On January 19, 2017, the very last full day of the Obama Presidency, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will be “in CONFERENCE” regarding the “Sister Wives” polygamy case, Brown v. Buhman. Unfortunately, the issue of unrelated consenting adult polygamy (UCAP), itself, will not be the focus of the Supreme Court Justices. Rather, the SCOTUS Justices will only be conferring over whether or not to even hear the case due to the technicality of “legal standing” issues. As SCOTUSblog.com reports, only the following are at issue:
Whether the government can seek to moot a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a statute by adopting a new non-enforcement policy during the pendency of litigation;
whether the government can later moot by voluntary cessation a subsequently filed lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a statute under which the government publicly threatened a party with prosecution; and
when a district court makes underlying findings of fact in the course of adjudicating a claim under the voluntary cessation doctrine, under what standard of review those findings should be examined on appeal.
On January 3, 2017, Lead Attorney for the Browns, Jonathan Turley, filed their rebuttal to UAGO’s brief in opposition. Noting that the UAGO was simply wrong (namely, that there is a “split” among the different US Circuits on the technicality issue), the rebuttal reply – more than once – indicated that the case should be remanded (sent back down) to the Tenth Circuit Court, stating that these issues
require at the very least a remand with instructions to apply the appropriate standard (Page 10)
and
require (at the very least) a remand with instructions to apply the appropriate rules of law (Page 13).
It is ironic that this will be held on the very last full day that US President Barack Obama is President, the day before the incoming President Donald Trump is inaugurated. Years ago, back on November 7, 2008, only three days after Barack Obama was first elected, an article was sent to the media by Pro-Polygamy.com, the national polygamy movement’s media-distribution site, titled, “Obama’s Historic Election Gives Hope to Polygamous Americans.” With the caveat of specific political views aside, the article concluded with the following:
Now that African Americans have successfully traveled that amazing road from oppression to president, then consenting-adult polygamous Americans can do it too.
The dream continues. God bless America indeed!
Indeed, that article took note of the famous, important “content of character” line from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It continued that line with the following, directly quoting me:
National Polygamy Advocate, Mark Henkel, has long shared Martin Luther King’s dream. Content of character is really what matters indeed. Henkel has said, “I have a dream that one day a man will be judged, not based on the number of consenting-adult wives who willingly marry him, but, indeed, based only on the content of his character.” For polygamous Americans, the dream continues.
Yet now, on what will be the very last day of the presidency of the very first elected African American president, Barack Obama, January 19, 2017, unrelated consenting adult polygamous Americans are left with the disappointing reality that SCOTUS will only be conferring about whether or not to even hear the polygamy case of Brown v. Buhman.
On New Years Day this year, January 1, 2017, Pro-Polygamy.com, distributed another article to the media, titled, “Will Supreme Court Hear ‘Sister Wives’ Polygamy case in 2017?” The article ended with my direct quote, which succinctly sums up the frustrating “worry” that unrelated consenting adult polygamists (UCAP) now have regarding what SCOTUS could do (or rather, not do) with this important case.
Will the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) even hear the arguments of the “Sister Wives” polygamy case, Brown v. Buhman, in 2017? If the Utah Attorney General’s Office gets its way, the answer would be a resounding, “NO!”
In November, 2016, SCOTUS requested that the Utah Attorney General’s Office file their rationale for why they believe that SCOTUS should deny the petition. On December 27, 2016, the UAGO filed their formal brief in opposition. Therewith, the UAGO posited that there allegedly “is no split” between the differing U.S. Circuits around the country on the issue of voluntary cessation doctrine.
On Page 25 (i.e., PDF-pg35) of the brief, the Utah AG Office declared the following about the Petitioners (i.e., the Brown family) and “why” SCOTUS should “not” even hear the case.
For all their errors on the voluntary cessation question, Petitioners nail the most important score: They are, at best, “persons formerly threatened with prosecution under” the Statute. Id. at 21 (emphasis added). They face no current or continuing threat that Respondent will prosecute them in Utah, away from their new Nevada home. The case is moot for the reasons the Tenth Circuit correctly explained, based on legal rules that do not conflict with other circuits’ precedent. Certiorari should be denied.
The saddest irony of all this may also be found within the very words of the brief itself. On its Page 4 (i.e., PDF-pg14), the UAGO admitted the following about how evidently unnecessary the anti-polygamy law actually is.
Given that enforcement policy, just ten defendants were charged statewide under the Statute between 2001 and 2011. App. 10. Six of those ten “were also prosecuted for crimes other than bigamy, such as criminal non-support, unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, forcible sexual abuse, marriage license fraud, and insurance fraud.” Id. at 11. The Attorney General’s Office could not confirm whether charges besides bigamy were filed in the last four cases. But in three of those four, county prosecutors dismissed the bigamy charges, and in the fourth case the defendant was convicted of attempted bigamy in a county prosecution.
“The practice of polygamy, in particular, often coincides with crimes targeting women and children.”
…
“Crimes not unusually attendant to the practice of polygamy include incest, sexual assault, statutory rape, and failure to pay child support.”
If anything, by the Utah AG Office’s own admission, the evidence disproves that wild absurdity. Indeed, it demonstrates why still criminalizing unrelated consenting adult polygamy (UCAP) is wholly irrational.
However, SCOTUS could very well choose to deny the Brown family’s petition for a Writ of Certiorari. If that happens, then, alas, such an irrational anti-polygamy law still will remain on the books. And worse, the actual merits of Brown v. Buhman will not have even been heard by the Supreme Court.
As the year 2016 comes to a close, both sides are waiting to see whether SCOTUS will deny or allow the Brown v. Buhman case to go forward in 2017.
As FOX 13 reported, “The petition, filed Monday, basically focuses on whether the Browns really faced a threat of prosecution from Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman.”
“The day after the first episode aired, Utah state officials publicly denounced the Brown family as criminals and opened an investigation under the state’s anti-bigamy statute, which – unlike that of other states – prohibits not only the practice of polygamy, but also the mere practice of cohabitation by married persons. …Prosecutors later gave public interviews discussing the Brown family and their alleged crime of polygamy. …The Respondent, through his subordinate, publicly accused the Brown family of committing felonies every night on television and stated that ‘The Sister Wives’ television program would make their prosecution ‘easier.'”
As a formal “investigation” was initiated against them, the Browns fled Utah and moved to Nevada. Attorney Jonathan Turley filed the case, now identified as Brown v. Buhman, on July 13, 2011, asserting that Utah’s anti-bigamy law was unconstitutional. Prosecutors said the family’s emigration to another State would not stop their investigation to prosecute the Browns for polygamy in Utah, even as the Prosecutors filed a motion to get the case dismissed in early 2012.
After that motion was denied, the Prosecutors “conveniently” invented/declared a new “UCAO policy.” This new and deliberately non-binding policy proclaimed that the Utah County Attorney’s Office would no longer prosecute the Browns or other unrelated consenting adult polygamous families formed only on religious beliefs. With that new “UCAO policy,” the prosecutors filed yet another motion to dismiss the Brown v. Buhman case on May 31, 2012. As the Petition for a Writ of Certiorari explains to the Supreme Court,
“The district court again denied the motion, citing this Court’s instruction that ‘a defendant’s voluntary cessation of a challenged practice does not deprive a federal court of its power to determine the legality of the practice,’ …and that any assertion to the contrary faces the ‘heavy burden of persuading the court that the challenged conduct cannot reasonably be expected to start up again.’ …In this case, the district court noted that the government had not abandoned its constitutional defense of the [anti-bigamy] statute, …and that its new prosecution policy was ‘at most, an exercise of prosecutorial discretion that could be reversed at any time.'”
The courts of appeals are squarely divided over the extent to which the voluntary cessation doctrine permits the government to moot a constitutional challenge by changing its enforcement policy during the pendency of litigation, as well as whether a district court’s factual findings under the doctrine should be reviewed de novo or for clear error or abuse of discretion.
Essentially, the petition observes that among the separate federal Circuits (of Appeals courts), some have more permissive tests and standards of review regarding the “voluntary cessation doctrine” than others. This disparity among the Circuits creates a non-uniformity of the treatment of law around the country, whereas uniformity of “equal treatment under the law” is Constitutionally required.
Hence, in a different Circuit Court of Appeals (i.e., not the Tenth Circuit), in one that uses a less permissive test and standard of review regarding the “voluntary cessation doctrine,” the after-the-fact “UCAO policy” would not have been allowed to be applied to so-artificially moot the standing of the Brown family to thereby permissively reverse the lower court decisions of the Brown v. Buhman case.
Requesting that the Supreme Court use the Brown v. Buhman case as the vehicle to decide and establish that uniformity (once and for all) defines the technical premise of the Petition for a Writ of Certiorari. That is to say, the petition was not so much about polygamy itself, but about addressing the wrongness of the case being reversed due to the tyranny of such “convenient” exploitation of prosecutorial discretion, being identified as “voluntary cessation doctrine.”
So that, then, raises the question: will the actual merits of the case even be heard by the Supreme Court?
If SCOTUS decides that the conclusions made in the Brown family’s petition are valid, that type of decision will reverse the Tenth Circuit’s reversal, bringing the status of the case back to the prior positive results from the District Court decisions. Will SCOTUS then let that status stand as it was, or will they actually have a hearing of the actual merits of the case?
If SCOTUS rather-lazily refuses to even consider the case, the result will not only deny Brown v. Buhman from even achieving anything at all in the fight for rights and freedom for unrelated consenting adult polygamy, but it will also maintain the unconstitutional non-uniformity among the differing federal Circuit Appeals Courts too.
If SCOTUS actually affirms and establishes the Tenth Circuit’s rather permissive test and standard of review regarding the “voluntary cessation doctrine” to become the nationwide uniform application, the Brown v. Buhman case will effectively be finished, fully depriving unrelated consenting adult polygamists of the valid right to fight against provably unconstitutional law.
Whether or not one supports polygamy, anything but the first of those three possibilities will, undoubtedly, present a profound threat to the liberty of all citizens of the United States. Ergo, this “polygamy case” before the Court now has far broader impact than when it began.
As of this writing, what happens next is up to the Supreme Court of the United States.
A month ago, on Monday, April 11, 2016, a 3-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had rendered the Brown v. Buhman decision as “moot.” Without even considering the merits of the case, but instead being based on the Utah prosecutors later proclaiming that they would not really go after the Brown family for polygamy, the three judges decided that the case was “moot” because the Browns supposedly had no more legal “standing” to even bring this to court. Immediately afterward, the Brown family requested a re-hearing by all of the judges in the entire Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In opening that “order,” the decision additionally noted the following.
As no member of the original panel or the en banc court requested that a poll be called, the petition for en banc review is denied.
This latest text of the May 13 decision was mostly the same as that of the earlier April 11 decision (see: 2016-04-11 Tenth Circuit reverses Brown v Buhman. However, at end of the last word of the last paragraph of the last section before the Conclusion, the Court added one new additional footnote, Footnote #27.
The last paragraph that added that Footnote #27 declared the following.
The proper disposition of this appeal, therefore, is to remand to the district court with instructions to vacate its judgment in favor of the Browns and dismiss this suit without prejudice. 27
The text for that one additional Footnote #27 explained the following.
27 As explained above, the Browns’ move to Nevada eventually also rendered this case moot. Whether or not this basis for mootness took effect before commencement of this appeal, Mr. Buhman’s implementation of the UCAO Policy was independently sufficient to extinguish any live case or controversy as of May 2012, a year and a half before the district court granted summary judgment to the Browns and over two years before entry of final judgment. Because this case became moot “prior to final adjudication,” Rio Grande Silvery Minnow, 601 F.3d at 1128 n.19, vacatur and dismissal without prejudice are appropriate.
With that “explained” in the additional Footnote #27, the decision concluded with the following.
Assuming the Browns had standing to file suit in July 2011, this case became moot when Mr. Buhman announced the UCAO Policy in May 2012. That policy eliminated any credible threat that the Browns will be prosecuted. We therefore remand to the district court with instructions to vacate its judgment and dismiss this suit without prejudice.
As FOX 13 reported, Renowned Constitutional law professor and the attorney for the Brown family, Jonathan Turley, wrote the following email response.
“At issue is the most basic right in our legal system: the right to be heard in a federal court. The lower court found that the Browns left the state after months of abusive treatment by the government, which denied them basic protections under our Constitution. All families should have access to the courts when targeted by the government in this way. The panel decision leaves a chilling message for citizens in dealing with their government. The 10th Circuit panel ruled that a prosecutor can publicly declare a family to be felons, keep them under criminal investigation, and denounce them for their religious beliefs without fear of being held accountable in a court of law. The Tenth Circuit did not deny the violation of free speech and free exercise by Mr. Buhman – violations found by the trial court. Rather it barred the Brown family from challenging his actions in federal court. This country rests on the rule of law, which is reduced to a mere pretense if citizens are barred from the courthouse. The Browns respectfully disagree with the panel and will seek relief before the United States Supreme Court.”
So with that, the “Sister Wives” polygamy case now moves up to the final court of last resort, SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States).
On Monday, April 11, 2016, the U.S. Circuit Court Appeals for the Tenth District, in Denver Colorado, formally reversed the lower court’s decision in the Brown v. Buhman case. This is the case of the Kody Brown polygamous family from the reality-TV series, “Sister Wives.”
Exercising jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we hold this matter is moot. It is not a “Case” or “Controversy” under Article III of the U.S. Constitution. We remand to the district court with instructions to vacate the judgment and dismiss this action.
In the Fall of 2010, TLC began airing “Sister Wives,” the first-ever polygamy-friendly reality-TV show. The focus of the series was upon Mormon polygamist Kody Brown, his three wives, and all of their children. By the end of the first season, a fourth wife (with three children of her own) was joining the family too. This family had no connection to crimes, underage marriage, or the FLDS. Indeed, the Browns are a committed family, of whom all 5 of the parents married as un-coerced consenting adults.
Soon after the TV series first began, an ominously terrifying “investigation” was announced by the Utah State authorities as a result of the family being publicly “out” as polygamists on television. For their safety, the Brown family quickly moved from Utah to the State of Nevada. Renowned Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley, who had been publicly repeating my known arguments for years (even repeating my pro-polygamy media arguments since 2004) filed a lawsuit for the Brown Family in the Summer of 2011.
In December 2013, the first six of seven counts in the Brown v. Buhman case were decided in the U.S. Federal District Court in Utah. On that Friday the 13th, Judge Clark Waddoups
struck down the “cohabits prong” of Utah’s 1973 anti-bigamy law,
limited the definition of its “purports prong,” and thereby
Indeed, about 5 years ago, I presented a speech before a non-polygamous audience about this very matter, titled, We Always Opposed All Criminals.
The video of that speech is embedded here below.
Moreover, as the national voice for UCAP polygamy rights the last 20+ years, I have repeatedly presented numerous sound-bites that instantly refute and discredit any such irrational attempt to connect UCAP to that criminal (or any such criminals). Here are two quick examples:
“Criminalizing all unrelated consenting adult polygamists (UCAPs) because of Warren Jeffs
Whether Appellees had standing and their claims against Appellant Buhman were ripe at the time of the complaint; and
If so, whether the prosecutorial policy announced in Appellant Buhman’s May 22, 2012 declaration, or any other matters, rendered Appellees’ claims against him moot.
These two odd questions are more about the issues of “standing” than they are about the case itself. This could either be worrisome (indicating bad intent) or positive (indicating pre-emptive problem-solving.) The Tenth District’s U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the last court to hear the case before possibly proceeding next up to the final court of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Hence, this “next to last court” might be having a recent Decision by SCOTUS “nagging” the back of their mind.
Namely, as recently as 2013, SCOTUS vacated the Hollingsworth v. Perry case (instead of deciding it) simply because of the lack of correct “standing” issue. For many, the hope of that decision based “on its merits” potentiated it as a possibly very big case too. Truly, if Hollingsworth had been decided “on its merits” rather than being vacated on the technicality of improper “standing,” it might even have had impact on this Brown v. Buhman case. Instead, Hollingsworth had no positive impact for UCAP polygamy.
As such, there is a possibility that the motive behind the Appeals Court asking these two questions is a positive one; it could be that they want to proverbially “dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s” so that SCOTUS will not subsequently vacate this decision too due to the “standing” issue. However, if that is not the intent, then those two questions are worrisome; the questions could otherwise seem to suggest that the court itself is pro-actively looking for ways to intentionally allow such bad law to stay on the books by purposely trying to find such technicalities with which to stop the case at this lower-level court.
Regardless of positive or worrisome intent, however, if the issue of “standing” is so positively addressed and resolved, then that will actually strengthen the eventual case for when/if it moves up to SCOTUS.
Defending Kim Davis’ refusal to do her big government job, OMOWs (one man one woman supporters) now posit that Individuals have a “Religious Liberty” right to not have to follow the mandates of law – even if the applicable government mandate comes from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). How will this newly-evolved OMOW position apply to the “Religious Liberty” of UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamy supporters)?
This is the fourth part of a series of posts pertaining to the County Clerk in Kentucky, named Kim Davis, who refused to do her $80,000 a year government job to issue marriage control licenses after the Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges (June 26, 2015) legalized same sex marriage in all States.
Pope Francis said on Monday [9/28/2015] government officials have a “human right” to refuse to discharge a duty, such as issuing marriage licenses to homosexuals, if they feel it violates their conscience.
Speaking to reporters aboard the papal plane on his way back to Rome from the U.S., the pope said, “Conscientious objection must enter into every juridical structure because it is a right.”
Without directly alluding to the Davis case, the pope said in Italian, “I can’t have in mind all cases that can exist about conscientious objection but, yes, I can say that conscientious objection is a right that is a part of every human right.”
He added that if “someone does not allow others to be a conscientious objector, he denies a right.”
He said that by denying some rights over others, “we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying: ‘This right has merit, this one does not.’”
Liberty Counsel & Vatican confirm: Pope met with Kim Davis
On Tuesday, September 29th, the organization assisting Kim Davis, Liberty Counsel, reported the meeting.
Kim Davis said, “I was humbled to meet Pope Francis. Of all people, why me?” Davis continued, “I never thought I would meet the Pope. Who am I to have this rare opportunity? I am just a County Clerk who loves Jesus and desires with all my heart to serve him.” Kim said, “Pope Francis was kind, genuinely caring, and very personable. He even asked me to pray for him. Pope Francis thanked me for my courage and told me to ‘stay strong.'”
“The challenges we face in America regarding the sanctity of human life, marriage, and religious freedom are the same universal challenges Christians face around the world. Religious freedom is a human right that comes from God. These values are shared in common by people of faith, and the threats to religious freedom are universal. Kim Davis has become a symbol of this worldwide conflict between Christian faith and recent cultural challenges regarding marriage,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel.
On Thursday, September 24, in the afternoon after his historic address to Congress, just a few minutes before flying to New York City, Pope Francis received, spoke with, and embraced Kim Davis — the Kentucky County Clerk who was jailed in early September for refusing to sign the marriage licenses of homosexual couples who wished to have their civil marriages certified by the state of Kentucky.
The meeting with the Holy Father was a moment of consolation to Kim.
It strengthened her conviction, she told me, to obey the law of God, before the law of man.
It is the teaching of the Catholic Church that, when the human law contradicts the natural law, it is not a valid law.
Irony of newly-evolved Catholic position on “Religious Liberty”
That the Catholic Institution would now assert that position is an irony that must not be overlooked. In my previous post (“Kim Davis, Religious Liberty, and Polygamy – Part 3“), I had explicitly demonstrated the following:
What we therefore see is evident. The 1878 SCOTUS decision of Reynolds v. United States and the anti-constitutional anti-polygamy laws were “rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamists) have been perpetually pointing this fact out to OMOWs. But OMOWs stiffneckedly turn a deaf ear and continue to willingly embrace the anti-constitutional “rulings and statutes” of big government marriage control that neither “Nature nor Nature’s God” have ever forbidden.
Indeed, the very concept of “Religious Liberty” directly arose (half a millenium ago) out of the Reformation as Christians (known as Protestants) fled the governments of Europe that were directly and tightly controlled by the Catholic institution, to enforce its religious doctrines.
One of those government-enforced Catholic-invented man-made doctrines is OMOW – one man one woman.
If the contemporary Catholic institution has finally “come around” to that paradigm of “Religious Liberty” rights as a freedom of conscience, then it directly applies to UCAP (unrelated consenting adult polygamy) too. After all, UCAP is vastly more Biblical and Natural than any government imposed socialism of OMOW.
Justice Kennedy: Kim Davis could have chosen to resign
But what about the “Religious Liberty” of people who work as functionaries of big government to process the laws of big government, even as their religious beliefs oppose such things?
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who authored the Supreme Court’s landmark June ruling on marriage equality across the U.S., said that public officials should step down instead of doing something they saw as “morally wrong,” seeming to refer to Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, SFGate.com reported Tuesday. Davis had refused to issue marriage licenses to homosexuals on religious grounds even after the ruling.
At an event at Harvard Law School, a student asked Kennedy whether officials were bound to follow the “new insights” by the justices on abortion and marriage issues. “The rule of law is that, as a public official in performing your legal duties, you are bound to enforce the law,” Kennedy told Harvard Law School students, without mentioning Davis’ name, according to the SFGate.com.
The 79-year-old justice also said that he felt for officials who faced “difficult moral questions” when their religious beliefs clashed with legal authorities. Such a clash “requires considerable introspection,” Kennedy reportedly said.
“But certainly, in an offhand comment, it would be difficult for me to say that people are free to ignore a decision by the Supreme Court,” Kennedy added, stating that the officials have the duty to follow the law.
“Great respect, it seems to me, has to be given to people who resign rather than do something they view as morally wrong,” Kennedy said, referring to three German judges who resigned instead of following the dictates of the Nazi government.
OMOWs Whine, Weep, and Wail
Many would-be “conservatives” proverbially went, “Waaaahhh,” whining, weeping, and wailing over Kennedy’s response.
“I think it’s a two-way street, that justices who don’t follow the Constitution ought to resign if they can’t do their job,” said Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a conservative Christian legal organization that represents Davis and dissident clerks in Alabama. “I think the Supreme Court does not have unlimited authority and that five justices cannot say what they want to if it’s not based on the Constitution.”
At the would-be “conservative” CNSNews.com, one writer wept,
It was very disappointing that Justice Kennedy’s reported answer failed to acknowledge or make any mention of respect for or protection of the rights of those who have strong religious or moral objections to judicial-created rights such as the right to same-sex marriage. Recognition for newly-minted constitutional rights such as same-sex marriage does not require disregard for the long-established constitutional rights of conscience of those who cannot in good faith adherence to their deeply-held religious or moral values support the new judicial invention.
Cruz said, “When a Supreme Court justice compares his own lawless rulings to the draconian oppression of the Nazis – and says that Christians should resign from public office if they will not surrender to his imperious decrees – that really says it all.”
Irony of OMOWs’ newly-evolved position on “Religious Liberty”
That OMOWs would now assert that position is another irony that must not be overlooked. In my previous post (“Kim Davis, Religious Liberty, and Polygamy – Part 2“), I revealed the evolution of the OMOWs’ position:
Consequently, UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamy supporters) have perpetually been oppressed by the unconstitutional marriage control of the OMOWs’ anti-polygamy laws.
When UCAPs plead with OMOWs (one man one woman supporters) to remember that the “freedom of religion” clause of the First Amendment does not permit such marriage control tyranny, OMOWs respond by repeating the words from the Reynolds decision that “religious liberty” is supposedly no excuse for disobeying law. To wit, when it comes to law:
Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief?
To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and, in effect, to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.
That very assertion from the Reynolds “religious liberty” precedent has been the big government go-to response by OMOW “conservatives” in almost every discussion about the anti-constitutional tyranny of anti-polygamy marriage control.
OMOWs have transferred themselves from being the persecutors against UCAP “religious liberty” to now claiming that their own “religious liberties” are being persecuted by SSMs (same sex marriage supporters).
OMOWs misunderstand the Constitution backwards
Looking more deeply, we also see that these OMOW cries incorrectly reverse the direction of how the Constitution functions in limiting government and freeing individuals. They forget that, while Government Powers must be enumerated, Individual Rights do not.
The Ninth Amendment codifies that Rights of Individuals do not have to be exactly, expressly, or explicitly written/enumerated in the text of the Constitution to still factually exist as a true Right of Individuals. Conversely, the Tenth Amendment codifies that the powers of the federal government do specifically have to be so exactly, expressly, or explicitly written/enumerated in the text of the Constitution in order to be allowably authorized at all.
In this context, although Obergefell v. Hodges was half-right & half-wrong, the right of individuals to marriage does not have to be in the Constitution to still be valid. More importantly, it is precisely because government marriage control is not codified in the text of the Constitution that the federal government is prohibited from having any powers to enforce it at all.
And that thereby reveals and renders the OMOWs’ historically-favorite marriage control SCOTUS Decision (the anti-polygamy precedent), Reynolds v. United States of 1878, to be wholly unconstitutional in any State of the United States.
If anything, therefore, the OMOW cries against SCOTUS overreach should more technically and only apply to that 1878 precedent that criminalized polygamy. While it is proper for SCOTUS to recognize and protect true Rights of Individuals that are not enumerated in the Constitution, it is not proper for SCOTUS to allow the federal government to enforce marriage control powers that are not so expressly enumerated.
As such, within such a now-corrected context, that which Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver said above would otherwise indeed be correct, when he said, “the Supreme Court does not have unlimited authority and that [..] justices cannot say what they want to if it’s not based on the Constitution.” But that statement actually and only may correctly apply to Reynolds v. United States of 1878, the SCOTUS decision that unconstitutionally banned UCAP (unrelated consenting adult polygamy) and became the original precedent for thereafter justifying all unconstitutional big government marriage control.
Hence, it is doubly ironic that OMOWs now posit this newly-evolved defense of “Religious Liberty.”
What does this newly-evolved “Religious Liberty” mean?
As we ponder this evolution of position of the OMOWs, what do we see? In this matter with Kentucky’s Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, the Catholic institution’s Pope Francis, the Family Research Council, Liberty Counsel, many would-be conservative media, and other OMOWs et al, all posit that Individuals have a “Religious Liberty” right to not have to follow the mandates of law. They all assert that accommodations “must” be allowed for conscientious objection based on the fundamental “Religious Liberty” right. Moreover, they apply that position beyond Individuals making their own free choices, but even apply it to those performing jobs as functionaries of big government.
Most significant of all, such OMOWs assert this evolved position even if the applicable government mandate – to which someone religiously objects – comes from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).
In the wake of SCOTUS’ 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Decision, at least big government functionary, Kim Davis, could have simply let others do her job instead, or she could have just resigned. She always had freedom. But in the wake of SCOTUS’ 1878 Reynolds v. United States Decision, UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamists) never had such freedom without always facing the very real threat of an actual jail sentence, no matter what.
Hence, that evolved position requires such OMOWs to now have to accept the following truth. If a big government worker has that “Religious Liberty” right to not have to obey the mandate of law as “decided” by the Supreme Court of the United States, then all that much more do UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamists) have that exact same “Religious Liberty” right to not have to obey the mandate of law as “decided” by the Supreme Court of the United States – especially in the corrected context of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
Failing or refusing to embrace that truth is, as Pope Francis condemned above, “denying some rights over others, ‘we would end up in a situation where we select what is a right, saying: “This right has merit, this one does not.”‘” As I previously wrote in Part 2 of this series,
An Easier Solution – For the sake of “Religious Liberty”
Better still, though, there is an easier way.
It is simple. Discontinue the anti-conservative idolatry of the Constitutional-abomination and Biblical-abomination of big government marriage control. No special rights for OMOW (one man one woman). No special rights for SSM (same sex marriage). And no special rights – nor criminalization – for UCAP (unrelated consenting adult polygamy).
This proposal is my win-win solution. Conservatives get a political “win” of limited government. Liberals get a political “win” of “equality for all.” No one gets to re-define, impose, license, control, sanction, ban, or criminalize the definition of marriage on any other unrelated consenting adult. And everyone is truly free. Welcome back to a real America again.
Unfortunately for Kim Davis personally, though, yes… this solution could potentially put her out of her job as an $80,000 a year functionary of the false god of big socialist government. Since she says (out of her own mouth that) she only “desires with all [her] heart to serve” Jesus, we should be able to trust that she should be fine with that.
Ergo, for Kim Davis’ “Religious Liberty” and for us all, I invite all OMOWs – with their newly evolved position for “Religious Liberty” – to once and for all finally embrace my now-very-well-known proposal, the Polygamy Rights Win-Win Solution – Abolish all government marriage control for unrelated consenting adults.
Kim Davis was given an award for her “unwillingness to accept rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” But do OMOWs (one man one woman supporters) really believe in such principles? Because Obergefell v. Hodges being allowed and imposed is the fault of Reynolds v. United States being allowed and imposed, will OMOWs learn from this in order to now get consistent with these principles?
This is the third part of a series of posts pertaining to the County Clerk in Kentucky, named Kim Davis, who refused to do her $80,000 a year government job to issue marriage control licenses after the Supreme Court decision of Obergefell v. Hodges (June 26, 2015) legalized same sex marriage in all States.
In presenting the award, the FRC’s president, Tony Perkins, (starting at 17:10 in the above embedded video), read the inscription.
Integrity is the alignment of conviction and action in the pursuit of truth and justice.
In the course of history, men and women of integrity, few in number but deep in character, have pursued justice at great personal cost.
Whether it was
Abraham Lincoln asserting the constitutionally unsettled nature of the Dred Scott decision,
Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of a public bus, or
Martin Luther King risking the fang and claw of police dogs to end legal segregation,
our nation has been ennobled and enriched by historic citizens who declare their unwillingness to accept rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.
Across the world, people of faith, the Yazidis, Baha’is, Jews, and Christians, by the tens of thousands, have borne mortal wounds for rejecting the demands of authorities to embrace a new system of belief, attack their neighbors, subjugate their wives, and pay taxes imposed on them on the basis of their religious heritage.
Hereto, people of profound integrity are standing against a tide of power that would attempt to make man-made law the source of all goodness and truth.
In today’s conflict over the meaning of the irreplaceable civil institution of marriage, one elected official, Kimberly Davis, of Rowan County, Kentucky, has inspired millions of her fellow Americans. As her words and actions attest, she has proceeded with an unshakable blend of humility and determination. Indsodoing, she has reminded us that we must remember to kneel before we dare stand.
In honor of the model of personal courage she has offered our nation, Family Research Council is pleased to bestow on Kimberly Davis the second “Cost of Discipleship” award, given in Washington, DC, this 25th day of September, in the year of our Lord, 2015.
Those are some truly lofty and uplifting words! It is unfortunate that the FRC does not yet really believe all of those words. A simple and straight-forward analysis of the text, the Bible, and history reveals the disappointing rejection of Jesus Christ as replaced with a worship of the false god of big socialist government. For these unrealized idolators, “religious liberty” means their man-made version of big socialist government versus the other man-made versions of big socialist government they oppose. Alas, they do so while blindedly oblivious to the cause and effect reality that their own idolatry of making “man-made law the source of all goodness and truth” gave birth to the new idolatry that merely copies them to the same, but which they now oppose.
For this post here, I will only address the reference that is the single truest statement in the entire text. (I will address the other issues in yet another future post.)
One very true line from the award citation jumps out and inspires us all, no doubt. To wit, “our nation has been ennobled and enriched by historic citizens who declare their unwillingness to accept rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Truer words could likely not be said in this context.
So let’s look at that statement. As the context now pertains to big government marriage control, we must first look at “rulings and statutes” that empowered the false god of big socialist government to even be involved in anti-constitutional marriage control.
As I mentioned in my previous post (“Kim Davis, Religious Liberty, and Polygamy – Part 2“), OMOWs (one man one one supporters) concocted a subterfuge in the 1800s to get around the US Constitution’s self-evident prohibition of marriage control. The “liberal activist judges” of the 1878 Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) decided the Reynolds v. United States decision, setting both the wholly anti-constitutional precedent and misleading rationale for marriage control to unconstitutionally prohibit polygamy.
In all absolute fact, and to quote the FRC’s citation above, Reynolds and the anti-polygamy marriage control laws were “rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
A simple study of biology and zoology quickly reveals that polygamy is the leading form of reproductive bonding in all of Nature. In most examples throughout Nature, the females of a species choose the males. The concept of socially-imposed monogamy is mostly a man-made construct; it is a form that very, very rarely occurs in Nature.
As the citation also adds, beyond just Nature, then what about “Nature’s God?”
No matter how one might try to suggest otherwise, the above speech is the exactly, honestly, spiritually, and intellectually correct rendering of what the entire story of David does show. The reason why few know about the entire story is that few Christians have been brave enough to share it all in one context. Regardless, though, the story is what it is, and I neither added nor deleted anything from the story, as any clear reading of 1 Samuel 16 through 2 Samuel 23 of the Bible will prove.
But we do not have to stop there with only David; other great heroes were also polygamists – and they were never called sinners for it in the Bible.
The author of the Adam & Eve story as well as the “one flesh” verse of Genesis 2:24, Moses was a polygamist. So were Abraham and Jacob (aka, Israel). Indeed, anti-polygamy laws are actually anti-Semitic because they are expressly anti-Israel; the 12 tribes of Israel were born of his four wives. To support anti-polygamy is to say that the Jews are supposedly “illegitimate.” (To that, I say, God forbid.)
As if all that was still not enough to prove that anti-polygamy is anti-biblical, the four major reasons/exegeses from the Bible are explained in this speech (embedded here below) that I presented a few years ago, titled, “Bible NEVER Created One Man One Woman Doctrine.”
What we therefore see is evident. The 1878 SCOTUS decision of Reynolds v. United States and the anti-constitutional anti-polygamy laws were “rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
UCAPs (unrelated consenting adult polygamists) have been perpetually pointing this fact out to OMOWs. But OMOWs stiffneckedly turn a deaf ear and continue to willingly embrace the anti-constitutional “rulings and statutes” of big government marriage control that neither “Nature nor Nature’s God” have ever forbidden.
Yet, after the Obergefell v. Hodges decision by SCOTUS on June 26, 2015, OMOWs are suddenly giving an award to Kim Davis for supposedly “standing boldly” for “religious liberty.” If what Kim Davis did is even worthy of such an award, then my work for over 20 years of standing against anti-constitutional “rulings and statutes” of big government marriage control could be the very definition of such an award.
Yes, Obergefell and laws forcing imposed-SSM (same sex marriage) on others are simply more unconstitutional “rulings and statutes” of big government marriage control. Likewise, Reynolds and the anti-polygamy laws forcing imposed-bans of UCAP (unrelated consenting adult polygamy) are also every bit as much more unconstitutional “rulings and statutes” of big government marriage control too. Indeed, Obergefell being allowed and imposed is the fault of Reynolds being allowed and imposed.
The truth of this indisputable hypocrisy is so important to see that I will re-state it, just to make sure it is not misunderstood. OMOWs being forced to accept Obergefell and SSM marriage control have only themselves to blame. That is because OMOWs started it all when they (themselves) forced UCAPs to accept Reynolds and OMOW marriage control.
There is more to say about this in a future post.
Ultimately, OMOWs, Kim Davis, the FRC, and their big-government-idolatrous apostate “Christian” followers, really have no true insight about being persecuted for “religious liberty” in America when it comes to big government marriage control. If they really want to now believe what they say about anti-constitutional SCOTUS decisions and legalized laws, then their wannabe “integrity” would self-require them to likewise work to end the real persecution of the “religious liberties” of unrelated consenting adult polygamists (UCAPs) too. Government has no Constitutional authority to impose big government marriage control on unrelated consenting adults.
If opposing the unconstitutional SCOTUS big government marriage control ruling of Obergefell is a “religious liberty” right, then opposing the unconstitutional SCOTUS big government marriage control ruling of Reynolds is a “religious liberty” right too. In fact, the latter is even moreso.
But will one man one woman supporters (OMOWs) now really stand up for those ennobling principles? The test of proof of their “integrity” on this issue is simple. Regarding bothObergefellandReynolds, will they truly… “declare their unwillingness to accept rulings and statutes that conflict with the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God?”
If they do, the solution is easy and a “win” for everyone.
Let’s bring an end to the idolatry with the Polygamy Rights Win-Win Solution: Abolish all big government marriage control for unrelated consenting adults.
