It's All Silliness

Today, (once again on June 26th) the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision.  I'll ignore yesterday's ignominious decision upholding Obominacare.  Today's decision commands all fifty states to permit and acknowledge same sex marriages.

I have been enthusiastically awaiting this outcome - not only for legal and social reasons, but also from the simple standpoint of logic.

In Saudi Arabia recently, two women were jailed for violating the kingdom's ban on women driving.  Their case has now been referred to the Terrorism Court (a court that has sentenced dissenters to death).  Now, I may be wrong, but I think automobiles are a relatively modern innovation. I would imagine that before engines came along, Arabia didn't ban women from driving/riding camels.  When the government gets involved sometimes it screws things up and makes a controversy where there needn't have been one - especially when it imposes an arbitrary discrimination.

Today, as the news media recite the arguments surrounding both sides of today's 5-4 ruling permitting gay marriage licenses nationwide, I hear remarks like - "It's been that way since the founding of our nation", "Marriage has ALWAYS been between a man and a woman", "Why does the Court think it can dictate the will of the respective states?".

Virgil Cooper wrote:

The marriage license as we know it didn't come into existence until after the Civil War and didn't become standard practice in all the states until after 1900, becoming firmly established by 1920. In effect, the states or governments appropriated or usurped control of marriages in secular form and in the process declared Common Law applicable to marriages "abrogated." 

See also UCC - Uniform Commercial Code - 1950 - Approval of the Uniform Marriage License Application Act. (http://www.barefootsworld.net/usfraud.html)

Prior to the states' intervention into the civil marriage business, it was the province of the various churches to decide whom they would marry.  The fact that the states stuck to the man/woman marriage model was perhaps arbitrary, and only reinforced by a prevailing culture which until 2003 saw gays as felons.

Today's ruling gave gays nationwide something that 100 years ago they wouldn't really have needed. What makes the difference now is that since the good religious folks of our country deputized the government to guard and maintain the sanctity of the Judeo-Christian sacrament of traditional holy matrimony, the glorious prize at stake is the LICENSE - a relatively new innovation (like the automobile).

I have said it before, but the equal protection doctrine of the (fraudulent) Fourteenth Amendment makes it silly for the new, Corporate United States government to discriminate on the basis of gender when issuing a license - especially one that is essentially a BUSINESS LICENSE.  Virgil Cooper continues:

In the civil law, the marriage is considered to be a for-profit venture or profit-making venture (even though it may never actually produce a profit in operation) and as the wife goes out to the local market to purchase food stuffs and other supplies for the marriage household, she is replenishing the stocks of the business. To restate: In the civil law, the marriage is considered to be a business venture, that is, a for-profit business venture. Moreover, as children come into the marriage household, the business venture is considered to have "borne fruit."  (citing William Defuniak)

I am happy for my gay friends who can now feel like fully-fledged corporate subjects with equal privileges and immunities granted as titles of nobility in an admiralty jurisdiction.  One news anchor mused about whether we polygs will now step up and insist on equal treatment in the form of licenses for a plural family.  I don't know, I'm thinking about it.

I do think that Utah's recent appeal (to the 10th Circuit) of Judge Waddoups' decriminalization of plural cohabitation is not only littered with typos, but also now is doomed to fail.  While gays have won the right to marry, we polygs are still not permitted to exist.  How silly is that?

They'll Never Understand

I have the sense that a lot of people in this world are really galled by the whole polygamy thing. The reactions to news articles; the comments about Fundamentalist Mormon families and communities - it all shows a deep disdain for the culture, the practitioners and even the religion. Many people seem to be as enthused about polygamy as they are of learning they are HIV positive. It is repugnant and impossible to understand.

A significant number of characters seem to be making a career out of combating polygamy and polygamists. Even well-balanced, compassionate people are at least baffled as to why so many men and (even more) women deliberately choose to be polygamous.

A possible feminist complaint could grow out of the common perception that polygamous men dominate and subjugate their wives. What's confusing is that there are multitudes of monogamous men who do exactly that. Generally, such situations are the result of character shortcomings in one or more of the spouses (- NOT because they happen to be believers in Mormonism).

These perception problems are still very hard to resolve. WHY?

I believe the simple answer is - PATRIARCHY.

Patriarchy is a controversial concept. It is plainly endorsed by the Bible and, until the 20th century, it was pretty much the accepted family model across 99% of the world. In our modern, progressive world view, we are taught to shun patriarchy. We repudiate the idea that a man is the "head" of his "household", especially in the very binary, dyadic monogamous arrangement. Modern monogamy is more like a duel than patriarchy. In the monogamy model, the partner with the strongest personality (or muscles) wins more of the arguments.

Patriarchy, however, evinces an asymmetrical family model where the husband holds an position of political and/or religious supremacy and has the "final say". To the average outsider, this is an almost indefensible arrangement. Why would a woman voluntarily subject herself to the "leadership" of a husband, when she could freely choose otherwise? Why would she not choose instead to join a "polyamorous" relationship, where all of the players are egalitarian and secular, and negotiate a vast array of different intimacy dynamics?

Here's the dilemma though, - when there is one man and several women, the women all crave the husband's time and attentions. What they get is ALWAYS a portion - a fraction of his total, available energies (just as in monogamy), and here's the CRUX. WHO decides how to divide up his time (daytime or bedtime)? Ultimately, it is the husband who MUST govern his own schedule, his eating, his bathing, his working, his playing, his waking and sleeping. It is just a simple fact of life and logistics. The husband is thus elevated upwards a notch in the political hierarchy, because he (and he alone) must make those moment-by-moment, executive decisions about what he is going to do with his time and with whom he will spend it. Face it folks - that is the inherent NATURE of religiously-inspired polygyny - there is no getting around it.

Yes, the poor man is vastly outnumbered by the women in his family. They may even (individually or collectively) have more robust personalities than his. They can out-vote him and even threaten to leave. Still, in the end, he is the de facto chief, because he often governs a significant percentage of the family's resources. Plus - what if he is just like typical men - lazy, selfish, inconsiderate, rude, controlling, brutish, smelly, short-tempered, deceitful, disloyal, ignorant, impatient and oversexed? It has been proposed by no small number of advocates that there should be strict laws against men having more than one partner, ever. Heck, it's a wonder that our noble government allows men to have a partner at all.

I know the Mormon Church looks at modern men that way (except for the ones in leadership positions). The distinguished Mormon polygamist leaders (and apostles) of the 1800's were nigh unto godhood - Joseph, Brigham, John Taylor, Heber C. Kimball, Parley P. Pratt, Wilford Woodruff, Heber J. Grant and so on. Nowadays, the men who enter the New and Everlasting Covenant are criminals, apostates and filthy adulterers.

So, to all you diffident outsiders I say this, "What if there are five good women who discover a man who is truly decent? - a man who is honorable, fair, studious, charitable, kind, compassionate, patient, wise, prayerful, generous, loyal, strong, industrious, loving and humble? What if our Heavenly Father inspires and directs those five women to join with that man in an eternal marriage? Should the government step in and stop the relationships before they blossom?"

Tens of thousands of Fundamentalist Mormons have embraced this lifestyle as part of a deeply-held religious theology. The women recognize that they exchange a certain portion of their political autonomy for the opportunity to spend the eternities with someone who aspires to godhood. They see this covenant as a huge blessing, and not as a burden. They develop rich, enduring relationships with their sister-wives - which would have been impossible outside the covenant. They live according to the revealed convictions afforded them by the restoration of the Fullness of the Gospel. They face hardships and adversities like the rest of humanity, but they accept their trials as a gift from God - calculated to magnify and exalt them. They worship our God, our greatest Patriarch, and they rejoice in having a mortal patriarch who cherishes them - and whose sole objective is to return, with them, to the presence of God, so that they might inherit ALL that He has.

So, do we embrace a healthy form of patriarchy? Do we allow Barack Obama to exercise leadership over the Executive Branch? Do we allow the Pope to oversee the Catholic Church and the Vatican? Do we condone Thomas S. Monson's primacy over the LDS Church? Do you let your boss lead you when you are at work? Would we let Jesus Christ direct his apostles and disciples? These are all different types of leadership - even "patriarchy" scenarios. Have you lived inside a fully-functioning polygamous family? In such a home, compulsion cannot work. Duress and tyranny would bring swift destruction. There can NEVER be success, except through collaboration, true love, common-consent and leadership through compassion and service.

Outsiders may NEVER understand this. If they did understand it, they would not be outsiders anymore. Still, as alluded to in D&C 113:8, conviction is often genetic.

Christine Durham for President

America has gone stark raving mad! The People were asked to lend $750 billion to the banks who stole our money, so they can lend it back to us and charge us interest! This is almost as absurd as claiming that Ruth Stubbs' informal wedding was criminal because, by wearing a "white dress" for the ceremony, she was mimicking legal marriages and harming the sanctity of the holy government institution of licensed legal marriage. Perhaps we should vote Christine Durham for President, since, as evidenced by her statements below, she may be one of the few remaining sane American public servants.

Utah Supreme Court Chief Justice Christine Durham’s Remarks.
(from her dissent in the State v. Holm appeal decision [May 16th, 2006])

‘As interpreted by the majority, Utah Code section 76-7-101 defines “marriage” as acts undertaken for religious purposes that do not meet any other legal standard for marriage- -acts that are unlicensed, unsolemnized by any civil authority, acts that are indeed entirely outside the civil law, and unrecognized as marriage for any other purposes by the state- -and criminalizes those acts as “bigamy”. I believe that in doing so the statute oversteps lines protecting the free exercise of religion and the privacy of intimate, personal relationships between consenting adults.’ (p.48-49)

‘Because I do not agree that the state can constitutionally criminalize private, religiously-motivated consensual relationships between adults, I believe Holm’s conviction under section 76-7-101- -which does not rely on the fact that Holm’s partner in his alleged bigamy was a minor- -must be overturned, and I therefore respectfully dissent from Part I of the majority’s opinion.’ (p 49, paragraph 134)

‘I understand the declaration in section 30-1-2, that certain “marriages” are prohibited and void, to mean that any attempt by those described to enter into a legal union in fact results only in a purported marriage. The contrary reading suggested [by the majority] simply leads to the perplexing question - in what sense can the state legislature prohibit and declare void a relationship that does not claim any legal status?’ (p.53)

‘The majority’s interpretation will subject religious leaders to criminal sanction for performing religious ceremonies that are not intended by anyone involved to have significance beyond the community in which they occur. …. For example, a minister officiating in a commitment ceremony involving a same-sex couple may now be held in violation of section 30-1-15(2) (though perhaps only if at least one partner is wearing a white dress[ !!!! ]).’ (p.57)

‘It is apparent that the majority wishes to emphasize the importance of the private commitment between two partners [more so than the state marriage license] who pledge to each other lifelong love, companionship and support. The majority also alludes to the sanctification such a commitment receives when the partners participate in a religious ceremony in accord with their faith. Undoubtedly, a couple may feel it is their commitment before God that gives their relationship its legitimacy or permanence. However, it is beyond dispute that such private commitments alone, even when made before God, DO NOT CONSTITUTE ‘MARRIAGE” IN OUR STATE OR IN OUR LEGAL SYSTEM.’ [emphasis added] (p.57)

‘In my view, those who choose, for religious or other personal reasons, to refer to themselves as “married,” even though they know the law does not so regard them, are free to do so within their private sphere and cannot by that act alone fall subject to criminal penalties. Imposing criminal penalties on such a basis is equivalent to disciplining an individual who goes by the name of “Doctor W,” but who is not, in fact, a licensed physician, for violation of state licensing requirements, even though he has never professed to be a legally licensed doctor or to have the medical expertise which that status is designed to ensure.’ (p.58)

‘It is not inconceivable that the drafters [of Utah’s constitution], while conceding that polygamous unions could never receive legal recognition, believed that private polygamous practice, including cohabitation with former “wives” and their children, might continue.’ (p. 63, paragraph 153)

‘I conclude that imposing criminal penalties on Holm’s religiously motivated entry into a religious union with Ruth Stubbs is an unconstitutional burden under our constitution’s religious freedom protections.’ (p.69, paragraph 166)

‘While some in society may feel that the institution of marriage is diminished when individuals consciously choose to avoid it, it is generally understood that the state is not entitled to criminally punish its citizens for making such a choice, even if they do so with multiple partners or with partners of the same sex.” (p.75 paragraph 172)

‘I similarly conclude here that an individual is free to appropriate the terminology of marriage, a revered social and legal institution, for his own religious purposes if he does not thereby purport to have actually acquired the legal status of marriage.’ (p.75 paragraph 173)

‘The State has provided no evidence of a causal relationship or even a strong correlation between the practice of polygamy, whether religiously motivated or not, and the offenses of “incest, sexual assault, statutory rape, and failure to pay child support.”’(p.77 paragraph 175)

‘…one scholar has concluded that “criminalization of polygamy is largely a symbolic tool that seems unlikely to either provide substantial protection to victimized adult and teenage women or to enhance state oversight and regulation of fundamentalist communities.”’ (Footnote #28, p.77)

‘The State of Utah has criminal laws punishing incest, rape, unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, and domestic and child abuse. Any restrictions these laws place on the practice of religious polygamy are almost certainly justified. However, the broad criminalization of the religious practice itself as a means of attacking other criminal behavior is not.’ (p.79 paragraph 176)

‘…I could not uphold Holm’s bigamy conviction on the basis that the religiously motivated conduct at issue is inherently harmful to children who grow up in polygamous homes, and are thereby exposed to the “culture” of polygamy. Our previous rulings and legislative policy support this conclusion. For example, this court has previously held that those engaged in the practice of polygamy are not automatically disqualified from petitioning for adoption of a child.’ (p.80 paragraph 177)

‘…The majority concludes that the private consensual behavior of two individuals who did not claim legal recognition of their relationship somehow constitutes an abuse of the institution of marriage, thus rendering Lawrence inapplicable.’ (p.81 paragraph 180) ‘…I do not believe that the conduct at issue threatens the institution of marriage, and I therefore cannot agree that it constitutes an “abuse” of that institution. The majority fails to offer a persuasive justification for its view to the contrary.’ (p.81 paragraph 181)

‘I agree with the majority that marriage, when understood as a legal union, qualifies as “an institution the law protects.” … However, the Court’s statement in Lawrence that a state may interfere when such an institution is “abuse[d],” … together with its holding that the sodomy statute was unconstitutional, leads me to infer that, in the Court’s view, sexual acts between consenting adults and the private personal relationships within which these acts occur, do not “abuse” the institution of marriage simply because they take place outside its confines.”’ (p.82 paragraph 183)

‘In my opinion, these holdings correctly recognize that individuals in today’s society may make varied choices regarding the organization of their family and personal relationships without fearing criminal punishment.” (p.82 paragraph 183)

‘The majority does not adequately explain how the institution of marriage is abused or state support for monogamy threatened simply by an individual’s choice to participate in a religious ritual with more than one person outside the confines of legal marriage. Rather than offering such an explanation, the majority merely proclaims that “the public nature of polygamists’ attempts to extralegally redefine the acceptable parameters of a fundamental social institution like marriage is plain.” … It is far from plain to me.’ (p.83 paragraph 184)

‘I am concerned that the majority’s reasoning may give the impression that the state is free to criminalize any and all forms of personal relationships that occur outside the legal union of marriage. While under Lawrence laws criminalizing isolated acts of sodomy are void, the majority seems to suggest that the relationships within which these acts occur may still receive criminal sanction. Following such logic, nonmarital cohabitation might also be considered to fall outside the scope of federal constitutional protection. Indeed, the act of living alone and unmarried could as easily be viewed as threatening social norms.’ (p.83 paragraph 185)

‘…this individual liberty guarantee essentially draws a line around an individual’s home and family and prevents governmental interference with what happens inside, as long as it does not involve injury or coercion or some other form of harm to individuals or to society.’ (p.83 paragraph 186)

‘The Court determined [in Lawrence] that when “adults…with full and mutual consent from each other” enter into particular personal relationships with no threat of injury or coercion, a state may not criminalize the relationships themselves or the consensual intimate conduct that occurs within them.’ (p.84 paragraph 186)

‘In my view, Holm was not properly subject to prosecution under the “purports to marry” prong of section 76-7-101 because he never claimed to have entered a legally valid marriage. Moreover, I would hold Holm’s conviction under the “cohabits” prong of section 76-7-101 invalid under the religious freedom provisions of the Utah Constitution. In addition, I believe the majority has erred in suggesting that the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas … does not recognize private relationships between consenting adults as entitled to protection under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.’ (p.85 paragraph 188)


www.utcourts.gov/opinions/supopin/Holm051606.pdf

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)?