Utah & Polygamy: We Told You So
18th December 2013
Waddoups calls a 19th-century Supreme Court ruling banning polygamy “racist” and “orientalist,” because it asserted that Christianity’s teaching on marriage is superior to the polygamous arrangements that some Africans and “Asiatics” (presumably this means Arab Muslims) live by. This is an important point, it seems to me. If Christianity and the Christian moral and societal framework is no longer viewed as normative in laws governing sexual practice, then the slippery slope to legalizing polygamy is here. We already know from the Lawrence ruling that the state may not regulate private consensual sexual conduct; if the principle that privileging Christian marital norms is impermissible is accepted, by what standard do we prevent polygamy? I suppose you could say it harms society in some way, but this judge rejected that argument.
December 18th, 2013 at 19:09
In some way? I should think the harm would be obvious.