Tag Archives: Topic: Polygamy

Marci Hamilton has this article on Findlaw. She begins: The tide is turning in favor of protecting children in polygamous communities – as several new developments evidence. First, the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding hearings on the crimes that occur …

Along with several reports, the Religion Clause Blog links to the text of testimony in yesterday’s Senate Judiciary hearing on polygamy.

The Salt Lake Tribune: var requestedWidth = 0; if(requestedWidth > 0){ document.getElementById(‘articleViewerGroup’).style.width = requestedWidth + “px”; document.getElementById(‘articleViewerGroup’).style.margin = “0px 0px 10px 10px”; } The witness list for Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on polygamy includes U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett …

“. . . Suppose . . . these polygamists are your neighbors . . . Do we require the husband to divorce . . . ? Is it possible for this husband to continue providing for 22 children and 3 women outside of their current context?”

Bill Muehlenberg’s Culture Watch blog carries this post that begins: An Australian Islamic leader has announced that polygamous marriages should be recognised by the Australian government. Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia said that polygamous relationships in …

“We do know that polygamy is practiced in Nevada. Whether or not it’s criminal is a different story,” she said . . .

Russia Today reports: “An Iraqi man living in Denmark has been told that if he doesn’t divorce one of his two wives, he will have to leave the country. The unnamed interpreter worked with Danish forces in Iraq before going …

The early Church took a strong position on fornication, adultery, divorce, abortion, and homosexuality, though it is not easy, in every case to frame a strictly scriptural argument.

Top state and federal law enforcement officials from Utah, Arizona and Nevada met Wednesday in Las Vegas to discuss cooperating in the investigation of polygamy-related crimes.

The AP reports: Gov. Rick Perry hinted Thursday that members of a polygamist sect whose children were recently returned amid a botched sex-abuse investigation should pack their bags, a newspaper reported . . . “If you are going to conduct …

Maggie Gallagher has this commentary on Townhall. She writes: . . . The Texas polygamy case prompted a wide variety of public reactions. As someone who is about as opposed to polygamy as it is possible to be, my first …

WorldNetDaily reports: An Internet campaign has been launched calling for the impeachment of the Texas judge who ordered hundreds of children at the compound owned by the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints church taken into state custody. The online campaign, found …

Certain religious practices create a clash between capabilities where the capability to religious belief and expression is in conflict with the capability of equal status and nondiscrimination.

CNN reports: “A polygamist sect under fire over allegations of underage marriage will now allow women to wed only when they are old enough to give consent under state law, a spokesman said Monday. . . “

The Religion Clause Blog reports that a special prosecutor has been appointed to determine whether to bring charges against polygamists in Bountiful, British Columbia.

The AP reports: “A Texas district judge has ordered the return of more than 400 children taken from a polygamist group’s ranch. Parents are allowed to begin picking up their children at 10 a.m. Monday.” The report also indicates that …

[Toronto Imam] Hindy is using polygamy as a proxy for his fundamentalist version of Islam, something he wants to see legitimized in Canadian society as a whole. It is part of an attempt at empire building. . .

There are estimates of 50,000 to 100,000 Muslims in the United States living in polygamous marriages, according to the NPR series.

Eugene Volokh comments on and links to the opinion in this post on the Volokh Conspiracy. The AP reports: Court: Sect children should be returned to parents. It begins: “In a crushing blow to the state’s massive seizure of children …

The ACLU has issued this press release that reports: . . . Last month, TDFPS seized more than 400 children during a raid on the YFZ Ranch, where individuals affiliated with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints …

. . . according to academics researching the issue, estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 people . . .

The article ultimately concludes that while polygamy and same-sex marriage may share some common ground, advocates should continue to distance same-sex marriage from plural marriage to avoid relinquishing the movement’s hard-earned cultural capital and societal support.

Are the beliefs of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), the polygamous sect that the state of Texas has also accused of child abuse, sufficient grounds for removing all the children from the group’s compound in Eldorado, Texas?

Brenda Sapino Jeffreys reports on the Texas Lawyer. The report begins: The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services filed a motion for emergency relief at the Texas Supreme Court on Friday, seeking a court order that would allow it …

“State child welfare authorities on Friday appealed a stinging court ruling that said their seizure of more than 440 children from a polygamist sect’s ranch was unjustified, but they also agreed to reunite 12 children with their parents while the case moves on.”

The harder legal question is whether criminalizing polygamy is still constitutional . . . In the 19th century, none of these rights claims was available. Now they are, and they protect every adult’s rights to consensual sex, marriage, procreation, contraception, cohabitation, sodomy, and more.

The AP is reporting that a court of appeals has ruled that Texas had no right to remove hundreds of children from a polgamist compound.

Part IV argues that the restriction preventing the father from advocating polygamy to his child should have been upheld. It criticizes the majority opinion for not providing the trial court with the broad discretion it needs when making determinations of a child’s best interest and for ignoring the factual findings that support the trial court’s decision to limit the advocacy.

The essence of the case is that the men who control the politics of the group (as well as the hapless women and children who live there) have used junk theology about heaven, hell, paradise and salvation to maintain their unquestioned access to all females of reproductive age (or younger).

Dale Carpenter has this post on the Volokh Conspiracy discussing the slipper slope argument that redefining marriage for same sex couples will lead to redefinition for polygamists. He writes: I am not faulting the California Supreme Court for failing to …

Texas officials are making it impossible for parents to get back their children, complained Willie Jessop, an elder of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which runs the ranch in Eldorado. “Every parent is accused of being bad and there’s no cure,” he said after the first day of hearings, which were to resume Tuesday and expected to last three weeks.

A state requirement that children in foster care be inoculated against disease has prompted another round of headaches for lawyers who represent 464 children taken from a polygamist ranch last month . . .

. . . British Columbia’s Attorney General Wally Oppal told The Associated Press he plans to arrest someone on a polygamy charge or ask the courts to weigh in on Bountiful’s legal standing within the month . . .

Texas child welfare officials conceded Tuesday that a newborn’s mother, held in foster care as a minor after being removed from a polygamous sect’s ranch, is an adult.

This is the House of Yahweh: a different, even darker sect that the state has been investigating for years. Authorities in February charged the group’s 73-year-old leader with performing polygamous weddings and forcing about 40 children — some as young as 11 — to work jobs at his 44-acre compound.

Mental health workers sent to emergency shelters in San Angelo last month to help care for the hundreds of women and children removed from a polygamist sect’s West Texas ranch have sharply criticized the Child Protective Services operation, telling their governing board it unnecessarily traumatized the kids.

WorldNetDaily reports: An author who wrote two books about homosexuality told managers at the University of Toledo in an open letter they should praise an administrator who said being “gay” is not the same as black, not suspend her. The …

Hand-scrawled records taken from a polygamist sect are helping untangle the spider-web network of family relationships at the Yearning For Zion ranch, where some husbands had more than a dozen wives.

While polygamy involves having more than one spouse, Trask’s group, which has 1,500 active members, including some in Connecticut, supports polyamory: having multiple loves of either sex with or without marriage.

The reformation of the trust raises challenging issues under the religion clauses of the First Amendment. The reformation may pass muster under the Free Exercise Clause, but the court did trespass the bounds of the Establishment Clause, which constrains the state from intruding into the functioning of a religious community.

The ABA Journal reports that Texas raised the age of marriage from 14 to 16 after the FLDS group came under suspicion.

“The new petition argues that the trial court abused its discretion in failing to return the children to their mothers and in denying them visitation rights.”

In its amicus brief, LLI warns the Court of Appeals to apply a standard of strict scrutiny when determining whether to take custody of a child away from his/her parent, unless the state presents evidence to establish sexual exploitation or abuse exists.

However, the actual legal issue at stake in the Texas case is not polygamy, or child custody, or even “pedophilia” or “child sexual abuse,” which are terms usually applied when the victim is pre-pubescent. Instead, the issue is a crime usually referred to as “statutory rape.”

Don’t we normally arrest individual suspects and try them for their crimes? Do we normally and pre-emptively round up all the children in a community where it is suspected abuse is taking place without specific evidence?

62 per cent of respondents think bigamy, or being legally married to more than one person, is a criminal offence.

. . . some . . . assert that the CPS may take all of the FLDS’s children away because . . . the “culture” of the FLDS is inherently abusive, as it encourages early marriage and leaves its children inherently isolated by homeschooling . . .

The ACLU of Texas has joined the debate over the removal of 416 children from a polygamous sect’s ranch more than two weeks ago.A Utah man also has gathered 1,000 signatures through an online petition site from people who oppose the blanket removal of the children from the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado.

. . . Excuse me, Judge? You issued a sweeping, house-to-house search warrant based on a highly questionable anonymous call that turned out to be phony. You refused to allow individual hearings for children, grouping them together like cattle.

David Bernstein has this post on the Volokh Conspiracy questioning Texas’ methods in prosecuting FLDS members and seizing hundreds of children.   Numerous comments are posted below the post. For related posts, click the polygamy tag below.

A casual walk through any women’s clothing store readily demonstrates that modesty is not in fashion. This holds true for the young ladies as well. Fashion designers seem to believe every five year old girl ought to reveal her body …

“Now, polygamists are trying to ride on the liberal wave of nonjudgmentalism and of hostility to traditional marriage. Who are we to say what marriage is? As liberal democrats, we’ve said it before, and have to again.”

The ACLU of Texas has issued this press release that includes these comments: . . . “While we acknowledge that Judge Walthers’ task may be unprecedented in Texas judicial history, we question whether the current proceedings adequately protect the fundamental …

The belief system at a polygamous sect is abusive and teen girls do not resist early marriages because they are trained to be obedient and compliant, an expert testified Friday in a custody hearing for 416 children seized from a secluded ranch.

The AP reports: “A court hearing to decide the fate of the 416 children swept up in a raid on a West Texas polygamous sect descended into farce Thursday, with hundreds of lawyers in two packed buildings shouting objections and …

The potential for freedom-of-religion claims in the removal cases makes Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for the Plano, Texas-based Liberty Legal Institute, shudder.

Authorities previously burst into the rural Utah-Arizona border home of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1935, 1944 and 1953 . . . “It ended up strengthening them in the long run,” said Ken Driggs, an Atlanta attorney and polygamy historian.

Religion Clause links to several reports and the full text of the search warrant in the raid on the FLDS ranch in Texas.

Religion Clause blog reports: “Echoing a 2007 report by a special prosecutor, yesterday Vancouver lawyer Leonard Doust recommended to the Attorney General of the Canadian province of British Columbia that before prosecuting members of the polygamist FLDS colony in Bountiful, …

Religion Clause Blog reports: Attorneys for the FLDS Church have filed papers challenging the continuing execution of the search warrant at the group’s YFZ Ranch near San Angelo, Texas. Some 401 children have been removed from the ranch and placed …

The Morrisons are part of a group of Evangelical Christian polygamists who believe that polygamy, the practice of taking more than one wife, is spiritually and even economically more favorable than monogamy.

. . . the New York Times ran a front-page story explaining that there is now a full-blown culture of polygamous West African immigrants, most of them here illegally . . .

This AP report covers today’s Utah Supreme Court decision in Utah v. Holms. The court upheld Holm’s bigamy conviction even though his second marriage was merely a private religious ceremony.