Yes, I recognize that there is a difference. I am not convince that the Mormon Church would do so.
There are times I wish I had your (lack of) imagination.
Utah Constitution, Article I, Section 4: “There shall be no union of Church and State, nor shall any church dominate the State or interfere with its functions.”
I say, did you have a point to make by posting this?
Take a look at the docket of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit some time. Look at how many of the cases are appeals from the District Courts for the District of Utah on religious freedom or religious establishment claims. Then think about how well that clause is being observed in the State of Utah.
the only problem I see with the actual polygamy is that he’s not properly supporting his women and children. If you can keep 5 wives and 29 children and still provide for all of them, I have no problem with it, though one would think that would drive a man insane.
5 wives nagging him and 29 kids begging to play catch? Yeesh… I’d rather commit suicide.
Now, the molestation thing I have a problem with…
How would the Church know who voted aquit and who didn’t? My voluminous knowledge of justice-based television shows tells me that they only announce the vote juror-by-juror in special cases. Is that right?
If the jury doesn’t unanimously vote guilty, then, what, they excommunicate the lot of them?
Needs2know, I don’t need to read any more books on Mormonism to know that polygamy as it is currently practiced by Mormon splinter groups is no great shakes for women. However, you have yet to say anything that convinces me that the practice of polygamy amongst consenting adults should be outlawed.
We already have laws against child molestation, statutory rape, and spousal abuse. Why can’t offenders be prosecuted under these laws, and left alone otherwise? (You have presented no convincing evidence, by the way, that polygamists commit these crimes more frequently than monogamists.)
If women are brought up in the patriarchy and make the choice as adults to perpetuate that lifestyle, it’s not the place of the government to wade in and free these women for their own good. They are adults and can make their own choices, regardless of how ignorant and/or brainwashed you think they are.
Minty…I just happened to have a copy of this article that I printed out for my increasingly fundie sister. The article is not necessarily written for the purpose of this thread but since I had it in hand it will give you a good idea of just how powerful and pervasive the LDS church is in Utah.
Minty…there is a wealth of information out there from excomunicated Mormons and non-Mormons who know the ins and of the “church run” state of Utah. (Mind you I’m not making a value judgement here. I don’t live in Utah and do not even plan on ever visiting.)Just from the little I’ve read on the history of this church it appears that it will go to great lengths to control it’s members and hide it’s contridictions from the rest of the world.
http://www.tompaine.com/history/2001/04/27/index.html
Needs2know
Believe me, I’m no fan of the Mormon church. But jury trials are held every day in Utah. Some of those cases will be of interest to the Mormon church, and at least a handful of those jury verdicts will inevitably be contrary to the way the church believed they should have been resolved.
I have never heard of the Mormon church punishing a juror for having voted against what the church believed to be its interests, and will not believe it until somebody shows me hard evidence. In fact, I find it very telling that in the anti-Mormon page Needs2know linked to, there is the woeful tale of a purveyor of soft-core porn who was apparently charged with obscenity at the behest of the church. He was also acquitted–twice–by juries that almost certainly included Mormons. There’s also a tale of a lesbian psychology teacher who sued her crusading Mormon opponents and won. Yet there is no indication whatsoever that any action was taken against those jurors who went against the obvious position of the church.
Church pressure on politcians? Nothing new there. Church pressure on prosecutors? Wouldn’t surprise me at all. Church sanctions on jurors who vote the wrong way? Show me the evidence. There are enough anti-Mormon organizations out there that it ought to be there if it exists, so feel free to prove me wrong.
Podkayne: Jury verdicts in criminal cases are (in almost all states) required to be unanimous, whether to convict or acquit. If the jurors cannot agree on a verdict, the judge will declare a mistrial. If Tom Green is acquitted, it will be because all of the jurors agreed he was innocent of the crime.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Xerxes *
**Interestingly, our paper reports that
I think they are using Utah’s common-law definition of marriage, IIRC. In other words, just because you say she’s not your wife anymore doesn’t mean she’s not your wife anymore.
I’d like to go back to the constitutional issues previously addressed by minty green and others. Specifically, the question of whether the decisions reached in the 1870’s regarding the practice of polygamy by Mormons in what was then the Utah Territory are ‘good law’ today.
In one sense, those decisions are ‘good’ law because the Supreme Court hasn’t revisited the direct issues contained and stated that the conclusions therein are incorrect. You will note that the practice of polygamy was attacked by the Court again in its opinion in Cleveland v. United States, 329 U.S. 14 (1946), which upheld application of the Mann Act (prohibition of transportation of women across state lines for immoral purposes) to defendants who transported women across state lines to enter plural marriages. By the way, if you want to read a REALLY scathing tract from the Court regarding polygamy and the Mormon Church in the mid-1800’s, read Mormon Church v. United States, 136 U.S. 1 (1890), especially the part beginning on page 48.
The legal justification for the decisions starting with Reynolds is not so silly as it may sound, whatever the intolerance of the results. As noted in many cases involving the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment, there is a distinction between a belief, and conduct based on that belief. The belief is absolutely protected, but conduct, by its very nature, cannot be (see Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 304 (1940), for example). The original rule ennunciated in Reynolds provided essentially no protection for conduct, a rule followed in cases involving compulsory vaccination (Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905)), and child labor (Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944)). But, starting in the early 1960’s, the Court began to protect conduct as well, beginning with Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U.S. 599 (1961) ("*f the State regulates conduct by enacting a general law within its power, the purpose and effect of which is to advance the State’s secular goals, the statute is valid despite its indirect burden on religious observance unless the State may accomplish its purpose by means which do not impose such a burden."; see also Justice Brennan’s opinion in Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963)). Eventually, the Court adopted a “compelling interest” and “least restrictive means” test, finding, for example, that Amish children couldn’t be compelled to attend school past the eighth grade in violation of the beliefs of the sect (Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972)).
Recently, the Court has backed away from the “compelling interest - least restrictive means” test in belief/conduct cases. In the perhaps seminal case of Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), the Court allowed the State of Oregon to deny unemployment benefits to persons dismissed from their jobs for using peyote during religious ceremonies. The suppression of the religious conduct was an incidental result of otherwise valid conduct prohibitions. Because the state’s laws weren’t intended to affect a religious practice, they survived scrutiny. Smith was attacked immediately in Congress, which passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, in which Congress specifically stated that it was restating the test for such cases to be the tests ennunciated in Sherbert and Yoder. The Supreme Court, predictably, struck down the RFRA as it attempted to dictate application of the Free Exercise Clause to states through the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment (City of Boerne v. Flores, ___ U.S. ___, 117 S. Ct. 2157 (1997)).
Where does this leave us? Under the old polygamy cases and the belief/conduct distinction of Reynolds, Utah can ban polygamy without violating the Free Exercise Clause. Under the rubric ennunciated in Yoder, it would be difficult to support the prohibition of polygamy, especially since the “compelling governmental interest” is much less obvious (likely there would be those who would attempt to show that polygamy = antisocial mysoginistic behaviour, but the true answer to that is to attack spousal abuse and child sex, not attack plural marriage itself). But under Smith, it isn’t clear what would result. This isn’t surprising: the main criticism of the current Court’s attempts to follow a middle-of-the-road path (usually authored by either Justice O’Connor or Justice Kennedy) is that such a path gives little guidance as to future results, depending as it does so heavily upon specific facts in a given case and the particular opinions of the individual justices as to the importance of the governmental interest served. One could argue that polygamy laws are a direct attack by the state on a religiously related practice, either as an attempt to support a mainstream Christian theology (Establishment), or as an attempt to eliminate a cultist “barbaric” practice preached by obscure sects (Free Expression). One could also argue that the state is not banning a religious practice at all, but merely establishing the boundaries of valid non-religious conduct (state recognized and sponsored cohabitation between adults), with the incidental result that religious sects that want to practice polygamy are frustrated from so doing.
Perhaps Mr. Green will be the catalyst for a re-examination; at the least, the federal Circuit Court of Appeals covering Utah is going to be asked to review the issue (10th Circuit, by the way, a somewhat conservative circuit). It’s too bad that the state prosecuting polygamy isn’t Arizona, which has its share of polygamists living north of the Grand Canyon in an area of the state that the state government rarely visits; Arizona is in the notorious Ninth Circuit, the decisions of which are quite regularly subjected to Supreme Court review.
Guilty, on four counts.
I didn’t quite make it through all the posts, so this may be
a repeat but here goes anyway.
There seems to be three issues to deal with here:
1)Utah’s quest to clean up their “reputation” before the Olympics next year. When I moved to Utah in 1996 (only stayed a year, that was TOO much for me), people made reference to polygamy as if it were common and acceptable practice. When I would go to Target, I would see the “sisters” and their children. They held hands and wore the same dress. Is this a crime? No. Did it make my skin crawl? Yes.
2)The “polygs” are breaking the laws that involve welfare fraud. They also take out large life insurance policies on their children, because invariable (as in Mr. Green’s case)
one or two of them will die in childhood. I would pass huge
homes on the east side of town going up toward the canyons, and my friend would tell me they were owned by polygamists.
This was common knowledge. Bought with cash.
3)The legal age for marriage in Utah is 14, right? He married at least one of the wives when she was 13. This sounds like breaking the law to me.
The Mormon Church would like to distance itself from this disaster, just like any business would distance itself from a business partner who “got caught” doing something unsavory.
Interestingly enough, as late as 1997 Utah still followed
the “alienation of affection” law. Is there anywhere else in the US that still has that one on the books?
How the devil do you see the LDS church as a partner in this guy’s antics? The LDS leadersip is quite adamant about the church not condoning plural marriage. Said leadership is also quite adamant about not condoning extramarital relations.
Hell, I bet following your logic there, the freaking prosecutor was the guy’s partner in the crime too!
The radio report says that the jury was out three hours. Given that the jury had at least six counts to deal with, should have read through the instructions after retiring, elected a foreperson and probably took advantage of the chance to have lunch on the county’s tab, this jury worked pretty quickly and probably didn’t have much argument about what to do. Takes care of my speculation about a Utah jury with all those polygamist ancestors being unwilling to convict.
Now comes the real fun. The guy has fought it so far on technical grounds and as a public relations matter. The appeal should be a real show.
As others have already pointed out, there’s not much need to punish Green for bigamy iff all you’re upset about is diddling the little girls. It’s perfectly possible to charge the guy with sexual assault, which I think they did in this case. Obviously, he wasn’t convicted on that charge.
Also, 14 is no longer the legal age for marriage in Utah:
This has been nagging at me for a couple of days now.
Care to explain, with cites, statistics, and actual evidence, why you state that? Or is it merely because you believe deep down in your heart that the LDS church leaders are scum and it’s okay for you to throw out an unsupported insinuation?
Last I checked, the LDS church has, as its 12th Article of Faith (I’ve bolded a couple of words in the following quote for emphasis),
Now that alone tells me that a good LDS juror would heed the instruction from the judge to return a guilty verdict only if the prosecution had proven their case, regardless of the juror’s personal feelings about the alleged crime. What about cases where both the prosecuting and defending attorneys are LDS?
From where I sit, Kelly, it is you and not minty green who is devoid of imagination.
Monty:
I have a friend who is an apostate Mormon. She has told me many stories of dissident Mormons who have been subjected to harassment of all sorts by the Mormon hierarchy. I have no reason to believe that she has misrepresented those anecdotes to me; several of them have been documented by independent sources. I have also read press reports describing incidents of the Mormon Church throwing its weight around to influence politics and of the Mormon Church applying ecclesiastical penalties against people who advocate for positions its disfavors.
I have no interest in trying to convince you that the Mormon Church has a history of harassing its membership. The record is out there; research it for yourself if you don’t believe me. I am not sufficiently interested at this time in the topic to research it further at this time, or to recover the documentary evidence upon which I originally based my opinion.
Kelly,
“Put up or shut up” is good advice. Take it.
Monty, I expressed an opinion based on what I have learned over the past several years. I don’t take notes on every conversations I have, scribble down the ISBN of every book I read, or write down the URL of every web page I look at. You’re free not to believe my opinion. You are NOT free to be rude about it.
Kelly,
Interesting world you live in there where you call what I posted rude, when it wasn’t. I merely pointed out a couple of factual things and also expressed an opinion.
Yet, you certainly felt free to be rude to minty green. Or don’t you recall your remark about her “(lack of) imagination?” If you don’t, feel free to scroll up and read it and check the nifty little thing to the left of the posting to show that, yes, it actually was you who made that rude, insulting, and yes, asinine, comment.
I didn’t ask you to post every book’s ISBN, or every website’s url; yet I did ask you to provide cites, statistics, and evidence.
What you responded with was:
[ul][li]ONE PERSON’S STORIES without saying what those stories were. The fact remains that it’s still ONE PERSON’S STORIES.[/li][li]Elevating the rudeness you displayed towards minty green, but this time with me as a target because, IN MY OPINION, I dared to ask you if you had anyting that even closely resembled a FACT for your assertion above.[/ul][/li]
IN MY OPINION, you really need to get a grip and quit taking logic cues from Blueii and SJ/BB.
P.S. Yes, my comment above about the nifty little thing to the left was condescending. Thank you for noticing.
There was never any doubt about conviction, unless the jury was willing to try jury nullification, and that wasn’t likely because this guy isn’t exactly someone the community is going to be sympathetic to (sleeping with 13 year old girls, etc.).
The real issue will be explored upon either appeal or by way of habeas corpus petition to federal court. Then an appellate court can address the First Amendment issues.