As long as they aren’t filing a marriage certificate with the authorities, these polygamous marriages don’t exist, in the eyes of the government. It isn’t much different than the thugster in the innercity spreading his seed all over, is it? Isn’t there some pro football player that has an unbelievable number of kids with a number of women?
You do know that most of these women are on welfare because legally they are single moms with like 12 kids.
And that is just for starters the abuse that goes on in these compounds is staggering. They also have at least one re-education camp where women who aren’t completely submissive go to learn to ‘stay sweet’. You don’t want to know what goes on there.
In Utah (and Arizona), it's more complicated. There are special prohibitions in the Utah and Arizona state constitutions and the Utah and Arizona state laws on bigamy are written very specifically to go beyond legal marriage.
Utah was required to renounce and prohibit polygamy in order to become a state. Utah was, for all intents and purposes, a theocracy. It had been at war with the U.S. (Google the Utah Wars). Polygamy was illegal in the United States.In fact, the first political platform of the Republican Party (1856) spelled out the:"right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism — Polygamy, and Slavery."
So Utah (and Arizona) was required to put a prohibition against polygamy in its state constitution. In Utah, the prohibition even required that the people of Utah couldn't change that provision without the consent of the United States (Utah Constitution, Section 3, Article 1). The United States didn't trust the LDS Church or the people of Utah.
Utah Code Annotated 76-7-101 makes bigamy a third-degree felony and goes beyond having more than one actual marriage. The Code provides:
"A person is guilty of bigamy when, knowing he has a husband or wife or knowing the other person has a husband or wife, the person purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person."
There is a dual city on the Southern Utah/Northern Arizona border that's been there for years and is one of many known cities where polygamists live. The state authorities do nothing about them (except occasionally to address welfare fraud). This isn't an informal thing - it's formal.
The official state website of Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff says that although polygamy is illegal in Utah and Arizona, law enforcement in both states have decided not to prosecute it. Some will say this is because it is a victimless crime; however, there are many victims. You could start with the teenaged boys who are thrown out of the compounds with no education, no money and no possessions because they pose a threat to the older men when it comes to the affections of the young girls. They're called the 'lost boys' and there are charities set up to take care of them. There is rampant child sexual abuse in these polygamist communities, as girls in their early teens or preteens are taken as brides.
There's massive welfare fraud, because the women generally don't work and the men can't afford to support multiple families.
In short, there are a lot of sociological angles here that are different than thugs impregnating several women.