Mr. Mitchell revisited

Some people try to claim that Brian David Mitchell and the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping is a case that brings up issues unique to Utah.
However, these people never bother to wiegh in on whether he should have been excommunicated by the Church. Since these people tend to be those who shout things like "Excommuncation is a violent act" and to claim it somehow denies peoples "free agency", to be consistent they should louadly protest the Church for having excommunicated him and gripe that the Church ferreted out the secret fundementalists networks in the Salt Lake stake he was in to what extent they did.
However, ferreting out fundamentalists networks is one thing that at times requires aid to stake presidents from those higher up, and such things are constantly denounced by the Libertine Mormons. That even is not a good name, but these people believe in liberty from the priesthood, liberty from direction by Jesus Christ through his prophets, and liberty from any limits to doctrinal orthodoxy.
So the actual result of my assessment of Brian David Mitchell is that the only possible fault by the Church was not excommunicating him sooner, not making his bizarre views, including his desire to have multiple wives more public and letting him be anonymous. Of course, doing more against him would have been uncalled for, and you can not punish people for crimes they have not done, so I really do not think different actions towards Mitchell would be called for.
If we had open lists of excommunicated people it would probably contribute more to feelings of animosity in Utah. Yet, it is the Church's failure to openly urge its members to shun in everyway polygamists, the Church's failure to set up autos-de-fe and burn polygamists at the stake or at least throw them in dungeons, that leads to our enemies being able to claim we are too lenient on polygamists.
Some how the fact that Utah is the only state that has managed to convict Warren Jeffs of any crime does not prevent it from being accused of being too lenient on polygamists by residents of New York where there has never been any attempt at all to prosecute men for marrying second wives who are 15 when they are 35.