaning is overbroad, in that most Utah families have a married man who resides with other people to whom he is not married, namely his CHILDREN. This construction would put half of Utah in prison for bigamy. The second meaning – the sexual one – is the more likely application, would you not agree? The problem with this is plainly obvious. Mormon fundamentalist polygamists get a legal marriage license with the first “wife”. The subsequent (or “plural”) wives are only girl-friends in a strict legal sense. There may be sex acts, and children may be born, but that still does not afford the women any kind of legal spousal status. In strict legal parlance, the man’s actions constitute adultery or fornication – both misdemeanors which are NEVER prosecuted in Utah. Sadly, every year, thousands of ordinary Utah citizens commit adultery, and, in some cases, a pregnancy results. These crimes are never prosecuted because the perpetrators are not fundamentalist Mormons.

In recent years, the bigamy statute has been used to prosecute four men, all of whom were either single or were married to only one legal wife. Those men are Mark Easterday of Monroe, Steve Bronson of Hinckley, Thomas Green of Partoun, and Rodney Holm of Hildale. In some cases, girls of minor age were involved but, since at that time Utah had no “child bigamy” statute, all four men were prosecuted for “adult” bigamy. The only other bigamy case in recent history is the case of State v. Geer”. Geer was a true bigamist because he had two concurrent state marriage licenses. Without exception, Utah has only used the bigamy statute on men with one wife or no wife when those men were FUNDAMENTALIST MORMONS who believed in the Mormon doctrine of polygamy. There crime was their doctrinal beliefs.

This approach unquestionably violates the operational neutrality requirement of the Lukumi decision, and I believe it violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause. If I have a wife and I take an additional bed-partner, my guilt or innocence and the length of my prison sentence hinge on the language I use to describe the second woman. If I say, “mistress” or “girl-friend”, I am home free. If I say “plural-wife”, I will end up in prison. If it is discovered that I am a Mormon fundamentalist, then my goose is cooked. Mormon fundamentalists are about as popular as Nazi war criminals.

Even more ironic is the fact that in June of 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Lawrence v. Texas which forever changed the landscape of morality legislation. In overturning the (1986) Bowers v. Hardwick decision, the Court held that it could now no longer be said that homosexual sex was not a fundamental Constitutional liberty. Scratch your head for a minute and think back to the last case you remember where a gay person was incarcerated for homosexuality. In fact, today, Utah representative Jackie Biskupski is an openly homosexual state legislator. Now no state can enact or enforce any law prohibiting any homosexual sex act. The Lawrence Court insisted that states cannot create laws directed at specific lifestyles which are not then applied generally to all parties. It said that states must not pass morality laws designed to attack private adult conduct just because the majority finds that conduct repugnant or distasteful. All private, non-commercial, consensual adult sex acts are Constitutionally protected. This is why Bill Clinton and Hugh Hefner are not in prison. Singling out Utah’s polygamists for disfavorable treatment is inexcusable.

You may remember that Utah was refused admission to the Union until it agreed to include in its state constitution an irrevocable clause which would forever prohibit “polygamous or plural marriages”. A clause was then also inserted which forbade Utah to remove this prohibition without first getting permission from the federal government. This “irrevocable” clause is unconstitutional because it brought Utah into the Union on a lower (“unequal”) “footing” than the other states whose constitutions contained no such heavy-handed federal interference. In 1910, a Supreme Court decision, Coyle v. Smith, found such irrevocable clauses to be impermissible. Sadly, however, as long as the good people of the pretty, great State of Utah are content to leave this unconstitutional clause in their constitution, it remains in place to menace some 30,000 law-abiding fundamentalist Mormons with the stigma of criminality and the specter of prosecution.

One puzzling aspect of this situation is that the Attorney General has said that he will not prosecute consenting adult polygamists for the following three reasons:

No one will come forward to provide evidence;
Utah lacks sufficient law enforcement resources to catch all the polygamists; and
There are not enough prison spaces or foster homes for the polygamists and their children after they have been caught. (Could you ever let a polygamist out of prison?)

I think the true reason no prosecutor dares to exercise Utah’s bizarre bigamy statute against a consenting adult family is that the Attorney General knows that such a prosecution would provide the perfect test case to compel the Supreme Court to overturn the statute and the Reynolds decision. It appears that certain parties in power are anxious to maintain the status quo.

I will finish by including a statement made by the State of Utah in its Amici Curiae brief in the Lawrence v. Texas case. Joining other states’ efforts to keep already unconstitutional laws on the books, the Attorney General argued,

Even legislation that is largely symbolic and infrequently enforced (due to other salutary checks on government power like the Fourth Amendment) has significant pedagogical value. Laws teach people what they should and should not do, based on the experiences of their elders.

Might I venture to suggest that Utah’s elders include Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, Heber C. Kimball, Daniel Wells and John Taylor (all of whom were revered polygamists and statesmen)?