Under Texas law, an indictment must repeat the phrase “against the peace and dignity of the State”. Readers interested in examining the indictments in the Eldorado case can find them, for now, here. [CAUTION: For mature readers only!] Henceforth, to avoid unfairly associating a religious brand with the calumny repeated in these indictments, I will refer to this case by the place where the crimes alleged in the indictments are alleged to have taken place, Eldorado. I can offer, on reliable authority, that Ray Jessop’s indictment is not connected to Teresa Jeffs.
I know that I speak for many when I say that whatever dignity the State of Texas had, it was wasted by Governor Perry and his legislative cronies — most notably Harvey Hilderbran — back in 2004 when they contrived to distort the laws of Texas to attack an otherwise inoffensive religious minority by pretending that Texans did not then think it moral for 14-year-old girls to be married. More on this topic at a later date. I would, however, like to solicit from willing readers their personal knowledge of cases in which happy, successful families began with the marriage of a girl between the age of 14 and 16 years.
For now, let’s just say that the hypocrisy of Texas knows no bounds. Hilderbran and Perry should be indicted for running roughshod over the 1st, 4th, 5th and 14th Amendments. Peace and dignity, indeed.
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
Jeny 07.31.08 at 12:41 am
My father (age 21) married my mother (age 16) in 1959.
They are now 70 and 65 years old and still married to each other. Next year they will celebrate 50 years of marriage–a happy union which produced 4 children and 5 grandchildren.
They are as in love with each other today as they were the day they married.
Jeny
kbp 07.31.08 at 1:46 am
At this point I’m limited to speculation on many of the facts.
That said, I am assuming all of the alleged victims are with child. If the Bishop’s records were sufficient alone to produce the charges, I’d venture to guess we’d have seen a boat load of men charged for bigamy.
I say such guessing that Texas is not afraid to charge any 2 that allegedly committed bigamy while both were consenting adults.
That leaves me believing the DNA testing was the ticket, testing we were informed about 3 days before the 14 day hearings even started. I’ll get back to this topic later.
Kurt does a fine job of pointing out the mindset of those that went after crimes by enacting laws to make the beliefs they disapproved of illegal.
Many in the bunch that passed these laws must be creating embarrassment for their own relatives that would be guilty if they had been born later.
One fact that stands out here is the absence of any victims (well, if we get past the idea the entire state of Texas is a victim!), and the fact they are not embarrassed for what they did.
Texas ‘rescued’ all the women at the ranch and not a single one claims to be a victim of anybody but Texas (unless you believe Natalie, our SUPERSTAR).
So back to that DNA.
Texas has to use some test on itty bitty things, so small that we can’t even see them, to prove there is a victim, all this BEFORE they can prove there is a crime.
Now just imagine if we could go back and test those that passed these laws and their parents. How many more VICTIMS do you think we could create?
R 07.31.08 at 6:43 am
That said, I am assuming all of the alleged victims are with child.
Teresa Jeffs is not. Veda Keate has a child, but she is not pregnant now. I can’t speak of the others, but I doubt they’re pregnant.
Thomas Forguson 07.31.08 at 7:46 am
I got my Jessops confused. You take all the Jessops out of the FLDS and there wouldnt be very many left.
Doran Williams 07.31.08 at 8:10 am
I like what Headmistress pointed out over at Common Room: That it was just fine for more than a hundred years for 14 year old Texas Baptist girls to get married with parental consent, but apparently immoral for 14 year old girls amongst the FLDS membership to get similarly married.
I really have no doubts that if local Baptist parents in the Texas Hill Country asked for a court to approve the marriage of their 14 year old daughter, they would get that order with very little bother. But if a set of FLDS parents asked for a similar order, they would be put through a wringer by the judge, and might not get the order at all, not even if the reasons were to be the same for the Baptists.
able eddy 07.31.08 at 10:13 am
And all for the same reason that religious bigots of that brand and others in the Deep South used to tar and feather Mormon missionaries. Their ministers are scared to death of the fact that LDS and FLDS, etc., have no paid ministry. And hence feel a “moral” obligation to generate hysteria against them. Mormon “ministers” don’t live in million dollar homes paid for by their flocks. They earn their own way.
John Lester 07.31.08 at 2:57 pm
My grandfather, a Pentecostal preacher of righteousness for 60+ year, the last 40+ of which was as Pastor of his own large and successful church, married my grandmother when she was 14 (with the state and her parent’s blessings).
Only death did them part. They had 10 children together, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF WHICH married and had sizable families themselves. Almost all of them are faithful solid citizen church attenders today.
My mother was their 4th child.
It outrages me when I see the FLDS attacked for what are simply Biblical practices.
1st Corinthians 7:36 plainly states (especially in the Greek) that minimum age of marriage for women begins at menstruation.
Period.
The State of Texas, ironically, the supposed Bible belt, has CRIMINALIZED the Bible and those that actually LIVE by it.
Signs of the rapidly approaching End Times.
Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.
Chai Tea 07.31.08 at 7:01 pm
Sorry, this is off topic, but I wondered if someone would please get word to Bill at flds.ws that the files he has posted about Malonis are really messing up my dial up service and crashing and/or locking my computer - if it’s doing it to mine, my guess is that it’s doing it to others with dial up, too.
Thanks.
ON topic - it’s being well documented that Texas feels IT is above the law and that the people within it’s borders have no rights except as granted to them by Texas. The state should truly secede from the union since they are not going to honor the Constitution.
They don’t want the FLDS people there, and they refuse to let them go. How ironic is that?
And sickening.
Shari 07.31.08 at 8:01 pm
Vic, don’t expect any self-respecting FLDS woman to view that stuff. For that matter, no FLDS man will think much of it either.
TxBluesMan 07.31.08 at 10:01 pm
Doran,
Years ago, anyone could hang out a shingle and claim to be a lawyer. Should we allow that now, since it ‘used to be’ the practice? Or what about hangings in the courthouse square? Laws change.
ChaiTea,
You have it backwards. It is the FLDS that believes that they don’t have to comply with the law.
Texans take a dim view towards that.
As of this date, there have been no findings that the FLDS had any rights violated.
Vic 07.31.08 at 10:17 pm
Shari { 07.31.08 at 8:01 pm } Vic, don’t expect any self-respecting FLDS woman to view that stuff. For that matter, no FLDS man will think much of it either.
———————————————————————-
Are you FLDS ? If not how would you know they wouldn’t take a peek…..it appears you did
Kathy 07.31.08 at 10:25 pm
Tx,
No findings? Of course not. It seems to me that the state of Texas finds only what it wants to find or fabricate.
I take a dim view towards what Texas has done and you continue to defend. You seem very selective about who has to comply with the law and who doesn’t.
Hopefully, in time, it will be proven by a higher court OUTSIDE of the state of Texas that the FLDS had several of their rights violated.
Chai Tea 08.01.08 at 4:05 am
How strange…to the majority of the American public, this trampling of constitutional rights, the kidnapping of a whole town’s worth of children, the herding of women and children to ‘concentration style camps,’ the stripping of potential victims of abuse of THEIR right to communicate with lawyers and family, the 3 day house arrest without mirandizing a townful of men seems VERY illegal to those of us without ANY legal training.
I know I’ll never step foot in Texas because of their police state based upon what has been seen by their handling of this case, which two higher courts have said was done “improperly.” And I think they only said that because the first financial figures were out and Texas was trying to figure out a way to back out of this disaster.
I’m still waiting for Texas to raid all the high schools and junior highs, round up ALL the children, take them to holding cells without adequate facilities, forcefully take DNA samples from them, subject them all to physical exams and immunizations, subject the adolescent girls to pelvice exams and pregnancy test, keep the children from communicating with their parents, and then forcefully take DNA samples from all the men and relatives of the children to figure out who the parents of the kids are so they can be charged with abuse….because certainly there is at least a few girls there that are or maybe or maybe will become, pregnant.
When Texas does that to the main stream population, MAYBE, just maybe, the people who live in Texas will wake up and realize they are in a police state.
Oh…and don’t forget to charge all the people for raising their children in a specific way, i.e., with values. If any of the families attend church, any church, go break into it and steal all it’s records, and don’t forget to use a swat team to raid each childs home and take all the families photographs and personal papers, including any diaries, and computers.
Good grief.
Yea, BLuesy…no illegal, horrifying acts happening here - the rest of the US is blind. Not.
Maybe you should get out of Texas for a bit and see that the rest of the world doesn’t have to live under Texas intimidation or laws. There IS a whole OTHER world out here.
Hey! You can be a ‘lost attorney’ - come out of the darkness and into the light - you can be the poster boy for “Lost Attorneys” - maybe Dan Fischer will underwrite your cause.
lol
Doran Williams 08.01.08 at 7:52 am
tx claimed that “Years ago, anyone could hang out a shingle and claim to be a lawyer.”
Tx, do us a favor and provide some citations or something like that from your cookie-cutter citation book, to substantiate this claim. I doubt that it is accurate. You may be correct, of course, given that you do not demonstrate having ever graduated from law school or having passed the Texas Bar exam.
Your arguments by analogy are getting flimsier day by day.
“Laws chage,” pronounces tx, “therefore let us take 465 children from their parents without any evidence that it was necessary to do so. And let us (police state advocates) traumatize and abuse those children and endanger the health of those children. And let us all recognize that we may have to abuse those children in order to save them from abuse, even though there is no evidence of that abuse for all but three or four of them. And then, we may have to put some of those abused children in jail if they don’t cooperate with us. And when we finally convict the abusers of these children, at a cost of a half-million dollars or so per defendant, let us put those abusers in prison for extended periods, even though that means they will not be able to support their children whom they did not abuse. And let us all, finally, salute the great State of Texas! Sieg! Heil!”
kbp 08.01.08 at 8:42 am
Doran,
“..at a cost of a half-million dollars or so per defendant”
It’s over FIVE million per as I see it.
Doran Williams 08.01.08 at 9:02 am
This is a good example of why I do not design space ships and nuclear weapons.
Shari 08.01.08 at 9:37 am
Vic, no I’m not FLDS. I’m not LDS either. I happen to be Lutheran LCMS if it’s important to you. I do live very near some FLDS folks and some of my best friends here are LDS, and even they don’t stomach that kind of stuff.
I got about 15 seconds into it and personally couldn’t stand it any longer. Was I offended? Not really because I obviously didn’t stay on the site long enough. I’ve got better things to do with my time.
TxBluesMan 08.01.08 at 11:48 am
Doran, you mean aside from the traditional law schools?
Look up the history of John Nance Garner. A 4th grade education, he tried to attend Vanderbilt for one semester but couldn’t hack it. He returned to Texas and became a lawyer back when the bar exam consisted of the judge asking you a couple of questions. He was a Judge at 25 and later became Vice President of the United States.
It wasn’t until 1903 that a written exam was required for the bar in Texas, and only 74 were admitted to the bar that year. In 1897, 900 were admitted to the bar, most without legal training and some without having ‘read for the law.’ Look up Art. 256, RCS (1897).
Granted, we don’t do it that way now, but that’s because the law evolves - and my argument about practicing law without training makes about as much sense as your talking about the age of marriage in the 40s…
Kurt Schulzke 08.01.08 at 12:00 pm
TBM –
Do you really mean to equate the fundamental human rights inherent in the choice of marriage partners with the right to practice law?
And — speaking of the practice of law, law and order, etc. — I’m still interested in your take on whether it was OK for Charles Childress or his emissary to personally approach Judge Walther, without notice to the other parties, to discuss that Order to Stay Discovery.
Jeny 08.01.08 at 12:15 pm
Seems to me practicing law isn’t a “right”, but rather a *privilege”.
On the otherhand, marriage to the person(s) of your choice *is* a fundamental right–protected by the Constitution of the United States.
They are hardly equivalent.
Jeny 08.01.08 at 12:17 pm
Driving a car - privilege
Practicing Medicine - privilege
Practicing Nursing - privilege
Practicing Cosmetology - privilege
These are all things which are licenced, but which are by no means *rights*, but rather privileges which may be revoked at any time by the government for various infractions.
Can a marriage license be revoked by the government? If so, how often does that happen as compared to the revokation of a Doctor’s license, or a Lawyer’s license, or some drunk’s driving license?
Hmmm……?
TxBluesMan 08.01.08 at 3:41 pm
Kurt,
Is there a fact witness that observed an ex parte meeting or is it speculation? Did he perhaps drop it at her office without talking to her? I would be more concerned with an actual meeting than dropping off a motion.
And no, practicing law is not a fundamental right like the selection of a marriage partner (correcting what I am sure is a typo on your part, since plural marriages are illegal in all 50 states).
Jeny,
Plural marriage has never been held to be a constitutional right. As a matter of fact, every attempt to legalize bigamy and polygamy through the courts have failed, and doesn’t look like it will change anytime soon. Before you bring up Lawrence v. Texas cite omitted, be aware that the only one that talked about polygamy in that case was Justice Scalia, and he was dissenting from the opinion. Kurt can explain what that means.
If you want, I’ll provide examples of the decisions holding that it is constitutional to criminalize polygamy.
honey 08.01.08 at 5:01 pm
TxBluesMan
I have some questions….why are you so bitter against the FLDS? What effect does them living their religion have upon you? Are you as concerned about prosecuting other “criminals” as you are about the FLDS? Are you as concerned about prosecuting all the underage sex that goes on in the world in general? Does it offend you that a man would take responsibility for his actions as the FLDS men do and claim their wives and children?
just curious…….
mag 08.01.08 at 5:44 pm
TBM
UM last time i checked the Constitution of theese great United States guarentees freedon of religion.It is a religious practice,and by some is considered a great privelage,to live pologamy.
In the FLDS culture a wife is never overwhelmed by the day to day living,because of the relationship with her sister wives,she always has time to take time for herself,or to spend any amount of time with one or all of her children as she sees is nessesary.She never has to pawn her child off to someone out of the family for babysitting.Many families have certified teachers & nurses,within their home. Do you know anyone who has so many oppertunities given them, IN THEIR OWN HOME.
TxBluesMan 08.01.08 at 6:33 pm
Honey,
I don’t have any bitterness towards the FLDS, but I expect them to obey the same laws as everyone else have to. They can believe whatever they want, but when they act in violation of the law, they should be accountable for it.
You ask if it offends me that the men take responsibility - if they are willing to take responsibility, why aren’t they announcing to the world that they married an underage girl, had a baby with her, and have more than one wife? Are they ashamed of it? Or is it that they know that they have committed a crime?
They are not taking responsibility and if they truly believed it to be a constitutional right, then they would stand up, say they did it, but it is our right to do so.
Mag,
You may want to read the case law on the Free Expression Clause. Religion has never been able to violate a law of general applicability. Polygamy has never been a constitutional right, and those that practice it are felons in Texas.
If you believe it to be a constitutional right, show me one case that allows polygamy or bigamy - just one.
I’ll save you the effort - there aren’t any.
Pliggy 08.01.08 at 11:42 pm
Bigotman,
I can relate to you somewhat. Because only six months or so ago every single blog I got on to that was not my own, I was the only one defending my position and had many who attacked it because all the FLDS women they knew were the ones who left screaming.
But there is a difference.
I was and am defending my father, grandfather, and great grandfathers religion. Not only that, I am defending my birth. I am not a crime no matter what you bigots say. And you are defending the government, the police state, the sanctity of Adultery, and the torture of children.
Yes, polygamy has been against the law, all the way up to the Supreme Court they have ignored the Constitution. And several times. But a peaceful and religious church ignored that law and lives in secrecy rather than face persecution because they could never get justice, just as the Jews in Germany who didn’t get killed, or the negro race who did get out of slavery from the south, and I am sure you know a few among “your people” as well.
Polygamy is not against God’s law. And it is not murder. It is a viable and righteous lifestyle that was lived in peace by my mother to my great great great grandmother, except when the Police told them they couldn’t.
The Constitution of the United States was written to protect the minority from the majority. The First Amendment gives us the right to live this religious doctrine whether you and your law degree says we can or not. It is not a decision for the FLDS to live it openly or not, it is the States decision. The FLDS will live this law, or die at the states hands, innocent.
You cannot defend the Constitution, where all laws must be founded, without defending the freedom to live religious polygny. And no judge can make the Constitution moot and be right. No matter how many times it has happened, or how many people agree.
You say it is law vs lawlessness, not suppressing a religious belief vs religious freedom. You are d e a d wrong. The sooner you admit your mistake, the better off you will be.
honey 08.02.08 at 9:16 am
If everyone in this world are descendants of Adam and Eve then everyone’s ancestors have lived plural marriage at one time or another.
Thomas Forguson 08.02.08 at 10:36 am
TxBluesMan, I refer you to the supreme court case of Lawernce Vs. Texas. If two gays have have sex in a motel room in Texas, Texas cant tell a man how many wives he can have. Any laws against the practice of polygamy are uncostituional.
TxBluesMan 08.04.08 at 12:28 pm
Thomas,
Lawrence very specifically states that it doesn’t affect the institution of marriage. The only comments about polygamy were in the dissent of Justice Scalia, and as Kurt can confirm, a dissent is not binding on any lower court.
Reynolds has never been overturned, and laws prohibiting polygamy are still constitutional.