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Utah Attorney General's Office wants more meetings with FLDS

[At last week's meeting, FLDS member and spokesman Willie Jessop said a considerable amount of time was devoted to the issue of underage marriages. In a statement issued at the FLDS Church's YFZ Ranch, the faith recently announced that it will no longer condone or encourage those type of unions.

"Not only did I say this publicly, but the FLDS have lived it privately for more than a year," Jessop said...]

Sounds like the FLDS leadership has quietly dumped Warren Jeffs and his child bride teachings and practices.

If they'd only announced this decision publicly a year ago, instead privately adopting it, the FLDS and Texas might have avoided the YFZ raid fiasco.

Sounds like an "I'll send my assistant to meet your assistant" type meeting. No concrete progress will be achieved, but maybe the finer points will come to the table.

You mean that adults are going to talk things out like adults instead of snatching children and destroying families? What a concept.

Does our AG do anything other than meet on polygamy? There muts be many other important legal matters. It seems like he is obsessed with one and only one issue.

Last time I checked, polygamy itself was illegal. Why have meetings? Arrest them and throw them in prison.

Isn't it interesting how Mark Shurtleff has told the public all these years how the FLDS are not or do not cooperate. Now it is he who refuses to go to any meetings. HMMMMM!!!!!

Leave the polygamists alone...

Most of us around here exist today because somebody in our family tree also had similar beliefs.

Who and how has authority to say that a woman who has gone through puberty may not be married? Do you have any authority beyond "might makes right?"

What Shurtleff says to the FLDS will depend on who shows up.. and which vote pool he is pandering to that given day.

The same authority that says a child who has gone through puberty cannot simply be raped by any man who decides to breed with her.

The morals of our society are sometimes the only things that separate us from the animals.

Satsn is surely in the hearts of mankind in this day and age! Children subjected to marriage as a child bride could NEVER understand a marriage relationship! Mankind has used immoral powers to destroy the emotional, physical and spiritual well-being of children for centuries! The innocent children suffer the rest of their lives inner conflict no one could possibly understand but they! Stop this atrocity in its tracks now! Give children a firm foundation and childhood they deserve without suffering fear of being raped by older sexist hungry men!

The FLDS will never give up their child brides. Send them all to prison, since plural marriage and welfare fraud is illegal.

Hey Shurtleff, good idea. It is such an important issue that you may want to show up. As you have been
on the guilty untill proven innocent side of this coin.

And while you at it, maybe meet with all the gays and lesbos before you start a unlawfull seizure of human beings.

Why does the state of Utah even care who marrys who?
If they are of age what business is it of the State
Goverment.

Oh now I remember, arrest and inprison all people
who want to smoke weed rather than drink or smoke
tabacco.

Again a prime example of how goverments try to eliminate freedoms.

Why does the Goverment have any right to tell me what
I can or cannot do in my home. Marry whom I want and as many times as I want. Teach my children what I feel is right and wrong.

Hey don't worry I don't want to have sex with underage girls,boys or dogs.

At least the barn door has been closed after the proverbial cow has escaped.
It looks like the only person that may have been "molested" was the 12 year old in the photo with Jeffs. The girl is now 16 and Jeffs is in prison.
So if the gossip is true and if girls were taken as brides and if the kiss was more than a kiss and if there are no more underage brides the whole rotten mess falls on the head of a man already in prison.
Super.....so now both sides can meet once a quarter over coffee and donuts and talk about the weather.
I bet Texas will continue to persue charges, rack up millions more in legal expenses and put Jeffs in a Texas prison just to show that they are "tough on crime".
In the meantime the FLDS will continue to practice their religion and wait till the girls consent to consumate their spiritual unions at 17....everyone goes away happy.
But just to spice things up, Hildrbrand has said that he has another series of laws targeting the FLDS ready for the next Texas legislative session in January.

Wild Bill: "why does the government have any right to tell me..." Since your elected representatives do the job of ordering our society so that we may all live in peace. That's why you elect them. To sort all these things out and find solutions. You send them there. You are the Government. There is no 'wild' country in which you can do as you damm please. You belong to a species called humans. There is order even in the most primative of animal societies of which humans are not one. We are a higher order animal we have a higher order society. We do the best we can till we can do better. Let's keep working on it together.

He'll do anything to get in the news.

It's interesting to see the twisted ways in which the FLDS and their supporters justify their unethical lifestyle.

Do you know how many "illegal" things are being done in 50 states? Aside from the old laws still left on the books in many places, are we going to arrest all practicing gay people, how about illegal immigrants, folk commiting adultry?
We better get going, we're going to need to build a LOT more prisons.

Watching the interaction between a mainstream culture and a small sect is interesting.

Certainly forced underage marriages are illegal and should be prosecuted. Given that Texas found 20 possible examples of underage marriage (five of the females were still children), one can only guess that maybe there are 300 FLDS cases involving statutory rape, most of them being in Utah and Arizona.

Even if this is reigned in by legal action or by the FLDS, it is still disturbing watching girls being raised in a culture that teaches them to accept forced marriage at 18 years-old, especially when it involves marriage to an old man.

One has to wonder what if anything is going on down in Texas. Has the opposition to the seizure of FLDS cowed law enforcement into not doing anything? Is Texas still deciding under what conditions to prosecute polygamy? Is the delay due to a decision to issue arrest warrants all at the same time, like arrest warrants for a drug ring?

I would like to see our government enforce laws (i.e. polygamy and welfare fraud) than "talking with them". If we want to have a moral society we need to enforce laws rather than just talk about them.