SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A polygamous family says the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage shows that laws restricting consensual adult relationships are outdated, even if certain unions are unpopular.
Kody Brown and his four wives argue in court documents that their reality TV show “Sister Wives” shows polygamous marriages can be as healthy as monogamous ones.
“The Browns were investigated and no crimes or harm was found in their plural family,” attorney Jonathan Turley wrote in court documents filed Wednesday in front of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. He has said the family is prepared to take the legal fight to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
The Browns are defending a legal victory they won in 2013, when a federal judge struck down key parts of Utah’s law banning polygamy. Advocacy groups for polygamy and individual liberties called the ruling a significant decision that removed the threat of arrest for the state’s plural families.
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes appealed, saying courts have long upheld laws banning polygamy because they prevent abuse of women and children.
Unlike same-sex marriage advocates, the Browns are not seeking full legal recognition of polygamous marriages. That portion of Utah’s bigamy law prohibiting multiple marriages license was left in place by U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups when he decided that a provision of the state law forbidding cohabitation violated the family’s freedom of religion.
In most polygamous families, the man is legally married to one woman but only “spiritually married” to the others.
The teaching that polygamy brings exaltation in heaven is a legacy of the early Mormon church, but the mainstream Salt Lake City-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned the practice in 1890 and strictly prohibits it today.
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We’re at an early point in the acceptance trajectory - the way that the gay community was at an earlier point than the African-American community during the civil rights movements of the 1960s, and had to wait a few decades longer for widespread acceptance - but it would be nice to think that I might see some measure of poly acceptance in my lifetime. (One thing confusing the issue is that urban progressive poly folk and fundamentalist Mormons don’t have much in common, including the shape polyamory/polygamy takes.)
You just can’t reason with people who insist that this landmark decision was about the definition of “marriage” rather than the concept of “equal protection.” Exhausting.
Legally they are unrelated, but there’s no denying they are related in our cultural perception and awareness. Culturally the definitions are shifting. A whole lot more has happened in the country than just the supreme court ruling. Gay marriage ruling is more a catalyst than a precedent for plural marriage and/or other shifts that various people might desire.
Thanks Mormons for bringing Sharia law that much closer in the USA.
The late science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein delved into the future diversification of legally binding personal relationships in his later works, which did come across as creepy sometimes, but what moral issue today wouldn’t be to someone even 50 years ago?. Why not have limited marriage contracts, that would allow a couple to marry for 5/10 years with a renewal clause, and spell out specifically at the nullification of the marriage? A group marriage contract, for between 3 and 10 (or more) folks, with a dissolution clause for members opting in or out of the group? Or marriage between cousins, who are not statistically at risk for birth defects any more than the general population? The legal evolution of gay marriage really does make us question what equal protection means between consenting adults.