Bill to Decriminalize Polygamy Passes Utah Senate and Utah House Committee – By Michael W. Chapman (CNS News) / Feb 25 2020
(CNSNews.com) — A bill in the Utah legislature that would decriminalize polygamy, knocking it down from a felony to an infraction — the equivalent of a parking ticket — passed the Utah Senate last week and was approved by a House committee on Monday, making it more likely that the legislation will become law soon.
Under current law in Utah, a largely Mormon state, polygamy is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Under a proposal to amend the bigamy laws in the state, SB 102, the rules would be amended to reclassify polygamy as an “infraction.”
HERRIMAN, UTAH – FEBRUARY, 2008: School-age children from a polygamist family consisting of one father, three mothers and 21 kids, wait for the school bus. This family lives in the Salt Lake Valley among monogamist families and their children are attending public schools. (Photo by Stephan Gladieu/Getty Images)
The bill was sponsored by State Sen. Deidre Henderson (R-Spanish Fork) and has 20 co-sponsors. Sen. Henderson contends that under the current polygamy law, women and children are often afraid of leaving a polygamous home for fear of punishment, and this fear (and manipulation) is often imposed by the male head of the household.
“Don’t prosecute otherwise law-abiding polygamists, but instead focus on actual crimes like fraud and abuse,” Henderson wrote in The Salt Lake Tribune on Feb. 7. “We want to encourage more reporting and easier investigation of abuse, and the way to do that, after consulting with prosecutors and polygamists alike, is to reduce the criminal penalty so the high barrier to community integration is lowered.”
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