Plural marriage was the nineteenth-century LDS practice of a man marrying more than one wife. (See
Doctrine of Plural Marriage) Popularly known as polygamy, it was actually polygyny. Although polygamy
had been practiced for much of history in many parts of the world, to do so in "enlightened" America in
the nineteenth century was viewed by most as incomprehensible and unacceptable, making it the Church's
most controversial and least understood practice. Though the principle was lived for a relatively brief
period, it had profound impact on LDS self-definition, helping to establish the Latter-day Saints as a
"people apart." The practice also caused many nonmembers to distance themselves from the Church and
see Latter-day Saints more negatively than would otherwise have been the case.

Rumors of plural marriage among the members of the Church in the 1830s and 1840s led to persecution,
and the public announcement of the practice after August 29, 1852, in Utah gave enemies a potent
weapon to fan public hostility against the Church. Although Latter-day Saints believed that their
religiously-based practice of plural marriage was protected by the U.S. Constitution, opponents used it to
delay Utah statehood until 1896. Ever harsher antipolygamy legislation stripped Latter-day Saints of their
rights as citizens, disincorporated the Church, and permitted the seizure of Church property before the
manifesto of 1890 announced the discontinuance of the practice.

Plural marriage challenged those within the Church, too. Spiritual descendants of the Puritans and sexually
conservative, early participants in plural marriage first wrestled with the prospect and then embraced the
principle only after receiving personal spiritual confirmation that they should do so.

In 1843, one year before his death, the Prophet Joseph Smith dictated a lengthy revelation on the doctrine
of marriage for eternity (D&C 132; see Marriage: Eternal Marriage). This revelation also taught that under
certain conditions a man might be authorized to have more than one wife. Though the revelation was first
committed to writing on July 12, 1843, considerable evidence suggests that the principle of plural marriage
was revealed to Joseph Smith more than a decade before in connection with his study of the Bible (see
Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible), probably in early 1831. Passages indicating that revered Patriarchs
and prophets of old were polygamists raised questions that prompted the Prophet to inquire of the Lord
about marriage in general and about plurality of wives in particular. He then learned that when the Lord
commanded it, as he had with the Patriarchs anciently, a man could have more than one living wife at a
time and not be condemned for adultery. He also understood that the Church would one day be required
to live the law (D&C 132:1-4, 28-40).

Evidence for the practice of plural marriage during the 1830s is scant. Only a few knew about the still
unwritten revelation, and perhaps the only known plural marriage was that between Joseph Smith and
Fanny Alger. Nonetheless there were rumors, harbingers of challenges to come.

In April 1839, Joseph Smith emerged from six month's imprisonment Liberty Jail with a sense of urgency
about completing his mission (see History of the Church c: 1831-1844). Since receiving the sealing key
from Elijah in the Kirtland Temple (D&C 110:13-16) in April 1836, the Prophet had labored to prepare
the Saints for additional teachings and ordinances, including plural marriage.

Joseph Smith realized that the introduction of plural marriage would inevitably invite severe criticism.
After the Kirtland experience, he knew the tension it would create in his own family; even though Emma,
with faith in his prophetic calling, accepted the revelation as being from God and not of his own doing,
she could not reconcile herself to the practice. Beyond that, it had the potential to divide the Church and
increase hostilities from outside. Still, he felt obligated to move ahead. "The object with me is to obey &
teach others to obey God in just what he tells us to do," he taught several months before his death. "It
mattereth not whether the principle is popular or unpopular. I will always maintain a true principle even if
I Stand alone in it" (TPJS, p. 332).

Although certain that God would require it of him and of the Church, Joseph Smith would not have
introduced it when he did except for the conviction that God required it then. Several close confidants
later said that he proceeded with plural marriage in Nauvoo only after both internal struggle and divine
warning. Lorenzo Snow later remembered vividly a conversation in 1843 in which the Prophet described
the battle he waged "in overcoming the repugnance of his feelings" regarding plural marriage.

"He knew the voice of God—he knew the commandment of the Almighty to him was to go forward—to
set the example, and establish Celestial plural marriage. He knew that he had not only his own
prejudices and pre-possessions to combat and to overcome, but those of the whole Christian world…;
but God…had given the commandment" [The Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, pp. 69-70
(Salt Lake City, 1884)].

Even so, Snow and other confidants agreed that Joseph Smith proceeded in Nauvoo only after an angel
declared that he must or his calling would be given to another (Bachman, pp. 74-75). After this, Joseph
Smith told Brigham Young that he was determined to press ahead though it would cost him his life, for "it
is the work of God, and He has revealed this principle, and it is not my business to control or dictate it"
(Brigham Young Discourse, Oct. 8, 1866, Church Archives).

Nor did others enter into plural marriage blindly or simply because Joseph Smith had spoken, despite
biblical precedents. Personal accounts document that most who entered plural marriage in Nauvoo faced a
crisis of faith that was resolved only by personal spiritual witness. Those who participated generally did so
only after they had obtained reassurance and saw it as religious duty.

Even those closest to Joseph Smith were challenged by the revelation. After first learning of plural
marriage, Brigham Young said he felt to envy the corpse in a funeral cortege and "could hardly get over it
for a long time" (JD 3:266). The Prophet's brother Hyrum Smith stubbornly resisted the very possibility
until circumstances forced him to go to the Lord for understanding. Both later taught the principle to
others. Emma Smith vacillated, one day railing in opposition against it and the next giving her consent for
Joseph to be sealed to another wife (see comments by Orson Pratt, JD 13:194).

Teaching new marriage and family arrangements where the principles could not be openly discussed
compounded the problems. Those authorized to teach the doctrine stressed the strict covenants,
obligations and responsibilities associated with it—the antithesis of license. But those who heard only
rumors, or who chose to distort and abuse the teaching, often envisioned and sometimes practiced
something quite different. One such was John C. Bennett, mayor of Nauvoo and adviser to Joseph Smith,
who twisted the teaching to his own advantage. Capitalizing on rumors and lack of understanding among
general Church membership, he taught a doctrine of "spiritual wifery." He and associates sought to have
illicit sexual relationships with women by telling them that they were married "spiritually," even if they had
never been married formally, and that the Prophet approved the arrangement. The Bennett scandal
resulted in his excommunication and the disaffection of several others. Bennett then toured the country
speaking against the Latter-day Saints and published a bitter anti-Mormon exposé charging the Saints with
licentiousness.

The Bennett scandal elicited several public statements aimed at arming the Saints against the abuses. Two
years later enemies and dissenters, some of whom had been associated with Bennett, published the
Nauvoo Expositor, to expose, among other things, plural marriage, thus setting in motion events leading to
Joseph Smith's death (see Martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith).

Far from involving license, however, plural marriage was a carefully regulated and ordered system. Order,
mutual agreements, regulation, and covenants were central to the practice. As Elder Parley P. Pratt wrote
in 1845,

"These holy and sacred ordinances have nothing to do with whoredoms, unlawful connections,
confusion or crime; but the very reverse. They have laws, limits, and bounds of the strictest kind, and
none but the pure in heart, the strictly virtuous, or those who repent and become such, are worthy to
partake of them. And…[a] dreadful weight of condemnation await those who pervert, or abuse them"
[The Prophet, May 24, 1845; cf. D&C 132:7].

The Book of Mormon makes clear that, though the Lord will command men through his prophets to live
the law of plural marriage at special times for his purposes, monogamy is the general standard (Jacob
2:28-30); unauthorized polygamy was and is viewed as adultery. Another safeguard was that authorized
plural marriages could be performed only through the sealing power controlled by the presiding authority
of the Church (D&C 132:19).

Once the Saints left Nauvoo, plural marriage was openly practiced. In winter quarters, for example,
discussion of the principle was an "open secret" and plural families were acknowledged. As early as 1847,
visitors to Utah commented on the practice. Still, few new plural marriages were authorized in Utah
before the completion of the Endowment house in Salt Lake City in 1855.

With the Saints firmly established in the Great Basin, Brigham Young announced the practice publicly and
published the revelation on eternal marriage. Under his direction, on Sunday, August 29, 1852, Elder
Orson Pratt publicly discussed and defended the practice of plural marriage in the Church. After
examining the biblical precedents (Abraham, Jacob, David, and others), Elder Pratt argued that the
Church, as heir of the keys required anciently for plural marriages to be sanctioned by God, was required
to perform such marriages as part of the restoration. He offered reasons for the practice and discussed
several possible benefits (see JD 1:53-66), a precedent followed later by others. But such discussions
were after the fact and not the justification. Latter-day Saints practiced plural marriage because they
believed God commanded them to do so.

Generally plural marriage involved only two wives and seldom more than three; larger families like those
of Brigham Young or Heber C. Kimball were exceptions. Sometimes the wives simply shared homes,
each with her own bedroom, or lived in a "duplex" arrangement, each with a mirror-image half of the
house. In other cases, husbands established separate homes for their wives, sometimes in separate towns.
Although circumstances and the mechanics of family life varied, in general the living style was simply an
adaptation of the nineteenth century American family. Polygamous marriages were similar to national
norms in fertility and divorce rates as well. Wives of one husband often developed strong bonds of sisterly
love; however, strong antipathies could also arise between wives.

Faced with a national antipolygamy campaign, LDS women startled their eastern sisters, who equated
polygamy with oppression of women, by publicly demonstrating in favor of their right to live plural
marriage as a religious principle. Judging from the preaching, women were at least as willing to enter plural
marriage as men. Instead of public admonitions urging women to enter plural marriage, one finds many
urging worthy men to "do their duty" and undertake to care for a plural wife and additional children.
Though some were reluctant to accept such responsibility, many responded and sought another wife. It
was not unheard of for a wife to take the lead and insist that her husband take another wife; yet, in other
cases, a first marriage dissolved over the husband's insistence on marrying again.

As with families generally, some plural families worked better than others. Anecdotal evidence and the
healthy children that emerged from many plural households witness that some worked very well. But
some plural wives disliked the arrangement. The most common complaint of second and third wives
resulted from a husband displaying too little sensitivity to the needs of plural families or not treating them
equally. Not infrequently, wives complained that husbands spent too little time with them. But where
husbands provided conscientiously even time and wives developed deep love and respect for each other,
children grew up as members of large, well-adjusted extended families.

Plural marriage helped mold the Church's attitude toward divorce in pioneer Utah. Though Brigham
Young disliked divorce and discouraged it, when women sought divorce he generally granted it. He felt
that a woman trapped in an unworkable relationship with no alternatives deserved a chance to improve
her life. But when a husband sought relief from his familial responsibilities, President Young consistently
counseled him to do his duty and not seek divorce from any wife willing to put up with him.

Contrary to the caricatures of a hostile world press, plural marriage did not result in offspring of
diminished capacity. Normal men and women came from plural households, and their descendants are
prominent throughout the Intermountain West. Some observers feel that the added responsibility that fell
early upon some children in such households contributed to their exceptional record of achievement.
Plural marriage also aided many wives. The flexibility of plural households contributed to the large
number of accomplished LDS women who were pioneers in medicine, politics and other public careers. In
fact, plural marriage made it possible for wives to have professional careers that would not otherwise have
been available to them.

The exact percentage of Latter-day Saints who participated in the practice is not known, but studies
suggest a maximum of from 20 to 25 percent of LDS adults were members of polygamous households. At
its height, plural marriage probably involved only a third of the women reaching marriageable age—though
among Church leadership plural marriage was the norm for a time. Public opposition to polygamy led to
the first law against the practice in 1862, and, by the 1880s, laws were increasingly punitive. The Church
contested the constitutionality of those laws, but the Supreme Court sustained the legislation (see
Reynolds v. United States), leading to a harsh and effective federal antipolygamy campaign known by the
Latter-day Saints as "the Raid." Wives and husbands went on the "underground" and hundreds were
arrested and sentenced to jail terms in Utah and several federal prisons. This campaign severely affected
the families involved, and the related attack on Church organization and properties greatly inhibited its
ability to function (see History of the Church: c. 1877-1898). Following a vision showing him that
continuing plural marriage endangered the temples and the mission of the Church, not just statehood,
President Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto in October 1890, announcing an official end to new
plural marriages and facilitating an eventual peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Earlier polygamous families continued to exist well into the twentieth century, causing further political
problems for the Church, and new plural marriages did not entirely cease in 1890. After having lived the
principle at some sacrifice for half a century, many devout Latter-day Saints found ending plural marriage
a challenge almost as complex as was its beginning in the 1840s. Some new plural marriages were
contracted in the 1890s in LDS settlements in Canada and northern Mexico, and a few elsewhere. With
national attention again focused on the practice in the early 1900s during the House hearings on
Representative-elect B. H. Roberts and Senate hearings on Senator-elect Reed Smoot (see Smoot
Hearings), President Joseph F. Smith issued his "Second Manifesto" in 1904. Since that time, it has been
uniform Church policy to excommunicate any member either practicing or openly advocating the practice
of polygamy. Those who do so today, principally members of fundamentalist groups, do so outside the
Church.

Bibliography

Bachman, Danel W. "A Study of the Mormon Practice of Plural Marriage before the Death of Joseph
Smith." M.A. thesis, Purdue University, 1975.

Bashore, Melvin L. "Life Behind Bars: Mormon Cohabs of the 1880s." Utah Historical Quarterly 47
(Winter 1979): 22-41.

Bennion, Lowell ("Ben"). "The Incidence of Mormon Polygamy in 1880: "Dixie' versus Davis Stake."
Journal of Mormon History 11 (1984): 27-42.

Bitton, Davis. "Mormon Polygamy: A Review Article." Journal of Mormon History 4 (1977): 101-118.

Embry, Jessie L. Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the Principle. Salt Lake City, 1987.

Foster, Lawrence. Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, The Mormons, and the Oneida Community.
Oxford, 1981.

James, Kimberly Jensen. ""Between Two Fires': Women on the "Underground' of Mormon Polygamy."
Journal of Mormon History 8 (1981): 49-61.

Van Wagoner, Richard S. Mormon Polygamy: A History. Salt Lake City, 1986.

Whittaker, David J. "Early Mormon Polygamy Defenses." Journal of Mormon History 11 (1984): 43-63.  

COLORADO CITY, ARIZONA -- Drenchedin prophecy and shrouded in secrecy, this fast-growing theocratic town has been a rock in Utah's shoe for more than six decades.

The LDS Church has excommunicated and scorned its residents. Government officials tried three times to arrest its leaders and wipe it off the map. Internal divisions have torn the town's dominant polygamist church into bitter factions.

Through it all, for more than 63 years, these self-described ``fundamentalist Mormons'' have clung stubbornly to their belief that keeping multiple wives will give them entrance into the highest levels of heaven.

Their faith is deeply rooted in the Mormon experience, and the story of Colorado City goes back to Utah's earliest days.

Less than a decade after the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Brigham Young was traveling by wagon from St. George to Pipe Springs in the far southern territories of Deseret.

Struck by the rugged beauty of the vermillion cliffs, he ordered his driver to stop. What he said next is regarded as prophecy by the latter-day polygamists -- an utterance on the level of ``this is the right place.''

``This will someday be the head and not the tail of the church,'' Young said. ``These will be the granaries of the Saints.''

Someday seemed a long day away. The soil was thin and sterile and the water was salty. The Indians were unfriendly to the hapless settlers, who struggled to raise even sustenance crops.

Church leaders sent John D. Lee to this outback in 1871 to keep him away from federal authorities, who wanted to hang him for his role in inciting the slaughter of an Arkansas wagon train at Mountain Meadow. Lee took two of his wives to the mouth of the Paria River and ran a ferryboat for a few months before moving south to Arizona. He was finally executed by firing squad in 1877, but the tiny settlement of Lee's Ferry survived.

Surrounded as it was by sandstone walls and a far radius of desert, Lee's Ferry and the rest of the Arizona Strip became a hiding place for those who continued to practice polygamy long after the LDS Church -- under tremendous pressure from Congress and the courts -- formally disavowed multiple marriages in 1890 and strengthened the ban in 1904.

The Arizona Strip polygamists believed that church President John Taylor, staying at a house in Centerville in the summer of 1886, had an all-night conversation about plural marriage with God and the martyred prophet Joseph Smith.

``Have I not given my word in great plainness on this subject?'' God supposedly told Taylor, who then set a small group of men apart, charging them with keeping ``The Principle'' alive in secret. They claimed to be a subterranean wing of the church, never publicly acknowledged, but vital to God's plan all the same.

The town of Short Creek -- which would later come to be called Colorado City -- was founded in 1913 by a monogamous cattle rancher named Jacob Lauritzen. It became the home for a group of the Lee's Ferry polygamists who were excommunicated from the LDS Church in 1935 after they refused to sign a ``loyalty oath'' renouncing polygamy.

Some of the men of Short Creek had to come to Salt Lake City to find work during the Great Depression. A radio manufacturer named Nathanial Baldwin was sympathetic to their belief in plural marriage and hired several polygamists to work in his Salt Lake City assembly plant.

It was in the Baldwin factory that the Short Creek polygamists met several of the members of the future Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headed by John Y. Barlow, and his associate, magazine editor Joseph White Musser.

The FLDS Church decided Short Creek was sufficiently far from civilization to be an ideal homeland for believersof the true gospel. The Grand Canyon and a hundred miles of desert separated it from the Mohave County Sheriff at Kingman.

It was said that the Salt Lake polygamists saw a strategic advantage in Short Creek's stateline setting. Residents trying to avoid lawmen on either side of the border could slip easily out of their jurisdiction.

This would later give rise to apocryphal stories about polygamist houses built on wheels to be rolled back and forth between Utah and Arizona, depending on which county's sheriffs were on the prowl.

A young convert named Leroy Johnson, who would later become prophet of the FLDS Church, remarked about Short Creek: ``The evil powers tried to destroy that which God had set up, but before he allowed this condition to transpire, he provided an escape for this revelation to continue.''

The new church bought a red pickup truck and ferried men and their wives to the desert town, which it called The First City of the Millennium. It also set up a ``charitable philanthropic trust'' called the United Effort Plan to hold all the land in common.

Short Creek became an immediate challenge to its neighbors, not just because of its polygamy, but also because of the burden all the wives and children placed on the welfare system in Mohave County. ``Relief authorities, receiving blanks which listed one father as the head of three or four families, began to scratch their heads,'' wrote historian Wallace Stegner.

The Mohave County attorney and the sheriff pressed charges against two of the leading polygamists, who served two years in the penitentiary. The FBI raided the town again in 1944, and 15 men went to the Sugar House prison in Salt Lake City. Nine later won release by signing a ``manifesto'' pledging to forever renounce the teaching or practice of plural marriage. Most returned to Short Creek and immediately broke their promise to the government.

The welfare problem did not go away. Jesse Faulkner, a superior-court judge in Kingman, complained to officials in Phoenix about the ``taxpayer emergency'' the polygamists were causing by demanding new school facilities without paying property taxes. Cattlemen in the area also were upset at paying grazing fees allegedly used for polygamist schools, according to historian Richard Van Wagoner.

Arizona Gov. Howard Pyle responded by hiring a private detective agency from Los Angeles to snoop around the community, looking for abuses of taxpayer money. The detectives reportedly posed as Hollywood scouts looking for a good location for a Western movie and took photographs of every resident.

Pyle then sneaked a $50,000 appropriation through the legislature under the label of ``grasshopper control,'' to pay for a massive police raid on the town.

At 4 a.m. on July 26, 1953 -- two days after Mormons all over Utah celebrated Pioneer Day -- a caravan of highway patrolmen, social-service workers, deputy sheriffs, photographers and journalists rolled into Short Creek to find most of the town standing in front of the schoolhouse singing hymns. They hoisted the American flag up the flagpole as the raiders drew near, and started into ``God Bless America.''

Pyle, meanwhile, sat in front of a microphone at a Phoenix radio station and brought official news of the raid to the rest of the state. ``Here is a community . . . unalterably dedicated to the wicked theory that every maturing girl child should be forced into the bondage of multiple wifehood with men of all ages for the sole purpose of producing more children to be reared to become mere chattels of this totally lawless enterprise,'' he said.

The husbands of Short Creek were taken almost immediately to the Mohave County Jail at Kingman, while the women and children stayed behind. It took Arizona social workers nearly a week to sort out the interwoven family lines and figure out which children belonged to which parents.

The LDS Church-owned Deseret News was almost alone among newspapers in proclaiming support for the raid. The rest of the nation, meanwhile, saw newsreel images of children being separated from their mothers, and criticism came heaping down on Pyle from almost every quarter. The raid was viewed as a
politician's grab for headlines at the expense of innocent families. Pyle would later lament that ``Operation Seagull'' helped finish him in politics.

Twenty-three Short Creek men were sentenced to a year's probation for conspiracy. But the negative publicity generated by the 1953 raid ushered in a new era of peace for Short Creek and a general relaxation of polygamy enforcement across the West. The FLDS Church changed Short Creek's name to Colorado City on the Arizona side and Hildale on the Utah side to avoid unpleasant associations with the raid.

Supporting plural wives, financially and emotionally, was never an easy thing to do, as many men now
could attest from being married to only one. The members of the Church followed "the principle," as it
was often called, for religious reasons.

Plural marriage served a practical purpose for the Mormon pioneers as well, allowing for women to be
cared for even if there were not enough men, as well as lifting the burden of some household
responsibilities. A pair of wives who shared a house, for example, shared household responsibilities.

Eliza Ann Graves, Charles C. Rich's second wife, spun and wove fabric and sewed and knitted clothing,
including Rich's suits. Sarah Jane Peck, his fourth wife, sold eggs from the farm, carded and spun wool
into thread, and knitted it into mittens, stockings, or sweaters.

Brigham Young explained part of the purpose of plural marriage in his response to the question: What is
the largest number of wives belonging to any one man? Brigham Young said, "I have 15; I know no one
who has more; but some of those sealed to me are old ladies who I regard rather as mothers than wives,
but whom I have taken home to cherish and support."

Support was a significant part of plural marriage, and before a man was allowed to take another wife, he
would have to receive permission from the religious leaders, normally receive approval of his other wife
or wives, receive permission from the parents of the potential wife, and show that he was capable of
supporting another wife, both financially and emotionally.
 

Mark Twain's View

The practice of polygamy was one that caused a great deal of controversy. Laws were passed against
polygamy, and Utah was denied statehood for a time because it was still accepted. It was even humorized
by Mark Twain, who said in his book, Roughing It:

"With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth, I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great
reform here [to abolish polygamy] -- until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was
wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically homely creatures, and as I
turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, 'No; the man that marries one of them has done a
deed of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure,
and the man that marries 60 of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the
nation should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.'" The numbers of people practicing
plural marriage varied throughout the pioneer period. At the height of its practice, approximately one-third
of the population was involved in polygamy as husbands, wives, or children in polygamous families.

For a better idea of how polygamy worked, check the chapters on Charles C. Rich, Bill Hickman, John
Gardiner and Brigham Young.

It is important to note that the Mormon Church does not practice or endorse polygamy today, and its
practice is grounds for excommunication.  

Polygamists Assert Rights At Capitol
Salt Lake Tribune  February 15, 2001

BY GREG BURTON

Nearly 100 polygamists and their supporters packed a Capitol Hill hearing on an anti-polygamy bill Tuesday, a rare public assembly of plural families whose lifestyle was outlawed in Utah 105 years ago. 
Wives with babies crouched on the floor. Husbands leaned against walls. And two uniformed state troopers, summoned by a lawmaker, stood in the front and back of the room.  "We are people just like you. We love our children. We pay our taxes. We have a right to live our lives," said Owen Allred, the 87-year-old leader of the nation's second-largest polygamous church, the Apostolic United Brethren. 

Allred encouraged Tuesday's strong showing against the bill during a Sunday sermon before his Bluffdale congregation. Roughly half the crowd followed Allred to the Capitol. Others belong to a loose underground of independent polygamists, a network that continues to thrive despite Utah's long effort to abolish polygamy.  "I've never seen this many people come to one of our hearings -- on any  subject," said Rep. Glenn Way, R-Spanish Fork, co-chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. "Especially this one-sided."  Only four people in the crowd came to testify in favor of Sen. Ron Allen's  measure, which targets marriages of young teens in polygamist communities  by making it a third-degree felony for parents or pastors to condone or  solemnize outlawed marriages.  "We want to help the children who have no voice and no choice,"  said Vicky Prunty, executive director of Tapestry Against Polygamy, 
a group of former polygamous  wives whose lawyer, Douglas White,  helped Allen, D-Stansbury Park, craft the legislation.  Tapestry has almost single-handedly revived a long-dormant practice in  Utah of  charging polygamists with bigamy, a trend that snared Juab  County polygamist Tom Green, who awaits trial on four counts of  bigamy and single counts of  child sex abuse and criminal nonsupport. 
Tapestry's members do not quibble: They want to end polygamy. But first they intend to rescue hundreds of abused women and children they say are trapped in Utah's male-dominated polygamous communities.  "It's sick and it's sad," said Rowenna Erickson, a Tapestry co-founder. "Somebody has to fight for these children. We could sure use some help at the Legislature." 

But by bending Utah's marriage statute so prosecutors can target parents and religious leaders, opponents say, Allen's Senate Bill 146 also threatens consenting adults who enter polygamous relationships and parents who teach plural marriage as religious doctrine.  "We do not support child brides," said Mary Batchelor, co-author of a positive account of plural marriage. Batchelor and Prunty are former sister-wives of the same man. 

Overwhelmed by the crowd, the judiciary committee crammed debate into a half-hour slice of pros and cons, highlighted by Allred's speech.  "I applaud Mr. Allen's efforts to pass this bill . . . for the safety and
well-being of our children," Allred said. "I have children. A lot of them."  However, Allred said, it is unfair for the state to support children born out of wedlock to single parents when polygamous couples who want to support and legitimize their children are prevented by law.  "When a man wants to marry a woman and take care of that child, you say 'No, we won't help you because you're a polygamous child.' " 
Allred said laws against statutory rape and child abuse already cover acts Allen hopes to prevent. 
"I only ask the state to enforce the laws they have," he said afterward "They don't need more."  At the very least, opponents asked Allen to delete two sections of SB146. The first would make it a felony for parents to encourage or promote outlawed marriages, including polygamy and same-sex unions. The second is a passage that makes it a felony for someone to officiate during outlawed marriages of consenting adults.  "We don't swallow [Allen's] stated intent," said plural wife Marianne Watson, one of Batchelor's two co-authors. "We believe it opens the door to the [polygamy] raids of the 1800s and 1900s . . . a witch hunt this state can ill afford."  After the meeting, Rep. Scott Daniels, D-Salt Lake City, said he will propose an amendment lowering the penalty for solemnizing an outlawed marriage from a felony to a misdemeanor. "This is too harsh," he said.  Rep. Katherine Bryson, R-Orem, suggested removing the words "promote" and "encourage."  "We're not talking about a crime, we're talking about marriage," she
said. "Wouldn't that be difficult to prove, what's inside a person's head?"  With little time to explore each angle or listen to every person, the judiciary committee delayed further discussion and debate until Friday, when a vote is expected that could move the measure to the House floor. SB146 unanimously passed the Senate.  

The polygamists and Tapestry Against Polygamy each promised to return.  Prunty wants to prevent "children from being groomed into polygamy." Batchelor, Prunty's former sister-wife, wants to promote understanding of a lifestyle too often painted with a negative brush, she told lawmakers.  "Our presence here is not a threat, but an invitation to open a dialogue between you and the people of this special minority."