According to Thursday’s AP News Report, many Utahns think polygamist clans in southern Utah aren’t getting prosecuted enough.
Warren Jeffs, who has been previously mentioned here (and also a related case here, which attorney general Mark Shurtleff declined to prosecute), was recently indicted for sex crimes for arranging the marriage between a teenage girl and a 28-year-old man. This is the first indictment of a high-profile polygamist in the western US in quite some time. John Daniel Kingston, another Utah polygamist, only served 28 weeks of his earlier sentence for felony child abuse, and was in court again on May 21, 2004 for continuing to abuse his illegitimate children.
In my humble opinion, it’s very telling that Utah prosecutor Mark Shurtleff has not been willing to go up against the polygamists. Instead, Arizona has stepped up to the plate to do the dirty work to bring Jeffs to justice.
Mark Shurtleff’s spokesman, Paul Murphy, states, “Anytime there is a victim who will come forward to testify, we’ll take the case. Those victims have been few and far between.”
To the contrary, says twenty-year-old Rachel Strong, recently escaped from Jeff’s polygamist clan, “Here I am. For over six months I’ve been willing to testify.” Additionally, Tapestry Against Polygamy, a Utah-based group assisting women and girls escaping from abusive polygamous relationships, distributed a list of escapees willing to speak during the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Tapestry’s task is made more difficult, however, by the existence of the Blood Atonement Doctrine, which, although repudiated by the mainstream LDS church, is still considered doctrine amongst fundamentalist Mormon sects in Utah backwaters. Blood atonement mandates the murder of apostates and those who violate certain fundamentalist church edicts. According to Tapestry, “Many wives have been threatened with this Blood Atonement.”
I suspect this complicates obtaining willing witnesses for a trial.
From where I sit, it seems as if the illegal nature of the polygamous relationships themselves are not challenged in Utah. The potential five years’ imprisonment for the crime of “bigamy” is rarely pursued. Instead, prosecutors go after the easier charges of child abuse, and the perpetrators receive a slap on the wrist in a county jail, soon to return to their previous practices. It seems fairly obvious that our Attorney General can’t — or won’t — make an effective case attempting to enforce laws banning bigamy.
What’s the right approach, then? Well, from what I understand, “raids” of polygamous households do not seem to work well. It didn’t work when federal troops attempted it against mainstream LDS leaders in the 1800s, it didn’t work at Waco with the Branch Davidians, and it doesn’t work today against the Fundamentalist LDS and Polygamist Christian groups. Such attempts simply send the leaders into hiding, and risk injuring the victims of the polygamous system with unnecessary violence. Raiding Jeffs’ compounds in Utah, Arizona, and Texas probably isn’t the best solution.
I don’t know that there’s a “right” answer for this situation. But what we’re doing now sure doesn’t seem to be doing the job.
Send in the IRS
Are they paying taxes? Send in the IRS. That’s an approach I’d think about. Tax fraud (evasion) carries a much higher penalty than 5 years.
Going to the Treasury moves the battle of the religious lines.
Hmmm
But as a “religious organization”, couldn’t they claim tax-free status?
There’s always a loophole. My $.02 Weed
They would have to be recognized
They would have to be recognized by the IRS as a non-profit to claim exemption. I doubt they have this status.
Not necessarily
Non-religions are required to register as a 501(c)(3) organization in order to have donations to them be tax-deductible and be able to purchase items from other entities without paying sales tax. However, according to American laws, that religion is otherwise tax-exempt no matter what it does.
We have some religions living in legal limbo due to suspension of 501(c)(3) status (or not obtaining one), yet they continue to operate. Usually, they’ll lose their status due to excessive political involvement. And actually, I’m fairly certain the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is a 501(c)(3).
I may have gotten those numbers backwards, though. I always forget if it’s c-3, or 3-c…
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Matthew P. Barnson
Not Quite
Really? Because if religions are tax-exempt, “no matter what”, then I’m going to break out my hand-woven, Israeli yalmuke and to start claiming sales tax exemption off all the furniture I’m currently buying. Furniture is expensive, and it’s going to be great when I request the 7% sales tax relief just because I’m religious.
It doesn’t work that way. You don’t get full tax-exemption because you’re religious. You have to be recognized by the IRS, and you have to follow certain rules. There are many forms that religious organizations can take; the 501(c)(3) is one of them. Tax-exempt status is not easy to achieve and is a precious protection level once received.
My original point is that your polygamy camps out there in Utah are probably liable for several tax crimes and prosecuting on this front may be more effective for rooting out on an individual basis. You don’t pay taxes and you go to jail for longer than 5 years.
Tax controversy regarding religions
Check out the decision in “Branch Ministries v Rossatti”. The background section and findings are enlightening. In sum, it states that you can hold yourself out to be a tax-exempt church, do so without filing for a 501(c)(3), and your donators will be able to deduct their contributions. If there is no advance ruling, however, the taxpayer (rather than the church) bears the burden of establishing that the church qualifies as a 501(c)(3).
As a taxpayer, of course, that would suck, and I wouldn’t donate to such an organization. But many fundamentalist Christian churches regard filing as a tax-exempt organization to be “selling out” to the US Government, and refuse to do so. Contributions are still tax-deductible, insofar as the organization behaves like a 501(c)(3), regardless of an advance ruling. Churches may be responsible for excise taxes in proportion that they engage in activities forbidden by law for a 501(c)(3).
It’s far more complicated than I can post in an off-topic response. Thousands of pages of research and opinion on the decision have been published on the topic, but suffice to say, if the organization walks and talks like a duck, the IRS treats it like a duck; it’s just a matter of who gets to prove it’s a duck during an audit.
State regulations on property, income, and sales taxes are wildly divergent. But you need not have a federal filing status to be sales-tax-free in Utah. Merely a business license will frequently do the job if you assert an item is for resale (probably not relevant for most churches), and there are state-by-state regulations on how churches can be exempt from sales taxes. Many are quite liberal in their definition of a “church”.
I wrote my original response when I was very tired, though. I should have said, “a religion retains tax-exempt status regardless of whether or not it has a valid IRS advance notice of its 501(c)(3) status as long as it purports itself to be a church, and doesn’t engage a significant portion of its income towards certain prohibited political activities”, but that’s way too coherent for me, and would make for a very long and convoluted sentence to follow, so I won’t.
🙂
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Matthew P. Barnson
Please send donations to….
Hello Mothership Muthas!
I am now the Grand Pubah of the Dirty Show Funk Trio organized religion.
Our basic tenets:
1) We want the funk. Give up the funk 2) We want the hotties. Give up your hotties. 3) We like pizza. Served by hotties. While listening to the funk.
In order to buy pizza, equipment, and hotties, please send all donations to:
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Go forth, my sons & daughters, and prosper HRLW
PayPal
Do you take PayPal? I want to join. Do I get a discount because I already have a hottie and only need to work to fulfill tenets 1 and 3?
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Matthew P. Barnson
Looks Like I’m Wrong
Okay, looks like I’m wrong on that assertion. This is a good thing because I’m the Treasurer of a national association and constantly dealing with the IRS about the tax-exempt status. There are a million rules to follow, and I’m constantly reminding our Board about them (“Do NOT publicly endorse a political candidate!”), but the bottom line is that membership dollars, purchases, contributions, retirement fund conversions, salary taxes, endowments, etc. are all protected when you have tax-exempt status bestowed by the IRS.
As for my business, I am sales-tax exempt because of the educational resale protection. But that’s only in one state. I can’t take it state to state. It gets messy. You wouldn’t think that an entire morning’s work can be allocated to just dealing with tax issues…
Churches
Yeah, so far it’s only churches that get that kind of treatment.
Makes me wonder about the “congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof” thing, though, that if your cause is secular rather than religious, you have to do all the paperwork.
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Matthew P. Barnson
Legalize Polygamy
No, seriously.
If the state (or the nation) recognized polygamous relationships between consenting adults as legal, it would eliminate the ability for polygamists to hide behind “religious freedom” to try and keep outsiders out. Those who are polygamists would have no reason not to come forward and register their marriages with legal authorities.
At the same time, legal authorities could aggressively pursue underage marriages, child abuse, and the other forms of sexual misconduct rampant in polygamist communities without worrying about the religion angle. Furthermore, those who feel they have been abused or mistreated within their polygamist marriage could come forward without fear of being prosecuted for their religious beliefs.
Right now, I think that the polygamists are hiding behind their cloak of self-imposed moral superiority. They see the law as wickedly trying to curtail their religious beliefs – so they work together to frustrate it at every turn.
But if the law said, “Polygamy is fine – provided there’s no abuse, coercion, or underage chicanery going on,” the polygamists lose their “religious freedom” shroud. The women who are involved could have reasonable legal recourse against their abusive husbands. Just think of how the law currently requires certain standards of conduct within a marriage – especially as it relates to the welfare of one’s spouse and children. There’s some real legal teeth there that currently go unused because polygamist marriages aren’t recognized!
Truthfully, however, I have two ulterior motives in such a proposal:
First, I think that abuse, secrecy, and underage coerced marriage is necessary for polygamy to exist. If you made polygamy legal and brought it out of the shadows, it would wither under the open light of scrutiny.
Second, I would find the wranglings of the mainstream LDS Church in such an environment to be fascinating.
Which, incidentally, is the real reason that polygamists aren’t prosecuted for their bigamist ways. It’s too embarrasing for the Mormon majority to be reminded that they’re all polygamists too – just in a spiritual rather than a physical sense.
This argument actually remind
This argument actually reminds me of one I heard in an old Ethics class concerning the legalization of prostitution in some Asian countries. The gist was the same: when something is legalized it can become institutionalized, and therefore the government can (in theory) set limits and monitor those limits accordingly.
Not having heard too much on the polygamy issue, I have to say that at first glance it looks a lot like the problems that certain countries (including our own, in some cities) are having with prostitution: namely abusive situations and underage children getting involved.
Perhaps if we examined the rate of abuse in Nevada prositution (where it’s legal) vs. the rate of prostitute abuse in other states, we’d know whether or not the legalizing line works.
Of course, I’m not saying that prostiution and polygamy are exactly the same thing. But they sure do sound similar.
On another note, I think it’s perfectly possible for a government to make something *legal* while acknowleding that it’s still not *right,* or a good idea. Case in point: tobacco. The current stance of the US Government is that tobacco is dangerous and lethal to hundreds of thousands of Americans every year. Hence all the age restrictions and public health ordiances dictating where you can or cannot smoke. But it’s still legal.
Legalizing polygamy (or, dare he say it, marijuana) could be done using the same arguments, I think.
Arthur Rowan Brother Katana of Reasoned Discussion Rebel Leader and Dance Instructor for the Unitarian Jihad
True
And, it probably comes as no surprise that I’m in favor of legalizing both marijuana and prostitution.
The government should not be in the business of deciding what is morally acceptable or not for consenting adults. Everytime it does try to deny people their rights because it finds something morally ambiguous, it creates more problems than it solves.
Prohibition, anyone?
The number of polygamists in
The number of polygamists in Utah is estimated at around 30,000, but I think that is a very low estimate. Have you read the comments here?
EDIT by matthew: Linked.
polygamy vs. homosexuality
I know these previous posts are old news, but I just logged in for the first time today.
I just spent a while reading through the posts related to “proposition 3” from last year and the discussion on the connected issue of homosexuality that it evoked.
Now I see this polygamy issue here earlier this year, and I have to say I’m not totally sure what the big difference is that seems to lead to many against polygamy and many for accepting homosexuality.
In my opinion, if people feel that no one has a right to oppose calling a same-gender union a marriage, then they should also not have the right to dictate how many marriages one may be a part of.
Personally, I would favor accepting polygamy over homosexuallity, mainly from a Biblical point of view. The Old Testament does talk of righteous men (such as Abraham or Jacob/Israel) who had more than one wife at the same time. But then, I’d probably still want to limit that to one man with several wives (as the Biblical model).
To me though, the issue isn’t really analyzing each of these to determine the merits of each based on our human-concocted criteria. To me the issue is what does God want us to do? What are the choices that would most please him?
I know the choices I’ve made for my life regarding such issues and they are what I believe my Heavenly Father would have me choose.
Accepting polygamy
My beef with polygamy is the documented social ills which flow from it, which I’ve enumerated in other posts. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a consensual polygamous relationship: that’s their business. The “wrong” part comes when polygamy is part of the power structure of a community, resulting in forced eviction of boys from the community and welfare abuse, among other things.
The principal social ill of homosexual promiscuity is the same as heterosexual promiscuity: various diseases (teen pregnancy and abortion are a hetero-risk only). AIDS is killing a large percentage of some African nations through predominantly heterosexual activities. We’ve avoided the same fate here through massive education efforts and emphasis on “safe sex”.
But documented social ills from homosexual monogamy? I haven’t seen any. Also I can’t say that I’ve seen any for non-heirarchical adult polyandry. It’s when power and dogma get tied into polyandrous relationships that the trouble seems to start.
Oh, for those who don’t know who Emil is: I believe he’s my neighbor down the street, if his name is the same as his handle 🙂
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Matthew P. Barnson
yes
Yes, you’ve got the right person.