Utah man faces prosecution in rare polygamy case

SALT LAKE CITY - A man who lives with his five wives and 29 children in the remote Utah desert goes on trial Monday in the state's first polygamy prosecution in decades.

Tom Green, who says his lifestyle is a God-given choice and has vigorously defended it on TV talks shows, faces charges of bigamy and criminal nonsupport. He could get 25 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

But Green, who insists he should be allowed to practice polygamy under the protection of religious freedom, said he shouldn't be required to keep his beliefs quiet.

Green also may be subject to a separate trial on child rape charges stemming from his relationship with one of his wives when she was 13, but no trial date has been set.

Only a handful of Utah polygamists have ever been charged with bigamy, and prosecutors believe the last trial was in the 1950s. The outcome of the trial will be watched with interest by an estimated 30,000 polygamists living in the West.

Critics of the practice say that the patriarchal societies in which polygamists live foster child abuse, incest and, because few practitioners can afford to support their enormous families, welfare fraud.

Polygamy arrived in Utah in the 1840s, when members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints settled in the state. Mormon leaders believed that God required the practice because some Old Testament prophets took multiple wives.

But outside the church, the practice was condemned. In 1854 the Republican Party termed polygamy and slavery the "twin relics of barbarism," and in 1862 Congress outlawed plural marriage.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1879 upheld the anti-polygamy law. And with federal pressure mounting, the church in 1890 disavowed polygamy.

Six years later, as a condition of statehood, the practice was prohibited in the Utah Constitution.