Tony Phillips has some worthwhile comments on the media sensationalism behind the Warren Jeffs case in protect children, yes, but leave cockamamie grownups alone . . . but while he makes some very very worthwhile points, he misses a few too.

Yes, polygamy is considered norm in most human societies both throughout history and right now:

…for the overwhelming majority of human history, throughout cultures and across the inhabited earth, polygamy of one form or another has not only been tolerated, it has been the norm. It still is. The Ethnographic Atlas recorded the marital composition of 1,231 societies between 1960 and 1980. Of them, 186 were monogamous. That’s 15 percent. As recently as 26 years ago, 85 percent of human societies had prevailing marriage norms that included some form of polygamy.

Yes, the government should keep it’s nose out of the private choices of individuals.

Yes, Jeffs is being prosecuted more for “exploitation of children” by allegedly forcing young girls to marry old geezers.

However, despite that point the government is very much interested in curtailing the practice of polygamy, polyamory, or any other poly involving multiple spouses legal or otherwise. The Green polygamy prosecution was pushed exactly in a way that Phillips (Tony, that is) says the government has no business interfering with. There were no legal marriages and Green made it clear he never “married” any of the women living with him. Hoever, the state used the concept of common-law wife to prosecute as a legal wife anyone living with someone for more than the minimum time for common law marriage rights to kick in. So, Tony will need to rethink his whole multiple co-ed strategy if he ever decides to move to Utah or other states that have begun using the same legal gambit (prosecuting polygamy when no formal laws have been broken).