Arizona’s constitution prohibits polygamy: Why it still happens
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Polygamy is outlawed in the state constitution, but there are still likely hundreds of Arizonans who engage in plural marriages.
Why it matters: Some religions — namely, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) — view plural marriage as a tenet of their faith, but several polygamist leaders have used the practice to force underage girls into marriage and commit other abuses.
Driving the news: Samuel Bateman, the leader of an Arizona polygamous offshoot of the FLDS, was sentenced to 50 years in prison last week for arranging sexual encounters with girls as young as 9 years old and for scheming to kidnap them from protective custody.
Bateman claimed to have 20 spiritual “wives.”
The intrigue: Bateman and other polygamists who ended up in prison were convicted of child abuse, sexual assault or financial crimes — not polygamy.
The big picture: The state constitution says: “Polygamous or plural marriages, or polygamous cohabitation, are forever prohibited within this state.”
Yes, but: The Legislature never passed a statute specifying the penalties for violating the constitution’s ban, so it’s unenforceable, former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard told Axios.
Between the lines: Arizona has a bigamy statute prohibiting someone from entering into a legal marriage with more than one person at once. However, many polygamous marriages are only “spiritual” and not recorded with the government.
In 2004, Goddard secured a child bigamy law that makes it a felony for someone 18 or older who has a spouse to enter into any kind of marriage — legal, spiritual or otherwise — with a minor.
The 2004 law also enacted penalties against people who arrange for a child to marry someone who already has a spouse.
Flashback: Until the early 2000s, Colorado City — a small town on the Utah border with a long history of polygamy — was mostly ignored by the state following a failed raid of the community in 1953.
Many, including Goddard, believe the isolation allowed child and sexual abuse to run rampant in the early 2000s under Warren Jeffs, the now-imprisoned FLDS prophet.
Zoom in: Goddard, who was AG from 2003 to 2011, worked with his counterpart in Utah to try to build trust with FLDS people and crack down on child marriages.
Content retrieved from: https://www.axios.com/local/phoenix/2024/12/18/arizonas-polygamy-laws-bateman-jeffs.
