You're right, Nathan, and really this is one of the best examples of judges just making stuff up and declaring it to be constitutional law. As I recall it, so-called "neutral state laws" that prohibit somebody's religious practice were ruled to be applicable in the case of Mormons and more recently in the Native American Church peyote cases, but courts ruled that exceptions had to be granted for, for example, Quakers and the draft. I never saw much distinction except that the judges thought Quakers were OK but didn't like Mormons or Native American Church members.

I think the issue of polygamy really relates to the difficulty in bureaucratic record keeping. But the revelation by the Morman Church leader (was it still Brigham Young?) really shouldn't be criticized. The Church also had a big problem with Blacks that was rectified by a revelation by the a later leader, I believe it was Ezra Taft Benson. Anyway, the ultimate penalty for bigamy is...

Two mothers-in-law.

Joe

The association of polygamy with sexism can only be true in the case of the historical configurations which have represented it. I personally see no problem with the idea that multiple people can find a loving, intimate relationship to share. For example, 3 women and 2 men could feel that their love for one another transcends the typical categories, and these individuals would also have had to overcome the deeply ingrained jealousy and envy that we are all aware of. Mormons and polygamist Muslims, on the other hand, use marriage as a form of ownership, not an expression of love. Of course, most Americans would not have such an open-minded view of the validity of group marriages.

Here's an interesting article in The Independent about the Mormon enclave in southern Utah. It surmises a conflagration is in the offing with it's 'Waco' headline grabber.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=492734

I find a comparisan between gay marriage and polygamy to be totally bogus.

Allowing homosexuals to participate fully in the norms of society is a progressive step forward. Polygamy, on the other hand, is associated primarily with ancient and medieval norms of behavior. Polygamy is system in which a small number of wealthy or powerful men dominate not only the women, but the other men as well (who are often left with no wives at all, since the number of males and females born in any human society is roughly equal).

I believe that polygamy is a major factor in the obscene level of political violence that we see in the Islamic world. Polygamy creates a large cohort of young men who will be pushed out of the competition for marriage and fatherhood.

The progressive direction has been to arrive at a monogamous compact whereby all men and women have equitable opportunity to achieve the married state and the attendant social ratification. Bringing gays into the picture is also a progressive step.

Wvmcl, you seem to be imagining that polygamy is widespread in the Muslim world. Have you actually bothered to research any statistics on this? Polygamy is actually much more common in sub-Saharan (non-Muslim) Africa than in the Muslim world, in terms of what percentage of the population engages in it. See here (PDF).

BTW, last summer I did some research into the narrow question of how American courts have dealt with recognition of (foreign) polygamous marriages that were valid where made. Most of the cases deal with Native Americans (whose tribal law is "foreign" in relation to U.S. law). Apparently polygamy was common among many Native American tribes. Several other cases deal with Sikhs and Chinese.

To equate polygamy only with Islam is to ignore the facts. To make sweeping generalizations about both polygamy and Islam based on this false equation is little better than prejudice.

Nathan, I am really shocked. This piece is outrageous. You would allow polygamy in the United States under any circumstances? Would you would allow radical Muslims (or anyone else for that matter) to legally start chopping off hands, lopping off tongues, and committing other outrages as well? The timing issue is a red herring.

This deeply undercuts your moral authority. You are not merely defending gay-marriage, you are promoting polygamy and presumably polyamory.

You are ready to cast moderate Muslims to the winds at a time when we need them as allies to the Global War on Terrorism, the war you dislike.

Who do you think makes up the largest group of moderate Muslims? It may surprise you, but the answer is women.

The Tapestry of Polygamy page documents some of the myriad abuses caused by polygamy. Sometimes the husband even commercially exploits his wife's labor power.

Polygamy is the slavery of women. I just don't see how defending it--either as desirable or as tolerable--fits in with your usually progressive politics. How is your message really coherent after this?

You falsely charge that Mormons were "forced. . . to recant a core part of their religious beliefs."

In truth, Utah's statehood was made conditional on its voiding of polygamous marriages. If the citizens of the Utah territory did not want to meet that condition, they didn't have to. They did want statehood, and they met the condition.

Furthermore, according to the US Mormon church, their leader had a religious revelation that polygamy was wrong. The government had nothing to do with that revelation.

That said, there was unjust persecution of Mormons. The Mountain Meadows Massacre should be mentioned. I don't see how stopping polygamy, however, counts as persecution.

Combining this with the school vouchers issue, I would have to draw the conclusion that you have reached a point where you are privileging free exercise of religion over just about every other consideration.

If you privilege religious belief that much, how can you prevent religious belief from justifying incest, violent crime, or the like? How can a state government exercise its police power to regulate the public morals if a person can always cite a contrary religious belief? I don't understand where you are going with this.

andrew hagan,

you are not a leftist or progressive. maybe you're a centrist. more likely you're a righist. what you are is a misuser of language. no one defines progressive like you define progressive. the left will not be so easily co-opted. if you want to present yourself as an ally go to a neocon blog like lgf.

by "andrew hagan" i of course mean andrew hagen

I think that the book Under the Banner of Heaven should be required reading by anyone wishing to discuss polygamy as it applies to the Mormon church. Very eye-opening.

I second the recommendation of Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. Eminently readable, scathing book.

Funny you should mention it, Mr. Newman. Today brought news that three big-city mayors voiced their support for SF's gay marriage actions.

One of them is the mayor of Salt Lake City:

Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, an honorary board member of the pro-gay-marriage group Freedom to Marry, said he welcomed the developments in San Francisco and Massachusetts.

"The more people become familiar with the impacts of marital discrimination on so many people, the greater progress we're going to see," Anderson said.

Why do I think Mr. Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, has something else in mind?

You would allow polygamy in the United States under any circumstances? Would you would allow radical Muslims (or anyone else for that matter) to legally start chopping off hands, lopping off tongues, and committing other outrages as well?

If that isn't an illogical comparison, Andrew, I don't know what is. Allowing people to having loving, intimate relationships that go against the norm versus mutilation as punishment. I see the similarity.

And another thing:

I still fail to see how the historical examples of polygomy (Mormonism, Islam, etc.) succeed in discrediting the idea that two is the magic number beyond which anything else is a crime.

you guys that recommend "under the banner of heaven" are victims of fallacious thinking.

generalizing the behaviour of one fundamentalist mormon to all fundamentalist mormons is ridiculous.

my guess is that the overall murder rate amoung fundamentalist mormons is probably way lower than the national average.

The issue here is in fact whether the state should have any role in deciding how two adults (or three, or four) organise a household. Someone kind of hit the nail on the head above. the present system of state marriage is a bureaucratic measure. It has about as much spiritual importance as any other state-mandated registration procedure, i.e., none. You may as well get a priest to officiate at the registration of your car down at the DMV.

Zero, you need to actually read Under the Banner of Heaven; your statement above shows pretty clearly that you haven't.

My point is, most people don't even know the history of Mormonism or Mormon Fundamentalists when they start spouting off about polygamy. The book is instructive in the extreme, and every bit as worthy as the recommendations of it.

If your going to read the Banner of Heaven book, maybe you should read A Marvelous Work and a Wonder to counterbalance the Banner book. I am a 5th generation Mormon, everyone I know was a true hard-working law abiding citizen. Mormons do great charity work worldwide. I resent discrimination of my religion based on the reading of one book.

Debbie Marks,SanAntonio TX

I, Don't think people understand the seriousness of this matter

We as of today do not know what causes people to be gay ...If its a problem
in the brain or just plain being a rebel ..maybe it's not a problem at all
. ...Until we find out what causes gayness "we don't need to legalize it"

Hi, unless you're a Mormon Fundamentalist, you have little to worry about (well, other than the inherent strangeness of the Mormon tenets of faith, but hey, they're really no worse than any other religion's...)

Katherine,

Okay, until we found out what causes love (as opposed to mere lust), let's not have marriage at all. Viewing most relationships, I've started to be convinced that it is a problem in the brain; it's certainly not very rebelious.

In theory, you have a point. However, in practice polygamy seems to frequently amount to culturally-permitted sex abuse of minors. Many of the cases reported out of Utah seem to involve girls as young as 12 or 13, i.e., well under the age of consent. This is a problem with Muslims also. At this point, the issue is no longer a cultural/religious variation, and becomes one of the exploitation of minors, which can't be sanctioned as permissible.

kenneth cavness,

i might read "under the banner of heaven" if i really had a lot of time to waste.

but i am deeply suspicious about any book with a subtitle implying that mormonism is a violent faith.

mormons get a lot of shit for the same reason that muslims get a lot of shit: conservatives don't like them because they aren't christian enough and liberals don't like them because they're conservative.

check out: http://www.justice.utah.gov/Research/CrimeStats/Murder.htm

as you can see the murder rate in utah is quite a bit below the national average.

Katherine, "legalizing being gay?" I have never laughed so hard in my life. Because you don't understand the reason for something it should not be allowed? Ignorance is the reason for so many atrocious crimes in our history... The murder of the jews, slavery ect. Also if you researched the subject you would find that scientists do infact believe that they have found the "gay gene."

I am in a Polyfidelity relationship. I am neither a Muslim, nor a Mormon. I just happen to be in love with two women. We are all adults who are not related to each other. We are not swingers. We do not have any of the baggage normally associated with Polygamy. I am not a sexist (quite the contrary, I am an ardent feminist). Plural marriage is not a religious issue with us. In our household, we have no minorities, because we are all free adults.

I strongly disagree with your readers who think it is okay to discriminate on this basis merely because some, or even most polygamists are abusive (I've no idea if that is true). Do they also advocate the banning of heterosexual monogamous marriage because most, if not all, men involved in them are sexist abusers? After all--every single case of spouse abuse in the United states for the past 100 odd years has been perpetrated within the confines of them.

The Supreme Court (you remember them, right?) has ruled that it is Unconstitutional to abrograte the rights of a class of people merely because a particular behavior (whether it is illicit or not)is associated with them.

This rant was not aimed at the author. I appreciate what you have done to further my rights, both as a practitioner of polyfidelity and as a non-heterosexual. It is some of your readers who I disagree with.

Thank you,
Michael

Cheers for Michael Badillo! In any modern, reaonably democratic and non-hierarchical society (even with massive wealth differentials) there will be some tendency toward monogamy, and that may very well be a good thing.

But I don't see any need to insist on strict monogamy in morals or the law. In fact, allowing for a degree of polyamory seems to be a reasonable safety valve. I don't believe that either men or women are strictly monogamous by nature, and I see no point in pretending that we are. In fact, it may be destructive.

Thanks for sharing your personal experience, Michael. It's useful to get some testimony of real experience.

- Russell Blackford

http://www.users.bigpond.com/russellblackford/

Interesting to find this blog in search today.

I have just recently read the pro-polygamy view about the slippery slope yesterday.

Plus, there are now non-Mormon Christians promoting what they call Christian Polygamy.

Your blog post seems to be on track.