It's a well known but unspoken fact of Utah life that polygamy still exists among breakaway "Mormon" groups, most of them in the southern part of the state, as well as in Mormon-settled parts of Arizona, Idaho and Nevada. A few years ago a senior official, either the attorney general or the then-governor, Mike Leavitt, made the mistake of saying something to the effect of "don't ask, don't tell, we have other priorities for law enforcement", which caused a brief ruckus. It's not a case of consenting (and educated and well-informed) adults. Girls in these communities are taken as "sister-wives" at 13-14 (sometimes younger), often by their uncles as in a major case in SLC a few years back where the young girl escaped and the family was prosecuted. Bot, I agree with your generally libertarian perspective - consenting adults should be able to enter into consensual agreements with each other to do just about anything, imho - but I don't think you'd be too pleased if your brother took your 13 year old daughter home to bed. It's just not right.

Not too sure where the religious basis for polygamy in the LDS church began, but my limited understanding is that Joseph Smith, a pretty notorious skirt-chaser, had a "revelation" in favor of polygamy. Brigham Young, a lively and virile guy, was more than happy to continue the practice when he took over after Smith was murdered. Young had (iirc) 18 or 20 wives; most Mormon families at the time were monogomous, however, for economic reasons - nobody was as wealthy as Young in the early church. Conveniently, when Utah wanted to ascend to statehood and the US Congress effectively said that wouldn't happen with polygamy intact, the then-president of the church had a clarifying revelation that polygamy was no longer acceptable to God (must have been an interesting drafting session). Today's polygamists are descendants of the mostly isolated communities that refused to accept the hypocrisy of that decision.

It's an interesting place to live.

__________________
81 300SD
08 MDX Tech
93 525i

05 F650GS