As reported by The New York Times and National Public Radio, I will be traveling to Salt Lake City today to file (on Wednesday) a challenge to the Utah statute criminalizing bigamy and cohabitation. The lawsuit will be filed on behalf of my clients, the Brown family. The Browns are featured in the TLC program Sister Wives as an openly polygamous family.
The lawsuit will be filed in federal court in Salt Lake City on Wednesday and we will be available for questions at 1 p.m. outside of the courthouse.
The Plaintiffs are Kody Brown, Christine Brown, Janelle Brown, Meri Brown, and Robyn Sullivan.
As in past cases, I will have to be circumspect in what I say after the filing of this action. However, we are honored to represent the Brown family in this historic challenge,” said Professor Turley. “We believe that this case represents the strongest factual and legal basis for a challenge to the criminalization of polygamy ever filed in the federal courts. We are not demanding the recognition of polygamous marriage. We are only challenging the right of the state to prosecute people for their private relations and demanding equal treatment with other citizens in living their lives according to their own beliefs. This action seeks to protect one of the defining principles of this country, what Justice Louis Brandeis called ‘the right to be left alone.’ In that sense, it is a challenge designed to benefit not just polygamists but all citizens who wish to live their lives according to their own values – even if those values run counter to those of the majority in the state.
The following is the statement from Kody Brown, which will be the only statement at this time on the filing:
Statement of Kody Brown:
“There are tens of thousands of plural families in Utah and other states. We are one of those families. We only wish to live our private lives according to our beliefs. While we understand that this may be a long struggle in court, it has already been a long struggle for my family and other plural families to end the stereotypes and unfair treatment given consensual polygamy. We are indebted to Professor Turley and his team for their work and dedication. Together we hope to secure equal treatment with other families in the United States.”
We will post the complaint as soon as it is docketed by the Clerk of Court.
Jonathan Turley
Wikipedia has a good definition of alpha.
The point is that females, due to their hypergamous nature, tend to be attracted to the alpha males. Males are not hypergamous which is why polygamist societies are much more prevalent than polyandrist societies.
So, if you think that being an “alpha male” is bad, as you appear to, why would you want to reward them with legalized polygamy? One of the purposes of “society” or “civilization” appears to be to constrain the alpha males somewhat.
polydoc:
Not sure of the basis or intent for your comment. No one said that women can’t be abused in any sort of relationship (in fact I compared them in this regard not contrasted them), nor did anyone say that non-polygamous marriages shouldn’t be regulated either. Obviously, they are since a license and blood test are required in many states. I just find this relationship fraught with more difficulties than the alternatives given the number of humans involved and suggested an educational rather than a criminal course.
I cannot fathom multiple wives. They would have to be pretty compliant and not jealous. As for what goes on at my house, if I even broached the subject, there would be repercussion that would register on the Richter scale. I am married to a MacBeth. An insurance adjuster who had borne the brunt of her wrath once asked me how I managed to deal with her. I told him, “Every night when I go to bed, I remind myself that I am married to a woman who is descended from the guy who cut off the head of the King of Scotland.”
“In a church.”
So what IS a typical human alpha male? A man who’d do anything to rise to the top of power? A man who’d cheat investors and taxpayers so he can accrue more wealth? A man who’d own a news organization that would do unethical things to get “news” about private citizens and public figures? A man who’d take steroids/do blood doping so he can perform better than his competitors? A man whose ego is so big he needs multiple wives to feed it?
I’ve always been too lazy and too much involved in life as play, to be an Alpha Male. While I was good looking, for much of my life before marriage I never had a metaphorical pot to pee in, nor anything resembling high status. Yet I was blessed with the serious affections of many women and my wife is both beautiful and intelligent. The Alpha Male get the females works among Great Apes and it works for human males if one defines female desirability as beauty matched with a hunger for cash/power. For those of us not inclined to be “Alpha’s” respecting and honoring a woman as an equal, with the understanding that sex is about the pleasure of all parties to it, makes a guy pretty damned sexy to women of good taste.
I’ve always been too lazy and too much involved in life as play to be an Alpha Male. While I was good looking, for much of my life before marriage I never had a metaphorical pot to pee in, nor anything resembling high status. Yet I was blessed with the serious affections of many women and my wife is both beautiful and intelligent. The Alpha Male get the females works among Great Apes and it works for human males if one defines female desirability as beauty matched with a hunger for cash/power. For those of us not inclined to be “Alpha’s” respecting and honoring a woman as an equal, with the understanding that sex is about the pleasure of all parties to it, makes a guy pretty damned sexy to women of good taste.
@Polydoc
“According to the evolutionary fairy tale you so obviously believe, wouldn’t that just be called “survival of the fittest” and therefore [be] a good thing?”
Are you saying that evolution is just a fairy tale?
Why are you placing a normative judgment on evolution. Evolution either happens or it doesn’t, why does it have to be good or bad?
My only point is that we can identify one group of losers which no one has mentioned if we returned to a polygamist society. And, perhaps they should have a say in it through the democratic process.
@GeneH, you are confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcomes. Jefferson was for the former, not the latter. Also, I don’t see how von Mises’ calling out of other groups for engaging in polylogism makes him a polylogist, unless you can shoe that he was many logics, each valid for some men and invalid for the others. I also don’t see how capitalism “causes” a polyogistic system based on class. As before in the other thread, you are extrapolating causation from, at best a weak correlation.
“If you watched the show you’d have noted how exhaustingly difficult it was for the Henrickson family to simultaneously uphold the principle of plural marriage and the equal status of women.”
Bruce in Jersey,
As another avid watcher of “Big Love” I did see how hard it was for them to follow their path, without disparaging the equal status of women. However,
the problem was not plural marriage per se, but the doctrine under Mormonism in general that only the man can act as “Priestholder” and ultimately his is the final say. When Barb has her epiphany the whole situation became untenable. Bill also was more than a bit of an ass and brought disaster on the family.
Responsible protest goes hand in hand with a full understanding and acceptance of the possible consequences of ones actions. MLK knew and accepted he might be killed. The Freedom Riders understood the danger of what they were doing. The Stonewall protesters knew the cops would break heads and so it goes. Bill was constantly being surprised by the blow-back from his actions, though much of results were foreseeable. This series was great tragedy and as usual with tragedy the hero is done in by his hubris.
I hope the lawsuit includes a claim based on freedom of speech. In some ways it’s a more powerful argument than religious rights. Utah law makes it a crime for a married person to “purport to marry” a third person. If, say, a married man, with his wife’s consent, forms a committed relationship with another woman, that alone is not a crime under Utah law. But Utah law makes it a felony for him to publicly state that the otherwise lawful relationship is a marriage. That’s unconstitutionally criminalizing free speech.
“Yes, more people need to speak up but I don’t begrudge them for their silence given the price they may be asked to pay.”
MASkeptic,
I agree. My question was asked out of curiosity, rather than condemnation.It
took courage for others to fight for their rights in the past and it will take courage for those whose rights are currently abridged to wage the needed battle.
PolyDoc wrote:
IMHO, any man, monogamous or polygamous, who abuses women and children, should not be allowed near any civilized person other than their prison guards.
PolyDoc,
Look no further than the the U.S. government. I trust that you’re including those individuals, as well.
We would love to see this law ended and want to know how to help. Is there some kind of account to donate to help the Brown’s legal fight?
Well said PolyDoc
mespo727272 wrote, in response to Scarecrow:
“My point was simply that this arrangement is a trap for the naive,lonely, and those with low self-esteem.”
Oh, you mean like those battered women who go from one abusive monogamous relationship to another?
IMHO, any man, monogamous or polygamous, who abuses women and children, should not be allowed near any civilized person other than their prison guards.
Don’t sweat it, PolyDoc. Another thread here shows that a truckload of be’s have been spilled on the highway. Maybe yours was just following the swarm.
oops, I meant “…and therefore be a good thing.”
Blame it on my keyboard…
kderosa wrote:
“No one has brought up the one party that will definititely lose out if these sort of relationships are legalized: the beta males, who will be left without mates.”
According to the evolutionary fairy tale you so obviously believe, wouldn’t that just be called “survival of the fittest” and therefore a good thing?
I would imagine Wrongway Feldman’s comment does strike too close to home for some posters since “polylogism” was a term coined by Ludwig von Mises who used it to describe other political and economic philosophies that he disagreed with and thus committed the error of polylogism himself. An error compounded by von Mises insistence that laissez-faire capitalists deserved to be left to their own devices which in effect creates a polylogistic system based upon class. That objectivists also love the term should come as no surprise as their pseudo-philosophy is intimately tied with the idea of übermensch and untermensch. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”, if one accepts the logic of Jefferson, precludes any political (or economic) system that seeks to make some men more equal than others no matter what their rationale might be.
Good comment, Wrongway, albeit a bit misplaced.
whoops again. That is a quote from someone else and so it should have ” at top and bottom. Wrongway strikes again, my bad.
Wrongway:
“I have a bit of dyslexia, thus the moniker wrongway”
I think you may be being a bit too hard on yourself. But in any event, you may have taken the “wrongway” but you got to the right conclusion.