When I come across sites like BiblicalPolygamy.com and its sister sites (TruthBearer.org, Pro-Polygamy.com, ChristianPolygamy.info, PolygamyDay.com, Pro-Polygamy.net, LoveNotForce.com) I can’t help but think that polygamy is soon going to be legal in this country again. My reasoning is simple: if the Supreme Court upholds the legality of “gay marriage,” then surely when it hears one of the more solidly law-based polygamy cases that will undoubtedly make its way up to it, the court will rule that anti-polygamy laws are unconstitutional, making it legal again. To me this is a no-brainer and is inevitable.
What I wonder, though, is what the reaction of the church will be. Although the prophet holds the keys to the sealing power and can still insist that no plural marriages are sealed or performed by any of the LDS clergy, within or without the temple, despite the practice being legal, what is to stop a member of the church from contracting a plural marriage outside of the church? Will church members still be excommunicated for exercising their right to take more than one wife, legally? In such a legal environment, I don’t see how the leaders could justify excommunication, as the practice of polygamy would not be breaking the law of man nor the law of chastity (the law of God). The law of chastity concerns sexual relations between a man and a woman who is legally and lawfully married. Legalized polygamy obeys the law of chastity.
Somehow I don’t think the present policy of prohibiting plural marriage will remain in place once the practice has become perfectly legal. I suspect that once its legality is established, there will be plenty of men who take more than one wife, bringing the church once again under the persecuting scrutiny of the monogamous masses.
Who knows? Maybe there will be mass inactivations and requests of name-removals by many offended women and also men who do not like the change in policy (pro-polygamy) and/or who do not appreciate the persecution that possibly will be heaped upon those members who remain and engage in the practice.
At any rate, I think that the present thinking of many church members that polygamy, if it happens again, is so distant in the future, say in the Millennium or even the after-life, that they need not think about it much, is naive. It would not surprise me in the least if we are faced with the return of legalized polygamy within the next few years.
Next Chastity article: Why the long process?
LDS Anarchy 