'Sister Wives' stars fight for the right to... polygamy: Is America ready?

Get your fill of the Sister Wives court proceedings yesterday right here! Not that anything...um...happened...or they showed up. Browns can't mess with court when they have a LIV party going on!!!
oday Kody Brown — star of polygamist reality show Sister Wives — reported to court with his four wives Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn, intending to prove their challenge Utah’s polygamy laws. Nearly two years after Big Love‘s Bill Henrickson ran for Senate expressly to take “The Principle” (a.k.a. polygamy) mainstream, it seems a curious case of life imitating art. We know how things ended for poor Bill, but what of the Browns, whose own series was spun off of Love‘s popularity? Do they have a chance that their love might be one day accepted by the public?
Said the Browns’ lawyer, Professor Jonathan Turley, “We believe that this case represents the strongest factual and legal basis for a challenge to the de ever filed in the federal courts. We are not demanding the recognition of polygamous marriage. We are only challenging the right of the state to prosecute people for their private relations and demanding equal treatment with other citizens in living their lives according to their own beliefs.”
It’s a tricky topic. Polygamy, as of now, certainly falls under the delightfully dismissive (and very large) umbrella of “alternative lifestyle” for the vast majority of Americans. The notion that a man would want to legally marry more than one woman makes people squeamish to say the least. And yet, clearly there is an appetite for this kind of content. Big Love ran for five critically acclaimed seasons (picking up a Golden Globe for Chloë Sevigny along the way), and Sister Wives is on TLC — a network that skews toward the apple pie demographic. Is this a case of reality television subtly, slowly shifting reality, or is it simply an instance of America wanting to objectify a novel curiosity on the boob tube, but no more?
U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups has yet to announce his decision on today’s hearing. “The court gave us a fair hearing and we will await his decision,” Turley told reporters. “We are committed to pursuing these claims on behalf of the Brown family wherever they take us in the legal system.”
(Source:  http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/12/16/sister-wives-stars-fight-for-the-right-to-polygamy-is-america-ready/)

 Judge hears 'Sister Wives' challenge of Utah law

 By JENNIFER DOBNER, Associated Press 
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Attorneys for a polygamous family made famous on a reality television show on Friday asked a Utah federal judge not to block their challenge of the state's bigamy law.
Kody Brown and wives Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn filed a lawsuit in Salt Lake City's U.S. District Court in July.
The stars of the TLC show "Sister Wives" contend the law is unconstitutional because it violates their right to privacy — prohibiting them from living together and criminalizing their private sexual relationships.
Under Utah law, people are guilty of bigamy if they have multiple marriage licenses, or if they cohabitate with another consenting adult in a marriage-like relationship. Any couple of any sex living together in an intimate relationship is considered marriage-like under the law, and such a living arrangement would be considered a felony. Any couple of any sex living together in an intimate relationship could be considered guilty of a felony under the law.
Formerly of Lehi, the Browns and their 17 children moved to Nevada in January after police launched a bigamy investigation. The Browns practice polygamy as part of their religious beliefs.
U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups heard oral arguments in the case on Friday in Salt Lake City and took the matter under advisement. It's not clear when he will rule.
For the case to go forward, the judge must decide the Browns have been harmed by the bigamy law.
In court, the Browns' Washington-based attorney, Jonathan Turley, said the family has suffered losses of income and been forced to move out of state because they were under investigation for bigamy.
They've also suffered "reputational harm" because the law labels the Browns' family a "criminal association," and because some Utah County prosecutors have said publicly that it would be easy for authorities bring charges because the Browns have already acknowledged felonies on national TV.
"This family was fearful of arrest ... they still are," Turley said. "It's why they are not here (in court) today."
Assistant Utah Attorney General Jerrold Jensen called the Browns' lawsuit "great TV drama" but said there's no real threat to the family, which has neither been arrested or charged with any crime.
Jensen said it's more likely the Browns were harmed by publicizing their lifestyle on television, not by actions taken by the state.
"The Browns have perceived that they will be prosecuted," Jensen said. "That is a misperception, at least at this point."
Jenson also said the Browns assume that an ongoing investigation by Utah County authorities is related to allegations of bigamy.
"It's over something else," Jensen said.
Utah County Attorney Jeff Buhman has not disclosed the nature of their investigation publicly and a message left for him Friday was not immediately returned.
Buhman's office has no stated policy related to the prosecution of polygamists.
On Friday, Jensen said the attorney general's office policy is to only file bigamy charges against a polygamist in connection with other crimes, such as underage marriages, child abuse or welfare fraud. A straight bigamy prosecution hasn't been filed in Utah for more than 50 years, Jensen said.
A check of state court records by The Associated Press, however, found at least two cases.
Bob Foster had three wives when he was arrested and charged with bigamy in 1974. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to six months in jail. He was released after 21 days and ordered to serve five years of probation. A judge also said Foster was not allowed to live with his families. Foster died from cancer in 2008. He was still married to all three women.
Mark Easterday was arrested and charged with bigamy in 1999. Authorities were alerted to Easterday's multiple marriage as part of a custody battle during his divorce from his first wife. He ultimately pleaded no contest to adultery because the divorce was finalized before the bigamy case went to trial. Easterday was sentenced to probation.
Easterday, who left Utah and is currently married to two women, told The Associated Press he believes the Browns are right to fear a bigamy prosecution.
"I know from experience that they do prosecute," Easterday said. I think they should change the law over the entire country. Why it is that in some places a woman and a woman can be married, but a man can't have another wife?"
Polygamy in Utah and across much of the Intermountain West is a legacy of 19th century Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons abandoned the practice of plural marriage in the 1890s as a condition of Utah's statehood and now excommunicates members found engaging in polygamy.
An estimated 38,000 self-described Mormon fundamentalists continue the practice, believing it brings exaltation in heaven. Most keep their way of life a secret.
Typically, polygamous men are legally married to their first wives and wed subsequent brides only in religious ceremonies. The couples consider themselves "spiritually married."
(Source:  http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jMDHarOyYP1xyUcsdKpN13-0Sfbw?docId=ac03b7d719d64eb2acf02b463f0015ca)

All this going on - What are the Brown's doing? well. according to tweets, a LIV party!

Caramel Brownie sent me this:

Maybe this is real reason they didn't show up to court. Scared they were gonna miss out on LIV Party ...lol SMH
GGRRRRR ..they disgust me :/
-Caramel Brownie

"AspynBrown: @mizkylie Hey are you coming to the LIV party tonight?"
--http://twitter.com/AspynBrown/status/147858133371457536


 Really? Browns got partying on their minds huh?...smh

-Caramel Brownie
"LuvgvsUwngs: @LuvgvsUwngs @MeriBrown1 @JanelleBrown117 @rosecolored6 Off to get a Christmas present for your party!"
--http://twitter.com/LuvgvsUwngs/status/146352729814601730


What are YOUR thoughts?

In Secret, Polygamy Follows Africans to N.Y.

By NINA BERNSTEIN


She worked at the Red Lobster in Times Square and lived with her husband near Yankee Stadium. Yet one night, returning home from her job, Odine D. discovered that African custom, not American law, held sway over her marriage.

A strange woman was sitting in the living room, and Ms. D.’s husband, a security guard born in Ghana, introduced her as his other wife.

Devastated, Ms. D., a Guinean immigrant who insisted that her last name be withheld, said she protested: “I can’t live with the woman in my house — we have only two bedrooms.” Her husband cited Islamic precepts allowing a man to have up to four wives, and told her to get used to it. And she tried to obey.

Polygamy in America, outlawed in every state but rarely prosecuted, has long been associated with Mormon splinter groups out West, not immigrants in New York. But a fatal fire in a row house in the Bronx on March 7 revealed its presence here, in a world very different from the suburban Utah setting of “Big Love,” the HBO series about polygamists next door.

The city’s mourning for the dead — a woman and nine children in two families from Mali — has been followed by a hushed double take at the domestic arrangements described by relatives: Moussa Magassa, the Mali-born American citizen who owned the house and was the father of five children who perished, had two wives in the home, on different floors. Both survived.

No one knows how prevalent polygamy is in New York. Those who practice it have cause to keep it secret: under immigration law, polygamy is grounds for exclusion from the United States.

Under state law, bigamy can be punished by up to four years in prison.

No agency is known to collect data on polygamous unions, which typically take shape over time and under the radar, often with religious ceremonies overseas and a visitor’s visa for the wife, arranged by other relatives. Some men have one wife in the United States and others abroad.

But the Magassas clearly are not an isolated case. Immigration to New York and other American cities has soared from places where polygamy is lawful and widespread, especially from West African countries like Mali, where demographic surveys show that 43 percent of women are in polygamous marriages.

And the picture that emerges from dozens of interviews with African immigrants, officials and scholars of polygamy is of a clandestine practice that probably involves thousands of New Yorkers.

“It’s difficult, but one accepts it because it’s our religion,” said Doussou Traoré, 52, president of an association of Malian women in New York, who married an older man with two other wives who remain in Mali. “Our mothers accepted it. Our grandmothers accepted it. Why not us?”

Other women spoke bitterly of polygamy. They said their participation was dictated by an African culture of female subjugation and linked polygamy to female genital cutting and domestic violence. That view is echoed by most research on plural marriages, including studies of West African immigrants in France, where the government estimates that 120,000 people live in 20,000 polygamous families.

“The woman is in effect the slave of the man,” said a stylish Guinean businesswoman in her 40s who, like many women interviewed in Harlem and the Bronx, spoke on the condition of anonymity. “If you protest, your husband will hit you, and if you call the police, he’s going to divorce you, and the whole community will scorn you.”

“Even me,” she added. “My husband went to find another wife in Africa, and he has the right to do that. They tell you nothing, until one afternoon he says, ‘O.K., your co-wife arrives this evening.’ ”

Men, in contrast, tended to play down the existence of polygamy, if they were willing to discuss it at all.

Dr. Ousseiny Coulibaly, 36, a gynecologist, was born in Mali and educated in France, where polygamy has long been an explosive immigration and women’s rights issue. Yet he said he was unaware of any cases among his West African patients at Harlem Hospital Center.

“I’m not asking,” he said. “I’m not even suspecting it. There might be so many things I don’t know.”

Don’t-ask-don’t-know policies prevail in many agencies that deal with immigrant families in New York, perhaps because there is no framework for addressing polygamy in a city that prides itself on tolerance of religious, cultural and sexual differences — and on support for human rights and equality.

Last summer, when a nonprofit agency in the Bronx surveyed the needs of the sub-Saharan immigrants in its child care and literacy programs, questionnaires asked about interest in marriage counseling, but not about polygamy.

“This is a very private community,” said Rose Rivera, director of Head Start at the agency, the Women’s Housing and Employment Development Corporation, which largely relies on the fathers to translate for the mothers. “They’re not really ready to trust us.”

Yet on Monday, two Gambian women with children in the program acknowledged, when asked by a reporter, that polygamy was a given in their lives. Both described themselves as “first wives,” married at 16, who joined their husbands in New York in the 1990s, never having attended school.

One, now 36, with three children, said her husband was betrothed to a second wife in Gambia whom he would soon bring to the Bronx. Protest was pointless. “They won’t listen,” she said. “Whether you like it or not, they will marry.”

Islam is often cited as the authority that allows polygamy. But in Africa, the practice is a cultural tradition that crosses religious lines, while some Muslim lands elsewhere sharply restrict it. The Koran says a man should not take more than one wife if he cannot treat them all equally — a very high bar, many Muslims say.

Ms. Traoré, of the Malian women’s group, cited two prosperous households in Bergen County, in New Jersey, that seemed to pass the test.

“They get along very well,” she said of the wives in one home, who married their husband in Africa at the same time. “It’s extraordinary. When they come to our celebrations they dress the same, the same outfit, the same jewels. The husband is completely fair.”

Still, since only one wife could have entered the country as a spouse, the other is probably more vulnerable to deportation, she acknowledged.

More typical, many immigrants said, are cramped apartments in the Bronx with many children underfoot, clashes between jealous co-wives and domestic violence. And if the household breaks up, the wives’ legal status is murky at best, with little case law to guide decisions on marital property or benefits.

Men, too, can end up in polygamous marriages reluctantly, driven by the dictates of clan and culture. That seems to be the case for the husband of Ms. D., the Guinean restaurant worker. Efforts to reach him for this article failed, but as Ms. D. tells it, he insisted he was just as surprised as she was when his first wife, left behind in Ghana, showed up six years ago.

Their match, like many African marriages, had been made by their families before he left for New York. Years later, he met and courted Ms. D. in the Bronx, saying his relationship with his Ghanaian wife was over.

But a year after he married Ms. D. in Guinea and they returned to the Bronx, relatives arranged for a visa for his first wife to join them.

“In Africa, women accept things like that,” Ms. D. said. “Here, the apartments are too small.”

She recalled terrible fights during the three months they all lived together. The conflicts continued after she paid for the first wife to move to another apartment. For eight months, the husband shuttled between the two, but he became abusive, she said. And when Ms. D was five months pregnant, he stopped showing up.

Like many West African women, Ms. D. had been subjected to genital cutting as a child, making sex painful. The other wife had not been cut.

“It’s not life, your man sharing a bed with another woman,” Ms. D. said. “You’re always thinking in your head, ‘does he love me?’ ”

Such stories of polygamy, New York style, are typically shared by women only in whispered conversations in laundries and at hair-braiding salons. With no legal immigration status and no right to asylum from polygamy, many are afraid to expose their husbands to arrest or deportation, which could dishonor and impoverish their families here and in Africa.

But Aminata Kante, an immigrant from Ivory Coast who found help for herself and Ms. D. at Sanctuary for Families, an agency for battered women, uses her own story to urge rebellion.

Wed at 15 in Ivory Coast, over the telephone, to a New York City taxi driver thousands of miles away, Ms. Kante was delivered to her groom on a false passport. She said she endured his abuse for years, bore three children, turned over her paycheck from work as a health aide, and tried harder to appease him when he sent two of the children to Africa.

But something snapped, she said, when he announced that he had taken a teenage second wife, also married, just as she had been, over the phone — a valid wedding in Ivory Coast. Ms. Kante left him. Relatives pressed her to return. Uncles warned that she would be branded a bad woman, and that the stigma would follow her children in Africa. Without papers, vulnerable to deportation, she ended up in a homeless shelter.

But now, at 30, she tells the story in the warm glow of her own living room, her children restored to her, and a green card secured, through unusual legal efforts by lawyers at Sanctuary.

“I know a lady who lives with her husband and another woman in one room, a two-bedroom, with 11 kids,” she said. “I tell her, she has to move — it’s not a life.” And her own husband? His second wife is 23 now, with three children. And recently, Ms. Kante said, he married a third.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/nyregion/23polygamy.html



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