You could also go to the judgement in the Constitutional Reference Case to find an argument that seeks to establish that gay marriage is OK, and that polygamy is reprehensible, although it might be difficult to differentiate between this and the Humpty Dumpty logic that Santorum is trying to unpick in his audiences.

Meanwhile, I close by drawing notice to the point that, just because polygamy is justified on all the arguments for gay marriage that Santorum exposes, doesn’t mean that it will get the same treatment. If anything, the Canadian polygamy judgement is evidence for saying that legal systems implementing human rights laws do not deliver human rights, but instead they deliver whatever the judge wants, backed by whatever rationalisation he finds convenient at the moment. Otherwise, why did just about every lawyer in Canada, including a series of special prosecutors, take the view for decades that polygamy would be protected, before the Chief Justice of BC came up with the idea that it was a bad thing, except for kids?

“This is not easy to step up and essentially be exposing my daughter as a polygamist but sometimes it’s hard to do the right thing,” said Reiman.

The ‘right thing’ in this case includes exposing the detail of a private letter from his daughter detailing the relationship and the developing attitude of Cook’s first wife to what the Bible had to say about polygamy.

This story demonstrates that polygamy is not just an issue within closed Mormon communities that have lived that way for the past 100 years, and the extreme reaction of the father in this case perhaps betrays the real concern of many who wish to proscribe the practice. It isn’t just a discussion about whether consenting adults can form their own preferred relationships – what if it’s your son, your daughter, your husband, your sister, etc. This brings the unfamiliar uncomfortably close to home for many.

But we may also ask, if Superintendent Cook had left his wife in order to cohabit with Miss Reiman, or merely had an extra-marital affair with her, would this be a story for the local media, or any business of the school board? If not, does that mean that these people are suffering harassment in their employment, unwanted press attention and family bitterness because Mr Cook remains committed to his first wife? And what kind of society is it that lets adultery and abandonment go unpunished, while penalising commitment?

Update: 13 January 2012
The complainant, who is the father of his second wife, has admitted that no laws appear to have been broken. Despite this, Superintendent Cook has resigned. His ‘first wife’, who Is alleged to have accepted the polygamous situation, is currently listed as support staff in the district, with the ‘second wife’ listed as a substitute teacher. See more here at the Idaho Statesman.

Here is a video at KIVITV and a record of a flat denial by John Cook that he is a polygamist. It appears this is not so much a denial of simultaneous plural relationships, but simply an assertion that they are not both legally recognised, and therefore no crime is committed.

Fox9 news coverage adds that Don Reiman, father of alleged second wife Jana Cook, has not spoken to his daughter in years and his information comes from a December letter from her to her sister.

Update 15 January 2012
The Republic adds that John Cook allegedly lives with his two wives at a ranch outside horseshoe bend, and that Don Reiman approached the school board having first failed to receive support from the County Sheriff, the County Prosecutor and a local private lawyer.

Both sides appear to be directing people to the Bible, but what does the Bible say about polygamy? Judge for yourself- for pointers, visit the Christianity section, especially the article Objections to Polygamy from Christians.

Relevant Videos on the Bible and Polygamy

1) The ‘Adam and Eve’ Defence

Some people say “Adam was given Eve as his wife. He was given one wife, not two or three or four. One wife was enough for Adam. One wife was what God intended. Marriage today should be ‘as it was in the beginning’. If God had wanted Adam to be a polygamist he’d have given him more wives.”

This is now examined on an internet video presentation that lasts less than 5 minutes. Here are the links for YouTube and the HD version on Vimeo. If you like them, don’t forget to tell your friends/social networks, and it will encourage us to produce more.

Here is the Vimeo HD version embedded:-

Objections Christians Have To Polygamy 1) The Adam and Eve Defence from AdamAndEveIt.info on Vimeo.

2) The ‘One Flesh’ Gambit

Now addressed in a video presentation that takes less than 5 minutes at the following links:- YouTube and the HD version on Vimeo

Objections Christians Have To Polygamy 2) The ‘One Flesh’ Gambit from AdamAndEveIt.info on Vimeo.

The most important issue in the ‘Brown’s v Utah’ Sister Wives case is that involved in the State trying to kill off the case before it first draws breath. Kody Brown and co don’t have standing, say the state, as they are not suffering any significant harm. The Brown’s say they are worried about being prosecuted, but the Attorney General says he will only prosecute polygamy where there is ‘another crime’ to prosecute, and the Utah County attorney won’t say what he will do, but both attorneys say that it doesn’t matter seeing as no-one has been prosecuted in Utah just for being a polygamist in over 50 years.
Except, it turns out that this is wrong. But it’s not the lawyers that have pointed this out, but a journalist at the Associated Press – see the story here, showing 2 people in separate instances being prosecuted just for polygamy. This has led to Joe Darger, fresh from his ‘Love Times Three” book tour, to enter the fray, pointing out the many negative effects suffered by families as a result of the polygamy ban being in place, even though it is rarely enforced, and the basic unfairness of stigmatising a community by criminalising their normal conduct whenever one of their number commits a crime.

Today, Kody Brown, the polygamist at the centre of reality TV’s ‘Sister Wives’, has at least part of his day in court, as he seeks to prevent his case against some of Utah’s key prosecutors being thrown out. The prosecutors are trying to say Mr Brown doesn’t have ‘standing’, as no-one has been prosecuted for polygamy alone in 50 years in Utah, except that the Associated Press did a quick search and found a couple that the prosecutors appeared to have missed. More here.
Oral arguments will be heard today, but it is not yet clear when Judge Waddoups will issue any ruling.

See comment from the Brown’s lawyer, Professor Jonathan Turley here, and his specific submission that they are not asking for Utah to breach its Enabling Act (whereby it was only able to become a State on condition that polygamy would always be prohibited) here.

As with many human rights cases, this smacks of a judge creating the law, rather than interpreting it, and an initial look at the judgement has revealed a number of errors – for example, the United Kingdom banned bigamy in 1604, not polygamy, and later case law, including the famous case of Hyde v Hyde and Woodmansee makes this clear. The judgement (see here) is however very long and detailed, as befits a case of this length and importance, so a full analysis will take some time. In the meantime it is likely that the case’s next stop will bethe Supreme Court of Canada.

Other Coverage
National Post

Vancouver Sun

Salt Lake Tribune

The Globe and Mail including pdf text of the judgement.

CBC News Canada

Winnipeg Free Press, with speculation on the likelihood of prosecutions beginning in British Columbia

This is no small case, with direct impact across Canada, an almost certain appeal coming to the Supreme Court of Canada whatever the result, on top of 42 days of courtroom clashes in just the last and most significant round of this case.

What will Bauman do? Chief Justice Robert Bauman, that is, who reserved judgement after the marathon trial, and whose court has arranged a lock-in for reporters ahead of the judgement being released on the B.C. Supreme Court website.

He has three main options – Back the polygamy ban, rule it unconstitutional, or say that the polygamy ban could only be treated used in cases that were abusive, leaving everyone else free to practice polygamy if they wished. It is possible that he may yet come up with a secret fourth option that no-one anticipates. For years a succession of lawyers have believed that the polygamy ban would not survive a Charter challenge.

Meanwhile tension has been raised by the carbon-copy ‘Sister Wives’ case of Brown v Utah, the Darger’s “Three in Love” book tour, and on the other side of the equation by the conviction of child abuser Warren Jeffs, and related investigations by the Mounties, which mysteriously surfaced at just the right time to apply maximum pressure on the Court’s ruling.

See more at the Province online.

While this legal development isn’t wholly surprising in an overtly Muslim country, it has created a reality check for the Coalition of nations who helped Libyans to topple Ghadafi, as the Governments of a number of those countries have policies that are opposed to polygamy, even when their laws may be more tolerant.

This plays against the background of the deaths of perhaps 50,000 men in the war of liberation, and the consequent increase in widows and orphans, which neatly matches the Koran’s basis for implementing polygamy in Islam in the first place. Polygamy is the historic societal mechanism that stands ready to handle this sort of problem, an acknowledgement that the family is the first welfare state, and for many still preferable to the version preferred by Big Government.

What should Libya do – implement the historic beliefs and freedoms of the people, or saddle themselves with a Socialist welfare system that even developed countries struggle to afford?

Let’s hope that Judge Waddoups is not completely new to the whole “Sister Wives” business, because if he goes off the paperwork submitted by the Brown clan and lawyer Jonathan Turley on Monday, he will be led to believe that both Kody and Janelle are ‘the husband’ in this plural family. While some junior lawyer gets a slap on the wrist for this cut-and-paste howler, it does suggest that Janelle Brown could have paid a bit more attention to the statement she was signing. The Browns are ‘alternative’, but they are not that alternative!

Kody, Meri and Janelle have all filed affidavits in support of their case to prevent Utah officials from prosecuting them for polygamy, and in response to the officials’ attempt to get the case thrown out as they probably weren’t really going to prosecute them anyway. Consequently the Brown’s job is to emphasise the fear of police intervention they feel, and the impact of various officials labelling them as criminals anywhere but in a court.

So we get tales of panic whenever a police cruiser passes the house, the cost of fleeing Utah, losses of sales and employment following public identification as ‘presumptive offenders’, etc. I’m not belittling this – far from it – I’m sure that the labelling has many distressing effects – it just strikes me as bizarre that you need to go to such lengths to prove the impact of the state criminalising your lifestyle, so that it is bad enough for the court to bother dusting off the Constitution to check whether that’s OK. Is it not enough that the law is unconstitutional – is it not undignified for the state to run the argument that ‘it doesn’t matter if the law breaks the law, for we will defend our unlawful law by never using it against anyone likely to win’ – the ‘we will only kick you when you’re down’ approach?

Anyway, for more, see….
Associated Press
Washington Post
CBS news

Kody Brown’s affidavit
Meri Brown’s affidavit
Janelle Brown’s affidavit