Read the AP article below. You can find it here:
Polygamous youth talent show raises charity funds
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A talent show featuring youth from Utah's polygamous community has generated an $1,800 donation to a statewide domestic violence hotline.
Sponsored by an equal rights committee of the polygamy advocacy group Principle Voices, the October talent night featured more than 20 vocalists and musicians. Nearly all were kids.
Principle Voices co-founder Anne Wilde says the event was designed as a service project for youth. Nearly all of Utah's polygamous sects were represented. About 250 attended the performance which was held in a private home.
The funds generated were donated to Linkline, a 24-hour domestic violence hotline run by the nonprofit Utah Domestic Violence Council.
Wilde says Linkline has suffered under state budget cuts. The hotline connects callers with counseling, shelters and other services.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Father Wins Right to Visit Children in Polygamous Community
Father wins the right to visit his children in his own home, which happens to be located within the boundary of a small community where a majority of the residents believe in and practice polygamy.
Imagine that! A non-custodial father actually being allowed to have regular visitations with his children in his own home. The man is divorced from the children's mother, and is currently single, is not practicing polygamy, and the objection of his ex-wife is that his belief in plural marriage should be sufficient to restrict his visitations with his children to supervised visitations outside of his home/community.
The man and his wife had resided near AUB communities and associated with those communities for many years, though they were LDS. Their children played with children of the AUB, and likely with children from polygamous families within those communities. It was interest shown by other women in potentially joining their family that ultimately prompted the wife to divorce, choosing to remain LDS and not adopt the Fundamentalist Mormon beliefs along with her husband. It is important to note that the AUB condemns underage marriage, and does not arrange marriages of its members.
It is sad to see a marriage of so many years end in divorce. I'm sorry for both parties and especially for the children. I would remind people, however, that people do change their belief systems during their lifetimes and sometimes these changes, along with many other factors, cause irreconcilable differences and break up the marriage/relationship.
In any case, this father has not done anything wrong, nor broken any law, and upholding his rights as a father to his children was the only right ruling for the court to make.
Some details of this case can be found in this Salt Lake Tribune article: Judge allows children to visit father in polygamous community.
Imagine that! A non-custodial father actually being allowed to have regular visitations with his children in his own home. The man is divorced from the children's mother, and is currently single, is not practicing polygamy, and the objection of his ex-wife is that his belief in plural marriage should be sufficient to restrict his visitations with his children to supervised visitations outside of his home/community.
The man and his wife had resided near AUB communities and associated with those communities for many years, though they were LDS. Their children played with children of the AUB, and likely with children from polygamous families within those communities. It was interest shown by other women in potentially joining their family that ultimately prompted the wife to divorce, choosing to remain LDS and not adopt the Fundamentalist Mormon beliefs along with her husband. It is important to note that the AUB condemns underage marriage, and does not arrange marriages of its members.
It is sad to see a marriage of so many years end in divorce. I'm sorry for both parties and especially for the children. I would remind people, however, that people do change their belief systems during their lifetimes and sometimes these changes, along with many other factors, cause irreconcilable differences and break up the marriage/relationship.
In any case, this father has not done anything wrong, nor broken any law, and upholding his rights as a father to his children was the only right ruling for the court to make.
Some details of this case can be found in this Salt Lake Tribune article: Judge allows children to visit father in polygamous community.
Friday, December 17, 2010
This looks like fun! Dress Like a Polygamist @ Polygamē Clothers of Utah
Polygamē Clothers of Utah is located on Main Street inside the Treasure Mountain Inn, in Park City.
Check out the following article from The Park Record:
Dress like a polygamist on Main Street
Novelty t-shirt shop pokes fun at Utah stereotype
by Andrew Kirk, OF THE RECORD STAFF
Posted: 12/17/2010 04:33:33 PM MST
Amber Smith shows off three of her designs and some of the books on polygamy offered in the...
Now that alcohol is easier to buy, Utah County resident Amber Smith is tackling the next biggest stereotype of Utah culture with a t-shirt shop called Polygamē Clothers of Utah.
Women can buy a t-shirt that labels them "Wife 27." Men can get a sweatshirt that says, "Half the husband, twice the man" or "I went to Utah and all I got was this other wife."
Smith is not part of a polygamist family and never has been, but she does know quite a bit about them. Since American culture seems fascinated with contemporary sister wives, she figured there was no one better to capitalize on the curiosity in what she hopes is a respectful manner.
"We don't want to be hateful to polygamist people, or to be rude, but to lighten the mood," she said.
Nor is it a stab at Mormonism, she said. Her husband, anthropologist Daymon Smith, is a Mormon history expert and both are members of the LDS Church.
"Tourists come to Utah and think we're all polygamists. We're poking fun at that," she explained.
The clothing is all hand-inked so each shirt or hoodie is unique. If people want to learn more about the practice, dozens of books give the history of nineteenth-century Mormon polygamy and polygamous practices around the world. Smith has even designed several ankle-length dresses inspired by photographs of Brigham Young's daughters and sewn in Colorado City, of course.
She has spotted a few people from Colorado City checking the store out, and they chuckled too, she said. Smith believes they've succeeded in joking with, not at, the contemporary practitioners.
"You don't have to be a polygamist, but you can dress like one," she said. "We're light-hearted about it; it's tongue-in-cheek."
Smith acknowledges some modern LDS Church members don't find polygamy funny, but she thinks that's ironic. Utahns are quick to judge groups they don't know a lot about. That's the exact same reason so many Americans assume church members all have many wives.
Polygamy was never a large part of Mormon culture, but it was understood and respected. She thinks Utahns today could do a better job respecting other people's beliefs.
Meanwhile, Smith has t-shirts reading, "Bigamy Schmigamy" and "Poly-curious." If anyone wishes
to take the anachronism a step further, she has images of Brigham Young dressed as Che Guevara all in the name of fun.
Polygamē Clothers of Utah
Inside Treasure Mountain Inn
255 Main Street Suite D
435-241-8420
Check out the following article from The Park Record:
Dress like a polygamist on Main Street
Novelty t-shirt shop pokes fun at Utah stereotype
by Andrew Kirk, OF THE RECORD STAFF
Posted: 12/17/2010 04:33:33 PM MST
Amber Smith shows off three of her designs and some of the books on polygamy offered in the...
Now that alcohol is easier to buy, Utah County resident Amber Smith is tackling the next biggest stereotype of Utah culture with a t-shirt shop called Polygamē Clothers of Utah.
Women can buy a t-shirt that labels them "Wife 27." Men can get a sweatshirt that says, "Half the husband, twice the man" or "I went to Utah and all I got was this other wife."
Smith is not part of a polygamist family and never has been, but she does know quite a bit about them. Since American culture seems fascinated with contemporary sister wives, she figured there was no one better to capitalize on the curiosity in what she hopes is a respectful manner.
"We don't want to be hateful to polygamist people, or to be rude, but to lighten the mood," she said.
Nor is it a stab at Mormonism, she said. Her husband, anthropologist Daymon Smith, is a Mormon history expert and both are members of the LDS Church.
"Tourists come to Utah and think we're all polygamists. We're poking fun at that," she explained.
The clothing is all hand-inked so each shirt or hoodie is unique. If people want to learn more about the practice, dozens of books give the history of nineteenth-century Mormon polygamy and polygamous practices around the world. Smith has even designed several ankle-length dresses inspired by photographs of Brigham Young's daughters and sewn in Colorado City, of course.
She has spotted a few people from Colorado City checking the store out, and they chuckled too, she said. Smith believes they've succeeded in joking with, not at, the contemporary practitioners.
"You don't have to be a polygamist, but you can dress like one," she said. "We're light-hearted about it; it's tongue-in-cheek."
Smith acknowledges some modern LDS Church members don't find polygamy funny, but she thinks that's ironic. Utahns are quick to judge groups they don't know a lot about. That's the exact same reason so many Americans assume church members all have many wives.
Polygamy was never a large part of Mormon culture, but it was understood and respected. She thinks Utahns today could do a better job respecting other people's beliefs.
Meanwhile, Smith has t-shirts reading, "Bigamy Schmigamy" and "Poly-curious." If anyone wishes
to take the anachronism a step further, she has images of Brigham Young dressed as Che Guevara all in the name of fun.
Polygamē Clothers of Utah
Inside Treasure Mountain Inn
255 Main Street Suite D
435-241-8420
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Married 21 Years Today: Celebrating Our Life and Family Together
My husband and I are celebrating our 21st anniversary today, in love.
Mormon Polygamy: Race Treason?
Some very interesting papers:
Natural Law and the Rhetoric of Empire: Reynolds v. United States, Polygamy, and Imperialism
Nathan B. Oman
William & Mary Law School
William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-43
Abstract:
In 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court construed the Free Exercise Clause for the first time, holding in Reynolds v. United States that Congress could punish Mormon polygamy. Historians have interpreted Reynolds and the massive wave of anti-polygamy legislation and litigation that it midwifed as an extension of Reconstruction into the American West. This Article offers a new historical interpretation, one that places the birth of Free Exercise jurisprudence in Reynolds within an international context of Great Power imperialism and American international expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. It does this by recovering the lost theory of religious freedom that the Mormons offered in Reynolds, a theory grounded in the natural law tradition. It then shows how the Court rejected this theory by using British imperial law to interpret the scope of the first amendment. Unraveling the work done by these international analogies reveals how the legal debates in Reynolds reached back to natural law theorists of the seventeenth-century such as Hugo Grotius and forward to fin de siècle imperialists such as Theodore Roosevelt. By analogizing the federal government to the British Raj, Reynolds provided a framework for national politicians in the 1880s to employ the supposedly discredited tactics of Reconstruction against the Mormons. Embedded in imperialist analogies, Reynolds and its progeny thus formed a prelude to the constitutional battles over American imperialism in the wake of the Spanish-American War. These constitutional debates reached their dénouement in The Insular Cases, where Reynolds and its progeny appeared not as Free Exercise cases but as precedents on the scope of American imperial power. This Article thus remaps key events in late nineteenth-century constitutional history, showing how the birth of Free Exercise jurisprudence in Reynolds must be understood as part of America’s engagement with Great Power imperialism and the ideologies that sustained it.
Keywords: legal history, polygamy, constitutional law, free exercise, first amendment, race, imperialism, Insular Cases, Reynolds v. United States, Reconstruction, Mormons, Latter-day Saints, law and religion, natural law, progress
Accepted Paper Series
Date posted: February 28, 2010
Suggested Citation
Oman, Nathan B., Natural Law and the Rhetoric of Empire: Reynolds v. United States, Polygamy, and Imperialism (February 26, 2010). William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-43. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1560015
***********
Race Treason: The Untold Story of America's Ban on Polygamy
Martha M. Ertman, University of Maryland School of Law
Abstract
Legal doctrines banning polygamy grew out of nineteenth century Americans’ view that Mormons betrayed the nation by engaging in conduct associated with people of color. This article reveals the racial underpinnings of polygamy law by examining cartoons and other antipolygamy rhetoric of the time to demonstrate Sir Henry Maine’s famous observation that the move in progressive societies is “from status to contract.” It frames antipolygamists’ contentions as a visceral defense of racial and sexual status in the face of encroaching contractual thinking. Polygamy, they reasoned, was “natural” for people of color but so “unnatural” for whites as to produce a new, degenerate race, licentious and submissive to despotism. The article suggests that the tension between status and contract, together with anthropologist Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, bridge the seemingly separate issues of Mormon polygamy and racial inferiority. In particular, Orientalism explains how the nation deprived overwhelmingly white Mormons of citizenship rights such as voting on grounds of racial inferiority. It concludes by paralleling the status-based, white supremacist rejection of polygamy and today’s arguments against same-sex marriage.
Suggested Citation
19 Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 287 (2010).
****************
The Story of Reynolds v. United States: Federal "Hell Hounds" Punishing Mormon Treason
Martha M. Ertman, University of Maryland School of Law
Article comments
With permission of Thomson Reuters/West.
Abstract
Part of the “Law Stories” series published by Foundation Press, this chapter in Family Law Stories tells the back story of the 1878 US Supreme Court case Reynolds v. U.S.. While the case held that Mormon polygamy was not protected as the free exercise of religion, this chapter shifts our focus away from sex and religion and toward the Court’s language linking Mormon polygamy with “Asiatic and African” peoples as well as political despotism. This close examination of the historical record shows that 19th century concerns about Mormon separatism – commercial, social and political separatism as well was religious – were as important, or even more so, than plural marriage itself. To make its case that antipolygamists of the day viewed Mormon polygamy as both politically and culturally treasonous, the chapter describes George Reynolds’ career, marriages, and imprisonment, including how his life-long devotion to the Mormon Church led to him to be the defendant in this test case. In conclusion, this chapter suggests that Reynolds reliance on political claims of treason (as well as white supremacist views of Mormon polygamy as race treason) may limit the precedential value of the case. In particular, if Reynolds is really about Mormon’s treasonous establishment of a separatist theocracy, it has little applicability to current discussions of same sex marriage since same sex marriage is an assimilationist project.
Suggested Citation
The Story of Reynolds: Federal "Hell Hounds" Punishing Mormon Treason, in Family Law Stories 51 (Carol Sanger ed., 2007)
Natural Law and the Rhetoric of Empire: Reynolds v. United States, Polygamy, and Imperialism
Nathan B. Oman
William & Mary Law School
William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-43
Abstract:
In 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court construed the Free Exercise Clause for the first time, holding in Reynolds v. United States that Congress could punish Mormon polygamy. Historians have interpreted Reynolds and the massive wave of anti-polygamy legislation and litigation that it midwifed as an extension of Reconstruction into the American West. This Article offers a new historical interpretation, one that places the birth of Free Exercise jurisprudence in Reynolds within an international context of Great Power imperialism and American international expansion at the end of the nineteenth century. It does this by recovering the lost theory of religious freedom that the Mormons offered in Reynolds, a theory grounded in the natural law tradition. It then shows how the Court rejected this theory by using British imperial law to interpret the scope of the first amendment. Unraveling the work done by these international analogies reveals how the legal debates in Reynolds reached back to natural law theorists of the seventeenth-century such as Hugo Grotius and forward to fin de siècle imperialists such as Theodore Roosevelt. By analogizing the federal government to the British Raj, Reynolds provided a framework for national politicians in the 1880s to employ the supposedly discredited tactics of Reconstruction against the Mormons. Embedded in imperialist analogies, Reynolds and its progeny thus formed a prelude to the constitutional battles over American imperialism in the wake of the Spanish-American War. These constitutional debates reached their dénouement in The Insular Cases, where Reynolds and its progeny appeared not as Free Exercise cases but as precedents on the scope of American imperial power. This Article thus remaps key events in late nineteenth-century constitutional history, showing how the birth of Free Exercise jurisprudence in Reynolds must be understood as part of America’s engagement with Great Power imperialism and the ideologies that sustained it.
Keywords: legal history, polygamy, constitutional law, free exercise, first amendment, race, imperialism, Insular Cases, Reynolds v. United States, Reconstruction, Mormons, Latter-day Saints, law and religion, natural law, progress
Accepted Paper Series
Date posted: February 28, 2010
Suggested Citation
Oman, Nathan B., Natural Law and the Rhetoric of Empire: Reynolds v. United States, Polygamy, and Imperialism (February 26, 2010). William & Mary Law School Research Paper No. 09-43. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1560015
***********
Race Treason: The Untold Story of America's Ban on Polygamy
Martha M. Ertman, University of Maryland School of Law
Abstract
Legal doctrines banning polygamy grew out of nineteenth century Americans’ view that Mormons betrayed the nation by engaging in conduct associated with people of color. This article reveals the racial underpinnings of polygamy law by examining cartoons and other antipolygamy rhetoric of the time to demonstrate Sir Henry Maine’s famous observation that the move in progressive societies is “from status to contract.” It frames antipolygamists’ contentions as a visceral defense of racial and sexual status in the face of encroaching contractual thinking. Polygamy, they reasoned, was “natural” for people of color but so “unnatural” for whites as to produce a new, degenerate race, licentious and submissive to despotism. The article suggests that the tension between status and contract, together with anthropologist Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, bridge the seemingly separate issues of Mormon polygamy and racial inferiority. In particular, Orientalism explains how the nation deprived overwhelmingly white Mormons of citizenship rights such as voting on grounds of racial inferiority. It concludes by paralleling the status-based, white supremacist rejection of polygamy and today’s arguments against same-sex marriage.
Suggested Citation
19 Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 287 (2010).
****************
The Story of Reynolds v. United States: Federal "Hell Hounds" Punishing Mormon Treason
Martha M. Ertman, University of Maryland School of Law
Article comments
With permission of Thomson Reuters/West.
Abstract
Part of the “Law Stories” series published by Foundation Press, this chapter in Family Law Stories tells the back story of the 1878 US Supreme Court case Reynolds v. U.S.. While the case held that Mormon polygamy was not protected as the free exercise of religion, this chapter shifts our focus away from sex and religion and toward the Court’s language linking Mormon polygamy with “Asiatic and African” peoples as well as political despotism. This close examination of the historical record shows that 19th century concerns about Mormon separatism – commercial, social and political separatism as well was religious – were as important, or even more so, than plural marriage itself. To make its case that antipolygamists of the day viewed Mormon polygamy as both politically and culturally treasonous, the chapter describes George Reynolds’ career, marriages, and imprisonment, including how his life-long devotion to the Mormon Church led to him to be the defendant in this test case. In conclusion, this chapter suggests that Reynolds reliance on political claims of treason (as well as white supremacist views of Mormon polygamy as race treason) may limit the precedential value of the case. In particular, if Reynolds is really about Mormon’s treasonous establishment of a separatist theocracy, it has little applicability to current discussions of same sex marriage since same sex marriage is an assimilationist project.
Suggested Citation
The Story of Reynolds: Federal "Hell Hounds" Punishing Mormon Treason, in Family Law Stories 51 (Carol Sanger ed., 2007)
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