Glenn Reynold's Instapundit entry on polygamy caught my attention, first because its not a common topic over there, and second because Reynold's is talking out of school.

I'm occasionally amused by the implication that there's something unnatural about polygamy, though: It's quite possibly the most common form of marriage in human society, and certainly far too common to dismiss as some sort of perversion. (Heck, read your Old Testament). But I think that most of the polygamy-talk now is just a symptom of the gay-marriage debate, rather than a genuine freestanding concern.

Ironically, here in Utah we think gay marriage is just a symptom of the polygamy debate ;-)

Polygamy is in fact a "genuine freestanding concern" here for some very real and serious concerns. One must understand that polygamy as practiced in North America, is overwhelming the result of religious belief, not simply an odd little arrangment between consenting, secular adults.

There is far more relevance to that fact than one might assume at first glance. In many (not all) cases, polygamy is a means of social control. Among the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints, an offshoot of the 19th century Mormon church), wives and children are given as rewards for faithfulness, and taken as punishment for dissent. Those sullen young men Glenn refers to do not exist in the abstract, rather they cruise the streets of Las Vegas and Mesquite, Nevada selling their bodies for food and a place to sleep. A young man who is dispossessed from the polygamous community has no education, no skills and no prospects in the secular world. The cruel exile is the inevitable result of a relentless logic that demands that the community shuck off its surplus males in order to preserve the social economy of multiple wives.

That same logic says that girls should be married off at impossibly young, even prepubescent ages, to insure early pregancy and thus and iron link into polygamous society.

Before I moved to Utah, I thought much like Glenn Reynold's did, but the reality is sobering indeed, in fact I dare say that Mormon opposition to gay marriage (as contrasted to Evangelical opposition) is strongly tied to the fear that legalizing gay marriage means inevitably legalizing polygamy.

Surprisingly to some perhaps, polygamy is de facto legal. There have been no recent prosecutions based on the mere existence of a polygamous relationship. Rather prosecutions in Utah and Arizona in particular are focused on statutory rape (the Tom Green trial comes to mind), welfare fraud and other incidental practices and outcomes that are politically easier to prosecute in an age where people's maritial arrangements, or lack of them, isn't treated as a criminal matter regardless of whatever laws may still exist on the books.

The tip-toe-through-the-tulips legal approach to polygamy makes Utah attorney-general Mark Shurtleff a pretty popular guy throughout the intermountain west and even in Canada, as various states and local governments consult with him on how to deal with local groups of polygamists.

Its arguable whether legalizing polygamy would exacerbate the problems or not, but make no mistake--polygamy is a problem.