NPR On Point on Polygamy

On November 29, 2006, On Point with Tom Ashbrook broadcast a show on polygamy in Utah. You can download on I-tunes as well.

Nothing particularly erotic about the show. Mark Shurtleff, Utah's Attorney General, makes an appearance sounding like a politician and prosecutor. Vicki Prunty, Director of Tapestry Against Polygamy, a non-profit organization based in Salt Lake City, was placed in opposition to Mary Allred, third wife in a polygamous marriage.

The most interesting thing is the discussion about the US v. Reynolds . Here is a nostalgic quote from the court on polygamy, back in 1879:

Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people. At common law, the second marriage was always void (2 Kent, Com. 79), and from the earliest history of England polygamy has been treated as an offence against society. After the establishment of the ecclesiastical courts, and until the time of James I., it was punished through the instrumentality of those tribunals, not merely because ecclesiastical rights had been violated, but because upon the separation of the ecclesiastical courts from the civil the ecclesiastical were supposed to be the most appropriate for the trial of matrimonial causes and offences against the rights of marriage, just as they were for testamentary causes and the settlement of the estates of deceased persons.

By the statute of 1 James I. (c. 11), the offence, if committed in England or Wales, was made punishable in the civil courts, and the penalty was death.

Well, Shurtleff wasn't propounding the death penalty, but I wouldn't give Tapestry Against Polygamy any rope.

As this blog progresses, I'm not interested in rehashing all of the old polygamy arguments -- abuse of the patriarchy, welfare fraud, women as property, etc. The much more intriguing polygamy discussion is how the specter of polygamy effects Mormon's erotic imagination.