Two conservative commentators are questioning Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner’s commitment to true marriage after he announced the hiring of a pro-polygamy lawyer to sue the Obama administration over its handling of ObamaCare.
Jonathan Turley, a liberal George Washington University law professor and prominent media pundit, will argue that President Barack Obama’s administration violated the constitution when it made changes to the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. ObamaCare) after its passage without approval from Congress. Turley may also sue the president over his recent executive order granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.
Writing for National Review, conservative commentators Dennis Saffran and Eamon Moynihan said they support the aim of both lawsuits, but they questioned the choice of the liberal Turley to lead the fight. While they concede that Turley is a talented attorney, they note that he is also well known for being one of the legal elite’s most vocal and ardent supporters of legalized polygamy – a position with which they’d rather not see the GOP associated.
Turley is perhaps best known for having successfully sued to decriminalize polygamy in Utah, where fringe Mormon sects had long flouted state law banning the practice by holding church ceremonies and cohabitating, without seeking legal recognition from the government.
Turley represented the stars of the TV reality show “Sister Wives” in challenging Utah’s anti-polygamy statute, which banned cohabitation among multiple consensual sex partners. He drew the ire of homosexual activists by hitching his clients’ cause to the so-called “marriage equality” bandwagon that has seen dozens of states’ definitions of marriage redefined by judicial fiat to include same-sex couples.
Turley argued that the United States Supreme Court’s 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision overturning anti-sodomy laws across the nation guaranteed Americans the right “to live your life according to your own values and faith,” even if that means “marrying” more than one person.
“While widely disliked, if not despised, polygamy is just one form among the many types of plural relationships in our society,” Turley wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “It is widely accepted that a person can have multiple partners and have children with such partners. But the minute that person expresses a spiritual commitment and ‘cohabits’ with those partners, it is considered a crime.”
Turley condemned gay activists for remaining “silent or outright hostile to demands from polygamists for the same protections provided to [homosexuals],” but conceded that their avoidance of the issue “might be strategic.”
“Some view the effort to decriminalize polygamy as a threat to the recognition of same-sex marriages or gay rights generally,” Turley wrote. “After all, many who opposed the decriminalization of homosexual relations used polygamy as the culmination of a parade of horribles. In his dissent in Lawrence, Justice Antonin Scalia said the case would mean the legalization of ‘bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity.’”
“Justice Scalia is right in one respect,” conceded Turley. “Homosexuals and polygamists do have a common interest: the right to be left alone as consenting adults. Otherwise he’s dead wrong. There is no spectrum of private consensual relations — there is just a right of privacy that protects all people so long as they do not harm others.”
Both Saffran and Moynihan, however, argue that polygamy does cause harm – to society at large, and to people drawn into the lifestyle.
“Polygamy, sadly, is an old experiment that has been tried in many places and at many times,” the two men wrote. “The arguments against it are manifest.”
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“Allowing some men to obtain many wives, while others are unable to find a wife at all, is a surefire recipe for violence and discord,” wrote Saffran and Moynihan. They note that wherever polygamy is practiced, war and violence are the norm while economic development remains stagnant, as in fundamentalist Islamic nations and the countries of West Africa.
“More fundamentally, polygamy is intrinsically inegalitarian,” the authors asserted. “It means many wives for some men and none for others. It also means that earlier, and typically older, wives are less valued. Especially in the Islamic world, these older wives often find themselves on the path to involuntary divorce, as younger women are brought in to replace them.”
“As with so many liberal causes, the Left here talks the language of equality,” wrote Saffran and Moynihan. “But somehow some powerless group always gets left out: fatherless children, mentally ill homeless people, crime victims, disfavored ethnic groups like Asian-Americans, discarded women in polygamous harems.”
“Given all of this, should the Republican party — the natural defender of the traditional family — be engaging a lawyer who ardently champions this radical and destructive ‘rights’ claim?” the authors asked. “After all, the platform of the Republican party that nominated Abraham Lincoln condemned polygamy and slavery as the ‘twin relics of barbarism.’”
Saffran and Moynihan said that their greatest worry was that Boehner’s allegiance with Turley would “go a long way toward mainstreaming [Turley’s] views.”
“While few liberals now openly share these views, the GOP action sends a clear signal that they’re no big deal — that even John Boehner is cool with them,” the authors wrote.
“What self-respecting liberal Democrat wants to seem less cool than John Boehner?” the authors add.