"Consciously taking tactics from the gay-rights movement, polygamists have reframed their struggle..."

They speak in terms of freedom and individual choice -- not religion. Good move, considering the audience they are most likely to persuade.

The U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which voided laws criminalizing sodomy, ... aided polygamy's cause because it implied that the court disapproved of laws that reach into the bedroom.

Since then, liberal legal scholars, generally no friend of the polygamists' conservative-leaning politics, have championed decriminalization. One of them is Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has written two op-eds for USA Today calling for the legalization of bigamy -- and same-sex marriage.

"I find polygamy an offensive practice," said Turley, who has become something of a celebrity among polygamists in Utah. "But there is no way its practice among consenting adults should be a felony."

I think it's rather obvious that it shouldn't be a crime for adults to live together and call themselves married. As long as it's not about having more than one marriage treated as a marriage in the legal sense, forcing anyone to marry, defrauding someone, or having sex with minors, the government should leave people alone.