Posted on 07/12/2011 8:17:26 PM PDT by EmpireStateConservative
Who’s angrier about this? Traditional marriage activists, or gay rights activists who don’t want to see the debate about same-sex marriage dragged down the slippery slope when they’re trying to build on momentum from New York?
Nationally-known constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley said the lawsuit to be filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City will not call for plural marriages to be recognized by the state. Instead, it asks for polygamy between consenting adults like his clients, former Utahn Kody Brown and his wives, to no longer be considered a crime.
“We are only challenging the right of the state to prosecute people for their private relations and demanding equal treatment with other citizens in living their lives according to their own beliefs,” Turley said in a press release. The Browns star in the TLC network show “Sister Wives.” There is no word yet on whether they will appear in a press conference scheduled for Wednesday…
The complaint to be filed Wednesday, Turley said, presents seven constitutional challenges to the state’s bigamy law. It is largely based on the right to privacy.
“In that sense, it is a challenge designed to benefit not just polygamists but all citizens who wish to live their lives according to their own values—even if those values run counter to those of the majority in the state,” said Turley, a member of the faculty at George Washington University.
If the distinction between decriminalization and state recognition seems confusing (which it did to me at first), it helps to know that Utah’s bigamy statute includes cohabiting with one person when you’re legally married to another. And in fact, this guy is only legally married to one woman; the other three are, er, “sister wives.” Basically, he’s arguing that he doesn’t care if the state recognizes them as legal spouses or not. Just don’t come knocking and lock him up if you find out. In that sense, it mirrors the current legal regime in most states where gay marriage is banned but gay sex is constitutionally protected.
So, no polygamous marriage claims here — yet. But legal precedents have a funny way of building on each other:
The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses…
The questions surrounding whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry are significantly different from those involved in criminal prosecution of multiple marriages, Ms. Pizer noted. Same-sex couples are seeking merely to participate in the existing system of family law for married couples, she said, while “you’d have to restructure the family law system in a pretty fundamental way” to recognize polygamy.
Professor Turley called the one-thing-leads-to-another arguments “a bit of a constitutional canard,” and argued that removing criminal penalties for polygamy “will take society nowhere in particular.”
Ah, but they’re not asking to change family law, just to take polygamy out of the penal code. The family law case will be the next lawsuit. FYI, the Supreme Court already upheld laws against polygamy — 130 years ago, rejecting a Mormon challenge based on the Free Exercise Clause. So there’s precedent here if SCOTUS wants it when it eventually hears a case along these lines. Two important footnotes, though. One: The Court’s language in Lawrence v. Texas, a decision authored by Anthony Kennedy, was famously broad in its implications (a point noted by Scalia in dissent at the time), so there’s no telling whether that earlier precedent is still good law. And second, Lawrence itself overruled a much more recent precedent in Bowers v. Hardwick to arrive at its holding. So yeah, there’s quite a fair chance that the Brown clan here might pull this off.
Exit question: Speaking of people who aren’t eager to watch this court battle play out, how excited do you think Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are right now?
Who didn’t know this wasn’t coming?
Take a wild guess what’s next....
-The 1972 Gay Rights Platform-
Repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent.
http://www.article8.org/docs/general/platform.htm
ah, ok....umm...gay-couples require no huge legal changes, while those required by polygamy would...? Since per gays marriage is about love, why cannot one wed, say, a much-beloved DOG..?
Gay people helped *Mormons*, ahahhahaha...!!!
All I can say is this, once you RE-DEFINE what all societies throughout history have meant, the word becomes anything you want it to mean.
In fact, it can be argued that POLYGAMY has a better historical precedent than gay marriage.
Someday they will want to be able to marry their own children
Traditional marriage activists, or gay rights activists who don’t want to see the debate about same-sex marriage dragged down the slippery slope...Hey dimwit. It's the same-sex marriage shit that's dragging everything down...
“In fact, it can be argued that POLYGAMY has a better historical precedent than gay marriage”
Yes it can. Polygamy is practiced in quite a few corners of the world today. I can never support queers getting married.
Why aren’t the Libs embracing polygamy?
Is Obama’s position of polygamy also “evolving”?
It's a no brainer. Polygamy has been practiced in practically every culture in the world at one time or another. Homosexual marriage? Before the modern "gay rights" movement, I have not found any references.
RE: Is Obama’s position of polygamy also “evolving”?
Seeing his sympathies with Muslims, I highly doubt it.
After all, the Muslims are allowed to have several wives, why should our laws not be modified to accomodate their deeply held beliefs?
Aren’t they Americans too? What about equal protection?
See... you start playing this constitutional game for one group and it becomes applicable to others.
Polygamy makes more sense than gay marriage, but for the life of me I don’t know why any one would want all hand wringing that would go with having multiple wives.
It hasn't changed. Muslims can have 4 wives. If he can get both gay marriage and polygamy, then he can dump Michelle and join a harem with 4 other guys.
You know what? I don’t care what any of them want. The homosexuals, the bigamists, or any of the perverts that seem to catch a headline.
This Country is on the line. We are allowing our freedoms to fade away while we place a stake in whether gays can marry or people can marry their pet goat, or double up on wives.
Let God sort them out (and you know He will).
We have bigger fish to fry.
Better question: "Where is CAIR with their billions. Ragheads love multiple wives.
This is not to endorse Mormonism or polygamy (or polyandry), it is merely an observation:
Polygamy is MUCH closer to the human norm over the millenia than is homosexual “marriage”. It does create economic and social imbalances (like we need more of those right now), but it is a distortion of the norm rather than a repudiation of it.
Just sayin’ . . .
“Before the modern “gay rights” movement, I have not found any references.”
Closest example I have found - quite by accident - is with some American Indians and some Central Asians (who share the same ethnic and cultural origins if you go back far enough) of antiquity. It was by no means what is being pushed in these final declining days of western secular civilization though.
In the rare cases of hermaphrodites (now called intersex), the androgynous person would assume the bearing, role and mannerisms of male or female, and set up house with a member of the ‘opposite’ sex. These unions were permitted, along the lines of “what else can so-and-so do?”, rather than anything to be celebrated or encouraged. So these nomadic cultures allowed the simulation of a normal arrangement to someone who was through no personal choice or fault in an ambiguous physical category. THAT is the sole analogy I can find, and it is not really the same thing at all.
I cannot remember the book. It was a serious study of shamanist cultures and I read it more than thirty years ago.
Next year, I’m going to marry my cat.
In another year, I’ll have to marry my dirty socks to get any attention.
Polygyny should be legal.
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