RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Polygamy Defended

Calling their lives blessed, more than a dozen children and young adults from polygamist families in Utah spoke at a rally Saturday, calling for a change in state laws and the right to live the life and religion they choose.

Polygamy is banned in the Utah Constitution and is a felony offense. The rally was unusual because those who practice polygamy typically try to live under the radar.

It drew about 250 supporters to City Hall, said Mary Batchelor, co-founder of Principle Voices of Polygamy, which helped organize the event.

The youths, ages 10 to 20, belong to various religious sects, as well as families that practice polygamy independent of religious affiliation. They said they spoke voluntarily. They gave only their first names, saying they were protecting the privacy of their parents.

Dressed in flip-flops and blue jeans, bangs drooping over their eyes, the teens at Saturday's rally talked on cell phones and played rock music, singing lyrics written to defend their family life.

All of the speakers praised their parents and families and said their lives were absent of the abuse, neglect, forced marriages and other "horror stories" sometimes associated with polygamist communities.

Speakers said that with "dozens of siblings" and multiple "moms" they are well supported, encouraged to be educated, and can make their own choices about marriage.

First brought to Utah by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1846, polygamy was abandoned by Mormons as a condition of statehood in 1890. The church now excommunicates members found to be practicing plural marriage. It also disavows those who call themselves "fundamentalist Mormons," although most Utah-based polygamists identify themselves with those terms.

Fundamentalists split with the Mormon church in the 19th century and continue to believe plural marriage is the key to eternal salvation.

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Pariah said:
No. They're all consenting adults, so it's perfectly fine.

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Pariah said:
No. They're all consenting adults, so it's perfectly fine.

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Animalman said:

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Pariah said:
No. They're all consenting adults, so it's perfectly fine.

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You are being facetious, yes?

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Uschi said:

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Animalman said:

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Pariah said:
No. They're all consenting adults, so it's perfectly fine.

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You are being facetious, yes?

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No, he's being a dousche and you went for it.

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Consciously taking tactics from the gay-rights movement, polygamists have reframed their struggle, choosing in interviews to de-emphasize their religious beliefs and focus on their desire to live "in freedom," according to Anne Wilde, director of community relations for Principle Voices, a pro-polygamy group based in Salt Lake.

In recent months, polygamy activists have held rallies, appeared on nationally televised news shows and lobbied legislators. Before the Nov. 7 elections, one pro-polygamy group issued a six-page analysis of all Utah's state and local candidates and their views on polygamy. "We can make a difference," the group told supporters.

Utah's attorney general, Mark L. Shurtleff, no longer prosecutes bigamy between consenting adults, though it is a felony. Shurtleff and his staff have established an organization, Safety Net, to bring together at monthly meetings representatives from at least five polygamous communities and law enforcement officers. He has arranged to have representatives of polygamous groups address Utah police. And three years ago, he wrote legislation to reduce bigamy between adults from a felony to a misdemeanor, although pressure from Utah's county attorneys derailed that.

n their quest to decriminalize bigamy, practitioners have had help from unlikely quarters. HBO's series "Big Love," about a Viagra-popping man with three wives, three sets of bills, three sets of chores and three sets of kids, marked a watershed because of its sympathetic portrayal of polygamists. The U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which voided laws criminalizing sodomy, also aided polygamy's cause because it implied that the court disapproved of laws that reach into the bedroom.

Since then, liberal legal scholars, generally no friend of the polygamists' conservative-leaning politics, have championed decriminalization. One of them is Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has written two op-eds for USA Today calling for the legalization of bigamy -- and same-sex marriage.

• In 2005, after Canada legalized same-sex marriage, then-Prime Minister Paul Martin commissioned a $150,000 study by three law professors to debunk any notion that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy.
  
  Big mistake. The study recommended that Canada repeal its anti-polygamy law. While they recognized "the strong association between polygamy and gender inequality," the authors determined it wasn't fair to discriminate, for example, against a Kuwaiti second wife who would be barred from immigrating to Canada with their husband and another wife.
  
  "Why criminalize behavior?" study co-author Martha Bailey explained. "We don't criminalize adultery."
  
  It's funny how quickly the switch can flip. Now civil-liberties types are wondering if maybe polygamy should be legal.
  
  On Monday, the British Columbia Supreme Court began a trial to determine if Section 293 of the Criminal Code, which outlaws polygamy, is constitutional. If the court decides it isn't, Canada could become the only Western democracy without an anti-polygamy law.
  
  This trial is not the result of same-sex marriage. In 2008, a British Columbia prosecutor charged two polygamist leaders of fundamentalist Mormon offshoot sects in the community of Bountiful; a court threw out the case on technical grounds, and now the law itself is on trial.
  
  In an affidavit filed with the court, George Washington University law Professor Jonathan Turley argued that polygamy "is a civil rights issue deserving the same protections afforded to homosexuals and other minority groups."

• One thing that seems to unite the polyamorous community is a real enthusiasm for digging into emotions. Honesty, openness and communication are cornerstones for polyamorous relationships, Holmes has found. “They’re talking a lot, they’re negotiating a lot, they’re bringing their feelings to the table a lot,” he said.
  
  It’s this intensive conversation that might be wise for monogamous couples to emulate, Holmes said. His work also suggests that basic emotions work very differently in polyamorous relationships. Take jealousy. If you ask most people how they’d feel if their partner had sex with or fell in love with someone else, the responses would be pretty negative: fear, anger, jealousy, rejection. Ask a polyamorous person the same question, and they’re more likely to tell you they’d be thrilled. It’s a concept called “compersion,” which means the joy felt when a partner discovers love outside of you. It’s similar to the feeling the typical person might get after finding out their best friend scored her dream job, Holmes said. But in this case, the happiness stems from a lover’s external relationships.

• Advocacy groups for polygamy and individual liberties on Saturday hailed a federal judge's ruling that key parts of Utah's polygamy laws are unconstitutional, saying it will remove the threat of arrest for those families.
  
  U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups said in the decision handed down Friday that a provision in Utah law forbidding cohabitation with another person violated the First Amendment right of freedom of religion.

• Now that we’ve defined that love and devotion and family isn’t driven by gender alone, why should it be limited to just two individuals? The most natural advance next for marriage lies in legalized polygamy