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Although polygamy is generally illegal in all 50 states, practitioners are almost never prosecuted unless there is evidence of abuse, statutory rape, welfare fraud, or tax evasion.
MORMON POLYGAMY: A 180-YEAR BATTLE FOR 'RELIGIOUS RIGHTS'
Polygamy among Mormons began with the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement Joseph Smith when he declared in upstate New York in 1831 that he had seen visions telling him that 'plural marriage' should be practised.
After his death in 1844, followers took polygamy to Utah, where it was practised publicly until 1890 when it was renounced by the LDS church to win statehood for the territory.
During that time, Congress issued the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act in 1962 which re-asserted that polygamy was illegal in all US territories.
The LDS argued that such laws infringed their right to religiously-based practise under the U.S. Constitution.
But a ruling by the Supreme Court in 1878 stated that they were not protected based on the long-standing legal principle that while government cannot interfere with religious beliefs, it can with practices.
Various splinter groups left the church after the 1890 Manifesto in order to continue polygamy.
Nowadays, there are said to be more than 30,000 people practising polygamy in Utah, Idaho, Montana and Arizona.
States occasionally take action against polygamists, notably Tom Green, who was sentenced to five years in prison for bigamy in Utah in August 2001.
One famous Mormon is U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, whose father George W. Romney was born in 1907 in a settlement in Mexico that had been founded in the 1880s by Mormons fleeing American anti-polygamy laws.
The last polygamist in Romney’s direct ancestry was his great-grandfather Miles Park Romney, who had three wives.
Romney's paternal grandfather Gaskell was monogamous and the Mormon Church outlawed polygamy in 1890. |