Call Central Casting: Ignorant Sheriff Candidate

Routt County, Colorado Sheriff John Warner seems intent on fitting into the stereotypical ignorant rural sheriff role we see so often in the media.

Rainbows customarily go by whimsical names they have chosen for themselves, but Warner said U.S. Magistrate Judge David West, who had traveled over from his usual base in Gunnison, was having none of it.

"He is addressing them by their God-given names, and the tickets are written out that way, too," Warner said.

One wonders if, in addition to the divinely inspired theory of child naming, he also believes in the "stork theory" of childbirth, widely discredited in the medical community but still widely propogated in children's literature. Or, perhaps he thinks that all parents are gods, but I suspect he is more inclined to monotheism than Shinto in his religious orientation.

Neither the judge nor the sheriff appear to be right on the law when it comes to names. Colorado law follows the common law, which provides that a person can adopt another name at will, and that the statutory method for changing one's name, provided at Sections 13-15-101 and 13-15-102 of the Colorado Revised Statues, merely provides an additional method beyond the common law for making a name change. In re Knight, 36 Colo. App. 187, 537 P.2d 1085 (1975). Incidentally, in Christian scripture, divine naming is restricted to exceptional cases, see e.g., Luke 1:31, Mark 3:16-17, and arguably Luke 1:59-63, compared to the general rule of Genesis 2:19, where humans get the job.

The Rainbow Family of Living Light has an unofficial home page here and is running into trouble for not obtaining a permit for their 20,000 person gathering in the rural area on federal land near Steamboat Springs. Probation and orders to leave the area, were the order of the day in the special session of the federal court (one not unlike an effort of Justice Souther when he was a state attorney general, that was instrumental to bringing him to the U.S. Supreme Court).

I imagine that a little creativity and tolerance could have produced a more productive interaction here from mainstream society in Routt County, but apparently, those involved are incapable of the feat.