Posted on 10/09/2014 9:37:10 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
A federal appeals court will review a ruling that struck down parts of Utah's anti-polygamy law and was hailed as a landmark decision removing the threat of arrest for plural families in Utah.
The Utah's attorney general's office filed an appeal Thursday with the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, two weeks after it ended speculation by announcing it would challenge the ruling. The lawsuit was brought by the family on the TLC reality TV show "Sister Wives."
In December, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups ruled in favor of reality show star Kody Brown and his four wives, saying a provision of the law forbidding cohabitation violated the family's freedom of religion.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
The overturned law wasn’t really a “polygamy ban”. Utah’s bigamy law is still in place like every other state. The law banned unmarried couples from living together. The court said adults can live with anyone they want.
All the freaks are coming out of the woodwork.
I’m gonna convert to Mormonism!
More wives = less housework for me.
Yeah but there’s also more mothers in law.
I’ll build a Moat and Bailey style of Castle and have a pack of trained German Shepards(The ones who love the taste of Mother in Laws)
You marry sisters, problem solved!
There is more historical precedent for plural marriage than for gay marriage. Courts and legislatures have put same sex marriage on the same footing as traditional one man one woman marriage, but all their reasons and arguments can apply to polygamy just as easily.
This won’t end until pedophilia is, not only legalized and endorsed, but until it’s a crime to object to pedophilia.
Twins!
[There is more historical precedent for plural marriage than for gay marriage. Courts and legislatures have put same sex marriage on the same footing as traditional one man one woman marriage, but all their reasons and arguments can apply to polygamy just as easily.]
We cater to the 10% of the population that is gay yet discriminate against the nearly 100% of the population that naturally favors multiple partners.
How does that make sense?
Any court that can find gay marriage in the US Constitution (I’ve looked, and I sure can’t find it), will be hard pressed to deny that polygamy is also there. Look for polygamy to be the “law of the land” within the decade.
Utah Crim. Code 76-7-101:76-7-101. Bigamy -- Defense.
(1) A person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband or wife, the person purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person.
(2) Bigamy is a felony of the third degree.
(3) It shall be a defense to bigamy that the accused reasonably believed he and the other person were legally eligible to remarry.
You are right. The same legal arguments that have been successfully used in court to push homosexual marriage, can and will be used to push polygamy.
Changing the definition of marriage does not end with monogamous homosexual marriage. Homosexual groups openly say that they want to get to a point in which marriage can consist of groups of people, any number partners, any gender of partners. The MSM doesn’t report this as their final goals, but, they admit it. If you can stand it, check out some homosexual themed sites and you will find this information.
Considering all of this going on, it’s not hard to imagine that people who practice polygamy on the down low, will start to sue for their “equal” rights.
You’re wrong. As I said, Utah’s bigamy law is still in place. The law you cite is still the law in Utah, it wasn’t overturned, so you don’t need to refer to it in the past tense. What was overturned was a different law passed to prevent unofficial “marriages” beyond the first one, that banned unmarried couples from cohabitating. The court said adults have the right to cohabitate, but the second and later “marriages” are not recognized.
I was wrong because the federal court did not strike down Utah Code Ann. § 76-7-101 (2013), which the court defines as the capital 's' "Statute." The court struck down the 'cohabitation prong' of the Statute ("[t]he court finds the cohabitation prong of the Statute unconstitutional on numerous grounds and strikes it," p. 90 of the Decision").
Then, "to save the Statute," the court announced that "marry” and “purports to marry” in the Statute will now mean "bigamy in the literal sense . . . the . . . impermissible possession of two purportedly valid marriage licenses for the purpose of entering into more than one purportedly legal marriage" (pp. 90-91 of the Decision.)
As a result both cohabitation by a married person with someone other than his or her lawfully wedded spouse, and polygamous arrangements such as Kody Brown's, are no longer 'bigamy' in Utah because Mr. Brown has in not in possession of purportedly valid marriage licenses for his second, third, and fourth 'marriages.'
As for you, please read the court's conclusion at pp. 90-91. The court did not overturn a 'different law.' If you believe that is the case then I would appreciate it if you could educate me. In addition, I did not find that the court took no steps to prevent or prohibit unofficial marriages 'beyond the first one,' as you stated. I found the contrary. Second and later 'marriages' no longer constitute bigamy unless the purported bigamist is in "impermissible possession of two purportedly valid marriage licenses for the purpose of entering into more than one purportedly legal marriage."
SUMMARY: The court struck down the cohabitation prong of Utah's bigamy statute as unconstitutional, but left the statute in place as written by assigning a new definition to the word "marry" and the phrase "purports to marry" in the bigamy statute. A polygamist in Utah is no longer a bigamist unless he or she is in "impermissible possession of two purportedly valid marriage licenses for the purpose of entering into more than one purportedly legal marriage." A person who cohabitates with one or more persons is also not a bigamist unless he or she meets the marriage license requirement.
I stand corrected. Really though, whether it was a separate law, or a part of the bigamy law is a distinction without a difference in practical terms. My main point is that polygamy as it's generally referred to is still illegal. Much of the reporting, especially the headlines, is misleading about that, as shown by the comments on these threads.
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