The latest episode in Sister Wives is playing out in the courtroom, not on cable. On Wednesday, the Brown family — the husband, four wives, and 16 children who star in the reality TV show — plans to file a lawsuit in federal court in Utah. The family members say the state's anti-bigamy law is unconstitutional and that Supreme Court precedent backs them up.
Kody Brown and his family made their television debut on Sept. 26, 2010. "I'm a polygamist," said Brown. "But we're not the polygamists you think you know."
Brown and his four wives knew they were taking a risk when they signed the deal with the network TLC. But Robyn Brown, wife No. 4, told viewers they wanted to make a point.
"It's OK for us to live this way, honestly," she said. "I'm sorry — but this is a nation of freedom of choice. We should have this choice, and I want my kids to know that."
Where have we heard Wife Number Four's assertion before? Most recently, in the push for the legalization of marriage between persons of the same gender, if memory serves.
There were those who raised the question: If we legalize same-gender marriage, yea-verily give it societal blessing, what prevents the bigamist from making the same argument, and demanding legalization of multiple-wife marriages? Hmmm...
What if, for instance, a pimp with ordination papers is able to marry multiple wives, employing them as he sees fit in a culture that decriminalizes prostitution?
The potential for abuse grows alarmingly, does it not?
What if one of those wives, with a child or two, decides that hooking for hubby is a really bad life? What does the divorce look like, and property and custody arrangements flowing therefrom? What if the pimp decides he wishes to wed both men and women? What if hubby, or one of the other spouses, engages in criminal behavior? How does marital privilege apply?
What if all this is OK in New York, but not recognized in Oklahoma, and one of the escapee wives decides to escape with the kids back home to Lawton? Do the marshals come to arrest her, and take the kids back to the pimp-husband?
Think about the culture in which we now live, and ask if these scenarios are far-fetched.
On and on it goes. OS fears we have truly opened Pandora's Box. Bigamy laws serve to protect women and children from predatory men, and to clarify distribution of assets in the event of death or divorce. They create a bit of order in a disorderly world.
One man, married to one woman at a time. Period. A clear, easily-verified, unequivocal definition of marriage.
There is a true leap between the passive acceptance of 'ways of life other than our own', and active endorsement of them in the law. Having made that leap, we are about to discover what life looks like in this new world.
OS is not certain we will be happy with it.
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