SEVEN BRIDES FOR ONE BROTHER?

Polygamy drawing scrutiny: Ariz., Utah officials to discuss issues (Mark Shaffer, Aug. 22, 2003, Arizona Republic)

As law enforcement officials and legislators from Arizona, Utah and Canada gather in St. George, Utah, today for a summit on polygamy, proponents of multiple marriage are facing their worst crisis since the state of Arizona raided the enclave of Short Creek, now Colorado City, 50 years ago. [...]

The issue of polygamy has been in the spotlight in recent years because of the nationally publicized trial and conviction for child rape of polygamist Tom Green, the attention that anti-polygamist groups drew during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and a recent best- selling book, Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer.

But Rodney Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney who represents the polygamist groups in Colorado City, Hildale and Bountiful, British Columbia, said that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are getting a bum rap.

In a letter sent Thursday to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, Parker wrote that the young women are not forced into marriage.

"They enter those relationships voluntarily with the consent of their parents and extended family. . . . Although their model of marriage by revelation runs counter to traditional notions of romantic love and marriage, the model works for them because they have confidence in it," Parker wrote.

Polygamy isn't immoral but it is illegal and it is universally banned, so unless the original statutes were intentionally targeted against Mormon religious beliefs and practices they need to either conform to the law or accept their punishment. You don't get to keep a "model" just because you "have confidence in it." Why not just lobby the state legislature to relegalize it? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 22, 2003 7:19 PM