Our recent Herald Poll on polygamy included these responses:

Thank you for your sound arguments and well-presented article. It's refreshing amid the plethora of sensationalism that usually surrounds polygamy stories. Polygamy does not equal child abuse. Polygamy should definitely be decriminalized.

Lehi

I do not recommend its practice, however it never seemed rational to me that polygamy (polyandry or polygyny) among totally voluntary, non-coerced consenting adults (over 18 years) be illegal, especially in a society that now openly tolerates adultery and homosexual behavior. On the other hand, rooting out and prosecuting sexual and other physical child abuse of any kind should be aggressively pursued to the full extent of the law. Further breaking child abuse laws should carry more severe, mandated punishment than similar adult laws due to the inability of the victims to protect themselves.

• Ed Trammell,

Provo

I can't understand why the public is so incensed with polygamists while they openly tolerate all kinds of immoral practices otherwise. Polygamy should be legalized as an affirmation of the freedom of religion upon which this country was founded and has long held as a human right. Legalization could help overcome welfare fraud and the type of sexual abuse caused partly by the follower's seclusion and closed community. I am aghast at the legal overkill going on in Texas. I can feel the heartbreak of the parents and children clear up here.

• Glenna Dennett,

Orem

We need to listen to experiences, experts and escapees that correct the victimizing folklore of "consenting adults" and "polygamy doctrine."

Polygamy "was an incident, never an essential" (Talmage); an "experiment" (Stanley S. Ivins); "cultural artifact" (Todd Compton); "not an eternal principle" (Eugene England); "not one of doctrine but of history" (John A. Widtsoe); "seems to corrupt civil society ... education, individual rights and the rule of law" (Naomi Schaefer); "the major factor responsible for poverty, corruption, illiteracy and diseases" (CAPWONA). "I think it is not doctrinal. It's not legal" (Gordon B. Hinckley). "Private choices are not private; they all have public consequences" (James E. Faust).

• Curtis Henderson,

Spanish Fork