We tend to think that culture wars are a unique affliction of our unsettled age. In the 19th century, however, the country was engulfed in a moral struggle not only against slavery but also - and often with comparable fervor - against Mormon polygamy. From Joseph Smith's revelation in the early 1830s that included plural marriage to the official repudiation of this teaching by the Mormon Church in 1890, Mormons were furiously persecuted and relentlessly prosecuted for their practice of polygamy.

The platform of the Republican Party in 1856 famously called for the prohibition in the territories of "those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery." Moreover, the state constitutions of Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Utah all have provisions banning polygamy and Congress required these anti-polygamy provisions as a condition of admission to statehood in all these states except Idaho.

This constitutional struggle over polygamy culminated in 1878 when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Reynolds v. United States. A bigamist named George Reynolds was prosecuted in the Utah territory. Reynolds sought a conduct exemption to the criminal prohibition of polygamy based on the guarantee of the free exercise of religion under the first amendment. With the correct observation that the practice of polygamy is incompatible with American political institutions, the Court determined that the prohibition was well within the authority of Congress in the territories.

Mormon polygamy was defeated by a culture stable enough in its understanding of public morality, particularly at the elite level, to thwart this great challenge. That understanding has essentially vanished today.

Proponents of same-sex marriage invariably wonder what harm would be presented by allowing couples of the same sex to marry. Of course, by ignoring sexual complementarity and violating the natural law, the common good is undermined; in other words, our moral ecology will be damaged. But our intellectual elites who dominate the courts, the universities and the editorial offices of newspapers are animated by a radical individualism on social issues and they have no concern at all for public morality and refuse to acknowledge any such harm.

Then what is the case against polygamy? Allowing a man (or woman) to enter into plural marriage will not prohibit others from marrying in the monogamous tradition. It would not interfere with that arrangement in any way. Churches would still be free to marry couples in conformity with their own teachings.

What is more, it should be acknowledged that, unlike same-sex marriage, plural marriage has a long and established tradition throughout many parts of the world. Finally, with the easy availability of unlimited divorce, serial polygamy is already thoroughly commonplace in Europe and America. What is the difference between taking three or four wives at once or one after the other?

With the exclusively libertarian premises that are relied on today for such questions, the case for polygamy is stronger than that of same-sex marriage. For the libertarian, any case against polygamy is based on nothing more than ignorance and fear. After all, most people know homosexuals. How many polygamists does anyone know? Perhaps such irrational opposition should be stigmatized as "polyphobia."

With numerous Mormon fundamentalists (excommunicated Mormons who practice polygamy) in this country and increasing immigration from Islamic countries where polygamy is enthusiastically practiced, plural marriage is not a concern based on hysteria or conjecture. Indeed, the intellectually casual embrace of same-sex marriage by its advocates is remarkably oblivious to this problem. Instead of mocking opposition to same-sex marriage as the irrational product of a benighted religious tradition, advocates must be forced to confront the inescapable logic of their own argument.

If marriage is to be deconstructed to satisfy a "right" that never occurred to anyone until the day before yesterday, then certain ineluctable ramifications must be addressed.

----Gregory J. Sullivan is a lawyer who resides in Bucks County. He can be reached at Gregoryjsull@aol.com.