When it comes to sexual relationships and cohabitation among consenting adults, Utah takes a permissive approach. If a guy wants to shack up with a lady, that's fine. If he wants to shack up with several, no problem. He can father children by different roommates, with no fear of the law.
But if he marries one woman and represents three others as his "spiritual wives," like Kody Brown? Then he's committed a felony. Not because of the stuff that goes on behind closed doors. It's the public act of claiming to be part of a lifelong "plural marriage" that raises the specter of jail.
This came as a surprise to Brown, a "fundamentalist Mormon" whose sect, unlike the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, practices polygamy. Despite the legal ban, prosecutions for polygamy are extremely rare.
Before appearing in a TV reality show called Sister Wives, Brown was told by authorities he was in no danger of prosecution as long as he wasn't doing anything else illegal, such as consorting with underage girls. But when the show hit the air, prosecutors opened a criminal investigation.
So Brown went to court claiming that his constitutional rights have been violated in various ways. Though it may come as a surprise to hear, he's got a perfectly reasonable argument.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/14/kody-brown-and-his-four-wives
