Free Republic

San Francisco, CA (AP) -- More than one-third of California's lawmakers added their voices Monday to the chorus calling on the state's highest court to overturn the prohibition on same-sex marriage approved by voters last week. Forty-four members of the California Legislature filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support one of the three lawsuits seeking to invalidate Proposition 8. The case, brought on behalf of gay couples who have not yet married, argues the ban should be tossed out because voters did not have the authority to make such a dramatic change in state law. The brief argues that the gay...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will introduce a measure Wednesday establishing a federal task force on polygamy and offering help to those trying to escape polygamous communities. The bill, if passed, would set the stage for likely the largest orchestrated crackdown on polygamy in a century. Ahead of the first congressional hearing focused on polygamy since the 1950s, Reid, a Mormon convert from Nevada, will introduce the Victims of Polygamy Assistance Act. It would set up a collaborative effort between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to combat "broad patterns" of polygamy-related crimes. The bill also would create grants...

Posted: 6:51 PM- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will take his quest for a federal investigation of a polygamous sect before the Judiciary Committee next week. The Nevada Democrat requested and received the July 24 hearing before the committee, during which he will present evidence to support a federal crime investigation of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a spokesman said. Jon Summers, who works in Reid's Washington, D.C., office, said Reid and others are set to testify. "He is trying to step up federal enforcement against abuses that often occur in these polygamous sects," Summers...

Custer County's sheriff is taking a stand. "We don't want them here," Fred Jobe says of the polygamists who quietly are settling onto his turf. "I just don't want them to think they're gonna move in and take over the county." As Jobe tells it, followers of Warren Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have moved into four compounds in Custer County and two in Fremont County. The extent of their influx into south-central Colorado is unclear because few outsiders have been let inside the sect's secrecy fences. Many locals are wondering why they don't see...

As a district judge heard the state's case for keeping children from a polygamous sect in custody, hundreds of electronic and telephone messages were pouring into Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office. They came from around the country - including Utah - and most made the same point: Send the children home to their mothers. By April 17, three days after separating mothers from their children, the office had received 449 messages opposed to the removal of the children and just 32 from people who supported it. "If you do nothing to protect these rights, you can be assured that you...

Texas child welfare officials say more than half the teen girls swept into state custody from a polygamist sect's ranch have been pregnant. Child Protective Services spokesman Darrell Azar says 53 girls between the ages of 14 and 17 were living on the ranch in Eldorado. Of that group, 31 already have children or are pregnant.