Challenging A Century-Old Supreme Court Ruling

Brian Barnard, a Salt Lake City civil rights attorney, is challenging the holding in Reynolds, the 19th century Supreme Court case banning plural marriage. Last Sunday, the Salt Lake Tribune ran this article about his efforts. This CBS article, released upon the lawsuit's commencement last year, contains further information. Barnard is acting on behalf of three clients, two women and a man, all over age 45, who claim that polygamy is necessary for their "exaltation and eternal salvation." Utah's bigamy laws do not require deceit of the legal spouse or performance of a second marriage ceremony for prosecution. A married person living with someone else in a sexual relationship can be found guilty of bigamy.

I'm glad there are people standing up and questioning the state's prohibition on nonmonogamous familial groupings. I also recognize that it may be most helpful to make the religious claims, since overturning Reynolds is the goal.

Nevertheless, I think it is unfortunate that the majority of legal challenges to monogamist laws that harm those in nontraditional familial units are coming from fundamentalist religious types. While making the religious claim may be the best shot to overturn monogamist-favored laws on constitutional grounds, in the courts of public opinion, it continues to keep nonmonogamy as a creepy-sounding, cultish practice. While that is true in some circumstances, it doesn't reflect the broad diversity of familial types who are harmed by bigamy laws. The difficulty may be in finding a nonreligiously-motivated nonmonogamous family who is willing to undergo the public scrutiny a lawsuit often entails.