The New Yorker Magazine (№ 22nd March 2021) by David Remnick (Editor In Chief)

Author:David Remnick (Editor In Chief) [Remnick, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: culture, politics, art, jounalism, magazine, non-fiction
Publisher: Conde Nast
Published: 2022-03-21T13:00:00+00:00

with no polygamous forebears, sup-

fundamentalist Mormons dismiss as took time to recognize that human sex-ported the decriminalization of polyg-

political expediency. The practice be-

uality is not as square as we make it

amy on libertarian grounds. “As a prac-

came a felony in Utah in 1935. In 2013, out to be,” he went on. “Polyamory and ticing Mormon, I don’t think God has it was temporarily decriminalized—not even the single life are just as valid as a condoned polygamy, just like I don’t by the legislature but by a judge, who heteronormative, husband-wife, picket-think that it’s O.K. to be injecting your-

ruled, in a case brought by Kody Brown, fence, three-children conversation. I self with heroin,” he told me. “But that that the state’s anti-bigamy statute was sponsored the Bigamy Bill because doesn’t mean that I should be support-unconstitutional. But three years later there’s plenty of relationships made up ing laws that punish other people who the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals of three and four people. When we choose to do those things. I don’t drink ruled that, because Utah did not actu-were debating it, I asked the primary

coffee, but I don’t think Starbucks should ally prosecute polygamists unless there sponsor and our legal counsel, ‘This be prohibited.”

were other crimes, the plaintiffs did not also means non-married multiple part-To Boyack, the fact that the polyg-

have standing, so the practice became ners, like a polyamorous situation?’ They amy ban was generally unenforced of-criminal again.

said, ‘Didn’t think about it, but yeah.’”

fered a new way of pursuing the cam-

By February, 2020, the Bigamy Bill

Eventually, the mainstream Mor-

paign against it. He went on a listening had the cosponsorship of Derek mon leadership, whose anti-gay poli-tour, documenting incest that had never Kitchen, one of only six Democrats cies had increasingly drawn outrage in been reported, interviewing women who in the Utah State Senate and its only Utah, concluded that it was fighting a had never testified to heinous abuse be-openly gay member. Seven years be-

losing battle on polygamy, too. Last

cause they were afraid their children fore, he and his partner had sued the February, when Henderson brought her could be removed, meeting one woman state in a case, Kitchen v. Herbert, that decriminalization bill to the Utah leg-who had never told anyone that she had challenged its ban on same-sex mar-islature, Church leaders told legislators

an autistic child because she feared she riage. They won, and the case led to to vote their consciences. The bill passed would lose him. Henderson held pub-the legalization of gay marriage in the nearly unopposed.

lic hearings at which polygamist vic-

Tenth Circuit and influenced the Su-

Still, even as polygamy gains legal

tims of abuse told similar stories. Boyack preme Court’s decision in Obergefell, standing, the institution itself looks said, “When we started talking to leg-eight months later. “The L.G.B.T.Q. harder to sustain. Kitchen notes that islators in that light—not that this is movement and, in particular, a lot of it’s neither environmentally nor finan-freedom for polygamists but, rather, that gay men really embrace polyamory,” cially viable, and that it requires inhu-the status quo empowers abusers—we Kitchen told me.

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