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December 24, 2005
Fighting the Culture Wars in the Land of Joseph Smith.
Yes, Utah.
In this morning's Salt Lake City Tribune, I note the following stories:
1. Logan Mall Asks Band to Stop Religious Music. It seems that a mall in Logan, Utah, invited a rock band that plays Christian music to come in and entertain its patrons for the Christmas season. Then, when the band played a rendition of "We Three Kings," mall officials asked them to stop. They only wanted "traditional holiday music," it seems. Bill O'Reilly could not be reached for comment.
2. Arizona Judge Rejects Defendant's Bid to Overturn Ban on Polygamy. In order to avoid a legal test of Arizona's ban on plural marriage, prosecutors dropped a couple of charges in the prosecution of a Colorado City man who is a member of a renegade branch of the Mormon Church that continues the Church's early practice of polygamy. The defendant had been charged with two counts of sexual assault on one charge of sexual conduct with a minor. The minor was apparently his second wife. By dropping the charge concerning the minor, the case is now just an assault case, and the religious defense that the defendant was preparing disappears.
If an effort to invoke substantive due process in defense of multiple marriage ever reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, you can be fairly sure that the case will come from one of these small mountain communities on the Utah/Arizona border where the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints thrives.
Posted by Eric at December 24, 2005 8:49 AM
Comments
The problem with the Mormon fundamentalists is not merely that they practice polygamy. The problem is that the male leadership of this cult ran the place like a feudal demesne. The abusive despots were passing around adolescent girls in arranged marriages and running scams on both the state and federal governments.
No, polygamy is not real issue here it is that in the United States we had a feudal theocracy and the local and federal governments took years and years to come around to dealing with it. The extremist fundie right should take lessons from these people.
Posted by: j swift at December 28, 2005 10:09 AM
If an effort to invoke substantive due process in defense of multiple marriage ever reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, you can be fairly sure that the case will come from one of these small mountain communities on the Utah/Arizona border where the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints thrives.
I'll bet you're wrong about that. Fundamentalist Mormon polygamy is so unattractive and so frequently mixed in with child marriage that it will tend to lack the ACLU/ civil libertarian legal supporters who help frame important cases to make them interesting and attractive to the Court. The Utah government in particular will tend to do what the Arizona government did here and dodge the issue, because the Mormon-Utah higher-ups hate national attention being drawn to the polygamists.
I'll bet that, if a case gets there, it'll be a Muslim case, involving an all-adults marriage, and won't arise out of Utah.
Posted by: Jacob T. Levy at January 4, 2006 12:26 PM