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Ho Hum .... Utah back to legalizing polygamy
Salt Lake Tribune story of June 13, 1999
The Salt Lake Tribune -- Lawyer Argues Polygamy Protected
Sunday, June 13, 1999
BY KRISTEN MOULTON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
To Utah polygamists and their defenders, Gov. Mike Leavitt got it right the first time.
During the early days of the past year's incendiary debate over plural marriage, the governor suggested the Constitution might protect Utah's polygamists from prosecution.
"But then the ceiling fell in and in no short order it was explained to him that religious liberty doesn't apply to fundamentalist Mormons and he's more or less backing up as fast as he can ever since," says Scott Berry, a Salt Lake attorney who has spent 12 years defending the polygamists of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah.
"Religious freedom extends to everybody from Native Americans to Hare Krishnas," says Berry. "But fundamentalist Mormons don't get it."
That Utah's estimated 30,000 polygamists lack religious liberty is not just feeling; it's a fact.
Not only does Utah's Constitution ban the practice rooted in early Mormonism, a 109-year-old U.S. Supreme Court ruling holds that the First Amendment does not apply to the practice of polygamy.
That decision came as Utah was trying to win statehood, a status achieved only after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave up the practice of plural marriage.
Those who continued to live according to doctrines espoused by Mormon church founder Joseph Smith paid with jail time, job loss and harassment in the late 1890s, early 1900s, and into the 1950s.
Still, polygamy thrived and for the past four decades, prosecutors and the public had seemed to find room for those living in plural marriages.
And polygamists, most of whom consider themselves family-oriented, conservative, fundamentalist Mormons, began to live openly if not flagrantly.
"As their lawyer, five years ago my advice was, `You've got nothing to be ashamed of with your religion. I think the world has changed. . . . You can identify yourselves as organizing your family according to this principle without fear of legal retribution,' " Berry said. "I'm not sure that that's the case anymore."
One former polygamous wife who previously was willing to be quoted by name no longer dares. "It's very threatening. My husband is at risk and I love our children too much."
The pendulum began swinging back a year ago when a 16-year-old girl told how her father married her off to an uncle more than twice her age and then beat her after she fled the marriage. The ensuing abuse and incest cases against John Daniel Kingston and David Ortell Kingston attracted international media attention and gave weight to the campaign of a new anti-polygamy group, Tapestry of Polygamy.
Tapestry has been pressing prosecutors to go after polygamists, and not just for incest and abuse. Several central Utah prosecutors are heeding the call.
Millard and Sevier county prosecutors have each filed bigamy charges this spring and the governor's brother, prosecutor David Leavitt, is considering bigamy charges against a man and his wives in Juab County.
Though the Utah Constitution bans polygamy, there is no law to enforce it so prosecutors have only a bigamy statute to apply to plural marriages.
Mark Easterday, 38, of Monroe, says he -- like many Utah polygamists -- is happy to see polygamists prosecuted for incest or abusing their wives or children.
But he will fight the bigamy charge filed May 20 in Sevier County "head-on" in spite of having openly lived with two women as wives. The first divorced him last week.
"I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. Who am I going to go with, the law or my religion?"
State Rep. David Zolman, a Taylorsville Republican, says polygamists should not be put in that position.
"They are a political reality," Zolman said. "We need to make a place for them. . . . They live in America, America guarantees liberties to all comers and it must apply to people who feel committed to have more than one marriage choice."
It may take a decade to decriminalize polygamy, he says.
Berry is not so certain Zolman will find fellow lawmakers willing to tackle the issue.
"By happenstance and culture and history and society, this is going to be a very traumatic issue for Utah to turn its face to," Berry said. "I'm not sure Utah is ready."
But neither is he considering the 109-year-old Supreme Court decision the last word.
"That they ruled that way in 1890 is not the end of the argument for me about whether fundamental Mormons are entitled to religious liberty."
Page Modified June 13, 1999