80 Utah Lawmakers Tell US Supreme Court Gay Marriage Will Lead To Legal Polygamy And Incest

80 Utah state lawmakers this week signed onto a brief that claims allowing same-sex marriage will lead to polygamy and incest.

Utah has a rich history with polygamy. It took the Mormon Church banning polygamy for Utah to become a state in 1896. Recently, a federal huge in the famous Sister Wives case ruled in favor of polygamist plaintiffs.

But 80 Utah lawmakers this week decided to invoke Americans’ general abhorrence of polygamy — and incest — when the signed onto an amicus brief sent to the U.S. Supreme Court, demanding the nation’s top justices rule against the legalization of same-sex marriage.

The word “polygamy” or its derivation appears 20 times in the 39-page brief.

Lawmakers warn the 10th circuit’s analysis “would improperly lead to polygamous and incestuous marriage.” 

The 10th Circuit, the brief claims, “did not adequately consider the consequences of its decision for Utah’s prohibitions of polygamous and incestuous marriages.” 

“If the choice of marriage partners is an unlimited fundamental right … and if that marriage choice cannot be denied even when a majority believes that choice to be ‘immoral,’ … then the fundamental rights analysis applied by the Tenth Circuit will apply with even greater force to consenting adults desiring polygamous marriage or marriage between at least some close relatives. The prohibition of those marriages has always been grounded in morality.”

These lawmakers from the state of Utah also ask, “if polygamy may be rejected because it is not ‘inextricably woven into the fabric of society,’ then why doesn’t the Tenth Circuit reject same-sexmarriage for the same reason?”

“The Tenth Circuit’s fundamental rights analysis abandons all standards of morality in marriage laws,” they add, “which would then improperly justify forced state endorsement of polygamous and adult incestuous marriage throughout the United States.”

Last December a federal judge struck down Utah’s law banning polygamy, and in August he again struck down that ban.

 

Hat tip: Buzzfeed and Joe.My.God.
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