(Governor) Herbert signs polygamy bill into Utah law

Salt Lake Tribune ^ | 3/28/17 | Nate Carlisle

[Nero Germanicus]

Gov. Gary Herbert on Tuesday signed a bill that keeps polygamy a felony in Utah and increases the penalties for polygamists convicted of committing frauds and abuses.

Herbert's approval of HB99 affirms the position Utah has held since statehood — that polygamy is against the law. Yet it's unclear how much of the bill will ever be used.

Polygamists and some sympathetic attorneys have said HB99 will be unconstitutional if it's applied to consenting adults who choose to live as such a family. Joe Darger, who has three wives and was the most vocal opponent of the bill, has dared prosecutors to charge him.

Darger doesn't think that will happen. After Herbert signed the bill Tuesday, Darger said the goal of HB99 appeared to be to keep polygamists silent by making their lifestyles a crime.

"This is more for persecution than it ever is intended for prosecution," the polygamist said.

The Utah attorney general's office and every county attorney who has been asked has said his or her policies are not to prosecute families like the Dargers. Assistant Attorney General Parker Douglas testified to the Legislature that prosecutors are concerned with polygamists who commit fraud and abuse.

[castlegreyskull]

Polygamy seems more normal than gay marriage; not that I support either. It will probably get legalized some day; know the deterioration of this country will continue.

[MeganC]

“Polygamy & the “Baby daddy” culture are the same thing.”

Except that they’re not the same thing. Aside from the notorious FLDS cult there’s a growing number of secular, pagan, and Christian polygamists in the USA who commit to their wives and families and who work hard and eschew welfare in order to avoid scrutiny by avaricious social workers and CPS.

The ‘Baby Daddy’ culture is one in which women have one or more partners and sometimes the express purpose of their behavior is to generate babies that enable the mother to obtain welfare entitlements. The CPS and social worker industries LOVE these people because the more such people there are then the more social workers and CPS the government needs to hire.

And in the Baby Daddy culture the presence of the man is a reason to cancel the welfare benefits. Thus the man isn’t around in the lives of his wives or his progeny.

The Baby Daddy culture costs America far more in welfare than the FLDS do with their ‘bleeding the beast’ BS excuse for welfare fraud. That’s the bigger problem.