MARCH 29, 2004

MARRIAGE
Polygamy a factor in marriage debates

IN THE NORTHEAST
• Read the Jan. 15, 2004, Boston Globe column, "Is lawful polygamy next?"
• James J. Hughes is the associate director of Institutional Research and Planning at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., where he also teaches health policy in the graduate public policy program. He is a sociologist and bioethicist and has written in defense of polygamy. Contact 860-297-2376, james.Hughes@trincoll.edu.
• Janet B. Bennion is an associate professor of anthropology and sociology at Lyndon State College in Lyndonville, Vt., who researches alternative sexuality in religious groups in the United States, Mexico and Africa. She is the author of two books about women's lives in polygamy, Women of Principle: Female Networking in Contemporary Mormon Polygyny (Oxford Press, 1998) and Desert Patriarchy: Mormon and Mennonite Communities in the Chihuahua Valley (University of Arizona Press, forthcoming spring 2004). Contact 802-626-6234, janet.bennion@lyndonstate.edu.

IN THE EAST
• Keith E. Sealing, assistant dean at Syracuse University's College of Law in Syracuse, N.Y., has researched whether the First Amendment free-exercise clause should prohibit states from banning religiously motivated polygamy. Contact 315-443-3192, kesealin@law.syr.edu.
• Audrey B. Chapman is a family therapist in private practice in Washington, D.C., and the author of Man Sharing: Dilemma or Choice? A Radical New Way of Relating to the Men in Your Lives (William Morrow, 1986). Contact 703-914-2068.
• Rick Ross is founder and executive director of the nonprofit Ross A. Institute, which is based in Jersey City, N.J., and has a mission of studying controversial groups and movements. The institute maintains a database on polygamist groups. Contact 201-222-3531, info@rickross.com.

IN THE SOUTHEAST
• Patricia Dixon is associate professor in African-American studies at Georgia State University in Athens, Ga., and co-founder of the African-American Relationships Institute. She contends that a shortage of eligible African-American men, combined with men's natural tendency to engage in multiple relationships, makes polygamy a practical option for African-Americans. Contact 404-651-4882, pdixon2@gsu.edu.
• Daryl White is a professor of sociology and anthropology at Spelman College in Atlanta who has researched Mormonism. Contact 404-270-6053, dwhite@spelman.edu.
• O. Kendall White Jr. is William P. Ames Jr. Professor in Sociology and Anthropology at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va., and has written extensively on Mormonism. Contact 540-458-8793, Whitek@wlu.edu.

IN THE SOUTH
• Hans A. Baer is a professor in the anthropology and sociology department at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock, and he has researched fundamentalist, polygamous Mormons. Contact 501-569-3173, habaer@ualr.edu.
• Kathleen Flake is assistant professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville. She has written extensively on Mormons, and is the author of The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (University of North Carolina Press, 2004). Contact 615-322-2776, kathleen.flake@vanderbilt.edu.
• Michele Alexandre, an assistant law professor at the University of Memphis in Memphis, Tenn., is a 2004 Fulbright Scholar researching the legal protection afforded to women under the Haitian practice of placage, an informal form of polygamy. She is currently in Trinidad and Tobago, working with the Hugh Wooding Law School and the Centre for Gender and Development Studies. Contact malxndr2@memphis.edu.

IN THE MIDWEST
• R. Collin Mangrum is a law professor at Creighton University in Omaha who teaches on church and state issues and on the history of American legal thought. He is co-author of Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (University of Illinois Press, 1988). Contact 402-280-3092, mangrum@creighton.edu.
• Maura I. Strassberg is a law professor at Drake University in Des Moines who has expertise in sexuality law and has written about polygamy. Contact 515-271-2068, maura.strassberg@drake.edu.
• Martin Ottenheimer is an anthropology professor at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., whose research specializes in marriage and family relationships. Contact 785-532-9903, martin@ottenheimer.com.

IN THE SOUTHWEST
• Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff has vowed to crack down on polygamy involving underage brides and abuse. His office has an investigator, Ron Barton, who specializes in closed communities, including crimes involving polygamy. Read a May 12, 2003, Salt Lake Tribune article, posted by the anti-polygamy site The Principle. Contact Paul Murphy at 801-538-1892, pmurphy@utah.gov.
• Workers with the toll-free Utah Domestic Violence Information Line, which is working with the state attorney general's office, have been receiving training in helping victims of violence from polygamous relationships. Read a Feb. 11, 2004, news release. Contact A.J. Hunt, 801-887-1236.
• Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, as part of a crackdown on abuse associated with polygamy, plans to establish a state justice center in Colorado City, where most residents engage in polygamy, according to a Feb. 5, 2004, story by News Channel 3 in Phoenix, posted by Fox 11 in Tucson.
• Martha Sonntag Bradley, a historian who teaches architecture at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, has written extensively on 20th-century polygamy and is president of the Mormon History Association. Her books include Kidnapped From That Land: The Government Raids on the Short Creek Polygamists (University of Utah Press, 1999). Contact 801-581-7383, bradley@arch.utah.edu.
Irwin Altman is a distinguished professor of psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and the co-author of Polygamous Families in Contemporary Society (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• Contact 801-581-7109, Irwin.Altman@m.cc.utah.edu.
Edwin B. Firmage is a law professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City who has defended polygamists. A monogamist and a great-great-grandson of polygamist Brigham Young, Firmage teaches constitutional law. He is co-author of Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (University of Illinois Press, 1988). Contact 801-581-7819, firmagee@law.utah.edu.
• Jeffrey C. Fox is an assistant professor of political science at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., who has researched Mormonism and polygamy. Contact 970-247-7316, fox_j@fortlewis.edu.
Jenifer Kunz, an associate professor of sociology at West Texas A&M University, has researched the attitudes of 21st-century members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints toward polygamy. Contact 806-651-2597, jkunz@mail.wtamu.edu.

IN THE WEST/NORTHWEST
• Police say a man in Fresno, Calif., who is suspected of killing nine of his family members lived a life of polygamy and incest, even fathering two of his victims with his own daughters, reported NBC11.com of San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco in a March 14, 2004, story. Read a March 18, 2004, Fresno Bee article.
• David L. Zolman of Salt Lake City is a family historian and former Utah state representative. He advocates open dialogue and education about the polygamous culture, its strengths and weaknesses, as well as an examination of contemporary anti-polygamy laws, and whether or not such laws are effective and serve the purpose for which they were intended, or if they are discriminatory and marginalizing of an entire class of citizens. Contact 801-969-9524, zolman2@comcast.net.
• Armand L. Mauss, a professor emeritus of sociology and religious studies at Washington State University who now lives in Irvine, Calif., has written extensively on Mormonism. His most recent book is All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (University of Illinois Press, 2003). Contact almauss@cox.net.
• B. Carmon Hardy is a history professor at California State University at Fullerton and the author of Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (University of Illinois Press, 1992). Contact 714-278-3378, chardy@fullerton.edu.
• Erwin Chemerinsky teaches law at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He specializes in constitutional law. He says that polygamy in the United States has customarily been the practice of subjugating women and that the state has an interest in preventing that. Contact 213-740-2539, echemeri@law.usc.edu.
• Stanley Kurtz is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, in Stanford, Calif., whose expertise includes the culture wars. Read his article "Beyond Gay Marriage: The Road to Polyamory," from the Aug. 4-Aug. 11 issue of The Weekly Standard. Contact Michele M. Horaney at 650-725-7293, Horaney@hoover.stanford.edu.
• Theodore C. Bergstrom holds the Aaron and Cherie Raznick Chair of Economics in the economics department at the University of California in Santa Barbara, Calif., and is the author of On the Economics of Polygyny (University of Michigan, 1994), which is available online. Contact 805-893-3744, tedb@econ.ucsb.edu.