I am new to Idaho and the concept of plural marriage. I am a Christian Protestant and married in a monogamous relationship. I understand that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abolished the practice of polygamy and that it is illegal in the United States to take more than one legal wife.

However, I fail to understand why it's a crime for an upstanding, tax-paying legal U.S. citizen who chooses to legally marry one wife and they solemnize, in a religious ceremony only, a relationship with another consenting adult. All parties are adults capable of making this decision and willing to live with each other in this scenario freely. I thought the protection of religious choices and the privacy of intimate, personal relationships between consenting adults were upheld by the U.S. Constitution.

Isn't it funny that a married man can legally have a mistress, children out of wedlock and that, without the knowledge or consent of his legal wife, sleep with other women - or men for that matter - and the legal system looks the other way? Yet, a spiritual man who believes it's wrong to have marital relations outside the sanctity of God's holy ordinance, and without the permission or knowledge of his legal wife, is a criminal if he lives a polygamous lifestyle.

Somehow, God has been taken out of the rule of law here.