The Women's Religious Liberties Union, a pro-polygamy group, protests outside the Tribune Building on Thursday.

Continuing a march they hope will vanquish a 64-year-old injustice, a small but vocal group of polygamous wives and supporters demonstrated in front of The Salt Lake Tribune on Thursday. 

The year-old Women's Religious Liberties Union (WRLU) was critical of newspaper and television depictions they say paint all polygamists as incestuous, misogynous and abusive to women and children.

But their real target is a 1935 Utah law that turned bigamy into a felony, instead of a misdemeanor, and a clause that makes an outlaw of any person who "cohabits with another person."

They are not alone.

Later Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said it plans to back the group's challenge of Utah's bigamy law.

"Living arrangements are really the most intimate kinds of decisions people make," said ACLU of Utah legal director Stephen Clark. "Talking to [Utah's polygamists] is like talking to gays and lesbians who really want the right to live their lives, and not live in fear because of whom they love. So certainly that kind of privacy expectation is something the ACLU is committed to protecting."

Utah's cohabitation clause was precisely aimed at polygamists, but is in direct conflict with religious protections in the U.S. Constitution, said WRLU spokeswoman Carol Smith.

"We believe you can't discriminate against us because of our life choices," Smith said. "What we want is very simple -- eliminate the cohabitation clause of the bigamy law."

Smith and about 20 supporters, some wearing cloth veils and dark sunglasses to shield their identities, marched through the noon hour in front of the Tribune Building, 143 S. Main, Salt Lake City.

The WRLU protests began in earnest last month outside the headquarters of the anti-polygamy Tapestry of Polygamy, a group WRLU members say spearheaded recent bigamy arrests in Millard and Sevier counties.

Smith and WRLU founder and president Mary Potter argue polygamists are being unfairly singled out under the bigamy statute's cohabitation clause. Bigamy laws are generally designed to target men and women who fraudulently marry more than once. Polygamists, Potter says, marry more than once with the consent of all parties.

"I speak for many people who are afraid," Potter said. "We feel if we strike this law it would answer a lot of problems we have in Utah."

One Utah political party agrees: "I don't defend what they believe, but I will defend to the grave their right to believe it," said Kitty Burton, chair of Utah's Libertarian Party, who watched the protest from a sidewalk planter.

But Potter and her followers face rigid opposition.

The U.S. Supreme Court has previously ruled the First Amendment does not exempt citizens from criminal anti-bigamy laws, although the ACLU's Clark believes there is growing support to change that.

"The bigamy statute, like the sodomy statute and like other anachronistic moralistic legislation, goes to the core of what the Supreme Court identifies as important fundamental privacy rights," he said.

In meetings held during the past several months, the ACLU and WRLU have mapped potential assaults on Utah's bigamy statute. While no path has been chosen, the likely route is a constitutional appeal of a bigamy conviction or a push on Capitol Hill, where a favorable lawmaker may be persuaded to introduce legislation altering the 1935 law.

Thursday's hourlong protest -- complete with megaphone exhortations and placard slogans -- focused on religious freedom, but touched on the Tribune's yearlong series of investigative reports on incest, welfare fraud and child abuse found within some polygamous clans.

After watching the protest, Tribune Editor James E. Shelledy defended the newspaper's coverage.

"The issue of polygamy has been incidental to the Salt Lake Tribune coverage in question," he said. "The trigger for and focus of Tribune stories have been criminal and unsavory activities, such as child and spousal abuse . . . . The Tribune will continue to investigate and to expose abuse of the vulnerable, exploitation of the system, and criminal acts whenever and wherever it finds them."

Siding with some Tribune reports, Sidney Anderson, a plural wife and member of WRLU, denounced convicted child abuser and polygamist John Daniel Kingston and Kingston's brother, David Ortell, who was sentenced on Friday for to up to 10 years in prison for incest and unlawful sexual abuse of his niece.

But the actions of a few polygamists should not condemn all polygamists, she said.

"Let's be proud of our heritage," she urged a somewhat stunned and mostly silent crowd in front of the Tribune Building. "You don't have to live polygamy, but please respect my freedom to practice my religion."