Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 02:12:31 -0400
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: Our unwarranted ban on polygamy?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"

<http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0108300068aug30.column?col>

 From the Chicago Tribune

Our unwarranted ban on polygamy
Steve Chapman

August 30, 2001

Let's say Tom Green is a handsome young NBA star with a lusty nature 
and some irresponsible habits. He has prolonged sexual relationships 
with several different women, and over the years he manages to father 
a couple dozen children. In those circumstances, no one would be 
surprised if Green's conduct earned him widespread scorn and 
ridicule. But we'd be very surprised if it got him sent to jail.

The real Tom Green is a bit different. He's a pot-bellied, 
53-year-old salesman, not a glamorous professional athlete. Instead 
of having affairs with an assortment of partners, he's been living 
with five wives in a polygamous household in the Utah desert, along 
with most of their 30 children. And no one seems shocked that last 
week, a Utah court sentenced him to five years in prison on four 
counts of bigamy. Green is a so-called Mormon fundamentalist who 
thinks he has a religious duty to practice "plural marriage," as the 
original Mormons who settled the state did. Utah, however, had to ban 
polygamy as a condition of joining the United States, and Green's 
outspoken defiance of the law got him in trouble with the local 
prosecutor.

In an era of sexual freedom, there's something quaint about 
prosecuting someone because he insists on formalizing his 
relationships with multiple women and the children he's fathered with 
them. We generally no longer enforce laws against fornication, 
adultery and sodomy, which are regarded as infringements on the right 
of people to live their lives as they choose. Still, though a man may 
have five girlfriends, and a woman may enjoy several suitors, the law 
says spouses are one to a customer.

[...]



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