The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) could be in trouble as eleven church members were indicted on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit fraud. After a raid conducted by the federal government this Tuesday, it became clear that several of the leaders of the FLDS Church were allegedly stealing from their members in order to profit.

This specific group actually has quite a history. FLDS began over a century ago when members fractioned off from the Mormon Church to create their own sect, which practices polygamy, after the Mormon Church stopped allowing the practice. The FLDS Church headquarters, where most of the people indicted this week live, are in Colorado City, Arizona, which borders the southernmost part of Utah. The leader of the FLDS Church is a man named Warren Jeffs, who took over after his father passed away in 2002 and is supposedly thought to be their prophet. Jeffs is currently serving a life sentence in prison for the sexual assault of two teenage girls, one fifteen and one twelve, back in 2011. It is estimated that Jeffs could have more than seventy wives and also reported that members of FLDS learn in schools that Jeffs is president of the United States.

Even more shocking than some of their beliefs and teachings is the group’s record with the law. Obviously, their leader was arrested in 2011 under sexual assault charges, but he isn’t the only one. The whole group is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for discriminating against non-church members living in their city. The DOJ claims that the religious group, which runs the entire town, denies fundamental rights like housing and police services to people who are not members of the Church–an action that is downright unconstitutional as far as separation of church and state and equality are concerned. On top of police reports of inequality, former members of the FLDS community who have been exiled have spoken out numerous times about the illegal and immoral actions of the leaders of the church. FLDS members responded to these allegations by insisting that the federal government was just trying to run them out of town for their religious beliefs and that they cannot be prosecuted just because someone doesn’t agree with their religion.

As far as this Tuesday’s incident, officers raided five stores in the town, indicting both Lyle and Seth Jeffs, who are the brothers of Warren Jeffs and head members of FLDS.

FBI raid on FLDS businesses in Hildale and Colorado City underwayhttps://t.co/hrgTDTdRHz pic.twitter.com/ZfUTyyGc6a

— KUTV 2News (@KUTV2News) February 23, 2016

FBI and sheriff's deputies surrounding another #hildale store pic.twitter.com/S6NOOydJXp

— HaileyHiggins (@HaileyHiggins) February 23, 2016

The group has allegedly been taking funds from food stamp program members and using them for their own benefit–a crime that is considered both fraudulent and money laundering. This raid was one of the largest interventions into this community that the federal government has ever done and officers hope to use evidence of fraud in order to get all the men who were indicted held until a trial determines their fate, rather than being released on bail.

While the leaders have pled not guilty, this is a huge blow to the FLDS Church, as almost all of the people taken into custody were high ranking members of the community, without whom, the group may not be able to function. The director of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Timothy Jeffries, was proud to announce that this was “a huge win for all victims of food stamp fraud, especially for those who reside in Arizona.” He also made a statement about Arizona’s commitment to continuing to solve the issue:

I am committed to fighting for the rights of individuals who are truly in need of these benefits, which helps to put food on their table. Stealing from the poor in any manner is wrong.

The  FLDS community has been asked to pray every day for Warren Jeffs’ release from prison (which is unlikely, at best) and are told that the only reason he has not been released yet is because they are not being faithful enough. Whether or not the FLDS Church will be able to continue in the absence of many of their leaders is unclear, but this could certainly spur a breakdown of the oppressive and apparently fraudulently-run group.

Alexandra Simone

Alex Simone is an Editorial Senior Fellow at Law Street and a student at The George Washington University, studying Political Science. She is passionate about law and government, but also enjoys the finer things in life like watching crime dramas and enjoying a nice DC brunch. Contact Alex at ASimone@LawStreetmedia.com

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Same sex marriage legalization is rampant across the country. LGBT rights have flittered in and out of the media spotlight–most recently flaring up with discussions over Caitlyn Jenner. But America’s changing attitudes regarding polygamy have been almost as dramatic. Gallup just released a survey showing that America’s moral approval of polygamy dramatically increased nine percentage points from 2001 to 2015. Despite this rise in moral acceptability, many are still confused by the term polygamy, while numerous Americans are paralyzed by the fear of legalizing it.

Polygamy is “marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time.” Often, polygamy is confused with polygyny, which means having one or more female wives or mates at a time. But the Gallup poll used the term polygamy, referring to any marriage in which there are more than two partners. In the poll, polygamy was the issue that saw the largest percent change–going from seven percent acceptance to 16 percent in just 14 years.

According to this Gallup poll, this increase in the acceptance of polygamy is accompanied with a record high moral acceptability of same sex marriage at 63 percent. There was also a 16 percentage point increase in the acceptability of having a baby outside of marriage and a 15 point increase in the acceptability of sex between an unmarried man and woman.

All of these percentages show a dramatic change in America’s attitudes towards sex, marriage, and relationships. These are huge shifts in American values, but conservatives have been shouting from the beginning that legalizing same sex marriage will lead to legalizing polygamy–including Rick Santorum and Rand Paul–and it looks like they could be right. The acceptance of same sex marriage coincides with the larger trend of more liberal attitudes toward marriage and sex. This general trend has caused many conservatives to shout louder, warning America of the ramifications of legalizing same sex marriage. One of the larger ramifications they promote is the possibility of legalizing polygamy. 

Although polygamy is not legal under federal law, and some states like Utah have decriminalized it, there are a handful of people who practice polygamy quietly by skirting the law. Often, this translates to taking one wife or husband in the eyes of the law and marrying another solely through a religious institution.

In the United States, polygamy is often associated with Mormonism and it is starting to become associated with Islam as well. But another population within the United States has recently taken up this issue as well—feminists. One of the primary arguments revolves around the notion that polygamy is a woman’s choice. It is therefore sexist if criminalizing polygamy takes away a woman’s choice to practice polygamy. As Jillian Keenan makes her feminist argument, she argues against pushing women into a victimized role, stating:

We have a tendency to dismiss or marginalize people we don’t understand. We see women in polygamous marriages and assume they’re victims.

While this argument resonates with the themes of personal freedom and choice, there doesn’t seem to have been any data collected to support this claim. If anything, there seems to be more data mounted against it. For example, many women who have immigrated to this country have arrived to find their spouse married to somebody else. Or sometimes a woman is told that she has no choice but to enter into a polygamous marriage. There are some cases of happy polygamous marriages but there is not enough information in order to legalize polygamy—feminist talking point or not.

While America is experiencing a smaller sexual revolution and refining its attitudes towards relationships, sex, and marriage, there are more perspectives to these issues than just legalization or decriminalization. The opinions are changing, but deciding on how that translates to policy is an entirely differently matter. So while polygamy might be seen as more acceptable, according to 15 percent of Americans, that doesn’t necessarily mean there will be any changes in the law anytime soon.

Sarina Neote

Sarina Neote is a member of the American University Class of 2017. Contact Sarina at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Polygamy and Public Opinion: Is America’s Morality Shifting? appeared first on Law Street.

Recently, Weird Al Yankovic used his song “Word Crimes” to teach us all how to not make idiots of ourselves when using grammar, but it seems as if not everyone was listening. One man’s lack of attention to basic middle school language rules has created what could literally be a word crime (and Mr. Yankovic, if you somehow read this, I mean literally in its proper definition, so please don’t “smack a crowbar upside [my] stupid head.”)

Before I get into the possible crime, though, it’s time for another overdue language lesson. Homo is derived from the Latin for human, and is used in the genus classification seen in the term for the modern human, Homo sapiens. That’s right: we’re all homos. It’s also used as a Greek prefix that means “same,” as in homosexual, meaning someone who is attracted to a person of the same sex.

Another example of the homo prefix is seen in the word homophone, which refers to words that have the same sound but do not have the same meaning.

Courtesy of Funnyjunk.

Examples of homophones can be seen in the following table.

Homo-sounding Words

Urban Dictionary Definitions

My Clever Examples

Ferry

To transport internationally, or across water.

I’d love people to ferry copies of this post to other lands.

Fairy

A gay man who acts more stereotypically feminine than most straight women.

That fairy convinced me to support gay rights with his fine use of diction.

Gaze

In blog terminology, to glare with silent disapproval at a troll who has intentionally attempted to derail a topic.

If people have off-topic comments to this post, all I need to do is type “GAZE“.

Gays

A homosexual male or female.

I backed the gays at the pride parade because they used proper syntax.

Quean

The proper term for a homosexual ‘queen’ (from Elizabethan English: a male or female who sells himself for sex.) (I could have also chosen “very homosexual jeans” here.)

Yon quean not only wore a superlative gown, he also had perfect nomenclature (said in a pompous voice.)

Queen

A flamboyant homosexual, usually male, always fabulous.

That queen rocked his dress and sounded smart while doing it (said in a fabulous voice while snapping in a z formation.)

Basically, what you should learn from the above is that when someone writes about homophones, it probably has nothing to do specifically with homosexuals (except when my examples are used.) But try telling that to Clarke Woodger.

Woodger allegedly decided that one of the employees at the Norman Global Language Centre, a place teaching English as a Second Language (ESL), was out of line for writing a blog post on the very controversial world of similar-sounding words.

The employer seems to be of the opinion that ESL learners might be able to recognize the term homo, but only in the one context. Since it would be inconceivable that an ESL learning center could teach anyone that a word might have an alternate meaning, Woodger thought it best to just not ever use the word homo in any context ever. Because, you know, you don’t want anyone to mistakenly link you to the gay agenda – though the idiot agenda is perfectly acceptable.

Courtesy of Quick Meme.

Woodger purportedly demonstrated the above opinion when he fired an employee for writing an illicit homo-centric grammar post. Tim Torkildson, the dirty-minded teacher who wrote the post in question, claimed that as he was being fired, he was told the “blog about homophones was the last straw” and that the school was now “going to be associated with homosexuality.”

To be fair, I should mention that Woodger did rationally defend himself. According to him, the reason he acted the way he did was that people at this level of English learning “may see the ‘homo’ side and think it has something to do with gay sex.” Good point, Mr. Woodger, you’ve one me to you’re side – whoops, I meant you’ve won me to your side. If only there was some way to learn the difference between those same-sounding words.

Courtesy of Cheezburger.

I hope we all agree that, assuming this actually happened, Woodger is a dam unreel fool of a mail who aired in his judgment, kneads to take a chill pill, and should develop some tacked. Or something like that. But is what he did a word crime in its most literal sense?

It depends on the state and whether this fits under that state’s employment at-will exceptions. This particular story took place in Utah, where a man may marry as many people as he wants so long as all the people he wants to marry are female. In Utah, employment discrimination against LGBT individuals is not yet prohibited. That being said, I’d have to say that this means that any LGBT supporter, whether that support is intentional or just through an inappropriate grammar lesson, would also not be protected.

Drat! It appears as if it is unlikely that a word crime was committed here; however, if this had happened in a more liberal state, let’s say California, it probably would have been. So, I stand by my claim that it is literally possible to commit a word crime.

Maybe one day we will live in a land where these offensive grammar violations are banned everywhere. Until that day, let us fight against blatant homophonia by teaching future generations tolerance for the English language and all of its variable meanings.

(You earn bonus points if you see all the many, many homophones scattered throughout this epic tale.)

—

Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured image courtesy of [Katy via Flickr].

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Heterophones…Because Homophones Are Just Too Suggestive appeared first on Law Street.

The Learning Channel, or TLC, has made a name for itself in recent years for creating shows that showcase a variety of family arrangements. From the infamous “Jon & Kate plus Eight” to “Little People, Big World,” TLC stars are probably used to seeing themselves in headlines. But one of TLC’s shows, “Sister Wives,” is making headlines this week for a different reason–they were on the winning side of a lawsuit against Utah’s polygamy laws that was ruled on Friday.

“Sister Wives” stars consists of Kody Brown, his four wives, and their 17 children. They are Fundamentalist Mormons and members of a church called Apostolic United Brethren, a specific sect within the greater Latter Day Saints church. Most Mormons don’t practice polygamy now, but some do, and AUB is one of them. According to Principle Voices, a polygamy lobby and advocacy group, there are about 38,000 Mormons in the United States who practice, or at least believe in the practice of, polygamy.

“Sister Wives” began airing in 2010 and the fourth season started last summer. Brown is legally speaking only married to his first wife–Meri. The other three, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn are all married to Brown in a spiritual and religious, but not legal, sense. Since the show began, a bigamy investigation was opened by the state. The Browns have since fled from their home in Utah, to Las Vegas, NV. They were scared of persecution due to their polygamist family arrangement.

Until last Friday, Utah had some of the strictest anti-bigamy and anti-polygamy laws in the country. It was illegal to even claim you were married to multiple people, or to live with multiple partners. Most other states have made it so that it is illegal to obtain multiple marriage licenses, or try to obtain a marriage license to someone who is already married.

Under the former Utah definition, the living arrangement of the Browns would have been illegal. In Utah, it would have been classified as up to a third-degree felony, warranting a fine of up to $5000 or up to 5 years in prison. State attorneys have used the law to prosecute polygamous families successfully in the past.

The Browns brought the lawsuit against Utah about two years ago, claiming that their constitutional right to privacy was being violated by the Utah law, as well as their right of religious freedom. US District Court Judge Clark Waddoups agreed with the Browns in a 91-page ruling he released on Friday. The ruling struck down only the cohabitation portion of the Utah polygamy law, and rendered it similar to polygamy laws in most other states. Now, it is only illegal to attempt to legally marry someone, or attempt to seek a marriage license if you are already married. In his decision, Judge Waddoups pointed out that the law is “too broad because it bars consenting adults from living together and criminalizes their intimate sexual relationships”.

This is seen as a huge win for both fundamentalist Mormons, as well as privacy-rights advocates. Given the national debate about marriage rights, whether this will move in a wave of changes could be interesting. But my prediction is that it will not, and that Judge Waddoups’ ruling was just a move to catch up an antiquated law in a conservative state to the rest of the United States.

—

Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Kyle Pearce via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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