Polygamy in American Law

Stanley Kurtz in the Weekly Standard:

The growing legal literature advocating the decriminalization of traditional polygamy was encapsulated by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley in a widely noticed October 2004 op-ed for USA Today. Turley argued that, as a simple matter of equal treatment under law, polygamy ought to be legal. Acknowledging that underage girls are sometimes coerced into polygamous marriages, Turley replied that "banning polygamy is no more a solution to child abuse than banning marriage would be a solution to spousal abuse." Like Turley, the law review literature argues that traditional polygamy is not intrinsically abusive, and can therefore be sufficiently policed through existing laws against incest, statutory rape, and child abuse. Big Love, set in a suburb of Salt Lake City, dramatizes this argument by contrasting the "good" polygamy practiced by Bill Henrickson and his three wives with the abusive polygamy in "the compound" nearby controlled by a traditionalist patriarchal figure.

Polygamy Versus Democracy You can't have both