I actually believe the state should never be involved in marriage. That is a religious choice, or it is a personal choice. It should not be something that the state is dictating.
—Kody Brown, the man with four Sister Wives, supports marriage equality for gays for the same reason he supports marriage equality for polygamists: Who gives a crap? “Every adult should have the right to marry and love who they want,” adds wife Janelle [via]
Cam
Interesting, you aren’t running any articles about the 1 million dollars, NOM’s Mormon connection is funnelling into Maryland to try to mess with the vote there, and now you’re running articles about how this guy supports us. Did the LDS church buy some ad space or something?
Stenar
This guy is not Mormon. The Mormon church abandoned the practice of polygamy 121 years ago in 1890. The Mormon church is just as much against this guy’s marriages as they are gay marriages.
Cam
@Stenar:
The Mormon church abandoned the practive officially because the U.S. told them that Utah would not be allowed statehood if they didn’t. Since that time they have allowed multiple compounds to flourish, as well as ignoring and covering for the multitudes of young teen aged boys kicked out of those compounds onto the street.
Additionally, Queerty used to follow the quesionable legal ties between NOM and it’s main funder, which is the LDS chuch, however since the church origionally tried to buy ad space here I’ve seen far far fewer articles, and now that NOM has announced they will spend over one million dollars in Maryland to convince Maryland voters to not support marriage I’m just curious why there isn’t the coverage that their used to be.
Steff
Well, this is a PR nightmare.
Stenar
@Cam: The Mormon church hasn’t “allowed multiple compounds to flourish.” The LDS church has had nothing to do with these compounds and would rather they all stopped as their existence is embarrassing to the church as people confuse them with Mormons, which they are not. There isn’t anything the LDS church can do to stop them. Just like there is nothing the Mormon church can stop Jehovah’s Witnesses or Catholics from their religious beliefs. In the 1950s, the state of Arizona tried to crush the polygamist compounds in northern Arizona by raiding them and taking all their children away. It became a huge nightmare as there were too many children to deal with and there was a huge backlash in newspapers across the country.
“One of the few media outlets to applaud the raid was the Salt Lake City-based Deseret News, which is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The News applauded the action as a needed response to prevent the fundamentalists from becoming ‘a cancer of a sort that is beyond hope of human repair.’ When the paper later editorialized its support for separating children from their polygamist parents, there was a backlash against the paper and the church by a number of Latter-day Saints, including Juanita Brooks, who complained that the church organ was approving of ‘such a basically cruel and wicked thing as the taking of little children from their mother.’ The Short Creek raid was the last action against polygamous Mormon fundamentalists that has been actively supported by the LDS Church.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Creek_raid
DJ
Mmm… this kind of support is not helping the gay marriage cause…
Cam
@Stenar: said… ”
@Cam: The Mormon church hasn’t “allowed multiple compounds to flourish.” The LDS church has had nothing to do with these compounds and would rather they all stopped as their existence is embarrassing to the church as people confuse them with Mormons, which they are not. There isn’t anything the LDS church can do to stop them.”
_______________________
In a state where the LDS church has a lock on pretty much every elected position please don’t try to claim that the church has nothing to do with letting these compounds, which are well known flourish. Finally, under embarassment and pressure and exposure from outside the side a few raids took place, and the dessert news had to acknowledge it.
Tom N.
Huh. I watched an episode a few days ago, where they were all complaining about having to “come out” (their phrasing). I remember being very angry at the time. Now, I’m not.
Idontmostlybite:)
@The Mormon church abandoned the practice of polygamy 121 years ago in 1890
Small correction–the mainline Brighamite Restorationist Church known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon)–in contrast to the 300-400 other ‘Mormon’ denominations including the Whitmerites, Strangites, Bickertonites etc.–stopped officially practicing polygamy as a temporal law in 1890 AND then reissued another manifesto in 1904 which addressed the same issue. D. Michael Quinn has shown exhaustively that plural marriages continued to be conducted after the manifesto, especially in Canadian and Mexican colonies which were outside US jurisdiction. Church leaders under testimony later admitted that the Church has ceased the practice, but not the priesthood. It was not until the 1920s or so that the crackdown on polygamy groups really began, also with the Short Creek raid in the 1950s. There are some polygamists that just blend into the mainstream Church in Utah and keep a low profile.
Polygamy is however still doctrinal. Read D&C 132 which deals with the ‘new and everlasting covenant’. Still in the ‘four standard works’, and thus still doctrine. It also still clearly exists in the Temple liturgy, since a man can be sealed to more than one woman as long as the other woman is dead. However, in the afterlife in the Celestial Kingdom, there will be polygamy for such individuals. One of the current Apostles, I think it is Holland or Oaks, is such an individual. Mormons used to be more forthright about their belief that polygamy being instituted in the Millennium, as is also the case with other distinctive Restoration doctrines like that God was once a man etc.
So, long story short, technically the Mormons have not stopped practicing polygamy.
MikeE
Yeah, um, I’d rather they weren’t “on our side”.
The point of my marriage is that I’m in love with ONE man. If I wanted to run around screwing five different guys, well, I don’t need marriage for THAT. Who wants to become a brother fu**-buddy?
Elizabeth
Here’s what I don’t get…They are supportive of gay marriage, but not of the gay “lifestyle.” Although I do agree with the philosophy that the state shouldn’t have anything to do with marriage. I’m of the opinion that marriage is between the people getting married and their higher power.