"I'm amused that right after 'potato, my penis droops' up pops Quayle."

I say, in the laughing-in-bed first-post-of-the-morning. 

Quayle is a regular commenter here, but — who knows, on the internet? — it might be Dan Quayle.



Quayle responds: "I carry the blood of polygamists in my veins. So one should expect that sort of thing, I guess." He adds: "I took the name from my great grandfather, pictured here surrounded by some new friends."



That's a photograph of taken at the Utah Penitentiary in 1889, showing men arrested under the Edmunds-Tucker Act, explained here. Included in the photo is John C. Bennett, who "taught a doctrine of 'spiritual wifery'":

He and associates sought to have illicit sexual relationships with women by telling them that they were married "spiritually," even if they had never been married formally, and that the Prophet approved the arrangement.

That wasn't the correct doctrine, and Bennett got excommunicated, and then he "toured the country speaking against the Latter-day Saints and published a bitter anti-Mormon exposé charging the Saints with licentiousness."

Here's John C. Bennett in happier days...



... posing like Napoleon:

"Why I Love Mormonism."

An essay — in the philosophy column at the NYT by — Simon Critchley a philosophy professor at tthe New School for Social Research in New York.

But every now and then during one of those New York soirées, when anti-Mormon prejudice is persistently pressed and expressed, and I perhaps feel momentarily and un-Mormonly emboldened by wine, I begin to try and share my slim understanding of Joseph Smith and my fascination with the Latter-day Saints. After about 45 seconds, sometimes less, it becomes apparent that the prejudice is based on sheer ignorance of the peculiar splendors of Mormon theology. “They are all Republicans anyway,” they add in conclusion, “I mean, just look at that Mitbot Romney. He’s an alien.” As an alien myself, I find this thoughtless anti-Mormon sentiment a little bewildering.

I'm pretty sure Critchley has no intention of helping Mitt Romney. Read through the interesting twists and turns and you'll arrive at the line: "Of course, for Christians, this is the highest blasphemy." That's just peachy for Critchley, but maybe you Republicans — you Christianists — ought to flip out.



If there is to be a mainstream media assault on Mormons, one ought to expect to find it under a title like "Why I Love Mormonism." You know what I love? Blasphemy.

Mormonism is properly and powerfully post-Christian, as Islam is post-Christian.... And obviously, both Islam and Mormonism have a complex relation to the practice of plural marriage....

From the standpoint of Christianity, both Islam and Mormonism are heresies and — if one is genuine about one’s theology, and religion is not reduced to a set of banal moral platitudes — should be treated as such.

... I see Joseph Smith’s apostasy as strong poetry, a gloriously presumptive and delusional creation from the same climate as Whitman, if not enjoying quite the same air quality....

Critchley is saying: We intellectuals can pleasure ourselves with the delusional poetry of Mormonism, but if you are genuine about your Christianity — especially you Islamophobes — you'd better freak out.

"Five 'jealous' wives rape Nigerian man to death."

They were — according to this news from Nigeria — jealous of the 6th wife. (Via Drudge.)

"Head of polygamous cult pleads guilty to murder of 4-year-old boy he bizarrely believed was gay."

The Daily News reports:

Peter Moses... marked the little boy for death after he decided his father was gay. When Jadon struck another boy in the buttocks, Moses concluded it was a sign of the child’s homosexuality, and decided to “get rid of him,” prosecutors said.

The bipolar cult leader — called “Lord” by his followers — took the screaming boy into a garage and shot him in the head with his mother’s gun while speakers blared music with The Lord’s Prayer in Hebrew, prosecutors charged.

He had members of his harem put the boy’s corpse in a suitcase and stash it in his suite — until it started to smell.

"Mitt Romney’s father was born in a small Mormon enclave where family members still live, surrounded by rugged beauty and violent drug cartels."

"This state of feeling in between, I would soon learn, defines nearly every aspect of Mormon life in the old colonies."

The settlers’ descendants, numbering several hundred in all, keep alive a culture that’s always been caught between Mexico and the United States, between the past and the present, between stability and crisis....

The Mexican Revolution played a critical role in the history of the Mormon colonies. Were it not for that 1910 uprising and the years of war that followed, Mitt Romney might have been born in Mexico, and might be living there today raising apples and peaches, as many of his cousins do....

And disqualified from serving as President of the United States.

When the first settlers arrived here in the 1870s and ’80s, some were fleeing a U.S. crackdown on polygamy. (The practice ended after a 1904 LDS edict that polygamists would be excommunicated.) They dug canals to channel the flow of the Piedras Verdes River to their crops, though the river’s waters dropped precipitously low afterward. But lore has it that the Lord quickly provided: An earthquake triggered the return of an abundant flow....

Biographers of the Romney family have pointed to the “indomitable will” of the forebears. But this characteristic, it seems to me, is common to many of the Mormons of the colonies. Their shared determination is one of the things that has allowed a relatively small number of English-speaking people to keep their language and way of life essentially unchanged for more than a century, despite being surrounded by an often hostile Spanish-speaking culture.

Leighton Romney, Mitt Romney’s second cousin, told me he hasn’t met the former governor of Massachusetts. (They have the same great-grandfather, Miles P. Romney, one of the 1885 pioneers.) I met Leighton the next day, on a visit to the fruit cooperative, packing house and export business he runs.

A 53-year-old dual citizen, Leighton has lived in Mexico all his life. Four of his uncles and one aunt served with the U.S. military in World War II. He knows the words to both country’s national anthems. Like people of Latin American descent living in the States, he hasn’t lost his sense of “kinship” to the country of his roots. “We’ve got a lot of similarities to Mexican-Americans,” he said. “We’re American-Mexicans.”

I wonder if the Romney campaign has a plan to roll out this American-Mexican dimension of the candidate. How should that be done? And are Americans ready at this point to absorb the story of how the government of the United States persecuted the Mormons?

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor tells a joke about Romney and Mormons and polygamy and Gingrich.

"One is a practicing polygamist, and he's not even the Mormon."

That sounds like a joke that's just out there waiting for everyone to discover it. I find it hard to believe that she's the first person to say it... and also that she did say it.

Kody Brown lawsuit challenging Utah's anti-polygamy law "is a nightmare for liberals and conservatives alike."

Says Monica Potts in The American Prospect (a liberal publication):

[The lawsuit is based on Lawrence v. Texas, which] was a groundbreaking decision that established gay rights and provided momentum for the campaign to legalize gay marriage. Liberals fear that by basing his case on Lawrence, Brown gives fodder to conservatives who argued that gay marriage would open the door to polygamy. Conservatives fear that striking down criminal laws against calling someone a spiritual wife would not only lead to recognition of polygamy but would also endanger anti-gay statutes that limit marriage to a man and a woman.

Remember, the lawsuit is not trying to force the state to recognize Brown's extra "marriages." He is only trying to get the state to leave him alone and not prosecute him criminally for calling those extra things he's got "marriages."

Who's having a nightmare here?
	Liberals who won't defend their values and social conservatives who are strong values defenders.
	Liberals who won't defend their values. Period.
	Conservatives. Except the most libertarian ones.
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"Regardless of whether it is a gay or plural relationship, the struggle and the issue remains the same..."

"... the right to live your life according to your own values and faith."

A NYT op-ed from Jonathan Turley, who is the lawyer for Kody Brown, the "Sister Wives" guy who has 4 wives and is suing for the right to be left alone. Note that he's not asking for the state to recognize plural marriage as marriage. He just wants to be rid of the threat of criminal prosecution.

One might expect the civil liberties community to defend those cases as a natural extension of its campaign for greater privacy and personal choice. But too many have either been silent or outright hostile to demands from polygamists for the same protections provided to other groups under [the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas].

The reason might be strategic: some view the effort to decriminalize polygamy as a threat to the recognition of same-sex marriages or gay rights generally. After all, many who opposed the decriminalization of homosexual relations used polygamy as the culmination of a parade of horribles. In his dissent in Lawrence, Justice Antonin Scalia said the case would mean the legalization of “bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity.”

In his last paragraph Turley says don't be like Justice Scalia. I suspect Turley is reaching out to liberal readers, who presumably would be horrified by sounding like Justice Scalia. That's a good rhetorical move if what's really going on is that liberals resist showing favor to polygamy because it's done by people they don't like: Christianity-motivated traditionalists. 

Turley isn't trying to talk to conservatives, who generally don't mind sounding like Justice Scalia. Indeed, they get ideas about how to think from Justice Scalia.  Conservatives aren't supporting the constitutional right of privacy in other contexts, so there's no hypocrisy to point out.

Turley also isn't talking to libertarians, who should find this issue so easy that no argument is needed. He does say "Civil libertarians should not be scared away by the arguments of people like Justice Scalia," but that usage of the word "libertarian" is different. It means something like liberals who take pride in thinking of themselves as supporting the kind of legal rights that good people are supposed to believe in. That's why — in a NYT op-ed — ugh, you sound like Scalia! is a good argument

A lawsuit challenging Utah's anti-polygamy law, premised on Lawrence v. Texas.

To be filed by Kody Brown, the husband of 4 wives (who starred in the reality show "Sister Wives"):

The lawsuit is not demanding that states recognize polygamous marriage. Instead, the lawsuit builds on a 2003 United States Supreme Court decision, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional intrusions on the “intimate conduct” of consenting adults. It will ask the federal courts to tell states that they cannot punish polygamists for their own “intimate conduct” so long as they are not breaking other laws, like those regarding child abuse, incest or seeking multiple marriage licenses.

Mr. Brown has a civil marriage with only one of his wives; the rest are “sister wives,” not formally wedded. The Browns are members of the Apostolic United Brethren Church, a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon Church, which gave up polygamy around 1890 as Utah was seeking statehood.

Making polygamous unions illegal, they argue, violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment, as well as the free exercise, establishment, free speech and freedom of association clauses of the First Amendment.

“We only wish to live our private lives according to our beliefs,” Mr. Brown said in a statement provided by his lead attorney, Jonathan Turley, who is a law professor at George Washington University.

The connection with Lawrence v. Texas, a case that broadened legal rights for gay people, is sensitive for those who have sought the right of same-sex marriage. Opponents of such unions often refer to polygamy as one of the all-but-inevitable outcomes of allowing same-sex marriage. In his dissenting opinion in the Lawrence case, Justice Antonin Scalia cited a threat to state laws “based on moral choices” against “bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity.”

I think the Lawrence-based argument for decriminalizing polygamy is much stronger than the Lawrence-based argument for requiring the government to give legal recognition to same-sex marriage. One is an argument demanding only that the government leave them alone as they pursue their "own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." The other is a demand that the government alter its treatment of its citizens, giving them access to to the benefits of having the official status as a married couple.

Barack Obama, Sr. declared to immigration officials that he planned to put Barack, Jr. up for adoption.

The Boston Globe reports:

The elder Barack H. Obama, a sophomore at the University of Hawaii, had come under scrutiny by federal immigration officials who were concerned that he had more than one wife. When he was questioned by the school’s foreign student adviser, the 24-year-old Obama insisted that he had divorced his wife in his native Kenya. Although his new wife, Ann Dunham, was five months pregnant with their child - who would be called Barack Obama II - Obama declared that they intended to put their child up for adoption.

“Subject got his USC wife ‘Hapai’ [Hawaiian for pregnant] and although they were married they do not live together and Miss Dunham is making arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away,’’ according to a memo describing the conversation with Obama written by Lyle H. Dahling, an administrator in the Honolulu office of what was then called the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Of course, Obama, Sr. could have been lying about the plan. (Obama, Jr. says he doesn't believe his mother ever considered putting him up for adoption.)

Although [Obama, Sr. ] told Duham that he had gotten divorced from his Kenyan wife, he apparently did not tell her about his other children.

Obama was a member of the Luo ethnic group, the third largest of Kenya’s tribes, among whose members polygamy was common. His own father had at least four wives. In fact, Obama was still married to his Kenyan wife, Grace Kezia Obama, and apparently worried about the financial burden of another child.

So, he was lying about the divorce? I don't understand that sentence that begins with the word "Although." There's no contrast between clause 1 and clause 2 of that sentence. He lied to her about 2 things. "Although" doesn't work.

Now, you may wonder, why would Obama Sr. lie to the authorities about adoption? Isn't his case for staying in the United States stronger if he is rearing a USC child? The article suggests that a new child combined with bigamy is what would make him a worse candidate and notes that the immigration authorities had been "alarmed" about his "playboy" ways. Once he married an American citizen, they anticipated that she would petition to make him a U.S. citizen, and the question of the validity of the marriage would arise. Officials considered "charging Obama with polygamy or bigamy in order to get a deportation order against him," but decided to watch him closely instead and question the validity of the marriage if he attempted to become a citizen. In the end, Obama Sr. left Hawaii (and Dunham and baby Barack) to go to Harvard, where he would find a new wife and "the question of how many wives he had would spiral into a confrontation with devastating consequences."

Why — let's ask the question again — did Barack Obama, Jr. write a book called "Dreams From My Father"? Why did this man, rather than his mother, deserve to be the centerpiece of his autobiography?

Let's talk about morality.

America has a strong consensus about a lot things even as we are divided on others:



What surprises you the most here? Are you surprised that 80% of Americans say suicide is morally wrong? I've often had to struggle with commenters on this blog when I have taken the firm position that suicide is murder, but I think America mostly agrees with me. There is generally an outpouring of sympathy when someone commits suicide. Why don't we express our moral opprobrium toward the self-murderer? I think it's because that person is gone, and we feel sorry for those who are left behind. They are the victims.

Doctor-assisted suicide is an important subcategory of suicide, and the Gallup report says that it "emerges as the most controversial cultural issue in Gallup's 2011 Values and Beliefs poll." But what is notable is that support for assisted suicide has been dropping and has reached its lowest level of support in 8 years.

"Older bin Laden widows think younger wife tipped off US."

See, that's the thing with polygamy. There's always the intrigue... the jealousy....

"Your name is Brian Mitchell, and you're attracted to young girls, and you're just a loser."

"... you're not going down as a servant of God. You're going down as a child rapist. You're going down as the lowest of the low.... I hate to tell you this, Brian, but the Rapture has not happened. You are still in this room. You cannot escape.... She gave you up. She thinks that you are a child rapist. She finds you rather smelly, and disgusting."

The police interrogation of the man who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart. His response:

"She was converted by the spirit of God.... The Lord God delivered her.... I'm just obedient to what God told me to do... I have only done what the Lord God almighty commanded me to do... You're asking me to speak about things which are sacred and holy and which I cannot talk about.... I thought she was 18. And she willingly chose to be sealed... Get thee behind me Satan!"

"Lawsuit exposes royal prince's bizarre sex statues — of HIMSELF."

That Daily News front-page teaser got me to click, and it was well worth it. The pictures of the statues are absolutely hilarious. (No nudity revealed in the cropped photos.)

Photographs of the pieces obtained by the Daily News show an endowed, muscular prince in a series of sexual positions with the woman, one of many at his beck and call. [Prince Jefri] Bolkiah has multiple wives and a harem of lovelies.

The prince is suing over the price his ex-advisers took for selling an estate — where he stored the statues. They only got $11 million for it. The prince's lawsuit and his efforts to exclude the statues as evidence at trial led to this complete exposure of the embarrassing statues.

People, think before you sue!

We had no thoughts at all about about Prince Bolkiah before he sued, and now his name is associated only with this one thing. And by "thing," I don't mean his cock. But he is well-endowed. In the statues!

"If these people go ahead banning polygamous marriages it means many women will go into prostitution."

"Every woman has the right to be under the shelter of a man."

"I don't know how much 4 different weddings would have cost me but I know doing it all at once saved money."

"For example I only needed one tent, I needed to hire one caterer and one photographer for the entire ceremony," said South African businessman Milton Mbele who married 4 women on the same day.

This guy is very organized:

"I prefer polygamy to having many girlfriends which is what some married men do," he says.

"If I love more than one woman, I would rather make it known to the other women in my life and make it official.

"If I feel like taking another wife this is something that will be in the open and my wives would know," he says....

There are seven days in a week and I have four wives. I will take turns visiting them and use the remaining three days to rest.

He's pacing himself. If he's committed to giving each woman sex once a week, then he's got room to add 3 more wives, but then he's going to have to build up his vigor and cut down on that rest time.

Can polygamy be a crime in the United States?

Here's some timely analysis by law and religion prof John Witte Jr. (It's especially timely for me because it's the subject of the Constitutional Law exam I'm working on grading right now... as I take a break to blog.)

For nearly two millennia, the Western tradition has included polygamy among the crimes that are inherently wrong. Not just because polygamy is unbiblical, unusual, unsafe, or unsavory. But also because polygamy routinizes patriarchy, jeopardizes consent, fractures fidelity, divides loyalty, dilutes devotion, fosters inequity, promotes rivalry, foments lust, condones adultery, confuses children, and more. Not in every case, to be sure, but in enough cases to make the practice of polygamy too risky to condone.

Should we limit freedom to do one thing because it often leads to something else? Shouldn't we be very careful when the thing we would limit is something that we ourselves have no interest at all in doing but that other people believe is essential to their eternal salvation?

From the opinion in the 1878 Supreme Court case — Reynolds v. United States — that upheld the criminalization of polygamy:

[T]he accused, proved that, at the time of his alleged second marriage, he was, and for many years before had been, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, commonly called the Mormon Church, and a believer in its doctrines; that it was an accepted doctrine of that church "that it was the duty of male members of said church, circumstances permitting, to practise polygamy; . . . that this duty was enjoined by different books which the members of said church believed to be of divine origin, and, among others, the Holy Bible, and also that the members of the church believed that the practice of polygamy was directly enjoined upon the male members thereof by the Almighty God, in a revelation to Joseph Smith, the founder and prophet of said church; that the failing or refusing to practise polygamy by such male members of said church, when circumstances would admit, would be punished, and that the penalty for such failure and refusal would be damnation in the life to come."

Reynolds was sentenced to 2 years at hard labor.

More from Witte:

[S]ome religious communities and their members might well thrive with the freedom to practice polygamy. But inevitably closed repressive regimes like the Texas ranch compound will also emerge—with under-aged girls duped or coerced into sex and marriages with older men, with women and children trapped in sectarian communities with no realistic access to help or protection from the state and no real legal recourse against a church or mosque that is just following its own rules. We prize liberty, equality, and consent in this country too highly to court such a risk.

Why isn't it better to strictly police child abuse, rape, and under-age sex? Why pick on one sort of behavior that has a risk of leading to these things? What if the evidence showed that mothers living with men who are not their children's fathers runs a high child abuse, rape, and underage sex? Could we criminalize that too? The answer shouldn't be the religious motivation seems especially repugnant.