Polygamy Ban Challenged in Utah

The question of polygamy has been a very contentious issue in Utah for over a hundred years. The Mormon church official rejected polygamy in order to accommodate the American government, but some Mormons always continued to follow the original practice as defended by Joseph Smith. Today, some are challenging the ban on polygamy in the courts - and using the recent Supreme Court decision invalidating anti-sodomy laws as an argument.

The Dayton Daily News reports:

[Brian] Barnard has not disclosed his clients' faith except to say that polygamy is a ``sincere and deeply held religious major tenet.'' ... ``It's not a case people can sniff at,'' said Richard G. Wilkins, a law professor at Brigham Young University. ``If you can't require monogamy, how in the world can you deny the claims of the polygamists, particularly when it's buttressed by the claim of religion?''

Others say Barnard will have a hard time taking the court's reasoning from the bedroom and applying it to marriage. The Lawrence case involved private behavior: Two gay men were arrested after police entered their apartment and found them having sex. ``It's possible to take the concept of private and intimate relationships and extend it to marriages, but we're not there yet,'' said Wayne McCormack, a law professor at the University of Utah. The state could try to justify the ban on polygamy by citing the messiness of configuring property rights and benefits between multiple spouses, McCormack said.

Simply arguing that polygamy is immoral or unpopular probably won't work - but there are other arguments that might work, as McCormack states. The problems of property rights, especially in the context of a divorce, are pretty serious. The question of whether a purely private sexual relationships is protected should also be granted official government sanction in the form of a marriage license is another - but if Barnard wins that argument, he will also essentially win the argument for gay marriage, I think.

Read More:

• Ethics of Gay Marriage
• Mormonism
• Recent Books on American Religion