GUIDE TO POLYGAMY ISSUES FOR JOURNALISTS: From ReligionLink, the Religion Newswriters Association website

Polygamy has emerged as an issue in the ferocious marriage debates. Could sanctioning gay marriage lead to legalizing polygamy? It depends on whom you ask. Though polygamy is illegal in all 50 states, it's thought to be practiced as matter of religion by thousands of people in the United States--particularly in the West--and is rarely prosecuted. Polygamy is back in the public consciousness for the first time in years because of wrangling over the legal definition of marriage and several high-profile criminal cases.

So far, there has been no serious challenge to anti-polygamy laws, but, as scholar Sarah Barringer Gordon puts it, culturally there is a significant disturbance in the waters. For one thing, marriage is no longer the main way people organize their lives. Living together without marriage--now extremely common--once used to be illegal, too. For another, the legal arguments from the late nineteenth-century court cases that denied a free exercise right to preach and practice polygamy have been rendered obsolete by the Supreme Court's subsequent First Amendment case law, according to John Witte, director of Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at Emory University. The court would have to rely on other arguments to reach the same result.

In some regions of the country, many people take the attitude that religiously motivated polygamy should just be left alone as a matter between consenting adults. When polygamists are prosecuted, it's usually for what some label "polygabuse"--charges related to crimes such as incest, underage marriage or welfare fraud. But many, including women who have left polygamy, say polygamous relationships are inherently patriarchal and tend to mistreat women. The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints outlawed polygamy in 1890, but some unofficial offshoots of the church continue to practice it.

Will polygamous communities press for legitimacy? While a number are openly hoping that they will gain standing through legalization of same-sex marriage, they are counterbalanced by those who insist on defining marriage as being between one man and one woman.

Why it matters
Both advocates and opponents of same-sex marriage sometimes cite the religious aspects of marriage to support their case. Advocates of polygamy also cite religious beliefs as a reason for the practice to be allowed. If religious beliefs are a factor in same-sex marriage, should they be a factor in deciding the legality of polygamy, too?

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posted by Eve at 6:19 PM | link

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