America's Polygamous Future

Once a society moves the definition of marriage away from ONE MAN and ONE WOMAN....Pandora's box will be opened.

Here is more evidence as to the direction we are moving...and this comes from a super mainstream source called the Wall Street Journal...so this will continue to surface in conversations to come.

When the Supreme Court paved the way for universal recognition of same-sex marriage last June, opponents predicted that polygamy would be next. They didn't realize how quickly this would happen.

 

Less than six months after the high court issued a pair of decisions expanding access to gay marriage and its benefits, a federal judge in Utah has ruled unconstitutional key parts of a Utah bigamy law that makes polygamous cohabitation a crime. The law had been challenged by 44-year-old Kody Brown and his four wives, who, together with their 17 children, star in the reality-TV show "Sister Wives." The Browns, who used to live in Lehi, Utah (they have since moved to Las Vegas), belong to one of several breakaway Mormon sects that practice plural marriage. (The mainstream Church of the Latter-day Saints formally abandoned polygamy in 1890, shortly before Utah became a state). An estimated 40,000 residents of Utah live in polygamous households.

 

To be sure, the court ruling, by U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups, does not legalize polygamous marriage or even invalidate Utah's bigamy law in its entirety. All 50 states have antibigamy laws on their books. But Utah's law, apparently uniquely, forbids plural marriages entered into via multiple marriage licenses and also applies to a married person who "cohabits with another person."

 

The typical practice for breakaway Mormon men, including Kody Brown, is to enter into only one legally recognized marriage but to take on additional "sister wives" in "spiritual" unions sanctified by religious ceremonies. Such unions are technically adulterous, but since the state of Utah does not prosecute adultery, Judge Waddoups said there was no "rational basis" for Utah's criminal law to distinguish between plain old adulterous cohabitation and informal polygamy entered into for religious reasons.

 

His ruling thus affects only so-called "fundamentalist" Mormons. However, the decision becomes precedent elsewhere, then it may apply to an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Muslims in the U.S. who are in similar polygamous arrangements that they believe are permitted by the Quran.

 

Still, since what can't be criminally prosecuted is de facto permissible, the plural-marriage toboggan is now positioned firmly downward on the slippery slope. Judge Waddoups's decision has already been hailed by polyamorists, libertarians and feminists. In an April article for Slate, Jill Keenan argued that legal polygamy "is the constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive choice" that would allow women to select among "diverse family arrangements" for the one that suits them best.

 

Here;  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304858104579263973928369760

 

You gotta love the first sentence in the article...."They didn't realize how quickly it would come."

 

Yep!  It will come like a flood.

 

Soon the courts will be filled with questions of legality as Tom, Sue, Betsy and Beth all seek to form a LEGAL FAMILY and request all the rights associated with marriage...including the right to adopt children.