On polygamy, a crackdown and a bid for legitimacy

America's often-isolated believers in polygamy are coming into the public eye - confronted by a new crackdown even as some civil rights advocates contend that plural marriage should be legitimized.

The most sensational of the recent incidents has come in the small, tight-lipped community of Colorado City, Ariz. Recently, a power struggle has emerged within the polygamy-oriented sect that dominates the town. Some men have been excommunicated and their wives and children been "reassigned" to other men.

The turmoil there - apparently a bid by the church leader to consolidate his control of the community - comes as America's estimated 100,000 polygamists are in the spotlight on other fronts:

• Early this week a member of the Kingstons, a large clan in Utah that has practiced bigamy, was sentenced to a one-year prison term for taking as his wife a 15-year-old cousin who was also his aunt.

• Authorities in Arizona and Utah, with an eye on Colorado City, are stepping up a years-long investigation into the sect there - so-called fundamentalist Mormons - including concerns about forced marriages involving underage girls.

• In Salt Lake City, a civil rights attorney brought a lawsuit Jan. 12 challenging Utah's ban on polygamy. The case, which is built partly on the precedent set when the US Supreme Court overturned Texas's ban on sodomy, involves a married couple who were denied a license for plural marriage.

In all, the flurry of events could refocus attention on a practice that has quietly persisted for decades.

"We've all just turned a blind eye to what's going on," Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff says in an interview. "It's an embarrassment."

Mr. Shurtleff is at the forefront of a two-state investigation along the Arizona-Utah border involving Colorado City and Hildale, a nearby Utah town.

Both states have constitutions banning polygamy. But only Utah has enacted laws to criminalize it, although there have been few successful prosecutions.

"It was not on my radar screen," says Shurtleff. "It just hasn't been for 100 years of our history."

He is a Mormon, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which disavowed polygamy in 1890 amid federal pressure. But for the breakaway sect, which calls itself the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), taking plural wives is an ecclesiastical mandate.

Along with Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, Shurtleff has been building law enforcement efforts around Hildale and Colorado City, formerly known as Short Creek. In August, Hildale police officer Rodney Holm was convicted of bigamy and sexual misconduct with a minor whom he took as his third wife. Shurtleff then began moves to decertify the police department in Hildale. "The law has not been there to protect women and children," Mr. Shurtleff says. The town is "in the absolute control of a religious zealot."

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