The ‘answer them nothing’ defense of the FLDS polygamists seems to have ended. The FLDS have now answered.
FLDS are defending themselves by claiming they don’t practice polygamy but rather they practice adultery. We don’t know which is worse. Looks to us they have just thrown their wives and children under the bus.
If these Mormons honestly believed God ordained them to practice polygamy, then why not stand up, tell the truth and trust God to take care of them?
The following from Brooke Adams ‘The Plural Life’ blog
Here are excerpts, quoted from Michael Emack’s Motion to Dismiss his bigamy charge:
1. In the purely religious unions at issue in this cause, there is no holding out that the cohabitating parties are “married,” nor is there any intention by any participant to be “married,” in anything other than a purely religious sense.
2. It is well settled that fraud is the gravamen of bigamy, and no fraud or deception of any kind is involved here.
3. The strict scrutiny required by the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act prohibits the state from criminalizing that religious practice as “bigamy,” with the attendant substantial burden on defendant’s religious and associational rights, unless the state can meet its burden to show it has a compelling interest and is using means narrowly tailored to further that interest.
4. The state’s prosecution in this cause arises out of and is based on a label defendant and his church apply to a religious ordinance he considers essential to his salvation. To criminalize such religious conduct violates defendant’s rights of religious conscience and freedom, equal protection and association.
5. The FLDS do not believe they become legally and civilly married by engaging in celestial marriage.
6. Defendant is legally and lawfully married to Sarah Hammon.
7. While legally and lawfully married to Sarah Hammon, defendant has cohabited with one Ruleen Johnson Jessop, a person other than his spouse Sarah Hammon, in this state.
8. Defendant and Ruleen Johnson Jessop participated in a “celestial marriage” on or about August 5, 2004.
9. Defendant also engaged in “celestial marriages” to two other women prior to his “marriage” to Ruleen Johnson Jessop.
10. The definition of “marriage” is set forth in the Texas Constitution: “Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.”
11. Defendant and Sarah Hammon do not, however, hold themselves out as being only in a union of one man and one woman, nor does either party intend to be only in a union of one man and one woman.
12. Those who do not seek the state’s imprimatur, and who do not hold themselves out as having done so, do not cross the threshold that would subject them to criminal punishment for what would essentially be an abuse of or affront to the state’s power and prestige (as well as a fraud on one or more other parties).
13. The principal purpose of these unions is to bind generation to generation for spiritual purposes unique to FLDS faith and practice, such that the entire community is strengthened and edified and the participants’ hope in exaltation is advanced.
14. Those who choose, for religious or other personal reasons, to refer to themselves as “married,” even though they know the law does not so regard them, should be free to do so within their private sphere.
15. Imposing criminal penalties on such a basis would be equivalent to disciplining an individual who goes by the name of “Doctor W,” but who is not, in fact, a licensed physician, for violation of state licensing requirements even though he has never held himself out as, professed to be or intended to be a legally licensed doctor or to have the medical expertise that licensed status is designed to ensure.
16. The statute cannot extend to criminalize an individual’s entry into a religious union where there has been no attempt to elicit the state’s recognition of marital status or to procure the attendant benefits of this status under the law, where neither party has held himself or herself out as having done so, and where neither party to the union believed it to have such legal import. Read the rest of this entry »
Both Sides of the Pond 