1) Last week, the Browns put forth a lawsuit to the Utah Courts questioning whether or not Utah's bigamy laws are constitutional. Go, Browns! The Jessops got your back!
2) A new Hate Group has sprouted up in Utah called "Sound Choices Coalition". It is created by former plural wives who "escaped polygamy". I find it ironic that most of these groups are started by women who once lived polygamy - one of them for 50 years. The reason I call them a "hate group" - they are against decriminalization, and they want to keep it illegal. In other words, they don't want talks; they don't want negotiations. They just want to see polygamist men in jail. On their website, they say things like:
“No one wants to break up happy families or throw good fathers in prison,” says Christine Marie Katas, founder of Voices for Dignity, who is a member of the Sound Choices Coalition. Katas, who wrote the symbolic petition, said, “But there has to be a better, more creative legal solution because the evidence clearly shows that significantly more harm comes to polygamous women and children than monogamous women and children.”
"These harms include higher rates of domestic violence and abuse, including sexual abuse, higher rates of marital dissatisfaction, higher rates anxiety and depression, higher rates of psychiatric hospitalization, higher levels of somatization, phobia and other psychological problems. Polygamous women have more children, are more likely to die in childbirth and live shorter lives than their monogamous counterparts. Children in polygamous families face higher infant mortality, and physical and mental disabilities from incestuaous marriages. Many children suffer more emotional, behavioral and physical problems, have lower educational achievement, and are at a higher risk of psychological and physical abuse than children in monogamous families."
So where is this so called "evidence"? Where is the research that supports this? Is it not bigotry to make these kind of negative statements about a particular group without having something substantial to present, to back it up? Otherwise, it is just a stereotype. Nothing more.
Hence, this group is... a hate group.
3) Flora Jessop has put down her meth pipe long enough to come in front of the cameras to celebrate her sister's escape from the FLDS. Now, admittedly, I don't know what her sister went through. And I am certainly not a fan of FLDS's brand of Mormonism. But my question is:
Why are people listening to Flora Jessop? Given the constant lies and unreliable information that she has fed the media, given the fact that she has been caught in these lies, why do they use her as a "reliable source?" Because the media is looking for anything lurid and sensational, and Flora Jessop is always willing to provide that.
Yes, bigotry is alive and well in America. And it is "okay" to demonize and discriminate against polygamists as a whole group.
