Polygamy case rife with irony

Brian Barnard, the noted Salt Lake City civil rights attorney who last week filed a lawsuit on behalf of three clients, a man and two women, who are challenging the Utah state law that prohibits them from practicing polygamy, appreciates the irony of the situation.

"People tell me that if it were a hundred years ago, I'd be representing the Mormons," says Barnard. "Back then, they were the ones with the interesting cases."

Now Barnard, with his clients, finds himself on the other side of a law long adhered to by the state's dominant religion as well as the Mormon-majority state Legislature.

Times indeed have changed. In 1878, when the LDS Church was still practicing polygamy and Utah was still a territory, the LDS Church hand-picked Brigham Young's personal secretary, a man with three wives named George Reynolds, to act as defendant in a criminal case that would test the federal law outlawing bigamy (being married to more than one person at the same time). The resultant LDS Church-led legal battle eventually wound up being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against Reynolds and the polygamy he practiced. Not only did the verdict send Brigham Young's secretary to prison for two years, it also, in a very real sense, shaped Utah's history. Twelve years later, the LDS Church abolished polygamy and 18 years later, after a promise to not practice polygamy forever, Utah was admitted as the nation's 45th state.

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Like Reynolds, the case Barnard is preparing is a test case, with the express goal of overturning Reynolds. As the attorney points out, the only way this can happen is if the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear the lawsuit and consider again whether it is within one's constitutional rights to practice polygamy when it is a part of one's religion.

Unlike George Reynolds, his clients — who are listed in the lawsuit as G. Lee Cook, D. Cook and J. Bronson — would prefer to remain as anonymous as possible. All three are over the age of 40 and Barnard says there are no state welfare abuse or underage marriage issues involved, as there were in the recent high-profile trial of polygamist Tom Green.

"My clients don't want a Tom Green situation; they want this to be a discussion of the legal issue," says Barnard.

All of which brings about the intriguing juxtaposition of a non-Mormon civil rights attorney born and raised in Los Angeles representing three people who are non-Mormons and want to legally practice exactly what card-carrying Mormon George Reynolds wanted to legally practice 126 years ago.