Whoa! Polygamist solution is frightening...

[Ron]

Originally Posted by Nina

Brother,
This is from the SCLU of Utah Reporter:Fall 2006

One Saturday last August, about 250 people gathered at the Salt Lake City and County Building to participate in an unprecedented show of public support for the practice of polygamy. At the first “Polygamists’ Youth and Family Rally,” more than a dozen youth speakers, ranging in age from ten to twenty and representing various religious groups, spoke positively about growing up in polygamous families, and called for a change in state laws that criminalize their parents’ relationships.

Many of the speakers invoked their First Amendment rights to association and religious freedom, which they felt should allow consenting adults (i.e. their parents, and, in the future, themselves if they so choose) to practice plural marriage as part of their religious expression. They also talked about the right to privacy, which they argued should clearly apply to their families as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas three years ago.

In Lawrence, the Court considered and struck down a Texas sodomy law that criminalized consensual sexual relationships between gay couples. The Court ruled that Texas’s law—and, by extension, the sodomy laws in other states, including Utah—violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and, absent injury to a person or abuse of an institution that the law protects, consenting adults enjoy the freedom to define their private intimate relationships within “the confines of their homes and their own private lives.”


As You can see, this is gonna be interesting.
Nina

Originally Posted by Pressing-On

Just a few notes running over the issue.

The questions is being raised - Why not go after the men?

Well, that is why the children have been taken. They want to do DNA tests to determine which "household" the children belong to and who is the father of each child.

There are a number of provisions that says the court may consider what household each person is a member of in order to protect them from anyone that has abused them either physically or sexually.

The broad definition of "household" as they are living in a communal situation is the difficulty in determining and relying on which household to protect the children from - hence the DNA testing.

The 16 year old permission to marry only relates to the first wife. The sister wives are not covered by that. Therefore, they are saying that any of the other wives that produce children at the age of 16 or under is sexual abuse, under Texas law.

What they are trying to accomplish by the DNA testing is to break each case down individually. The are trying to be able to title each case individually. They want to examine each individual child/parent relationship.

Once each case is broken down they can then give notice to person's interested in the children. They need to know who the father is for each child and not just an alleged father.

They can also use the DNA testing in a criminal case.

The big question still remains, how did they let it get to this place?