Utah Tries to Legalize Polygamy

Deseret News article of March, 1999

By Marjorie Cortez
Deseret News staff writer

For a moment, it appeared ---- on paper, at least ---- that lawmakers were going to study the legalization of polygamy.

There was egg on faces aplenty Wednesday night when the item turned up on the Legislature's "master study list" in the final hours of the Utah Legislature.

The list includes recommendations to the Legislative Management Committee, which decides what issues lawmakers will study during the legislative interim.

Rep. David Zolman, R-Taylorsville, said he "forgot" he had requested that lawmakers study the issue. It appeared in HJR9 as "Polygamy ---- to study what actions would be taken to eliminate legal prohibitions regarding the practice of polygamy."

Zolman said his intention was to explore the possibility of removing the prohibition of polygamy from the Utah Constitution and handling the issue in statute. Utah is the only state that has a "polygamy" provision in its state constitution, he said.

He also wanted to study why Utah had to surrender so much land to the federal government to achieve statehood.

Zolman he believes the polygamy issue "should go to the vote of the people."

The bill moved to the Senate, where Sen. Scott Howell, D-Granite, moved to purge the polygamy issue from the list.

"I took it out because I didn't want to embarrass our state one more time," said Howell. "It's a pre-emptive strike to save us from embarrassment right after the Olympic scandal."

House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin Garn, R-Layton, said dozens of requests for study poured in and Zolman's request slipped in unnoticed.

"I wish I had caught it. It wouldn't have been there," said Garn.

Comment: The original article printed in the newspaper stated that the reason that the polygamy illegality statement was published in the Utah State Constitution was because it was Federally mandated as a condition for Utah to receive statehood. (Utah desperately had fought giving up the practice of polygamy).

Interestingly, the sanitized Internet version of the story left out this information and substituted, "Utah is the only state that has a 'polygamy' provision in its state constitution."

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